Criticism of the DSM-5, and why the "middle way" is dangerous

If you're a mental health professional, or in any other way interested in the matter, and you don't want to be regarded backward, if you haven't yet, you better hurry to join in on the criticism of the forthcoming edition of the DSM!

These days, the internet is teeming with DSM-5 criticism, not least by professionals, and to judge from the vast majority of it,  the stance to take is that, this time (as in: opposed to last time), the proposals for new DSM categories are going too far. If the new categories are accepted as valid diagnoses, making their way into DSM-5, this will threaten, and might indeed erode psychiatry's credibility. After all, the proposed new categories aren't sufficiently supported by science, and we don't want anything unscientific in the DSM, do we? No, certainly not. Especially since the initiative for the forthcoming edition of the DSM was taken out of concerns about the lack of science behind the current edition... Oh, wait, that means what's in the current edition, DSM-IV-TR, isn't really backed by science, then? Exactly, that's what it means. And that then means that we protest new categories to go into the DSM, because we don't want them to -- yeah, what? Further add to the load of categories not backed by any science?...

Confused? Well, that's probably because you're still caught up in what commonly is thought of as "logic". Know that psychiatric logic is different . It may seem twisted at first glance, but, if you take a step back, and look at the big picture, it's actually quite simple: we have a number of behavior patterns, recognized by psychiatry as treatable (though not curable), medical conditions, a definition that, for several reasons but scientific ones, has been widely accepted by the public to be scientific -- just like the public once upon a time, for several reasons but scientific ones, accepted as the one and only truth that there is such a thing as spirit possession -- and now the worst we could do is to push our luck, and have this acceptance shaken to its foundation. 


Imagine, if the public started to question the validity of categories like "bipolar", "depression", or "ADHD"! Not to mention that of "psychosis"/"schizophrenia", psychiatry's "holy cow", the category that represents "insanity" in its purest form, and without which psychiatry might just as well pack up, because if the purest form of "insanity" isn't a medical condition, then none of psychiatry's categories is, and there is nothing left for psychiatry to label and treat (but not cure). Imagine, if psychiatry had to pack up, if we no longer could call people for "psychotic killers", with the psychiatric profession's seal of approval, that, miraculously, without any science to back it up, turns ordinary name-calling into, er, evidence-based diagnosis, if we had to acknowledge that we all are just human beings, reacting to life, some more extremely than others, due to more extreme life experiences than others', but still human beings! Imagine, if we couldn't scapegoat at least a certain number of people anymore, if we couldn't blame their faulty genes and brains anymore for our own insufficiencies, as parents, as a society, or as professionals! What a cruel world it would be!

So, if you want to save psychiatry, the "middle way" is the way to choose! Join the American Psychological Association, and "experts" like Allen Frances, Ronald Pies, and all the other hot-shots, including, well, Doug Bremner, and criticise the new categories proposed for the DSM-5, while you, by doing so, additionally confirm the already in the DSM, current edition, listed categories' scientific validity. By all means, don't go too far (!), like the British Psychological Society unfortunately does -- take for instance B 00, Schizophrenia, in their statement: "normal individual variation", "relational context of problems and the undeniable social causation of many such problems", "invalidity of this diagnosis", ... yeah, they're talking about schizophrenia, these guys must have lost it! Or as this and this petition wants you to go!

Certainly, a lot of harm is done to those who are misdiagnosed, and the new categories proposed for DSM-5 open up for more of such harm to be done to more people in the future, but how on earth can a diagnosis harm the person so diagnosed, if the diagnosis turns the person into a non-person? So, "psychosis", "schizophrenia", or whatever else from the DSM-IV: no harm done! Unless you were misdiagnosed, that is...

Sarcasm aside, the current discussion about DSM-5 and the validity of psych labels in general led my thoughts 1 1/2 year back in time, to a comment I received on this post, because it illustrates very nicely what the "middle way" actually looks like. A comment I back then decided not to publish.

The reason I didn't publish the comment in question back then was that I had no doubt that it was written in a state of pain and distress, emotional distress (as in "mental illness", exactly), so I thought, I'd "protect" the author of the comment against himself. This kind of reasoning, of course, is exactly the reasoning the mh system employs to justify its bad habit of regularly depriving labelled people of responsibility for themselves, their actions, their choices, and of their right to be heard. I put myself into the position of the one who knew what was good for the author of the comment, and although I still think the choice I made back then on behalf of the author was a wise one, I also think I was compromising myself by thinking I was in a position to choose on his behalf. I was infantilizing the author, "parenting" him, just like mh professionals usually do with those they've labelled "insane". "Do not parent. Parenting keeps kids alive and adults insane." -Peter Bullimore. "Insanity" means not having been given the chance to make one's own choices and take responsibility for them. No one can grow up and become "sane", as long as they're continuously denied the chance to make their own choices and take responsibility for them. So, I'm going to publish the comment below, as a sceen shot of the email notification I received back in 2010, since I, unfortunately, have deleted it from my comments folder at Blogger.

I am aware that the comment can be damaging to its author. It is for instance clearly a violation of the APA's Principles of Medical Ethics, section 7, item 3, and since it would have been possible for its author to remove it any time from the comment section at the post, while it is not possible for him to remove the screen shot here, I will of course do so, if asked to (in a commonly polite manner, any further abuse will be ignored, thank you!).

Anyway, this is what the "middle way" looks like:

Bruce E. Levine - My Story

The perfect parent

If everything else doesn't pan out, there's one thing you can do to achieve god-like status, perfection, in life: become a parent. At least to judge from the reaction of lots of parents to the least suggestion that maybe, just maybe, they didn't only have an influence on any success achieved by their offspring, but maybe, just maybe, also on one or the other failure, suffering, in their kids' lives, these parents seem to think they don't have to take the least responsibility for their parenting as being a parent in their opinion obviously equals to being the perfect parent. Being a parent seems to, automatically, turn you into some kind of supernatural being, infallible, and beyond any criticism. By definition there's no such thing as "bad parenting", there's no such thing as child abuse, neglect, or any kind of dysfunctional communication patterns acted out by parents towards their children. Parents don't make mistakes. To insinuate that they maybe, just maybe, are no less imperfect, fallible, and human as everybody else, and to ask them to take responsibility for their imperfection, their fallibility, and their humanity, borders to a cardinal sin.

Lola's is a quite interesting comment in this regard. Her daughter's upbringing was nothing less than perfect. No one, least of all Lola herself, made as much as one single mistake raising her daughter. It was all beer and skittles. Well, until "mental illness" struck, like a bolt from the blue. Never mind that alone reading about a "mentally ill" mother (Lola), that is a mother with major "issues", which, since she herself ascribes them to "mental illness", hardly can be anything but unresolved -- and as we all know, unresolved trauma inevitably gets acted out and thus passed on to any children, if there are any --, and about an "ex", into the bargain also this "ex" with "mental health issues", which means divorce, would, and should!, have everybody with just a minimum of insight into the human psyche shudder, and wonder how the kids cope in such a dysfunctional environment. Never mind that reading about all this obvious dysfunctionality wouldn't, and shouldn't!, have anyone with just a minimum of insight into the human psyche be the least surprised when they hear that a kid raised in this dysfunctionality reacts to it developing coping strategies that then, ignoring any insight into the human psyche, and maintaining the delusion of the perfect parent, conveniently can be labelled "mental illness".

There they are, the kids. Initially wanted, not for their own sake, but as an extension of their parents (' egos), whose only purpose in life it is to confirm their parents' infallibility, their god-like perfection as persons. But God help the kids, if they can't or won't fulfil this purpose, if they have the rudeness, selfishness, and ungratefulness to protest and thus expose their parents' violence towards them! Since the violence can't and must not be, in their parents' minds, since acknowledging to it would equal to having to give up on their "God delusion", it has to be the child who's imperfect, indeed defective, diseased.

So, please! psychiatry, step in and silence these rude, selfish, and ungrateful brats' completely unfounded accusations against us with your (pseudo-)scientific, medical authority! Once and for all. Please, label these rude, selfish, and ungrateful brats insane, that is whatever they say or do a symptom of "mental illness", and thereby invalid, not worth being listened to, and please, if ever you can, shut them up, free us from having to hear them scream out in pain over the violence we've inflicted on them!!!

Which also is quite interesting, is to watch some of these perfect parents go even further, not settling for having the rude, selfish, and ungrateful brat silenced, but additionally, in both hugging themselves, and fishing for the sympathy of people with just a minimum of insight into the human psyche, washing their hands of this dirty job of silencing the brat, and accusing psychiatry of being violent. These are the parents who complain about "misdiagnoses", side effects, lack of "treatment" efficacy, lack of services, and so on, and so on.

Sorry people, you have nothing to complain about. You asked for their help, and you got it. At least, they do whatever is in their power to meet your expectations. There's no way how psychiatry, or any other institution, ever could silence your children, and at the same time make them the successes, you initially wanted them to be. Success in life presupposes a language of one's own, through which the self can express itself. No language, no success. You asked for it yourselves. You asked for your children to be turned into non-persons, into a "mental illness", a failure.

You have no right whatsoever to judge and condemn people like Joseph Biederman or the Schofields. What these people do is nothing else but what you asked them to do, respectively what you do yourselves. You have no right to blame the pharmaceutical companies for pushing drugs with debilitating, and partly fatal "side" effects, and covering these "side" effects up. You asked for your children to be debilitated, and rendered lifeless. That you asked for this to happen in a metaphorical way, debilitating and killing your childrens' protesting self, doesn't make a difference. And you also asked for the cover-up. Since no perfect parent would ask for their child to be denied a self.

Psychiatry didn't establish itself, out of the blue. Just like your children didn't become "mentally ill" out of the blue. You asked for psychiatry to be established, in exactly the way it appears today, just like your behavior had your children react to it, and become "mentally ill".

Lastly, there's the returning "walk a mile in my shoes!"-thing. Well, I have. I've been about just as unconscious, unaware, and irresponsible, as these perfect parents are, or choose to be. Because, as mentioned before, the moment you know more than one side of the story, you're not innocent anymore. You stand with a choice, and with the entire responsibility for whatever choice you decide to make. And no, you don't even need to hear another side of the story from some critical professional or survivors, or whoever. You just need to listen to your children's side of the story. You just need to set yourself aside for once, and really listen to them. Not to whatever comes out of their mouth after they were "brought back" to seeing the world through your eyes, while they're drugged up over their own eyeballs, but while they're the most themselves, in "psychosis". You just have to try and walk a mile in your children's shoes.

Apart from all this, I can only wonder why someone, who thinks psych drugs, especially neuroleptics, are not designed for someone like her daughter, read between the lines: while they sure as hell are designed for the "real loonies", those not "misdiagnosed" -- and the concept of "misdiagnosis" always implies that there would be such a thing as correct diagnosis -- kept visiting and commenting on a blog authored by such a "real loony", playing up to this "real loony", who, into the bargain, isn't on any drugs, and, what more is, is a pronounced opponent to psych drugs and labels, and the institution of psychiatry as such. I can only wonder why someone who obviously firmly believes in biologically based brain diseases, at the same time, and repeatedly, joins in whenever there's a call for Soteria Houses. Soteria wasn't created to treat biologically based brain diseases. It was created out of the belief that the alleged biologically based brain diseases indeed were personal, existential crises. -- And the outcomes Soteria produced confirmed this belief to be true, btw. -- So, what's the big idea behind this sailing under false colors, behind this hypocrisy? Why not simply stand by one's convictions? Looking for sympathy? Seeking absolution for one's discriminatory us-and-them-thinking, even from the "real loonies" themselves? I have to disappoint you, X. No sympathy nor absolution for violence available here.
_______________

Since somebody pointed out to me that, especially for people who haven't been following X's blog and/or her comments, here or elsewhere, for some time, it might look like I condemn X on the basis of one single remark about psych drugs on her blog: No, I don't. This is what I wrote in reply to this somebody, and I hope, it contributes to a better understanding of what I react to. -- Also I decided to anonymize. As the above mentioned somebody also points out to me, X is by far not the only one to engage in this kind of behavior, so, it's probably a little unfair to mention only her by name:

X has puzzled me for the entire about 2 years I've been following her blog. Lots of critical comments, asking for Soteria Houses, when everybody else was, slamming the Schofields, when everybody else did, or Joseph Biederman, when everybody else did, criticizing one or the other pharmaceutical company, when everybody else did, etc. etc. (and "everybody else" of course means a certain clique in the blogosphere). Still, at the same time there also always were these small inconsistencies. "Misdiagnosis", over and over again, and as if there was such a thing as a correct diagnosis, mentioning "psychosis" and "schizophrenia" as if they were valid labels, just not for her daughter, and also that over and over again. Not just once. But she also successfully avoided to ever take a clear stand, whether she does believe in the labels, in the drugs, in biopsychiatry, or not. So, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. And, frankly, I didn't believe my own eyes when I read her comments at "Lola's story", that quite clearly, and clearer than ever, state that she does believe in the righteousness of for instance a "bipolar"-label for, and the drugging for it of, kids. I mean, read the comments at Fid's blog. Lola writes about 6-year-olds who get labelled and drugged, and are helped by it, and no objection from X. She agrees. Lola's her friend, she admires Lola, Lola's right when she says, kids are helped by psychiatry, its labels, its drugs. I can only conclude that this does not add up with slamming the Schofields for having their 6-year-old daughter labelled and drugged. Not at all. She did it, because everybody else did it. The same applies to her slamming Biederman on her blog. One minute she condemns the man, also joins in whenever people voice ethical concerns about the labelling and drugging of children, the next she agrees that "bipolar" in kids is real. I ask her, at Fid's blog, if this really is what she believes. Yes, it is.

One thing is that I, under these circumstances, couldn't disagree more with her. And I think, I myself don't make a secret of my points of view on my blog. It's pretty clear where I stand. [So, it should have been clear to X, too.] Another is that I a) really don't understand why on earth she doesn't simply say so, when she disagrees, but keeps giving the impression that she would agree with people, when obviously she doesn't, and b) can't do with hypocrites. I actually have more sympathy with someone like Lola than with X. Lola never came to my blog, or made a comment elsewhere, pretending to agree when in truth she didn't.

Additionally, I want to emphasize -- if anybody is in doubt -- that a disagreeing opinion alone, brought forward in a factual manner, has my full respect. What I have no respect for whatsoever is hypocrisy.

Grieving human nature

Gianna posted a piece about the NPR-article "Is Emotional Pain Necessary?"

"They might as well ask do we care to continue being human. This trend of pathologizing pain and making it wrong will be the end of us if we don’t do something to stop it."

I couldn't have written a better comment on the article. I'd just say that running from emotional pain doesn't only limit growth and healing, but in fact does prevent true growth and healing from happening at all, and even makes things worse. We're destroying human nature (= ourselves), and we're not even realizing it, because we're too doped up to feel that we're about to commit emotional suicide.

A couple of thoughts I had, reading the article:

"Kendler points to research showing that people who are doing well two weeks after a loss also seem to be doing well one year later."

What Kenneth Kendler doesn't tell us is whether these people who did well after only two weeks of grieving, got "over it" popping pills, or whether, and more likely, they really got over it, all by themselves. If the latter is true, and I suppose it is, what the studies show is that it actually is healthy to go through intense emotional pain, and process one's loss, and that this process shouldn't be interrupted and suppressed by any kind of - aggressive - "treatment".

" 'I mean, [pain] is a normal consequence of breaking a bone. But that doesn't mean that we don't treat the pain. We treat the pain vigorously,' Zisook says."

The comparison is ridiculous. No one would ask someone who's broken a bone to pop a pain killer, and get on with what they were doing. It would be regarded irresponsible, and in a medical context malpractice, if you didn't do anything, but gave the person who broke their bone a pain killer for it. Nevertheless, this is what psychiatry does, giving people with broken bones a pain killer, and expecting them to get on with what they were doing. Malpractice, indeed.

On another note, the bereavement exclusion, too, IMO is completely ridiculous. "Depression" is mourning and grieving a loss. It is being stuck in mourning and grieving, because you can't name the loss. Just because someone can't instantly name their loss, doesn't mean they haven't lost anything. It means they ought to be helped name their loss.

Accutane vs. Geodon. More on double standards

I watched this vid the other day, 1:43 into it. That was all I needed to see, or hear: "None of us would like it , if one of our children were to die at a young age, especially if it was for taking a medication that was for the treatment of pimples." -Doug Bremner.

Right. Certainly, none of us would like that. And sure as hell it was about time, and the only right thing to happen, when Accutane was pulled from the market last year. And although Hoffmann - LaRoche claimed other reasons to have prompted the decision to pull Accutane, concerns about the safety of the drug, also, and not least, voiced by Doug Bremner, without doubt were crucial to this decision. So, hats off to Doug Bremner's courage!

Anyhow, here's what I simply can't get my head around: if it is so outrageous as, among others, Doug Bremner thinks it is, and as it, indeed, is, that a drug that potentially causes depression and suicidal ideation/behavior as a side effect is used to treat acne, how come it is fully acceptable that drugs, medical treatments, with the side effect profile of Geodon are used to treat what isn't even scientifically proven to be an illness, a medical condition, at all? How come it isn't only acceptable, but apparently even desirable, if I understand Doug Bremner correctly - and it seems I do, since he didn't protest my comparison of his Mark Becker post to Fuller Torrey/TAC propaganda - to be able to force people to take these drugs?

So far, in Denmark there has been filed one complaint about Zyprexa causing diabetes. The complaint was dismissed. Explanation: "schizophrenia" is a far more severe disease than diabetes. So, if you suffer from "schizophrenia", you'll have to live with a side effect of the severity of diabetes. In fact, "schizophrenia", according to the "experts", such as Doug Bremner, must be worse than death. Because, unless you get run over by a bus and killed, or something along those lines, you, eventually, will die from taking drugs like Geodon or Zyprexa. On average, about 25 years earlier than you would have died not taking these drugs. So did the person who filed the complaint here in Denmark, who died from complications related to diabetes, which he had developed thanks to taking Zyprexa.

So, what we've got are drugs for the treatment of something that is not scientifically proven to be a disease, that actually, according to the scientific, psychiatric (!), research that has shown non-medical approaches like Soteria or Open Dialog to produce recovery rates of about 85%, vs. the drugs' 0%, with much greater probability is an emotional, existential problem, than that it is a medical one, that do not only have death as a possible, but, if taken long-term, as advocated by Doug Bremner and most of his colleagues, certain side effect. That is, looking at the scientific facts, any risk-benefit analysis of these drugs clearly tells us that the risks are way out of proportion compared to the benefits. Far more out of proportion than for a drug like Accutane.

Still, there is a public outcry, not least from Doug Bremner himself, for a ban of a drug like Accutane, while there, at the same time, is a just as loud, if not louder, public outcry, not least from Doug Bremner himself, in favor of forced "treatment" with a drug like Geodon.

If it was for Big pHARMa's profit to be at stake alone, I bet, someone like Doug Bremner would be one of the first to go for a ban of neuroleptics. But there is more, much more, at stake than Big pHARMa's profit when it comes to psych drugs. Pimples, acne, don't challenge society's status quo, they don't challenge the collective mass-psychosis that is called modern western civilization to the same extent as existential crises do. Indeed, society, Doug Bremner included, doesn't fear anything, not even death, and not even "if one of our children were to die at a young age", as much as it fears "schizophrenia", that is the confrontation with its own dysfunctionality. "Schizophrenia" begins where the courage to face oneself ends.

Free John Hunt! Sign the petition!

If you haven't yet, go sign the petition to free John Hunt, trauma survivor and psychiatric prisoner, here.

John Hunt is a trauma survivor with a diagnosis of 'paranoid schizophrenia'. He has spent over four years locked up in Carraig Mor psychiatric treatment centre in Cork city, Ireland. 

He has been over-medicated on an array of psychotropic medications with dangerous adverse effects. He has had tardive dyskinesia, akathasia and has developed incontinence. His physical/ mental/ emotional/ spiritual health has been severely neglected and has deteriorated since being in Carraig Mor. 

He has had no access to a rehabilitation team or psychotherapist and no day release in two years. There are no plans to rehabilitate John and return him to the community where he belongs. He is merely maintained and contained. John and his family have no voice in relation to his future. We are afraid that John's physical health is being damaged considerably. We cannot stand by and watch this happen any longer.

Read more on John's partner Grainne Humphrys' blog The Incarceration of John, and on Beyond Meds

"My pain is worse than yours!" Some reflections on PTSD vs. "schizophrenia", on the trivialization of trauma, and on responsibility

A commenter, Stephany, at Doug Bremner's blog seems to think that I engage in what she calls the " 'my pain is worse than yours' BS". In my previous post I pointed out that what I did, when I wrote about his loss, was that I looked at his experience from the perspective that most of his colleagues, and obviously, when it comes to others than himself, also Doug Bremner himself, employ. I looked at it from Doug Bremner's own, biopsychiatric perspective. 

If you have listened to the Madness Radio interview with Jacqui Dillon, you may have noticed that she mentions having been denied the possibility to talk about her life experiences not only in her assessment interview, but also throughout her entire stay in the psychiatric system. Whenever she tried to bring up the matter, her "care"givers in the system told her to focus on the present and future, not on the past. I myself hear it again and again, that people are told "You must forgive!" -- Forgive what, by the way?? If there's no trauma, and this is what these people also are told, over and over again, and at the very same time, that whatever pain they are experiencing it certainly isn't caused by any trauma, but by this mysterious, biological brain disease called "schizophrenia", I'd think, there can be nothing to forgive. Hm, strange. But well, logic and psychiatry - they don't really go that well together. -- So, the biopsychiatric approach obviously implies that, no matter what you have experienced in your life, it can impossibly have been worse than to have caused you to react to it with what then earns you a label of PTSD. As soon as your reaction exceeds just slightly whatever standards "experts" like Doug Bremner -- on the basis of their personal, on the at any time prevailing cultural norms and values, not on that of any scientific evidence , founded, convictions -- have put down for a label of PTSD, the label you receive from these "experts" will likely be that of "schizophrenia".  And as soon as you have received that label, instead of the PTSD-one, poof!, all the trauma you ever might have experienced didn't happen but inside your own, diseased mind, it's all in your head.  And even if any of it happened, it wasn't worse than that you just should forgive and forget all about it. 


While, as we all know, telling your story, talking about what happened to you, making sense of it -- which is what Doug Bremner for instance tries to do in writing about his mother's death -- is an essential step on the road to recovery for someone who suffers from PTSD, telling what the "experts" choose to believe must be a mere fantasy, talking about what they choose to believe never happened to you, isn't allowed, as it only would upset them you, make you a threat to their scheme of things "worse", in case they have chosen that you suffer from "schizophrenia".  


So, how convenient that there are no biological tests for neither PTSD nor any other "mental illness", that it is more or less entirely up to the personal preferences of your shrink, mainly depending on how much pain s/he is able to recognize and validate without terror taking over, and having him/her turn blind and deaf, and only looking to shut you up, now!, which label you'll receive from him/her. And, pop!, before you know where you are, you're no longer a traumatized human being, but a brain diseased freak, who risks to have his/her mug shot appear on Doug Bremner's blog, accompanied by a Fuller Torrey-TAC-worthy call for you to be stripped of whatever, if any, human rights you might have left. What a truly sensitive, the human being and his/her pain respecting and validating approach!

Trauma, pain, suffering cannot be measured and weighed in the same way as blood pressure or, well, insulin. An experience is just as traumatic as the person, who experiences it, experiences it to be traumatic. Indeed, it's all in your head. And no matter whether it's called PTSD or "schizophrenia", or whatever else.


So, while I, in applying the biopsychiatric perspective, could claim that there are innumerable four and a half-year-olds in this world, who experience the death of their mother without being traumatized by it (another one of biopsychiatry's favorites: "Other people have experienced the same you have without becoming psychotic/schizophrenic. So, stop whining about your past, and get on with your life [as the chronically brain diseased freak we reserve for ourselves the right to define you to be]!"), thus trivializing Doug Bremner's pain, I for one prefer to see him, his reaction, and to draw my conclusions about the "size" of his pain, the extent of trauma he has experienced from what I see there. The in my opinion only valid "measurement" for trauma, pain and suffering: the individual's individual experience of and reaction to it.

Personally, I didn't lose neither my mother nor my father as a four and a half-year-old, I wasn't sexually abused like Jacqui Dillon, I wasn't battered, screamed and shouted at, or physically neglected in any way. My parents had no financial problems, and there was no fighting, or drinking, or anything like that going on at our house. We were the perfect upper middle class family. Nothing "dramatic" ever happened before I was about 13 years old, and what happened from then on until my father's death four years later happens in the best of families, it happens all the time, and most of the children who experience it do not end up "psychotic"/"schizophrenic". "So, where's the trauma?" I can hear the Doug Bremners of this world ask. And, until 6 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to answer him other than with what he would have interpreted to be the "delusions" and "hallucinations" of a chronically brain diseased, genetically defective freak, because he's too afraid to see anything, but what our culture has decided simply is too obvious to be covered up, because all he would have been able to see was the perfect upper middle class family, in whose bosom I'd experienced the perfectly happy, safe and protected upper middle class childhood that clearly didn't involve any trauma at all.

So, why would I, who cannot even play the "I lost my mother when I was only four and a half years old"-card, want to trivialize Doug Bremner's grief, and why on earth would I, who hasn't experienced anything of what our culture recognizes as "trauma", want to engage in the "my pain is worse than yours" BS -- and it is BS, yes -- Stephany?? In fact, I'm the first to stand up and speak out against the ongoing trivialization of people's pain and suffering, that biopsychiatry so happily engages in -- that is what I do in criticizing Doug Bremner's post about Mark Becker -- as well as against the "my pain is worse than yours" BS that I witness everywhere among consumers, where it, characteristically enough, finds its most pronounced expression in the discrimination against, and demonization of "the schizophrenics", and not least in the invalidation of these people's trauma and pain as "delusions", perpetrated by people with all  kinds of other psych labels, not least those who claim to have been misdiagnozed as "schizophrenic" when in reality they were traumatized. As if "schizophrenia" and having been traumatized were opposites. Well well, also the discriminated against need their scapegoats to pass the discrimination, the violence, on to. And of course it is the most natural and safe thing to pass it on to those, who are assigned the place at the bottom of the pecking order by the almighty authority of biopsychiatry: "the schizophrenics". Of whom I am one of, traumatized, recovered, but still, never misdiagnozed.


I recommend a look at my own story, before anyone next time jumps to conclusions, and insinuates that I would trivialize anyone's trauma, and/or engage in the "my pain is worse than yours" BS.


As for the at Doug Bremner's blog's comment section also present accusation against me that I would engage in a simplistic "blame the parents" approach: if you call holding the people, who according to their own perception of themselves (!) are responsible, grown-up human beings, responsible is a simplistic "blame the parents" approach, then, yes, then I do engage in it. However, the accusation itself is a simplistic, cheap (!) attempt to escape having to take responsibility, and I think, everybody who makes use of it knows this very well. If you don't know it, I recommend reading Laing again (I suppose, you have read him before you went on to dismiss of his ideas?!), as you obviously got him all wrong.


"With rare exceptions, I think parents do their best. They try. But there are a lot of ways in which they can go astray." -Loren Mosher

Is it really so much more painful and terrifying for you to face your own imperfection as parents, your own humanity, than to witness your children lose their mind over your inability to face it?

Kafka, The Trial. An additional remark to Doug Bremner's attempt to defend himself against my criticism

Note that Doug Bremner writes in his post that he has no idea whether Mark Becker was traumatized by his family, since he "never interviewed them"(my emphasis). In my first post on this matter, I asked Doug Bremner, if he'd ever listened, without prejudice, to Mark Becker himself.

I encourage everybody to listen to, if nothing else from about 00:16:00 to about 00:21:00, this Madness Radio interview with Jacqui Dillon.

What is going on during this kind of "investigations" is that everybody else but the identified mental patient is listened to and taken seriously. Of course, the, in advance, identified mental patient can't be listened to, not to mention be taken seriously. It goes without saying that you can't take a disease, an imbalanced brain chemistry, defective genes, seriously. So, what immediately may look like an investigation, looking to reveal the truth, in fact is a charade, set up to, with professional authority once and for all, conceal the truth, and confirm what never was intended to be questioned anyway: that any accusations against the family (or whoever else) clearly were nothing else but the figments of a diseased mind, pure inventions. 

Dear Doug Bremner,

in your response to my criticism of your blog post about Mark Becker you write:


"What gets me is that these posters feel like that since I am a psychiatrist they can throw whatever rocks they feel like. I mean, just because you are suffering from mental distress, or a mental disorder, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t mean that you can act like a troll. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I am calling them out. This is no excuse to act like a mean person."


I want to put straight, that I.am.not.suffering.from.any."mental distress, or a mental disorder" more than you do. I take the full responsibility for every word I wrote in my previous post, as well as I take it for whatever I say or do in general. It will seem to me, that the fact that you're a shrink (= God?), and I am not, has you imagine you can "throw whatever rocks [you] feel like" at people, you've never met, hardly ever exchanged one word with. You did this in your post about Mark Becker, and you do it now again. "Psychiatry, a closed system, has the unique power to proclaim anyone who complains about it, or it's members, to be crazy for doing so." -Monophrenia


You also write: "Whether or not he was traumatized by his family, I have no idea, since I never interviewed them, but to assume that he was is my opinion fairly lame." 


Well well, but hypotheses about broken brains and defective genes, the blame the victim-approach, aren't lame, or are they?! How would you like it, Doug, if you were convicted of a crime only and solely on the basis of someone believing you've committed that crime, and without any chance to defend yourself?! Because, Doug, you see, this.is.what.you.do.to.people.: "I don't believe you were traumatized, so, you weren't, period. Take your meds!"


What "trivializing" your trauma concerns: No, I don't trivialize your trauma. I read your blog posts about your mother, back then, and I saw the four and a half-year-old. I saw his pain, and it was heart-breaking. You and your PTSD had my entire compassion and sympathy. What I did in my previous post, was showing you, how you trivialize other people's trauma. How you don't see these people and their pain. How you, in other words, apply double standards.


May I ask, who or what it is that gives you the right to deny others what you claim for yourself?! And don't start about your "professional training". You have no science to back your opinions up with. On the contrary.

So, you think, I acted like "a mean person"? Take a thorough look in the mirror, Doug! You don't only act like "a mean person". You stab people in their back.

PTSD-"expert" Doug Bremner can't see PTSD when it's staring him right into his face

"Later" - yeah well, one and a half months later I just want to add to my post about Alice Miller's death that I was appalled by most of the press reactions. One of the few obituaries to pay Alice Miller the respect she deserves is Sue Cowan Jenssen's. Read it here. (Via Beyond Meds.)

Talking about Alice Miller, I today did some more clearing up in my sidebar, as well as on Facebook and on Twitter. Life is simply too short to surround yourself with abusers, who, although they allegedly are "experts" on PTSD, can't recognize it when its staring them right into their face, who don't have anything else to offer victims of abuse than drugs, drugs, and even more drugs, to shut these victims up, so that they, the abusers, don't need to listen to them, but undisturbed may continue with their abuser business, for instance that of labelling people with "schizophrenia", who happily join in on the omnipresent demonization of "the schizophrenics", those lesser-than-humans, and on the just as omnipresent fear mongering that wants everybody to believe that going off the neuro-toxins that are called "medicine" immediately will turn you into a pickaxe killer.

And all this while what they demand and expect for themselves is pure compassion and understanding for the traumatized four and a half-year-old, who lost his mother, and therefor suffers from PTSD. - Are you sure Doug, that your problems were caused by trauma? That you're not a little brain diseased, genetically defective, a little lesser-than-human yourself?? I mean, compared to the abuse most of the people you fancy to label "schizophrenics" have experienced, the death of your mother is a mere trifle, and if what these people have gone through can't be recognized and acknowledged as deeply traumatizing, which is what I understand you believe, then how come you think, you can demand compassion and understanding for such an, in comparison, insignificant event as your mother's death to have caused you the least emotional suffering?!

Well, I'm done with this kind of unscientific, prejudiced and discriminating crap. Have a nice life, Doug! Oh, and don't read this! It might shake your belief system. (Although, can anything at all shake a sectarian belief system like the Inquisition's - er, I mean like biological psychiatry's? Hardly I guess.)
_______________

And right now, as I look at this post LinkWithin thinks that readers of this post "might also like" this one. Thank you, LinkWithin! :D

The latest in psych ward design from the Architectural Digest

Need new furniture for your bedroom? This bed isn't only maintenance-free, but, according to the manufacturer, also a real delight to the eye, or, well, "visually appealing" at least. Watch the straight lines and clearly defined colors. Indeed, neo-minimalistic aesthetics at its best!

Via Liz Spikol.

...and for some reason the Comfy Chair comes to mind:

Primal therapeutic oppression - Arthur Janov knows what you need!

Yesterday, my attention was drawn to the comment section of this post on this NYT-article on modern lobotomy at Mr. Arthur Janov's - yup, the Arthur Janov - blog.

My attention was drawn to the blog of the guru of the 1970ies screaming-hype by a comment on a blog post about, and this is somewhat important, Liberation psychology - by the way an awesome piece by Bruce Levine, and if you haven't yet, go read it! - at a Norwegian blog.

In his article about Liberation psychology, Levine states with Jesuit priest, therapist and activist Ignacio Martín-Baró:

"The prevailing psychology, (...), is not politically neutral, but favors maintaining the status quo. Reducing human motivations to the maximization of pleasure fits neatly into the dominant culture. Martin-Baró astutely observed that most prevailing psychology schools of thought—be it psychoanalytic, behavioral, or biochemical—accept the maximization of pleasure as the motivating force for human behavior, ignoring other human motivations, including the need for fairness and social justice. Prevailing psychology’s focus on individualism, he wrote, 'ends up reinforcing the existing structures, because it ignores the reality of social structures and reduces all structural problems to personal problems.' "

So, you might say the prevailing paradigm in today's psychology pathologizes suffering as an individual flaw - and it doesn't matter if this flaw is seen as biological, existential, spiritual or whatever else in nature - rather than viewing it as an expression of a very healthy discontent with and rebellion against a thoroughly oppressive culture.

Bruce Levine writes:

"Aldous Huxley predicted, 'And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude.' Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric drugs that make them care less about their boredom, resentments, and other negative emotions, thus rendering them more compliant and manageable."

Psych labels and the inevitably following "treatment" have indeed become our time's most employed means of oppression. Political, societal, and individual oppression.

Now have a look at this comment by Arthur Janov:

"There are many many reasons why we cannot take some people; those who really need a living arrangement supervised or controlled as is the case with psychotics."

Us and them, yup. The "psychotics", the lesser-than-human beings, who, because they are "psychotic" and thus lesser-than-human, need to be supervised and controlled, i.e. oppressed.

Since I've managed to see through and quite successfully ward off most attempts to oppress, retraumatize, and consequently silence me, that I, too, found myself subjected to in therapy, since I actually beyond the attempts to oppress, retraumatize and silence me also was as lucky as to receive some real help from my therapist, making it possible for me to find my own language and voice my discontent with and rebellion against the ongoing oppression in society, I left the following comment at Janov's blog:

" 'They need a supervised life.'



Wow wow wow! Mind-boggling to witness therapists know just exactly what it is their clients need!



As it may be true that, while going through acute crisis, most 'psychotic' (whatever that term means) people need a secure environment where they can be safe from (further) assault and trauma, 'secure' doesn't mean 'secured', as in 'supervised'. Or why not simply 'controlled', as in 'Let's lock 'em up and throw away the key!'??


How about a little more respect for the person in crisis, and his/her own knowledge of what s/he needs?



Marian, Denmark, blogger and expert on her own needs" (Janov likes to know about his commenters' location and profession)

Well, what of course I should have written isn't "their clients" but "people". As this is what therapists, Arthur Janov included, usually have the arrogance to assume, that their "expertise" entitles them to know what everybody else, not just their particular clients, needs. - Let's recapitulate here: arrogance is a response to fear.

Arthur Janov, like many other therapists, doesn't take "psychotics". But while he himself prefers to think, that he can't take these lesser-than-human beings because he can't provide the control they, like a ferocious wild animal, in his opinion are so much in need of, in truth he, as it will seem to me, can't take them because he lacks the self-control he'd need in order to be able to provide a safe and spacious enough place for people in extreme states of mind where they can liberate themselves from society's oppression, and fully come into being.

And while I think, it is better for a therapist to admit that s/he doesn't have the amount of self-control, -awareness, and -respect to deal with the whole range of human experiences, the extremes included, than to pretend to be able to deal with the extremes when the contrary is the case - these are the therapists who claim the professional expertise, providing the power to label, drug and, whenever perceived as convenient, commit people, to be more important than true empathy and respect -, which inevitably will lead to the person in crisis being retraumatized, I also think that s/he probably isn't fit to be a therapist at all, when s/he feels frightened by the extremes of the human experience to an extent that makes him/her call for "supervision", control and thus retraumatizing oppression. If you can't deal with the whole range of human experiences, but need to apply "supervising", controlling, and thus oppressing measures to the extremes, that means, you can't deal with anything that isn't "supervised", controlled, and thus oppressed by external powers. And that renders you an oppressor yourself.

In another comment Janov replies to someone who's written a letter to the author of the NYT-article:

"Well Walden good work and now let me know if he ever responds. I seriously doubt it."

Janov published my comment, and that's something I guess. But so far, His Greatness Arthur Janov hasn't had much to say to me so impertinently disturbing the worshipping of him at his blog, and I seriously doubt that he's going to have. But, of course, I'm also one of these lesser-than-human beings, a ferocious wild animal, who, had only a "supervised", controlled life been provided for me, never had had the impertinence to disturb the worshipping of His Greatness in the first place... In case Janov surprises me, I'll let you know...
_______________

Cross-published on Beyond Meds.

John Hunt - punished for being a trauma survivor

A video by Marion Aslan, co-founder of EleMental for John and his family.

Grainne Humphrys, John's wife, writes that the article Marion used for the vid is from last year. So, John is 28 years old today, and has been incarcerated at Carraig Mor for four years.

"Psykisk sårbar" - "Mentally vulnerable". The new, politically correct term in Denmark

There's a new trend emerging here in Denmark. The politically correct term for people in emotional distress is no longer "mentally ill" (psykisk syg) or "insane" (sindssyg - yup, both the "experts" and the media have a preference for this truly value neutral term, especially when it comes to "the schizophrenics"), it is "mentally vulnerable". Beautiful, huh? Like renaming the house slave as housekeeper, or lobotomy as psycho-surgery... Everybody of course just loooves this new term. It sounds so empathetic, so loving and caring, doesn't it?

One of those who are at the leading edge concerning this linguistic revolution is former Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who recently launched one more amazing website (check out the vid - and cry; no need to speak Danish btw, his facial expression says it all) for, yeah, "mentally vulnerable" people and their relatives.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, whose daughter suffered from "depression", and eventually felt so respectfully listened to, also by her father, that she couldn't bear it anymore - certainly because of the "illness" - and ended her life, now wants to compensate for this tragic loss by publicly pleading the "mentally vulnerables' " cause. As we all know, these, uhm, people don't really have a voice of their own (that's probably why Poul Nyrup didn't hear the least, although his daughter screamed and shouted right into his ears), so they need every NAMI-parent available to speak for them.

"Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness," it reads on Poul Nyrup's brand new website. Among a whole bunch of other lies. It seems, Poul Nyrup is in dire need of a Truth Injection. Maybe I'll take pity on him and e-mail him one, one of these days. Being no more "mentally vulnerable" than anybody else, and thus able to speak for myself. But frankly I fear, Poul Nyrup's condition is rather persistent and serious, with treatment-resistant denial being one of the core symptoms.

The end of suffering - genes and schizophrenia

This is a post I wrote for Gianna Kali's blog Beyond Meds. I publish it here too, as Gianna's blog has no comment function for now. So, feel free to tear me to pieces. Still, it would be nice if you considered this blog's comment politics...

The end of suffering- genes and schizophrenia

"Det är synd om människorna," is an often quoted line from August Strindberg's A Dream Play. Translated into English, the line becomes: "Human beings are to be pitied," which is a correct literal translation. Nevertheless, it fails to capture the very essence of the Swedish original, and often leads to the misunderstanding that Strindberg intended to say, human beings were to be pitied because of the suffering that is - being human. No, human beings are not to be pitied because their suffering in the world is without comparison, inevitable, and sometimes even endless. They're not to be pitied because of the suffering that is both humanity's greatest challenge and its greatest gift at the same time. There's nothing in nature, human or other, that doesn't serve a purpose. And there's only one purpose: life.

Human beings are to be pitied because they fail to recognize and acknowledge this. Because they have made suffering their worst enemy, whom they fight with all their power and strength. Because they have waged war on nature, not least on their own nature, on themselves, on life. 

That is what Strindberg's line and A Dream Play, which Strindberg himself said was "the child of my greatest pain", as a whole is all about.

The Danish newspaper B.T., a tabloid, ran an article on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009, under the headline "Skizofrene fostre kan sorteres fra" - "Schizophrenic embryos can be screened out".

According to another article at the website of University of Copenhagen, "Genetic Causes of Schizophrenia", a group of European researchers has found chromosomal changes in individuals labelled with "schizophrenia", that they interpret to be the main cause of the "illness". Their research is now granted a fund of additionally 30 million Danish crowns, in part paid by Lundbeck, a Danish pharmaceutical company, specializing in drugs for the "treatment" of "mental illnesses", Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Cipralex/Lexapro is a Lundbeck-product, as is Serdolect, a lesser known "atypical antipsychotic", in part by the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation, and the Danish Medical Research Council.

The additional funding is granted in order for the researchers to develop diagnostic tools, a new generation of drugs, targeting the mutated, "defect" chromosomes, and tools to screen embryos for the chromosome changes in question, so that parents to be can choose an abortion if the embryo shows these chromosome changes. 

The few critical voices that are heard here and there in the media don't go beyond questioning if it is "ethical" to screen out and dispose of embryos, that may or may not actually develop "schizophrenia" later in life, since the researchers admit, that it takes more than the identified mutated chromosomes for the "illness" to manifest. They also have found the specific chromosome changes in individuals who are not labelled, and do not display signs of the "illness", just as they found labelled individuals without the changes. So, basically, the results are not significantly different from what we have seen this kind of research conjure up so many times in the past.

Which obviously is significantly different, increased, once more, is our culture's belief in Social-Darwinism, and eugenic weapons in its war against our existential suffering, against our own nature. Because what the researchers really have found is not the cause of any biological brain disease, but the formal, biological effects of the challenges, humanity faces: social injustice, violence, abuse, exploitation, alienation...

At least since Paul Hammersley and John Read's meta study, we all know, that most people who are labelled with "schizophrenia", are survivors of abuse. And while Hammersley and Read concentrated on physical and sexual abuse, abuse has many faces. Most of what our culture values as "normal" in fact is unnatural, actually alienating us from (our) nature. It is a "toxic mimicry" of nature, to use Derrick Jensen's terminology. To expect our nature to submit to this toxic mimicry without resistance, and deny itself, is a kind of abuse. We're all traumatized by this abuse. It's what the Fall Of Man refers to. No one is innocent.

What we also know by now is that childhood trauma can change both neuronal pathways in the brain and genes. Like all form in this world, also genes react and adapt to the environment they're surrounded and influenced by. The form, our body and also our genes, is always a symbol, a sign, a "symptom", reflecting on a formal level whatever formal, existential, spiritual, psychological, social, etc. challenges we face by reacting to these challenges. A nonreactive entity, if it is a human being, a person, or a single gene, is not fit to survive in this world as it is defenceless exposed to it's destructive abusiveness.

Mutated chromosomes are not the cause of anything. Neither of "schizophrenia". They are a symptom - of the challenges, the social injustice, the abuse, the alienation, the violence and destructiveness we face in this world.

We can try to eliminate our suffering, our reaction to the challenges that surround us, and to gene-manipulate respectively abort humanity into a state of nonreactivity. It will be exactly this, the abortion of humanity. As nonreactive to our environment we will no longer be able to survive. Nonreactivity to the challenges we face will allow this world's destructiveness to unrestrained destroy not only the basis for our biological survival, but, and even worse, since our biological survival depends on it, the basis for our spiritual survival, for the survival of what makes us human: our souls, our suffering souls. We can try. While the researchers, and everybody else, are positive to have found the cause of "schizophrenia", as long as there's one single alive human being left on this earth, they will react to the world. To eliminate existential suffering, we will have to eliminate humanity. Although the Nazis were extremely efficient, murdering people who suffered in the way that is labelled "schizophrenia", although they sterilized everybody whom they did not murder, preventing them from having children, the percentage of people who met the criteria for "schizophrenia" did not decrease in Nazi-Germany. The percentage of Jews did. Remarkably. What does this tell us about the "genetic causes of schizophrenia"?

In the meantime, it nevertheless looks like humanity won't rest until it has not overcome but eliminated suffering by perfectionizing its cultural nightmare's alienation and deadness. It looks like we will eliminate nature, both our own and that around us - and end up perfectly inhumane. The latest research on the "genetic causes of schizophrenia", and the consequences it inevitably will have, is another huge battle won in our war against ourselves, on our way toward a perfectly inhumane world.

So I ask: Is it "ethical" to eliminate life's greatest gift to humanity - humanity itself?

I know, that this is a controversial viewpoint. 'You want people to suffer?!' I hear you, with disbelief. Yes. I want people to suffer. So that they can become aware and conscious. So that they can wake up in the dream, wake up from our cultural nightmare's emotional alienation and deadness. So that they can overcome suffering, realizing that what they thought was their worst enemy in truth is their best friend. So that they can become alive, in the true meaning of the word.

You may accuse me of romanticizing suffering, of being detached from reality, having my head in the clouds. You wouldn't be the first to do so. I'll answer you, that I've suffered myself. Indescribably. And I still do suffer. From being an alive human being. I wouldn't want to trade that for anything in the whole wide world. Suffering isn't a - romantic - accessory to life. It is the incentive necessary to bring about change, to have us keep walking on the road of constant change. And only as long as we keep walking that road are we truly alive. Suffering is not a superfluous accessory to life. There's nothing superfluous, dispensable, in nature. And suffering is natural. It is life.

100% survivor

Psychiatry and politics

One more reply to Will:

No need to apologize! As mentioned, I'm not an angel, me neither. And I've actually enjoyed this conversation too. I like conversations with people, who are open-minded. BTW, Gianna is right. There is a whole lot of judgement and anger, even hatred, out there. On both sides. I recently read a comment on a Norwegian blog, that stated that about 90 per cent of this world's population were traumatized, in one way or the other. It's certainly just an estimation, but in my opinion a very realistic one. Unfortunately. And if trauma isn't made conscious and worked out it gets acted out. Which means war. Like in the war against terrorism, the war against drugs, the war in Iraq,... you name it.

On juge un société à la manière dont elle traite ses fous. -Lucien Bonnafé

Of course it is society that makes psychiatry possible. And I want to emphasize, that I distinguish between the mental health system and psychiatry. It goes without saying: psychiatry was established in order to pathologize certain, unwanted behaviors and ideas, that couldn't be criminalized. Pathologizing behaviors and ideas means to declare them null and void. This quote from Jani's father's blog is one of the most obvious illustrations of what medically diagnozing behavior and ideas aims at: "With schizophrenics, you always have to try to rationalize with them. You have to try and point out where their thinking is irrational. It doesn’t work right then and there but the hope is that it will sink in over time and that Jani will learn to question her own thoughts." (my italics)

BTW, there lies an interesting contradiction in psychiatry's practice of pathologizing and declaring certain thoughts to be "irrational", while no one ever seems to doubt the report of "symptoms" by the identified "patient" to be other than rational.

Well, the thing is, that "psychosis", "schizophrenia", is a reaction to having one's thoughts and feelings declared null and void (because they're unwanted). I dare say, that every single individual who has experienced "psychosis" as a result of psychological trauma (and usually physical abuse involves psychological trauma as well) - in contrast to those, whose "psychotic" symptoms are a reaction to purely biological stressors, food allergies, adverse reactions to drugs, etc. - has had their own thoughts and feelings invalidated in one or the other way. To an extent, that eventually makes them doubt the value of their own, genuine thoughts and feelings themselves. And the moment one's true self starts to protest this invalidation, psychiatry steps in, and accomplishes what others weren't able to accomplish. Because they couldn't scientifically prove one's thoughts and feelings to be without value. Psychiatry can. Or, it claims to be able to. The invalidation of one's personality is scientifically, and thus, taken the status of science in our society into account, indisputably and irrevocably justified. That's why psychiatry has to be a (medical) science. Religion doesn't have that power anymore in our society today. Although it once had: what psychiatry is to our modern society, the Inquisition was to Pre-Enlightenment society. Notice that psychiatry emerges about at the same time as society enters the age of Enlightenment, and the Inquisition comes to an end.

When more and more people turned away from religion as the truth, and instead enthusiastically embraced science, the Inquisition was no longer an acceptable tool to control and oppress unwanted behavior and ideas. It needed to be replaced by a tool, that at least on the surface gave the impression of being scientific in order to be acceptable to an enlightened society.

Psychiatry is one of society's tools to enforce our culture's ideology on people. Probably the most effective one. Where educational institutions for example have great but nevertheless limited influence on individual perception, psychiatry's influence is virtually unlimited. Any kind of being in this world can be defined a mental illness (cf. homosexuality, or being a runaway slave), and while it wouldn't occur to anyone to remove real illnesses like the flu or cancer from the ICD, or to add any diagnoses that lack scientific proof of being an illness to it, psychiatric diagnoses are added to and removed from the DSM faster than you can say "DSM"... always perfectly in line with current cultural norms and values.

Now you'll maybe object, and say that people do suffer and need help. I agree. But the help people really need, is to have their suffering validated, not invalidated. To blame individual biology for suffering, that is caused by cultural norms and values, is to invalidate the suffering.

The vast majority of people I know, I myself included, know that they suffer and are in need of help. It isn't true that they lack insight by definition. The only idea they lack insight in regard to, is the idea that they would suffer from a brain disease and would need medical treatment. Non-psychiatric alternatives like Soteria don't need to force anybody, or lock as much as one single door. Because, in contrast to psychiatry, they validate people's suffering, so people stay voluntarily. Just as I didn't cancel, was late for, or missed out on one single therapy session. Because I felt that both my suffering and my being in general was validated. Not entirely - for example, I experienced being referred to as a "patient" as an invalidation - but enough to have me stay.

As for psychotherapy in general, and your experience in particular, that I've heard countless parallels to over time, it is dominated by psychiatry's (society's) ideology. That is, it doesn't validate the individual in crisis and his/her (human) experience. It pathologizes both. And once you and your (human) experience are declared pathological, it can't be you, but has to be the therapist, who knows all the answers. It doesn't work out for the individual in crisis, but it does for society. Society prefers to put up with a growing number of people on disability, people who aren't chronically ill, but chronically denied their true answers, their true selves, to being confronted with these true answers.

And people tell me, I'm paranoid, when I say it's all about shutting people up...

Here is one of the most striking examples to illustrate the true purpose of psych labels, I've seen so far. I only wonder, if the author of the comment ever has given the possibility of her own scheme of things being that of a diseased brain, and thus more than questionable, a thought. As far as I know, the person is psychiatrically labelled herself.

An unwanted child

First of all, go to Stan's blog, and read the e-mail exchange between him and the LA-Times reporter Shari Roan, who chooses to defend what in my opinion is a crystal-clear case of severe child abuse.

Now, while many in the meantime seem to have noticed that Jani's father Michael Schofield openly admits to have both beaten her up, starved her and subjected her to numerous other kinds of what without doubt must be termed severe child abuse, there's something, no one yet has explicitly mentioned, as far as I can see.

In this blog post Jani's father talks about the basic needs of infants:

"Simply having to feed another person on schedule is a chore. After years of only having to take care of yourself, you have to take care of another. Feed them. Clean them. Wipe them. Feed them again. Bathe them. Again with the feeding.

These simple tasks are difficult enough because we are not used to it. Society trains us to take care of ourselves, not another human being.

Since the focus of baby care classes is basic infant care, it lulls you into a sense of believing that infants will only complain if their basic needs aren't met. You believe all you have to do is feed them, clean them, keep them warm, and maybe hold them a little bit.

That's bullshit.

It turns out that "basic" human needs are not so basic, nor are they the same for every infant. The baby care classes prepare you to feed the baby and change a diaper, not how to meet your child's emotional and psychological needs. It is assumed that infants do not have such complex needs. This is just as much crap as the stuff in the diapers. Humans are born complex, psychological creatures, and can have needs that far outstrip basic needs."

Read between the lines: "No one told us, that human beings need love - so we assumed, we didn't need to love Jani as long as we changed her diapers and fed her."

Narcissists are people who don't know what love is. They've never received it, thus they are unable to give it, if it is in regard to themselves or others. All they've ever experienced is need, being ab-/used by others to fulfil these others' needs. This is all they know about relationships: how to ab-/use others to fulfil their own needs. Narcissists are not able to love.

To start with, Jani was physically probably provided for in a satisfactory way. Although one may wonder even in regard to that, taken the "difficult enough", and Michael Schofield's somewhat wistful description of the good old days when he and his wife would spend days in bed, doing nothing, into account... However, it stands out quite clear to me, that Jani emotionally was left high and dry in a more or less complete vacuum, that she spent her life in an emotionally ice-cold environment from day one.

Schofield blames Maslow, says Maslow was wrong. Maslow wasn't wrong. Schofield chooses to misinterpret, in his own favor. Love is a "D-need" in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And while one can argue if it is right to split up basic human needs into levels, like Maslow did, or if they should be grouped together at one single level, as some critics suggest, they are all deficiency needs, that, if not met, cause suffering.

Schofield also blames Jani, or the "illness", which is basically the same, says that the "illness" made her different, special, more needy than "normal" infants, who would be content, having their basic, physical needs fulfilled. Again, he is dead wrong. Any human being, infant or other, will inevitably suffer if they are deprived of love - or any other basic human need, physical or not, listed by Maslow as a D-need, for that sake.

This is what so-called "schizophrenia" is made of. It is the manifestation of the suffering, that is caused by being deprived of love, by being objectified, and ab-/used to fulfil others' needs. It is the manifestation of protest against that abuse.

Sometimes it is mentioned as a "symptom" of "schizophrenia", that "the schizophrenic" feels s/he's an unwanted child. It's not a symptom of a brain disease. It's the truth. Michael and Susan Schofield didn't want a child. They needed an object, a something, to act out their own trauma.

That this isn't recognized, that it even is blatantly denied, by Shari Roan for instance, but also and even more important by those, who should be the first to recognize it, the "experts", doesn't surprise me the least. It's only symptomatic of a thoroughly narcissistic culture.
_______________

P.S.: As for Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, if at all I'd split up the basic human needs, I'd place "love" at the very bottom of it. Human beings can handle a whole lot of suffering if only they are loved. If they are not, they will inevitably go to pieces, sooner or later, with or without other kinds of suffering. And no one who really loves their child, would ever put him/her through, what Jani has been put through by her parents, especially her father.