Looking the wrong place - Another update on "Strokes of insight and blind spots"

When I say, that Jill Bolte Taylor seems to me to be a very conscious and compassionate person, this is especially based on her statement, that an important, though often underestimated, quality for caregivers to have is being able to meet their clients where these are, as well as to be aware of and take responsibility for the signals (beyond verbal language) they send.

Jill Bolte Taylor's own experience, as she describes it in the interview, is that even though an individual is not capable of communication through commonly understandable verbal language, this doesn't mean the individual neither is capable of perceiving his or her environment's signals. On the contrary, as she states, often individuals who are in a state of mind that inhibits their ability to communicate understandable through verbal language, while the environment interprets this state of mind as also inhibiting these individuals' perception of their surroundings, their sensitivity toward sense impressions, their intuition, actually is highly increased.

As words lose their (commonly agreed upon) meaning, if it is because of a stroke that disables an individual's left brain hemisphere, and thus the language center, too, as experienced by Jill Bolte Taylor, or if it is because of a psychological insecurity in being in the world, that causes symbols no longer automatically to be taken for the real thing, that causes a separation of the symbol (the signifier, the word) from the symbolized (the signified, the thing), all attention is directed toward the real thing, leaving the symbol more or less emptied of its symbolic contents, and being nothing but an arbitrary sound pattern, free to be filled with and applied to purely individual meaning, free to become transformed from being a commonly understood code to being a more or less private, individual code, bordering on becoming a thing in itself.

The ability to use language is a natural one, but language itself is not a natural phenomenon. It is a cultural one. If it were a natural one, different coding would not be possible. Neither "poetic language" nor "psychotic language", with both being a play on words, a code, each on its level, would exist. If emotional crisis were a biological phenomenon, like a stroke, it would not be possible for an individual to regain his/her ability to communicate in a commonly understandable way just through (re-)gaining a certain security in being in this world. Emotional crisis is not a natural, biological, phenomenon. It is a cultural, i.e. psychological, social, psycho-social, one.

An individual's degree of anchoredness in language, his/her degree of anchoredness in which the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan calls "the Symbolic Order", actually is the only criterion diagnozed in regard to emotional crisis. Although it is diagnozed on various levels, thus providing a seemingly wide range of seemingly different "symptoms". Without exception, all these "symptoms" refer to an individual's perception of the world. Identifying this perception through looking at the individual's reaction to whatever is perceived.

Jill Bolte Taylor doesn't say it explicitly, nevertheless her statements at the interview imply a view of "psychotic language" - i.e. a view of "the psychotic way of perceiving the world" - as being a language completely deprived of meaning. Mentioning her "schizophrenic brother" in the context of an interview, that focusses on her own perception of the world during a period at which she herself was physically deprived of perceiving the world by means of language, language thus being nothing but incomprehensible noise to her, she implies, that his "schizophrenic" perception of the world must be the same (and this implication, of course, is which fuels her research-efforts as well as her engagement in NAMI). It isn't.

Verbal language, as well as the human Ego and the Symbolic Order as a whole, is a cultural phenomenon, and as such not nearly as rooted in our being as the natural, non-verbal signals, we send. In contrast to nature, culture, in the shape of verbal language, thinking and the Ego, is built upon more or less shaky ground. Although our culture trains us to ignore non-verbal signals in favour of verbal ones, the non-verbal ones are the only ones for us left to react to, the moment nature (the right brain hemisphere) for one or the other (i.e. for a physiological or a psychological/social) reason takes over. If this is because the function of the left hemisphere is interrupted physiologically through a head injury, or a stroke, or if it is because the value and reliability of its function's results are questioned by the right hemisphere's function, as it is in emotional crises such as so-called "schizophrenia".

"Schizophrenic's" often do not react "appropriately" to verbal language because they, on an unconscious level, see through its arbitrariness. Which they do react extraordinarily appropriately to is non-verbal language. In a culture that widely isn't aware of the non-verbal signals that are sent by its members, this can't be recognized. Neither it can be recognized by the "schizophrenic" individual him-/herself as long as it remains an unconscious process. While an individual who consciously chooses to go beyond the reactive Ego, because s-/he has become aware, conscious, of the reactive Ego's arbitrary character, would have to be called "enlightened", in a spiritual language-code.

Why would an individual, in spite of all cultural training, choose to question the meaning of words, of verbal language, and instead choose to rely on and react to non-verbal signals only? Among others, R.D.Laing and Gregory Bateson have provided an answer to this decades ago: An individual whose reactions to verbal language continuously by his/her surroundings are characterized and, subsequently, rejected as insufficient and/or incorrect, sooner or later, and consequently, will resort increasingly to attempting to read the non-verbal signs that are displayed, while rejecting the verbal ones, in order to "get it right".

This, of course, involves that the individual concerned develops a "sixth sense" for non-verbal signals, that s/he becomes extremely sensitive to these, just as Jill Bolte Taylor experienced herself to be, while her perception of verbal signals was inhibited due to physical brain dysfunction.

The parallels with emotional crisis seem obvious, at first glance and on a superficial, formal level, and may easily be mistaken as a proof for "mental illness" to actually be due to a physical brain dysfunction. As they are by Jill Bolte Taylor and mainstream psychiatry.

However, as mentioned above, restoring an individual's trust in verbal communication just by helping this individual to become aware of the processes that lead to him/her becoming insecure, or distrusting, would not be possible if the distrust was due to a physical dysfunction. Neither would it be possible for anyone to ever find a meaning in "psychotic language", which then truly would represent pure gibberish. While it only is seen as pure gibberish by people, who are not capable of overcoming their own cultural conditioning, in the shape of their own Ego. The parallels between emotional crisis, or what is called "psychosis", and a spiritual emergency are far more striking than those to a physical brain dysfunction as soon as the observer him-/herself is capable of going beyond the limitations of egoic thinking.

We today live in an era, where our culture has moved further away from (human) nature than ever before. Which almost exclusively characterizes our existing culture, is a just as exclusive acknowledgement of the human Ego as the one and only valid standard, everyone and everything is judged by. While the human Ego manifests itself through verbal language and thinking. If Descartes simply was wrong, or if he maybe became misinterpreted, I'll leave to the reader to decide...

I completely agree in Jill Bolte Taylor's statement, that it is essential for caregivers to meet their clients wherever these are at the moment. In contrast to her, I nevertheless don't see the clients of the mental health system met where they are as long as this system remains dominated by the egoic concept of brain diseases (i.e. moral judgements of an individual's behavior, lacking any scientific proof to be real, biological diseases). Actually, I see more harm than good done by forcing the mental health system's clientele to adopt the mental health system's perception of it as being physically brain dysfunctional and thus dependent on physical (medical) help, rather than accepting and respecting the clientele's own perception of itself, no matter how compassionately this coercion is performed. Indeed, the more compassionately it is performed, the more harm is done, as the discrepancy between form and content, the discrepancy between verbal and non-verbal signals, deepens with every increase in compassion with which the coercion is brought forward. Once again, the clientele is exposed to the very same experience of ambiguity that originally caused it to reject verbal communication as inauthentic, and thus unreliable, untrustworthy: the vicious circle becomes consolidated, rather than broken, with a chronification of the crisis as an almost inevitable result.

True, non-egoic acceptance and respect for individuals in emotional crisis requires not only formal compassion and consciousness. It requires even more content-related compassion and consciousness. Unfortunately, I don't see the latter in neither Jill Bolte Taylor's nor NAMI's or the mental health system's thinking at all. While it remains impossible to meet anyone wherever they are with compassion and consciousness limited to a purely formal, and thus inauthentic, level.

No matter how many brains Jill Bolte Taylor manages to sing together for further, neuroanatomic research, neither she nor any of her colleagues will ever find anything that unmistakably could distinguish the brain structure of an individual labelled "schizophrenic" from that of any other individual. It's like a friend once said: "Sometimes I'd like to tap them on their shoulder: 'Hey, have you ever considered that you might be looking in the wrong place?' "

Update to "Strokes of insight and blind spots"

First of all a correction: Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist, not a neurologist as I incorrectly wrote yesterday.

And an additional note: NAMI is an organization that, according to its own mission statement, aims to provide "support, education and advocacy" for the "mentally ill" and, especially, their relatives, and "is dedicated (...) to the improvement of quality of life for persons of all ages who are affected by mental illnesses."

One thing that by now would have to be regarded as a real improvement of quality of life for NAMI's target group is the endeavour of minimalizing discrimination of people labelled "mentally ill" through the use of a wording that, for instance, says "an individual who has schizophrenia" rather than "a schizophrenic individual". Jill Bolte Taylor, in her position as president of a NAMI affiliate, should be familiar with this. Nonetheless, she does not correct Oprah when the latter refers to Jill Bolte Taylor's "schizophrenic brother". Oprah Winfrey is a person with an enormous influence in the public. Jill Bolte Taylor here misses a unique and important opportunity to really practice some advocacy, education, and support for people labelled with "schizophrenia".

Strokes of insight and blind spots

Yesterday, I watched the webcast of Oprah Winfrey's Soul Series-interview with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. In her Soul Series-interview with Eckhart Tolle, Oprah calls him a "prophet", and I agree to that, although it, of course, again, is a label, a concept, and in certain contexts can be applied to diminish a human being to an object - of disdain.

Unfortunately, prophets continuously throughout history have been misunderstood. In "the right belief's" favour. One might think, that this would be difficult in regard to a "message", that just exactly says, that essentially there is no right or wrong, thus neither a right or wrong belief. A "message" that says that the only truth is found nowhere else but beyond any such thing as a conceptual belief-system, if it's called "Christianity", "Buddhism", "Socialism", "Neo-liberalism",..., or, well, "biological psychiatry". While the need to label, to conceptualize, is an egoic (narcissistic) one, that does nothing but inflicts harm and suffering both on the labeller and the labelled. A need, that devalues both of them, turns them into objects (of disdain), and in the end inevitably destroys them.

Being the inevitable result of the human mind's compulsion to conceptualize, judge (morally) and label, all wars in human history confirm this. You can only disrespect others to the annihilating point, war is a manifestation of, if you don't respect yourself. You can only disrespect anyone or anything to such an annihilating point, if you don't respect yourself.

Apart from the obvious wars, that are going on, in Iraq and Afghanistan for instance, there are wars going on worldwide, that are not always recognized as such: humanity's war against nature, against the planet Earth, as well as all those against all kinds of minorities: human beings fighting human beings.

As I see it, we're frighteningly fast moving toward a situation, where everyone fights everyone, in a more or less obviously war-like situation. Or, as Eckhart Tolle puts it, never before in human history has man inflicted greater suffering on his fellow human beings.

One of the wars that are going on is the war against people who experience extreme states of mind, people who are labelled "mentally ill". And especially in this war's context, I can't but think of the quote "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". I don't doubt this war's soldiers' good intentions. I don't doubt Jill Bolte Taylor's not only good but best intentions. Unfortunately, they are the result of a profound misunderstanding of a prophet like Eckhart Tolle's "messages". Good intentions are almost always the good intentions of an Ego. The parallel to psychoanalyst Wolfgang Schmidbauer's "helper syndrome" as rooted in what with an analytic term is called "narcissism" is striking. Thus neither Eckhart Tolle fails to mention the myth of Narcissus when he talks about the human Ego.

Jill Bolte Taylor is the president of NAMI Greater Bloomington Area, an affiliate of NAMI Indiana. The website of NAMI Indiana states as "Mental Illness Facts" among other things, that "severe and persistent Mental Illnesses are brain disorders (...) [that] cannot be overcome through will power and are not related to a person's (...) upbringing nor his/her age, race, religion or economic status". Further it is stated, that "[e]arly identification and treatment accelerates recovery and protects the brain from further harm related to the course of the illness. (...) Most people with serious mental illness require medication...". All these statements are, put forward as facts, simply lies.

Jill Bolte Taylor, author of the book "My Stroke of Insight", is a neurologist, specialized in brain research in regard to "mental illness". She is also known as "the Singin' Scientist", lobbying for people, especially those labelled with "mental illnesses" and their relatives, to donate their brains post mortem to research.

Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke in 1996, that affected her left brain hemisphere, thus forcing on her the experience of having no Ego. An experience that lead her to a deeper insight into the aspects of human nature, our modern, western society usually suppresses.

The interview on Soul Series gave me the impression of a highly conscious and compassionate human being. Nevertheless, it also left me somewhat disillusioned. There obviously are limits to insight, consciousness, and compassion, even for people, who not only have read "A New Earth", but also themselves have experienced what Jill Bolte Taylor calls "Nirvana". There obviously are limits, and, just as obviously, misinterpretation is possible.

It seems to me, that the blind spot is due to Dr. Taylor's brother being labelled with "schizophrenia". The same blind spot that is obvious in regard to Edwin Fuller Torrey.

If Eckhart Tolle ever had asked the very same mental health system, Jill Bolte Taylor advocates for, for help, he would undoubtedly have been given a label of "severe depression with suicidal tendencies", he would immediately have been put on an antidepressant, he maybe even would have qualified for ECT, and we would neither have "The Power of Now", "A New Earth", nor any other of his prophetic writings today.

I couldn't help it, all enlightenment disregarded, my own Ego won, and I had to share my impressions with the interviewee, just as I share them here - I still have a long way to go, trying to find a less egoic form for activism, I know that!
Here, however, is what a truly enlightened human being has to say about psychiatry:

"...Restoring mental health does not mean simply adjusting individuals to the modern world of rapid economic growth. The world is ill, and adapting to an ill environment cannot bring real mental health. Psychiatric treatment requires environmental change and psychiatrists must participate in efforts to change the environment, but that is only half the task. The other half is to help individuals be themselves, not by helping them adapt to an ill environment, but by providing them with the strength to change it. To tranquilize them is not the way. The explosion of bombs , the burning of napalm, the violent death of our neighbors and relatives, the pressure of time, noise, and pollution, the lonely crowds-these have all been created by the disruptive course of our economic growth. They are all sources of mental illness, and they must be ended." (Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist peace activist, The Path of Compassion, 1995. Quotation: Freedom Center)

Find the Soul Series-interviews for free on iTunes.

Labels vs. your own story

I originally wrote the below post for Outsideren's blog, where you can view it here. The below version of the post is a slightly edited and expanded one of the original. "Epidemic" relates to my earlier post at Outsideren's blog "Er epidemien biologisk eller kulturel?" (Is the epidemic biological or cultural?), which is (not) a review of E. Fuller Torrey's book "The Invisible Plague. The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present". The reason for me to mention the cat in my comment on Gianna's post is that Fuller Torrey advocates a theory about close contact to cats, especially their droppings, being the cause of "schizophrenia". Many things can be said about this man, but he certainly doesn't lack imagination!

Diagnoses, life stories and some more epidemic

Gianna did it again (so good to see, that she anyway is up to share her pearls!): she wrote another thought provoking post.

Apropos of epidemic: yes, also the number of grown-ups labelled "bipolar" has increased throughout the past about 15 years - in the U.S. Maybe the U.S.-American version of "bipolar disorder" is more infectious than the one that attacks people in other parts of the world?? An especially infectious variant of the virus?? Do I really dare to go on a trip to the U.S. (hopefully next year) and drop in at some of the most infected places such as Freedom Center and MindFreedom under these circumstances?? I can vividly imagine all the Outsiders draw back in terror: "Get thee hence, until we're sure you aren't infected!" I wonder, when would that be? The day I'd drop dead without ever having been the least "manic"?? Uhm.

However, it seems it isn't that much about an epidemic in "bipolar disorder" as it is an epidemic in what you might call "psychiatric bipolar-diagnozing-madness", a subtype of OCD that, as the name implies, only affects (infects) psychiatrists - in the U.S. So, no fear, unless you're a psychiatrist - living in the U.S.!

The magnitude of the U.S.-American "bipolar"-explosion is about 100%. That is, the number of "bipolar" labelled people has doubled throughout the past 15 years. A recent study now suggests that 50% of all people labelled "bipolar" are misdiagnozed. The actual rise in the cases of "bipolarity" thus is - let's see - 0%. I guess, I can safely go on my trip...

Well, among several other thoughts, Gianna's post for my part provoked some thoughts on labels, and I commented:

"Labels, well, I haven't been labelled officially, but if, it would "without any doubt" have been a "schiz"-label. It helped in one single regard: through my knowledge of the ideas and experiences of people like Lacan, John Weir Perry, Laing or anyone else who ever has tried to understand what really is the nature of the problems, psychiatry fancies to label "schiz" (and that's that - no further understanding required), I finally was able to ask myself the right questions and get to know myself a lot better, which on its part got me on the road to recovery. In any other regard I experience the label as an assault on my humanity. Actually, while in a state of acute sensitivity, I wasn't even able to write down the word (I virtually couldn't get the pen down on the paper or hit the keys), not to speak of having to listen to my therapist saying it, without feeling myself, or: my self, being reduced to something near zero. A trauma on top of a trauma.

Neither here: no family history of "madness". Only an abusive, over-controlling mother (whom I haven't forgiven: kids mean responsibility, also the responsibility to critically examine one's qualifications as a parent from time to time, especially when things start to go wrong), and an evasive, absent father - the "classical" setting, you might say. But, oh, I almost forgot: we did have a cat!..."



Now, my reluctancy toward the label hadn't escaped my therapists attention. As we all, my therapist included, know, "lack of insight" is a widespread "symptom" of exactly this "disease". The word wasn't said but a very few times. As the aim in this, therapeutic, context wasn't, as it unfortunately often is in a psychiatric context, to get me definitely reduced to something near zero.

But: of course, even in this, therapeutic, context the "insight" had to be checked for and preferably attained. So, my peace of mind in regard to this matter was continuously disturbed: "What do you think, your problem might be?", "Do you think, it might be severe?" And so on, and so on, in the same style. I stood my ground for weeks: "I don't know.", "No idea." All the while I became increasingly annoyed: "Why don't you just stop lumbering me! Say it yourself if you think it needs to be stated!" But, nah nope, that wouldn't have done in regard to the "insight", would it?!

About at the same time when I was working up my comment on Gianna's post, also Pablo sat and wrote his own comment:

"(...) Everyone needs to make sense of their own life. Human beings are creatures that occupy time as well as space - other creatures live much more in the moment with little sense of past and future. We need to construct a topography of time, a map of life, and this is our story. This is where our fascination with stories and storytelling comes from - this need to map time and locate ourselves within it.

A diagnosis is a substitute for a personal narrative. It’s an attempt to give someone a story when they can’t make sense of their own, but it’s inherently unsatisfying. It puts that person in a box and makes the individual fit the story instead of the story fitting the individual. Part of the recovery process is the process of reclaiming your own story - the story that makes sense of your life, not someone else’s. (...)"

I want to complement Pablo's comment with Grace Jackson's answer to Larry Simon's question about the causes why emotional crises that often lead to lifelong, chronic "illness". Apart from mentioning both social and biological (drug-related) causes, Grace Jackson talks about psychological causes of a chronification of crisis: "...it can become very attractive to a person who has no other identity in life, or no other - capital M - Meaning, an existential reason for existing, to actually assume some role which is giving meaning not only to oneself but to others. So, if I in fact become important to Nanny or to Chad, or become important in my family, or become important to my psychiatrist, because I assume this role, which everybody says I have, and I am assuming certain value because of accepting that label, then there are psychological reasons for having it be lifelong, or more chronic."

By the way, Larry Simon's so far two interviews with dissident-psychiatrist Grace Jackson are real highlights in his series of also otherwise exceptionally interesting and worth listening to radio-blog shows "Stories We Live By". Find and enjoy them here.

Annoyed, afraid and angry, and incapable of writing down the word I became because I, who all my life had been living others' stories, exactly the moment I'd started to claim my own story, once again was asked to live someone else's story - and renounce my own one.

To ask for "insight", the way the system does, i.e. via the identification with a label, is the same as to ask the individual in crisis to reduce him-/herself to something near zero. Once again.

I gave in, then. It hurt unspeakably. Even though the context as mentioned wasn't "official". And even though I deep down did as I've always done whenever self-reduction, or more precisely: self-denial, has been demanded from me, and shouted to myself: "NO!!!" No deep down "no", no matter how loud it is shouted, can ever make the written word unwritten. When I'm writing, I'm writing my own story. I'd been asked to write the word, and thereby someone else's story, into my own story. Once again. A trauma on top of a trauma, to quote Dianne.

Criticism Anxiety, part II

"If you want to know something, ask an experienced, not a scholar." -Chinese

So, here we've got it, the latest issue of Outsideren. Including the summary of the ECT-debate, and thus the article "Nej, nej og aldrig!" (No, no, and never!), based on an interview with me. As promised at "Criticism Anxiety, part I", I'll comment. Both on the article, and also on psychiatrist Martin Balslev Jørgensen's reply on some of my arguments against ECT: "Kun når det virkelig gælder" (Only when really necessary).

The editor's introduction to the issue states that ECT-(psychiatry-)critics don't show enough readiness for dialogue. This simply is wrong, as the example Dresden has shown. We're more than ready for dialogue. Which we're, nevertheless, are not willing to do, is exactly which psychiatry most often and quite consequently asks us to do, that is, to deny our experiences, and the positions we hold as a result from these experiences. Dialogue presupposes our experiences and positions to be respected. Just as we are supposed to respect others' experiences and positions. Interestingly, mental health staff mostly is in complete lack of the first. Psychiatrists' positions usually are based on theoretical knowledge alone, knowledge they acquired by studying clever books, written by people with a purely theoretical knowledge, acquired by studying clever books, written by people etc. Thus, their positions' foundation is of a more or less completely theoretical kind, not based on experience. Empirical research is a city in China to psychiatry.

Dialogue presupposes listening to each other. With very few exceptions, psychiatry has always been and still is characterized by denying to listen to its clientele. Martin Balslev Jørgensen (M.B.J.) the same - and I shudder to think, that the man also acts as a therapist. "People who are against ECT, from a philosophical position for example, do not have any understanding for how miserable these people feel", he says. Dear Martin Balslev Jørgensen, I feel like commenting, most of the most inveterate critics of ECT have been exposed to this kind of torture themselves. Are you implying that these people don't know what they're talking about??

"That psychiatrists can't think of anything but administering ECT as soon as possible, isn't true", M.B.J. replies to my statement, that "psychiatrists do (...) the only they can and the only they are trained to do: WRITING PRESCRIPTIONS and zapping people's brains", as it is put in the Outsideren (my emphasis). M.B.J. here, elegantly (?), navigates round half of my argumentation. The decisive half. A look at the patients' complaints board's rulings concerning complaints about involuntary ECT, shows clearly that the only less intrusive measures tried before ECT was administered, was medication. None of the rulings mentions any kind of dialogue to have been tried. Dialogue, which, by the way, isn't only less intrusive than ECT but also much less intrusive than medication. BUT: Psychiatrist indeed aren't trained to talk with their clientele. They are trained to administer "medicine" and ECT. As mentioned in a previous post: That's that. It's not without reason that they also refer to themselves as "psychopharmacologists".

In reply to my remark that psychiatry's view of human nature is a purely naturalistic one, that it doesn't take the metaphorical dimension of the mind, the psyche, into account, M.B.J. states, he "would rather compare mental distress to diabetes than to a broken leg", as the article "Kun når det virkelig gælder" tells us. I must admit, I'd be tempted to laugh if it wasn't that sad. Once again the simplistic comparison, Outsideren chooses to print instead of the more complicated explanation, I also went into at the interview, is misunderstood (on purpose?). The question is not at all, if crises are comparable to broken legs or diabetes. The question is, if crises altogether are comparable to physical harm, illness, "regulating mechanisms which do not work" (interesting rewording of the by now slightly hackneyed phrase "imbalances in brain chemistry"!), or not.

And, dear Martin Balslev Jørgensen, if you are capable of listening at all - once again I shudder...: My own EXPERIENCE (and I'm not alone in this) is, that they definitely are not. No matter how much you would like to make people believe it, in order to be able to sell them your "treatment", your pills and your ECT. And disregarded that you try to save your honour as a therapist by the bell by saying that crises aren't "a PURE physiologic problem" (my emphasis).

That M.B.J. himself is an individual who "doesn't want to face reality", as he accuses ECT- (and psychiatry-)critics to be, statements like "...only a very few individuals complain about persistent memory loss", "It has not yet been possible to make out for sure, if memory loss is a side effect of ECT, or if it is due to the preceding depression" and: "As a psychiatrist you use which is provenly effective" prove. Again, I can only point to the Sackeim-study - which Outsideren, unfortunately, and incomprehensibly to me, chose not to refer to - as the newest of numerous studies showing persistent memory loss and persistently reduced cognitive abilities with up to 50% of the individuals who were exposed to ECT, unmistakably being caused by the "treatment". How "effective" psychiatry's "treatment" options really are, no less numerous studies show, which compare ECT to sham-ECT and "medicine" to placebo. The "effectiveness" is the same, whether it is the real McCoy or sham-ECT/placebo. Should M.B.J., the "expert" in the field he so desperately seeks to appear as - in contrast to the, according to him, oh so stupid critics - not have any knowledge of these studies?? To me, this wouldn't exactly be a sign of especially great expertise.

How "strict" the rules for involuntary ECT are, a comparison of the numbers from 2005 and 2006 shows: In 2005 90 individuals were exposed to involuntary ECT in Denmark. In 2006 this number is five times as high (!): 450 individuals were exposed to involuntary ECT. Further increase is to be expected. Inhibitions clearly dwindle, the rules become decreasingly strict. That it allegedly is impossible to do without coercion, the fact, that there are countries, like Germany and Norway, where it is against the law to administer ECT involuntarily, disproves.

It is incomprehensible to me that Outsideren chooses to link to Dansk Psykiatrisk Selskab's (The Danish Psychiatric Association) 2002-study, which is characterized by the same bias and misinformation the whole psychiatric system strongly is characterized by, but chooses to do completely without any of the links to critical and independent information, I provided several of. Admittedly: Really critical and from the pharmacological as well as the ECT-lobby independent information is only available in foreign languages, primarily in English. Information in Danish is, as far as I know, not available.

Looked at in isolation, Outsideren's article about the arguments of ECT-critics is nowhere near satisfactory, and borders to the annoying in its simplicity that invites misunderstandings, like M.B.J.'s, of my argumentation. Additionally annoying is, that M.B.J. is widely allowed to avoid the issue in his defence of ECT, that, obviously, the misunderstandings aren't corrected. Nevertheless, all in all, the whole issue of Outsideren taken into consideration, a slightly greater differentiation can be observed, which, partly, saves the honour by the bell. Partly. Still it is avoided to take a stand, and, which is worse, to let a third party, such as I am in this case, FULLY take a stand that isn't in line with mainstream psychiatry's. As far as I am concerned, I feel a strong urge to apologize to people like Leonard Roy Frank, and, in future, I will consider more carefully whom I'll give an interview.