Most people have read George Orwell's famous anti-totalitarian novel,1984. Few however realize to what extent it was inspired by a book which is little remembered today, James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, just before the United States entered World War II. Orwell envisioned his new totalitarianism coming about in classic fashion, through the ascent of an obviously ideological party to total power. Burnham new better. He foresaw that the new totalitarianism would come about through the union of bureaucrats and business managers, who were often, due to the "revolving door" policy, one and the same person. Both would rule over vast empires whose power was undiluted by messy democratic institutions such as legislatures, courts, and a free press. To be sure, some semblence of these might be kept in order to fool the public. But the reality of democracy would be gone. This is exactly what has happened. President Obama has made little change in the evil institutions which were set up by the Bush Administration. That is because government is now firmly in the hands of that very cabal of bureaucrats and managers, and the current bail-out of big business has only served to further cement this fatal alliance between government and business, which in a free society should be adversaries.
As the American Psychiatric Association is now meeting in San Francisco, it is appropriate to ask what the role of psychiatrists is in this new society. Needless to say, dissenters or indeed, anyone with principles which transcend the infantile quest for physical and material well-being are a mortal threat to the managerial society. Orwell envisioned his protagonist Winston, a dissenter with such principles, being tortured in the "Ministry of Love" by a bureaucrat named O'Brien, whose goal was to "break him" so that he would come to "love Big Brother". He was assisted by a "man in the white coat," whose job was to see that Winston did not die what infamous FBI/CIA torturer Dan Mitrione called "a premature death". In reality, in the new totalitarianism, neither bureaucrats nor managers dirty their hands with this process. That is the role of psychiatrists.
A case in point is that of Susan Lindauer, a journalist with contacts in the U.S. intelligence community who tried to stop the invasion of Iraq. From 2000 to 2002 she wrote a number of memos to her second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, warning that such an invasion would only inflame Iraqi opinion against the U.S. and increase the danger of terrorism. For her efforts, she was arrested and sent to a military prison in Carswell, Texas where psychiatrists told her that she was "delusional" and pressured her to take an anti-psychotic drug which had been used against Soviet dissidents, Haldol. She refused, and in a hearing before Judge Michael Mukasey (later Attorney General) was ultimately spared the necessity of taking the drug, but also declared incompetent to stand trial, though she had no history of mental illness whatsoever. Psychiatrists who had never met her or her witnesses declared in court that she was psychotic. To this date she has not had a fair trial or opportunity to clear her reputation (for more information see Michael Collins, "American Cassandra", available on-line).
In such a society as we live in today, bringing about change by working through the system is no longer possible. Nor is revolution, for the masses have been infantilized to the point where they care only about their own physical and material well-being, and give no thought to transcendent principles. As one cannot allow the government to take one alive, lest one be forced through psychiatrist-designed tortures, ECT and forced drugging to abjure one's highest ideals, the most revolutionary act one can perform in in such a society is public suicide-- what the Japanese called kanshi, or suicide of protest. Think of how much political effect the Buddhist priests who immolated themselves in the Vietnam of the early nineteen-sixties had upon the world! That is why psychatrists seek above all to prevent suicide. Don't get me wrong-- I am not eager to die nor do I expect that most people are. But for anyone threatened by these henchmen of totalitarianism, suicide is not only the most rational option, it is a moral imperative. And thus I implore all those individuals who are faced with forced psychiatric treatment to consider the fact that in order to save themselves from spiritual murder at the hands of psychiatry, they may just have to surrender their physical existence.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
TEENS: DO YOU FEEL THREATENED?
I am appalled to learn that the governmental organization "Teen Screen" is already "screening" teens for "mental illness", often surreptitiously and without the consent of their parents. Have you been victimized this way? That is to say, has anyone at your school asked you personal questions which have nothing to do with academic matters (i.e. those issues associated with your studies)? If so, you should refuse to answer them, and tell your parents at once. The purpose of such questions is not your welfare: it is to stigmatize you as mentally ill so that you can be subjected to dangerous drugs in order to increase profits to psychiatrists and drug companies. If you have problems, these drugs will make them worse; if you are not actually suffering from a mental illness you will be after you take them.
The fact is, "Teen Screen" is unconstitutional and so are its questions. You may think that as a minor, you have no rights. But in fact, in a few years you will be an adult. And that makes all the difference in the world. An agent of the federal government (and they can be disguised in many ways) who asks such questions as "Do you ever think of killing yourself?" or "Do you have problems at home?" or even, "How many times a week do you masturbate?" is acting unconstitionally, that is to say illegally. It is an entirely different matter than if your parents or therapist or religious counselor asks you such questions, because that is a private matter which will presumably be held in confidence. If an agent of the federal government asks you, your answer will be on your record for the rest of your life. And such information may affect you adversely. However qualified, you may be fired from your job because someone has learned that when you were merely 15, you were suicidal, or had problems at home, or masturbated three times a week! Yes really! It could be the end for you. FOR GOD'S SAKE NEVER ANSWER ANY SUCH QUESTIONS. Say that you have to ask your parents first, and try to get legal help. Yours could become a test case which will end this threat to all teens.
It may be some comfort to you to know that one of the most respected of Supreme Court Justices would be on your side. As long ago as 1890, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, along with a colleague, Samuel Warren, wrote an article in the Harvard Law Review entitled "The Right to Privacy" (Vol. IV, No. 5: it can be accessed on-line at http:groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy_brand_warr2.html)
In this essay, Brandeis says, "The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others. Under our system of government, he can never be compelled to express them (except when on the witness stand), and even if he has chosen to give them expression, he generally retains the power to fix the amount of publicity that shall be given them." You can quote that to any "Teen Screen" interviewer who attempts to elicit information from you which has no relevance to your academic performance. If they say that you are still a minor and hence without rights, tell them that you will be an adult with full rights in a few years and there is no way that this inquisitor can guarantee you that the answers you give will not be kept on record and used against you for the rest of your life. If they try to reassure you that they will not be, do not trust them: as they do not themselves know if they will be or not, their reassurance must necessarily be a lie. In any case, as a soon-to-be adult, you have what Brandeis called "the right to be left alone" and you should avail yourself of it. It is my fondest wish that your parents will support you in this, but even if they do not, it is still your right to refuse. For God' sake, stand up for your rights! It is the most important thing you will ever do.
The fact is, "Teen Screen" is unconstitutional and so are its questions. You may think that as a minor, you have no rights. But in fact, in a few years you will be an adult. And that makes all the difference in the world. An agent of the federal government (and they can be disguised in many ways) who asks such questions as "Do you ever think of killing yourself?" or "Do you have problems at home?" or even, "How many times a week do you masturbate?" is acting unconstitionally, that is to say illegally. It is an entirely different matter than if your parents or therapist or religious counselor asks you such questions, because that is a private matter which will presumably be held in confidence. If an agent of the federal government asks you, your answer will be on your record for the rest of your life. And such information may affect you adversely. However qualified, you may be fired from your job because someone has learned that when you were merely 15, you were suicidal, or had problems at home, or masturbated three times a week! Yes really! It could be the end for you. FOR GOD'S SAKE NEVER ANSWER ANY SUCH QUESTIONS. Say that you have to ask your parents first, and try to get legal help. Yours could become a test case which will end this threat to all teens.
It may be some comfort to you to know that one of the most respected of Supreme Court Justices would be on your side. As long ago as 1890, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, along with a colleague, Samuel Warren, wrote an article in the Harvard Law Review entitled "The Right to Privacy" (Vol. IV, No. 5: it can be accessed on-line at http:groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy_brand_warr2.html)
In this essay, Brandeis says, "The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others. Under our system of government, he can never be compelled to express them (except when on the witness stand), and even if he has chosen to give them expression, he generally retains the power to fix the amount of publicity that shall be given them." You can quote that to any "Teen Screen" interviewer who attempts to elicit information from you which has no relevance to your academic performance. If they say that you are still a minor and hence without rights, tell them that you will be an adult with full rights in a few years and there is no way that this inquisitor can guarantee you that the answers you give will not be kept on record and used against you for the rest of your life. If they try to reassure you that they will not be, do not trust them: as they do not themselves know if they will be or not, their reassurance must necessarily be a lie. In any case, as a soon-to-be adult, you have what Brandeis called "the right to be left alone" and you should avail yourself of it. It is my fondest wish that your parents will support you in this, but even if they do not, it is still your right to refuse. For God' sake, stand up for your rights! It is the most important thing you will ever do.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
MILL'S ON LIBERTY AND TODAY'S PSYCHIATRY
John Stuart Mill was a man remarkably ahead of his time, a man who, more than any other, foresaw the danger that we face today. Actually we should say the Mills, because by his own admission, John's wife Harriet was the indispensable co-author of his most famous volume. Everyone is familiar with the following famous dictum-- including the chief enemies of liberty today, the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC):
"The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind is warranted, either individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forebear because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, or right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." (On Liberty, 1859, p. 68: all quotations are from the Penguin Classic edition, published 1985).
Of course the Mills recognized exceptions, such as children and those peoples who had not reached the stage where they were capable of governing themselves (being in this respect people of their time, they naturally had a paternalistic view of non-Western civilizations and to some extent, non-English-speaking ones). Raul Jean Isaac and Virginia Armat, authors of TAC's handbook Madness in the Streets, say that although Mill did not specifically mention the mentally ill, "he would be horrified to be cited as a source for the doctrine that society has no right to intervene on their behalf."[sic](p. 338) But they are wrong, and pointedly ignore the passage which proves it. What would have most horrified both John and Harriet Mill is TAC, whose view of mental illness represents a regression to the ideas which governed the administration of Bedlam, that the mentally ill are subhuman creatures who above all have to be controlled. Look at how Isaac and Armat describe what they call "the mentally ill": "Try engaging in 'free and equal discussion' with the individual convinced that aliens from outer space are talking to him from under the living room sofa." This is a description of psychosis, which the Mills would indeed recognize as an exception, and which they refer to in another passage as "delirium"(p. 166). But psychosis is a state of mind, not a diagnosis or a permament condition, and not at all synonymous with mental illness. There are many people who would be diagnosed as mentally ill today who have never experienced psychosis in their lives, and many others who have experienced it perhaps only once or twice and are now not only completely rational but capable of outstanding achievements. To these people the Mills would have accorded the full rights described in their famous passage. But TAC would not, and it is a fact that psychiatrists routinely describe as "schizophrenic" or "bipolar" many people who are not suffering from delusions and hallucinations. Therein lies the danger.
The brilliance of On Liberty lies in a fact that has puzzled many readers from the time it was written. The Mills lived in what was, in comparison to most previous civilizations, a relatively free and open society. They themselves seem to acknowledge that the possibility of a purely governmental tyranny rearing its head once again in the English-speaking countries is remote. And there is no way that they could have demonstrated, as indeed no one can demonstrate, that the consequences of a purely social ostracism-- that is to say, impediments placed in the way of one's career goals, a diminution of income, hurt feelings etc.-- can possibly compare to the imprisonment, torture and execution that government is capable of meting out. Why then did they show such terror of the power of society over the individual? The answer can be found in part in a factor to be discussed below, and in part in one obscure sentence which occurs early on in the essay. As they say of their own era, "In England, from the peculiar cricumstances of our political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, the yoke of law is lighter than most countries of Europe, and there is considerable jealousy of direct interference by the legislative or executive power with private conduct, not so much from any just regard for the independence of the individual as from the still subsisting habit of looking on the government as representing an opposite interest to the public. The majority have not yet learned to feel the power of government as their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the government as already is from public opinion." (p. 67)
This is what they feared above all, and what makes On Liberty sound, as one critic said, "as if it had been written from a prison cell" instead of a comparatively free and open society. The Mills foresaw the very situation we are in today, in which democracy has persisted for so long that people no longer look upon government as a potential threat but rather as their protector, and its will as their own. And well did they foresee that in such circumstances, whether through deliberate manipulation (for the public may in fact be wrong to feel that it has control over its rulers) or by succumbing to public prejudice, government would become inseparable from that prejudice. In such a situation, all the terrifying tools of coercion which only government can wield are put in service to enforce that conformity which was previously maintained through social ostracism alone. In this regard it is important to note that the very definition of the most prevalant form of mental illness is noncomformity. According to the American Psychiatric Association, "personality disorder" is defined by "an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior which deviates markedly from the expections of the culture of the individual who exhibits it." The more severe illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are characterized by a criterion which was once objectively definable, psychosis, but as we have seen that is a state of mind and not necessarily permanent. Furthermore, the range of criteria which are now used to establish that a person is psychotic is so broad as to be ludicrous. Such prevalent phenomena as a belief in the conspiracy theory of JFK's assassination or 9/11, or ESP or reincarnation, or that one has a special mission, are now taken as indicators of psychosis. But what makes these beliefs different from the conventional views concerning the events in question or the belief in a single omnipotent God or in heaven? Merely the fact that they are minority opinions. Indeed, the term "idiosyncratic" has entered the psychiatric lexicon as being practically synonymous with mental illness. This is precisely the situation that the Mills feared.
There is a very good reason why the issue of mental illness rarely arises in On Liberty. It is not just the fact that psychotherapy as we know it did not exist in the Mills' day: Sigmund Freud was only three years old when the book was published, and would not begin to publish his own works until decades later. But then, the victimization of those so unfortunate to be labeled "mentally ill" had begun long before, and has little to do with the pioneering work of Freud and his successors, which is being abandoned by modern psychiatry. And the Mills had every reason to fear that they too would become victims. In the first place, John Stuart Mill had suffered a nervous breakdown at age twenty, as a result of the demanding and soulless education forced upon him by his Utilitarian father, James Mill. Furthermore, the Mills lived in an era when women who did not conform to the rigid code of behavior expected of them were being stigmatized and punished as "hysterical", a fact of which Harriet Mill was no doubt most keenly aware. The Mills in effect recognized that "genius is next to madness"-- that the people who had done the most to further the progress of Mankind were for the most part possessed of characteristics which could easily, then as now, be labeled "mental illness". If they were mentally ill, their illnesses were inseperable from their originality of thought. And the Mills placed the highest value upon originality. "Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through this tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor and moral courage it contained." (p. 132)
Above all, the Mills possessed two characteristics which are as essential to human progress as they are liable to stigmatization. Firstly, they were independent thinkers, being temperamentally loners. As the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of On Liberty says of them: "whether at home or abroad, they were almost entirely withdrawn from the literary , social and political circles they might have been expected to frequent. In his Autobiography, Mill explained why a person of a 'really high class of intellect' would choose to have so few relations with 'society' as to be 'almost considered as retiring from it altogether': Society, he said, was 'insipid'; it discouraged serious discussion; it was 'useful only to social climbers, while those already at the top could do no more than comply with the customs and demands of their station'; worst of all, it was 'debasing to the intellectual, whose feelings, opinions and principles could only be lowered by contact with it.'" That he was describing his own situation is evident from his concluding remarks: "All those circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought." (p. 20). Secondly, as we have seen, the Mills were able to foresee dangers which their contemporaries-- even some of the most prominent among them-- were unable to recognize at all, and which in fact only became readily apparent a century or so after On Liberty was published. What would a doctor-- then or now-- say about people who shunned the company of others and worried about dangers no one else could see? At the very least, they would have been diagnosed with what we today call a schizotypal personality disorder, and at the worst with paranoid schizophrenia. Thus they did not fear the mentally ill so much as they feared the way that the concept of mental illness could be used to enforce obedience and conformity.
The proof of this is in a passage conveniently ignored by Isaac and Armat. Defending individual eccentricity, the Mills wrote, "But the man, and still more the woman, who can be accused of 'doing what nobody does', or of not doing 'what everybody does', is the subject of as much deprecatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. Persons require to have a title, or some other badge of rank, to be able to indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing what they like without risk to their estimation... for whoever allows himself too much of that indulgence incur the risk of something worse than disparaging speeches-- they are in peril of commission de lunatico and of having their property taken from them and given to their relatives." In a footnote they add, "There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of evidence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially declared unfit for the management of his affairs... all the minute details of his daily life are pried into, and whatever is found which, seen through the medium of the perceiving and describing faculties of the lowest of the low, bears an appearance other than the absolutely commonplace, is laid before the jury as evidence of insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little, if at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses, while the judges, with that extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which continually astonishes us in English lawyers, often help to mislead them. These trials speak volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion among the vulgar with regard to human liberty." (p. 134). Reading these words, one can have little doubt that not only would the Mills have opposed TAC absolutely, but that their entire philosophy regarding liberty and the sanctity of the individual was based upon opposition to precisely the sort of intrusion upon human freedom which TAC advocates.
The result of laws to inflict dangerous treatments and penalties on people for psychiatric reasons, in our own time as the Mills', is the emotion which always surrounds witch hunts-- terror. It is obvious to anyone who knows the power that the threat of being judged insane can wield, both in their time as in ours, that On Liberty was written against a background of this very fear, a fear so deep and unmentionable that the Mills could only bring themselves to allude to it once in the tract, and extensively only in a footnote (if the longest footnote in the book). That terror is spreading today, as TAC and its followers latch on to the public hysteria whipped up by western governments in the wake of 9/11. Recently I had a discussion with a leader in the Movement Against Psychiatric Assault about a piece I had written which he thought was injudiciously worded. He warned that it would make people think that I am mentally deranged, and that if people found out that he had given his approbation to it, "People will think I'm crazy too." I could not help but recall that moment when Edward R. Murrow was considering doing his famous program against Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. He asked his colleagues for their opinions as to whether he should proceed, and one by one they enumerated the personal factors which might put them in jeopardy if he did, to wit, "I was involved in leftist activities in college," "My brother-in-law is a Communist," etc. Murrow pondered their comments and said, "The fear is right here in this room. We go on the air tonight." It was a moment of profound moral courage, and one that is needed more than ever today. It is time for the better portion of mankind-- those capable of original thought and creation-- to take up the struggle where the Mills left off over a hundred and fifty years ago. It is time for us to make public our greatest fear-- not just for ourselves but for Mankind. It is time for us to point out that the witch hunts now being initiated by TAC and its followers are potentially more dangerous than McCarthyism. They have claimed to be the protectors of society-- let them be exposed for what they truly are: enemies of the Western tradition of political liberty, democracy, and civilization itself.
"The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind is warranted, either individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forebear because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, or right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." (On Liberty, 1859, p. 68: all quotations are from the Penguin Classic edition, published 1985).
Of course the Mills recognized exceptions, such as children and those peoples who had not reached the stage where they were capable of governing themselves (being in this respect people of their time, they naturally had a paternalistic view of non-Western civilizations and to some extent, non-English-speaking ones). Raul Jean Isaac and Virginia Armat, authors of TAC's handbook Madness in the Streets, say that although Mill did not specifically mention the mentally ill, "he would be horrified to be cited as a source for the doctrine that society has no right to intervene on their behalf."[sic](p. 338) But they are wrong, and pointedly ignore the passage which proves it. What would have most horrified both John and Harriet Mill is TAC, whose view of mental illness represents a regression to the ideas which governed the administration of Bedlam, that the mentally ill are subhuman creatures who above all have to be controlled. Look at how Isaac and Armat describe what they call "the mentally ill": "Try engaging in 'free and equal discussion' with the individual convinced that aliens from outer space are talking to him from under the living room sofa." This is a description of psychosis, which the Mills would indeed recognize as an exception, and which they refer to in another passage as "delirium"(p. 166). But psychosis is a state of mind, not a diagnosis or a permament condition, and not at all synonymous with mental illness. There are many people who would be diagnosed as mentally ill today who have never experienced psychosis in their lives, and many others who have experienced it perhaps only once or twice and are now not only completely rational but capable of outstanding achievements. To these people the Mills would have accorded the full rights described in their famous passage. But TAC would not, and it is a fact that psychiatrists routinely describe as "schizophrenic" or "bipolar" many people who are not suffering from delusions and hallucinations. Therein lies the danger.
The brilliance of On Liberty lies in a fact that has puzzled many readers from the time it was written. The Mills lived in what was, in comparison to most previous civilizations, a relatively free and open society. They themselves seem to acknowledge that the possibility of a purely governmental tyranny rearing its head once again in the English-speaking countries is remote. And there is no way that they could have demonstrated, as indeed no one can demonstrate, that the consequences of a purely social ostracism-- that is to say, impediments placed in the way of one's career goals, a diminution of income, hurt feelings etc.-- can possibly compare to the imprisonment, torture and execution that government is capable of meting out. Why then did they show such terror of the power of society over the individual? The answer can be found in part in a factor to be discussed below, and in part in one obscure sentence which occurs early on in the essay. As they say of their own era, "In England, from the peculiar cricumstances of our political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, the yoke of law is lighter than most countries of Europe, and there is considerable jealousy of direct interference by the legislative or executive power with private conduct, not so much from any just regard for the independence of the individual as from the still subsisting habit of looking on the government as representing an opposite interest to the public. The majority have not yet learned to feel the power of government as their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the government as already is from public opinion." (p. 67)
This is what they feared above all, and what makes On Liberty sound, as one critic said, "as if it had been written from a prison cell" instead of a comparatively free and open society. The Mills foresaw the very situation we are in today, in which democracy has persisted for so long that people no longer look upon government as a potential threat but rather as their protector, and its will as their own. And well did they foresee that in such circumstances, whether through deliberate manipulation (for the public may in fact be wrong to feel that it has control over its rulers) or by succumbing to public prejudice, government would become inseparable from that prejudice. In such a situation, all the terrifying tools of coercion which only government can wield are put in service to enforce that conformity which was previously maintained through social ostracism alone. In this regard it is important to note that the very definition of the most prevalant form of mental illness is noncomformity. According to the American Psychiatric Association, "personality disorder" is defined by "an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior which deviates markedly from the expections of the culture of the individual who exhibits it." The more severe illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are characterized by a criterion which was once objectively definable, psychosis, but as we have seen that is a state of mind and not necessarily permanent. Furthermore, the range of criteria which are now used to establish that a person is psychotic is so broad as to be ludicrous. Such prevalent phenomena as a belief in the conspiracy theory of JFK's assassination or 9/11, or ESP or reincarnation, or that one has a special mission, are now taken as indicators of psychosis. But what makes these beliefs different from the conventional views concerning the events in question or the belief in a single omnipotent God or in heaven? Merely the fact that they are minority opinions. Indeed, the term "idiosyncratic" has entered the psychiatric lexicon as being practically synonymous with mental illness. This is precisely the situation that the Mills feared.
There is a very good reason why the issue of mental illness rarely arises in On Liberty. It is not just the fact that psychotherapy as we know it did not exist in the Mills' day: Sigmund Freud was only three years old when the book was published, and would not begin to publish his own works until decades later. But then, the victimization of those so unfortunate to be labeled "mentally ill" had begun long before, and has little to do with the pioneering work of Freud and his successors, which is being abandoned by modern psychiatry. And the Mills had every reason to fear that they too would become victims. In the first place, John Stuart Mill had suffered a nervous breakdown at age twenty, as a result of the demanding and soulless education forced upon him by his Utilitarian father, James Mill. Furthermore, the Mills lived in an era when women who did not conform to the rigid code of behavior expected of them were being stigmatized and punished as "hysterical", a fact of which Harriet Mill was no doubt most keenly aware. The Mills in effect recognized that "genius is next to madness"-- that the people who had done the most to further the progress of Mankind were for the most part possessed of characteristics which could easily, then as now, be labeled "mental illness". If they were mentally ill, their illnesses were inseperable from their originality of thought. And the Mills placed the highest value upon originality. "Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through this tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor and moral courage it contained." (p. 132)
Above all, the Mills possessed two characteristics which are as essential to human progress as they are liable to stigmatization. Firstly, they were independent thinkers, being temperamentally loners. As the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of On Liberty says of them: "whether at home or abroad, they were almost entirely withdrawn from the literary , social and political circles they might have been expected to frequent. In his Autobiography, Mill explained why a person of a 'really high class of intellect' would choose to have so few relations with 'society' as to be 'almost considered as retiring from it altogether': Society, he said, was 'insipid'; it discouraged serious discussion; it was 'useful only to social climbers, while those already at the top could do no more than comply with the customs and demands of their station'; worst of all, it was 'debasing to the intellectual, whose feelings, opinions and principles could only be lowered by contact with it.'" That he was describing his own situation is evident from his concluding remarks: "All those circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought." (p. 20). Secondly, as we have seen, the Mills were able to foresee dangers which their contemporaries-- even some of the most prominent among them-- were unable to recognize at all, and which in fact only became readily apparent a century or so after On Liberty was published. What would a doctor-- then or now-- say about people who shunned the company of others and worried about dangers no one else could see? At the very least, they would have been diagnosed with what we today call a schizotypal personality disorder, and at the worst with paranoid schizophrenia. Thus they did not fear the mentally ill so much as they feared the way that the concept of mental illness could be used to enforce obedience and conformity.
The proof of this is in a passage conveniently ignored by Isaac and Armat. Defending individual eccentricity, the Mills wrote, "But the man, and still more the woman, who can be accused of 'doing what nobody does', or of not doing 'what everybody does', is the subject of as much deprecatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. Persons require to have a title, or some other badge of rank, to be able to indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing what they like without risk to their estimation... for whoever allows himself too much of that indulgence incur the risk of something worse than disparaging speeches-- they are in peril of commission de lunatico and of having their property taken from them and given to their relatives." In a footnote they add, "There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of evidence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially declared unfit for the management of his affairs... all the minute details of his daily life are pried into, and whatever is found which, seen through the medium of the perceiving and describing faculties of the lowest of the low, bears an appearance other than the absolutely commonplace, is laid before the jury as evidence of insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little, if at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses, while the judges, with that extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which continually astonishes us in English lawyers, often help to mislead them. These trials speak volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion among the vulgar with regard to human liberty." (p. 134). Reading these words, one can have little doubt that not only would the Mills have opposed TAC absolutely, but that their entire philosophy regarding liberty and the sanctity of the individual was based upon opposition to precisely the sort of intrusion upon human freedom which TAC advocates.
The result of laws to inflict dangerous treatments and penalties on people for psychiatric reasons, in our own time as the Mills', is the emotion which always surrounds witch hunts-- terror. It is obvious to anyone who knows the power that the threat of being judged insane can wield, both in their time as in ours, that On Liberty was written against a background of this very fear, a fear so deep and unmentionable that the Mills could only bring themselves to allude to it once in the tract, and extensively only in a footnote (if the longest footnote in the book). That terror is spreading today, as TAC and its followers latch on to the public hysteria whipped up by western governments in the wake of 9/11. Recently I had a discussion with a leader in the Movement Against Psychiatric Assault about a piece I had written which he thought was injudiciously worded. He warned that it would make people think that I am mentally deranged, and that if people found out that he had given his approbation to it, "People will think I'm crazy too." I could not help but recall that moment when Edward R. Murrow was considering doing his famous program against Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. He asked his colleagues for their opinions as to whether he should proceed, and one by one they enumerated the personal factors which might put them in jeopardy if he did, to wit, "I was involved in leftist activities in college," "My brother-in-law is a Communist," etc. Murrow pondered their comments and said, "The fear is right here in this room. We go on the air tonight." It was a moment of profound moral courage, and one that is needed more than ever today. It is time for the better portion of mankind-- those capable of original thought and creation-- to take up the struggle where the Mills left off over a hundred and fifty years ago. It is time for us to make public our greatest fear-- not just for ourselves but for Mankind. It is time for us to point out that the witch hunts now being initiated by TAC and its followers are potentially more dangerous than McCarthyism. They have claimed to be the protectors of society-- let them be exposed for what they truly are: enemies of the Western tradition of political liberty, democracy, and civilization itself.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
THE INSANITY OFFENSE: A Satire
"It's her, isn't it! You've brought her back to accuse me!" The voice of an old woman shrieked from the upper story of a dark, forbidding mansion as an attractive blonde listened uneasily from the office of the Torrey Pines Lodge, brow furrowed. Her name was Marion Cranberry, and she had just checked in, seeking shelter from the rain while fleeing the police after stealing $40,000 from her employer so that she could marry her lover, Sam Loony.
"No mother," the motel owner replied. "She's just a guest. Don't you remember that we have guests?"
"I think it's her-- your sister-- and you've brought her back from the hospital so that she can tell me that I was the cause of her sickness, because I'm a bad mother."
"Why should I do that? You were always a good mother to me."
"Well, I don't know--"
"Excuse me mother, but I promised the guest--"
In a moment the owner appeared, carrying a tray with sandwiches and a pitcher. He was young and boyishly handsome. "Sorry," he apologized. "Mum does get a bit agitated at times."
Marion wondered why he used the term "Mum" instead of "Mom" since he did not seem to be British. "Well, I don't want to intrude upon a family argument," she said.
"No, it's all right, she'll get over it. She thought you were my sister," the man smiled sheepishly as he handed the tray to Marion. Marion looked about as she ate. Behind her was a stuffed vulture, which looked as if it were about to swoop down on her. Over the owner's head swung a stuffed vampire bat. "Don't worry-- they're dead. Taxidermy is my hobby," he explained.
"What a curious hobby," commented Marion as she ate.
"But an interesting one. You must forgive my mother for being so upset by your arrival. After all, we don't get many guests since the new freeway went in. But we're working on improving the situation. We've thought of putting a big sign up alongside the new freeway directing people to our motel. In fact, we've even considered engaging the local police to force people to stay at our motel if they drive out this way."
"Isn't that like putting them in a trap?"
"Well I think we're all in traps. I'm trapped here because my mother needs me. She hasn't been well since we-- I mean she-- put my sister in the hospital. I think she feels guilty."
"Maybe you should put her into some sort of--"
The young man's eyes flashed anger. "You mean a madhouse, and institution? That would only remind her of what she did to my sister. How can you suggest that I do such a thing?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend... but don't you get lonely, being all alone with no one but her for company?"
"No. I grew up here. And after all, a boy's best friend is his mother."
Having eaten, Marion said, "Well, I think I'll retire. I have a long drive ahead of me. Goodnight Mr.--"
"Just call me Fuller."
As Marion departed to her room, which was next door, a middle-aged lady entered the motel office with a pet carrier. "Uh, hello," she said. "My husband and I were sort of driven off course by the rain. We'd like lodging for the night-- we'll pay any amount. But I have to warn you-- we have a pet. We love him so much that we take him everywhere--"
Fuller drew back against the wall, staring at the pet carrier as though it were about to attack him. "What-is-it?" he asked.
"Why it's a cat. Morris we call him."
Fuller's eyebrows shot up in horror. "Please-- please go."
"But is there any other motel around here?"
Fuller reached quickly under the counter and pulled out a brochure. "Here--" he threw it at her. "This is a guide to all the local motels. Just go."
As the lady left, highly disgruntled, Fuller disappeared upstairs. From afar, one could hear the old woman's raspy voice asking, "Was that her again?"
"No, Mother. Just another guest. But I sent her packing. She had a-- a cat."
"Oh no!" the old lady shrieked. "Not a cat! You don't want to end up like your sister, do you? I mean, she must have caught it from a cat. After all, if it's physical, and also hereditary, then both you and I--"
"Yes mother, that's why I got rid of her." Fuller came down the stairs once again. Next door, Marion was pondering. She had come hoping to find a haven from her personal problems, but Torrey Pines Lodge was beginning to seem like a worse problem than the ones she had left. She decided to leave the next day and return the money she had stolen. Then she prepared for her shower. Little did she know, as she slowly undressed, that Fuller was watching her from a peephole in the wall. she turned on the shower, and entered, luxuriating in the warm water after her stressful trip. Suddenly a human figure entered the bathroom. In a moment the shower curtain was split and a knife slashed Marion again and again. She fell to the floor, dead.
The next morning, Fuller knocked on the door with a breakfast tray for Marion. When she didn't answer, he entered. Suddenly he dropped the tray. "Oh God, blood! Mother!" he yelled and ran up the stairs of the old house. Once again the exchange between him and his mother could be heard from afar. "Did you do something unkind to our guest?"
"What makes you think that, dear? I wouldn't hurt a fly."
"But she's lying on the floor in the bathroom, stabbed to death. What should I do?"
"Well for heaven's sake, clean up the mess."
Fuller dutifully went down and removed all traces of blood from the bathroom. Then he put Marion and all her belongings, including the money, into her car and sunk it in a nearby swamp. "Boy," he said, wiping the sweat from his face after the car disappeared from sight, "Was that ever a pain in the ass." And then, looking about as if his mother might be listening, he corrected himself, "I mean a pain in the butt."
A couple days later, Fuller was on the front porch of the motel eating candy when a private detective named Allgas approached. "I'm looking for a missing woman." He tried to hand Fuller a photo but he scarcely glanced at it. "Did she check in here?"
"No, nobody's been here for a couple weeks. We don't get many guests since the new freeway--" Fuller launched into his usual explanation.
"I find that hard to believe. Will you let me look at your guestbook?" Fuller reluctantly agreed. Taking out a slip of paper with Marion's handwriting on it, he easily identified Marion's signature although she had used a pseudonym. Attempting once again to get Fuller to look at the photo, he asked, "Do you recognize her now?"
"Well, come to think of it, she was here a couple days ago."
"Did she make any calls?" Allgas asked, suspecting her boyfriend of being involved in the theft.
"No."
"Did you spend the night with her?"
"Of course not!" Fuller responded indignantly.
"Then how do you know that she made no calls?"
"She said she was tired, and I think, went straight to bed after she entered her room."
"But she used a pseudonym. How do you know that she wasn't fooling you about going right to bed as well?"
"She may have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother."
Allgas lifted an eyebrow. "Ah, your mother. So someone else lives here. May I speak to her?"
"Well, uh, no-- she's not well."
Allgas pretended to depart. But as soon as he was out of Fuller's sight-- or thought he was-- he headed for the old mansion. Opening the door, he called, "Madame?" He climbed the stairs, but before he had a chance to oepn the door at the top, a human figure ran out and slashed him, again and again with a knife. He fell to the floor, dead.
Soon afterwards, Fuller found the body. "Mother, you've made a mess again. This is getting to be too much." After disposing of Allgas' body in the swamp as he had Marion's, he told his mother, "I'm going to have to take you to the fruit cellar."
"No!" she protested loudly in her raspy voice. "You just put me down, young man!" Despite her protests, Fuller carried a figure dressed in the clothes of an old woman down the stairs and into the cellar.
The next day, Fuller arrived at an appointment with a representative of Silly Pharmaceuticals. Behind the desk sat a balding man, his heavy eyebrows turned downward at the center to form a "V", his mouth turned upward in a devilish grin, and the look of avarice all over his face. "What can I do for you, young man?"
"I need some drugs. You see, I run a motel, and every time we have a guest, my mother makes a fuss. She always thinks it's my sister, who was institutionalized years ago, coming back to accuse her."
"So you need drugs for your mother?"
"No, for the guests. I figured that if they didn't make so much noise, Mum wouldn't know they were there. Just something to quiet them down..."
The representative smiled broadly. "I think I have just the kind of drug you need. It will quiet them down forever."
"But I don't want to kill them. After all, that's against the law, and I have great respect for the law."
"Don't worry," they'll still be alive. Just barely."
"Uh, well, how much is it? For a year's supply?"
"Half a million dollars."
Fuller's brow furrowed. "That's awfully steep. I mean, we're just a small enterprise..."
"Well," the representative smiled, "I can give you an incentive. For such a large purchase, I you will receive a discount on shares in our corporation. You'll be in good company if you become one of our investors. Why, two ex-presidents-- father and son-- are as well."
Fuller immediately rose to his feet and saluted. "Whatever's good enough for the Commander-in-Chief is good enough for me!"
"So it's a deal?"
"Yeah, I suppose so," Fuller said, smiling.
As he wrote out the contract, the representative said, "If you want an even more effective way of controlling your guests, you might try Dramatics LLC, the electronics firm down the street. They have a gadget-- of course it has to be done in a hospital--"
"Oh I can't do that! If they say anything about a hospital, it will remind my mother of--"
The representative looked up and smiled. "I can guarantee that they won't remember a thing."
A few months passed. Guests accumulated at the Torrey Pines Lodge. Some came looking for the missing Marion and Allgas, others just happened to lose their way and end up there. One morning, Fuller decide to show them to his mother. They were all lined up in the parlor. Some were staring off into the distance with vacant looks, others were weeping, pouring out their misery in unintelligible phrases. A number of them kept making jerky movements of their facial muscles or limbs. One boy of about ten sat rocking back and forth, saying again and again, "Doctor says I won't get shocked if I take my meds. Johnny's a good boy. He takes his meds." One woman was wandering around in obvious anguish, asking, "Who am I? Can someone tell me who I am? I don't remember." When she reached the boy she asked, "Are you my son? You look familiar." But he didn't even look up at her, just kept repeating, "Doctors says I won't get shocked if I take my meds. Johnny's a good boy. He takes his meds."
Into this assemblage entered Fuller with a figure dressed as an old woman in a wheelchair. "You see, Mother! I have fixed it so that no one can ever accuse you of being a bad mother again!" He wheeled her down the row of helpless wrecks of human beings, saying, "Look! Look!"
Then "Mother" expressed her approval. But strangely, the voice was coming from Fuller himself. In a raspy old woman's voice he said, "Good boy, Fuller. As I've always said, a boy's best friend is his mummy." Fuller turned the wheelchair around so that all could see the desiccated body with the empty eye sockets which stared and stared into all eternity.
-- With apologies to Alfred Hitchcock
"No mother," the motel owner replied. "She's just a guest. Don't you remember that we have guests?"
"I think it's her-- your sister-- and you've brought her back from the hospital so that she can tell me that I was the cause of her sickness, because I'm a bad mother."
"Why should I do that? You were always a good mother to me."
"Well, I don't know--"
"Excuse me mother, but I promised the guest--"
In a moment the owner appeared, carrying a tray with sandwiches and a pitcher. He was young and boyishly handsome. "Sorry," he apologized. "Mum does get a bit agitated at times."
Marion wondered why he used the term "Mum" instead of "Mom" since he did not seem to be British. "Well, I don't want to intrude upon a family argument," she said.
"No, it's all right, she'll get over it. She thought you were my sister," the man smiled sheepishly as he handed the tray to Marion. Marion looked about as she ate. Behind her was a stuffed vulture, which looked as if it were about to swoop down on her. Over the owner's head swung a stuffed vampire bat. "Don't worry-- they're dead. Taxidermy is my hobby," he explained.
"What a curious hobby," commented Marion as she ate.
"But an interesting one. You must forgive my mother for being so upset by your arrival. After all, we don't get many guests since the new freeway went in. But we're working on improving the situation. We've thought of putting a big sign up alongside the new freeway directing people to our motel. In fact, we've even considered engaging the local police to force people to stay at our motel if they drive out this way."
"Isn't that like putting them in a trap?"
"Well I think we're all in traps. I'm trapped here because my mother needs me. She hasn't been well since we-- I mean she-- put my sister in the hospital. I think she feels guilty."
"Maybe you should put her into some sort of--"
The young man's eyes flashed anger. "You mean a madhouse, and institution? That would only remind her of what she did to my sister. How can you suggest that I do such a thing?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend... but don't you get lonely, being all alone with no one but her for company?"
"No. I grew up here. And after all, a boy's best friend is his mother."
Having eaten, Marion said, "Well, I think I'll retire. I have a long drive ahead of me. Goodnight Mr.--"
"Just call me Fuller."
As Marion departed to her room, which was next door, a middle-aged lady entered the motel office with a pet carrier. "Uh, hello," she said. "My husband and I were sort of driven off course by the rain. We'd like lodging for the night-- we'll pay any amount. But I have to warn you-- we have a pet. We love him so much that we take him everywhere--"
Fuller drew back against the wall, staring at the pet carrier as though it were about to attack him. "What-is-it?" he asked.
"Why it's a cat. Morris we call him."
Fuller's eyebrows shot up in horror. "Please-- please go."
"But is there any other motel around here?"
Fuller reached quickly under the counter and pulled out a brochure. "Here--" he threw it at her. "This is a guide to all the local motels. Just go."
As the lady left, highly disgruntled, Fuller disappeared upstairs. From afar, one could hear the old woman's raspy voice asking, "Was that her again?"
"No, Mother. Just another guest. But I sent her packing. She had a-- a cat."
"Oh no!" the old lady shrieked. "Not a cat! You don't want to end up like your sister, do you? I mean, she must have caught it from a cat. After all, if it's physical, and also hereditary, then both you and I--"
"Yes mother, that's why I got rid of her." Fuller came down the stairs once again. Next door, Marion was pondering. She had come hoping to find a haven from her personal problems, but Torrey Pines Lodge was beginning to seem like a worse problem than the ones she had left. She decided to leave the next day and return the money she had stolen. Then she prepared for her shower. Little did she know, as she slowly undressed, that Fuller was watching her from a peephole in the wall. she turned on the shower, and entered, luxuriating in the warm water after her stressful trip. Suddenly a human figure entered the bathroom. In a moment the shower curtain was split and a knife slashed Marion again and again. She fell to the floor, dead.
The next morning, Fuller knocked on the door with a breakfast tray for Marion. When she didn't answer, he entered. Suddenly he dropped the tray. "Oh God, blood! Mother!" he yelled and ran up the stairs of the old house. Once again the exchange between him and his mother could be heard from afar. "Did you do something unkind to our guest?"
"What makes you think that, dear? I wouldn't hurt a fly."
"But she's lying on the floor in the bathroom, stabbed to death. What should I do?"
"Well for heaven's sake, clean up the mess."
Fuller dutifully went down and removed all traces of blood from the bathroom. Then he put Marion and all her belongings, including the money, into her car and sunk it in a nearby swamp. "Boy," he said, wiping the sweat from his face after the car disappeared from sight, "Was that ever a pain in the ass." And then, looking about as if his mother might be listening, he corrected himself, "I mean a pain in the butt."
A couple days later, Fuller was on the front porch of the motel eating candy when a private detective named Allgas approached. "I'm looking for a missing woman." He tried to hand Fuller a photo but he scarcely glanced at it. "Did she check in here?"
"No, nobody's been here for a couple weeks. We don't get many guests since the new freeway--" Fuller launched into his usual explanation.
"I find that hard to believe. Will you let me look at your guestbook?" Fuller reluctantly agreed. Taking out a slip of paper with Marion's handwriting on it, he easily identified Marion's signature although she had used a pseudonym. Attempting once again to get Fuller to look at the photo, he asked, "Do you recognize her now?"
"Well, come to think of it, she was here a couple days ago."
"Did she make any calls?" Allgas asked, suspecting her boyfriend of being involved in the theft.
"No."
"Did you spend the night with her?"
"Of course not!" Fuller responded indignantly.
"Then how do you know that she made no calls?"
"She said she was tired, and I think, went straight to bed after she entered her room."
"But she used a pseudonym. How do you know that she wasn't fooling you about going right to bed as well?"
"She may have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother."
Allgas lifted an eyebrow. "Ah, your mother. So someone else lives here. May I speak to her?"
"Well, uh, no-- she's not well."
Allgas pretended to depart. But as soon as he was out of Fuller's sight-- or thought he was-- he headed for the old mansion. Opening the door, he called, "Madame?" He climbed the stairs, but before he had a chance to oepn the door at the top, a human figure ran out and slashed him, again and again with a knife. He fell to the floor, dead.
Soon afterwards, Fuller found the body. "Mother, you've made a mess again. This is getting to be too much." After disposing of Allgas' body in the swamp as he had Marion's, he told his mother, "I'm going to have to take you to the fruit cellar."
"No!" she protested loudly in her raspy voice. "You just put me down, young man!" Despite her protests, Fuller carried a figure dressed in the clothes of an old woman down the stairs and into the cellar.
The next day, Fuller arrived at an appointment with a representative of Silly Pharmaceuticals. Behind the desk sat a balding man, his heavy eyebrows turned downward at the center to form a "V", his mouth turned upward in a devilish grin, and the look of avarice all over his face. "What can I do for you, young man?"
"I need some drugs. You see, I run a motel, and every time we have a guest, my mother makes a fuss. She always thinks it's my sister, who was institutionalized years ago, coming back to accuse her."
"So you need drugs for your mother?"
"No, for the guests. I figured that if they didn't make so much noise, Mum wouldn't know they were there. Just something to quiet them down..."
The representative smiled broadly. "I think I have just the kind of drug you need. It will quiet them down forever."
"But I don't want to kill them. After all, that's against the law, and I have great respect for the law."
"Don't worry," they'll still be alive. Just barely."
"Uh, well, how much is it? For a year's supply?"
"Half a million dollars."
Fuller's brow furrowed. "That's awfully steep. I mean, we're just a small enterprise..."
"Well," the representative smiled, "I can give you an incentive. For such a large purchase, I you will receive a discount on shares in our corporation. You'll be in good company if you become one of our investors. Why, two ex-presidents-- father and son-- are as well."
Fuller immediately rose to his feet and saluted. "Whatever's good enough for the Commander-in-Chief is good enough for me!"
"So it's a deal?"
"Yeah, I suppose so," Fuller said, smiling.
As he wrote out the contract, the representative said, "If you want an even more effective way of controlling your guests, you might try Dramatics LLC, the electronics firm down the street. They have a gadget-- of course it has to be done in a hospital--"
"Oh I can't do that! If they say anything about a hospital, it will remind my mother of--"
The representative looked up and smiled. "I can guarantee that they won't remember a thing."
A few months passed. Guests accumulated at the Torrey Pines Lodge. Some came looking for the missing Marion and Allgas, others just happened to lose their way and end up there. One morning, Fuller decide to show them to his mother. They were all lined up in the parlor. Some were staring off into the distance with vacant looks, others were weeping, pouring out their misery in unintelligible phrases. A number of them kept making jerky movements of their facial muscles or limbs. One boy of about ten sat rocking back and forth, saying again and again, "Doctor says I won't get shocked if I take my meds. Johnny's a good boy. He takes his meds." One woman was wandering around in obvious anguish, asking, "Who am I? Can someone tell me who I am? I don't remember." When she reached the boy she asked, "Are you my son? You look familiar." But he didn't even look up at her, just kept repeating, "Doctors says I won't get shocked if I take my meds. Johnny's a good boy. He takes his meds."
Into this assemblage entered Fuller with a figure dressed as an old woman in a wheelchair. "You see, Mother! I have fixed it so that no one can ever accuse you of being a bad mother again!" He wheeled her down the row of helpless wrecks of human beings, saying, "Look! Look!"
Then "Mother" expressed her approval. But strangely, the voice was coming from Fuller himself. In a raspy old woman's voice he said, "Good boy, Fuller. As I've always said, a boy's best friend is his mummy." Fuller turned the wheelchair around so that all could see the desiccated body with the empty eye sockets which stared and stared into all eternity.
-- With apologies to Alfred Hitchcock
Friday, December 19, 2008
WHEN IS IT ACCEPTABLE TO FORCE TREATMENT ON SOMEONE? The Case of Ray Sandford
For some time now, I have been following the case of Ray Sandford. I first learned about him through e-mail circulars sent to me from Mind Freedom International, which said that he was having ECT treatments forced on him at regular intervals against his will, and urged opponents of psychiatric abuse to call or write the governor of Minnesota on his behalf. Unfortunately the circulars did not give much other information about the case: for instance, what sort of ECT Sandford was receiving (bilateral or unilateral), what his official diagnosis is, and what exactly it is that he has done to make the courts believe that he requires forced treatment. Through a phone call to Mind Freedom, I learned that he was being given ECT treatments because antipsychotic drugs had proven ineffective in controlling "social behavior which was unacceptable to those around him." And then just yesterday, I read the transcript of a segment aired by Minnesota Public Radio about Sandford, which answered all my questions except the one concerning the form of ECT. It was also rather discouraging, compounding the impression I had already from Mind Freedom and other patients' rights groups that there is no coherent strategy for defeating the harmful and incipiently totalitarian designs of TAC, the Treatment Advocacy Center.
The facts are as follows. Ray Sandford, a man of 54 years old living in a community care home just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been having ECT treatments of unknown type administered to him on a weekly or biweekly basis at a nearby hospital. He opposes the treatments, but apparently has put up no physical resistence to them. Instead he took what seems to me the very rational and constructive step of calling his local library for organizations devoted to patients' rights, and obtaining the number of Mind Freedom. His call to the organization's director, David Oaks, made his case a cause celebre among members of the Movement Against Psychiatric Assault. Ray was described by the reporter from Minnesota Public Radio, Lorna Benson, as having hands which shake, "a side effect from some medication he's taking, he says." This is tardive dyskinisia, and proves that he has already had been victimized by neuroleptics, which are almost as dangerous as ECT: even if the latter is stopped, he will have been maimed for life by the drugs. He told the reporter that the ECT treatments were wrecking his memory, which is undoubtedly true, as every recipient of ECT treatments of whatever kind, even those who advocate it such as Kitty Dukakis, has said that it causes amnesia. Sandford' mother, who was also interviewed by Benson, said that she supported the ECT at first, as it seemed to help him. But now she opposes what she views as an excessive number of treatments, especially in view of the accumulating memory loss. Sandford has been diagnosed as having a schizo-affective disorder. He was described by his mother as being "out of control". But how "out of control" was he? His court record describes him as urinating wherever he felt like it and smearing feces on hospital walls. His mother also says that he tail-gated her when she was driving and did "many irritating things having to do with bodily excrement." For this he has been forced to take neuroleptics and have ECT. (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/15/forced_electroconvulsive_therapy)
After Mind Freedom launched its campaign on behalf of Ray Sandford, the Minnesota Disability Law Center took up his cause. Its legal director Pamela Hoopes says quite rightly that whenever a person's right of self-determination is taken away, the courts have to have a good reason. She pointed out that there are different perspectives on how the state should make the decision to force treatment on someone against their will. "Sometimes people say you should use the perspective of a reasonable person... It's assumed that a reasonable person wants to protect him or herself against the relapse of a terrible mental illness..." Janus says that in her opinion, greater weight should be given to what the patient wants, even if it appears that their illness might be clouding their judgement. "Competent or not, not everyone wants to be treated when they're sick." This shows that the Minnesota Disability Law Center has a muddled and misinformed concept of the real issues involved in Sandford's case. In the first place, the drugs and ECT that are being forced on Sandford do not represent a "cure". They are forced upon patients in order to control them at the price of reducing them to a vegetable state, while earning profit for the electronics and pharmaceutical industries which manufacture drugs and ECT devices. However bad Sandford's illness may be, the treatments will leave him in worse shape. He will probably have to take neuroleptics for life in order to be spared the agony of tardive akathisia, a withdrawal symptom which is even worse than the tardive dyskinisia he is already suffering from. And of course the more ECT treatments he has, the more memory he will lose, until he has lost his very identity.
Furthermore, there are only two criteria wich can be reasonably used to justify forced treatment, and they are perfectly clear and objective. The patient must represent a danger-- not just an irritation-- to himself or, more importantly, to others. Some people, including myself, would argue that the "danger to oneself' justification may not always be sufficient, for people have a right to take their own lives for good reason, but since some commit suicide for no good reason, society is justified in preventing them from doing so until they have a chance to think it over, preferably in a more favorable environment than the one in which they have been living. But in any case, the essential criterion must be the threat of violence. This can lead to First Amendment complications, in that citizens have the right to advocate violence in the abstract, so long as there is no direct threat involved-- e.g., inciting a crowd to violence against a person or persons who are present and in a position to be attacked. But when Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre, wrote a play suggesting that he had precisely this intention, exactly a year before he carried it out (a play which, incidentally, still has not been released to the public), it would have been justifiable for authorities to keep a close watch on him, as they evidently did not, perhaps because Virginia is TAC's home state. The most important fact that can be argued in Ray Sandford's favor, besides the fact that both neuroleptics and ECT are dangerous, is that he is not violent. His mother said nothing about violent episodes in his past nor did she express any fear of him. Indeed, he is nonviolent to an extent which is almost incomprehensible. Contrary to what the Minnesota Disability Law Center says, many "reasonable" people threatened by such destructive treatments would fight to the death to avoid having them. If there was no way to avoid them, they would commit suicide. Someone who is truly "out of control', like Seung-Hui Cho, would use them as an excuse to attack innocents who had nothing to do with the forced treatment. Ray Sanford has done none of these things. His willingness to passively endure the gradual destruction of his mind and body is nothing short of saintly. And that is why his forced treatment with both drugs and ECT is so unjust.
One of the most disturbing things about this case is that Sandford's diagnosis, 'schizoaffective disorder", falls at least partly into the category of illnesses on the "schizophrenia spectrum" which I discussed in my last blog. Traditionally ECT has been prescribed, on either a voluntarily or involuntarily basis, primarily for depression. But Isaac and Armat, the mouthpieces of TAC, have recommended it specifically for schizophrenia in their book Madness in the Streets (p. 220) This is exceptionally dangerous since the "schizophrenia spectrum" includes disorders which are characteristic of the greatest minds in history, the people upon whom the survival of civilization depends. Some of these individuals-- Vincent Van Gogh is an example-- may be both psychotic and creative geniuses. Others-- usually referred to as schizotypes-- may have never experienced a psychotic episode in their lives. But their superficial resemblence to schizophrenics leaves them vulnerable to mis-diagnosis with its attendant jeopardy. To make things worse, the term "psychosis" has never been satisfactorily defined by psychiatry. The criterion of "being out of touch with reality" is clear enough when one is dealing with beliefs which are demonstrably contrary to fact-- for instance, that an airplane is a flying saucer. But what about-- and I am here quoting from a Wikipedia article on psychosis-- "the belief that one has some special purpose in or destiny (such as to save the world) or is being monitored or persecuted by government agencies"? Who are psychiatrists to say that an individual does not have a special destiny, when this is a religious belief not subject to proof or disproof? As for being monitored by government agencies, in fact today as in Ernest Hemingway's time millions of people are under surveillance for the most sinister of reasons. When we move from using forced treatment to deal with obvious mood disorders such as suicidal depression or homicidal rage to using it to treat so-called "perceptive disorders", there is no longer anything to stop it from being used for the purpose of political repression, and perhaps that is precisely what TAC intends.
Ray Sandford would not be an easy person to live around. I would not want to live around him. But in evaluating his case, we must recognize that ulitmately, what is being done to him can be done to anyone. If we allow people to have treatments forced upon them for any reason other than the imminent threat of violence, then we are opening up the door to an Orwellian nightmare. Today Ray is having forced ECT because he smeared excrement on a wall. Tomorrow it will be someone who smeared excrement on an American flag as a form of political protest. And the next day, someone who has merely publicly spoken out against government policy. With TAC providing the shock troops to enforce the nascent totalitarianism, it is time for us to draw an unequivocal "line in the sand".
The facts are as follows. Ray Sandford, a man of 54 years old living in a community care home just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been having ECT treatments of unknown type administered to him on a weekly or biweekly basis at a nearby hospital. He opposes the treatments, but apparently has put up no physical resistence to them. Instead he took what seems to me the very rational and constructive step of calling his local library for organizations devoted to patients' rights, and obtaining the number of Mind Freedom. His call to the organization's director, David Oaks, made his case a cause celebre among members of the Movement Against Psychiatric Assault. Ray was described by the reporter from Minnesota Public Radio, Lorna Benson, as having hands which shake, "a side effect from some medication he's taking, he says." This is tardive dyskinisia, and proves that he has already had been victimized by neuroleptics, which are almost as dangerous as ECT: even if the latter is stopped, he will have been maimed for life by the drugs. He told the reporter that the ECT treatments were wrecking his memory, which is undoubtedly true, as every recipient of ECT treatments of whatever kind, even those who advocate it such as Kitty Dukakis, has said that it causes amnesia. Sandford' mother, who was also interviewed by Benson, said that she supported the ECT at first, as it seemed to help him. But now she opposes what she views as an excessive number of treatments, especially in view of the accumulating memory loss. Sandford has been diagnosed as having a schizo-affective disorder. He was described by his mother as being "out of control". But how "out of control" was he? His court record describes him as urinating wherever he felt like it and smearing feces on hospital walls. His mother also says that he tail-gated her when she was driving and did "many irritating things having to do with bodily excrement." For this he has been forced to take neuroleptics and have ECT. (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/15/forced_electroconvulsive_therapy)
After Mind Freedom launched its campaign on behalf of Ray Sandford, the Minnesota Disability Law Center took up his cause. Its legal director Pamela Hoopes says quite rightly that whenever a person's right of self-determination is taken away, the courts have to have a good reason. She pointed out that there are different perspectives on how the state should make the decision to force treatment on someone against their will. "Sometimes people say you should use the perspective of a reasonable person... It's assumed that a reasonable person wants to protect him or herself against the relapse of a terrible mental illness..." Janus says that in her opinion, greater weight should be given to what the patient wants, even if it appears that their illness might be clouding their judgement. "Competent or not, not everyone wants to be treated when they're sick." This shows that the Minnesota Disability Law Center has a muddled and misinformed concept of the real issues involved in Sandford's case. In the first place, the drugs and ECT that are being forced on Sandford do not represent a "cure". They are forced upon patients in order to control them at the price of reducing them to a vegetable state, while earning profit for the electronics and pharmaceutical industries which manufacture drugs and ECT devices. However bad Sandford's illness may be, the treatments will leave him in worse shape. He will probably have to take neuroleptics for life in order to be spared the agony of tardive akathisia, a withdrawal symptom which is even worse than the tardive dyskinisia he is already suffering from. And of course the more ECT treatments he has, the more memory he will lose, until he has lost his very identity.
Furthermore, there are only two criteria wich can be reasonably used to justify forced treatment, and they are perfectly clear and objective. The patient must represent a danger-- not just an irritation-- to himself or, more importantly, to others. Some people, including myself, would argue that the "danger to oneself' justification may not always be sufficient, for people have a right to take their own lives for good reason, but since some commit suicide for no good reason, society is justified in preventing them from doing so until they have a chance to think it over, preferably in a more favorable environment than the one in which they have been living. But in any case, the essential criterion must be the threat of violence. This can lead to First Amendment complications, in that citizens have the right to advocate violence in the abstract, so long as there is no direct threat involved-- e.g., inciting a crowd to violence against a person or persons who are present and in a position to be attacked. But when Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre, wrote a play suggesting that he had precisely this intention, exactly a year before he carried it out (a play which, incidentally, still has not been released to the public), it would have been justifiable for authorities to keep a close watch on him, as they evidently did not, perhaps because Virginia is TAC's home state. The most important fact that can be argued in Ray Sandford's favor, besides the fact that both neuroleptics and ECT are dangerous, is that he is not violent. His mother said nothing about violent episodes in his past nor did she express any fear of him. Indeed, he is nonviolent to an extent which is almost incomprehensible. Contrary to what the Minnesota Disability Law Center says, many "reasonable" people threatened by such destructive treatments would fight to the death to avoid having them. If there was no way to avoid them, they would commit suicide. Someone who is truly "out of control', like Seung-Hui Cho, would use them as an excuse to attack innocents who had nothing to do with the forced treatment. Ray Sanford has done none of these things. His willingness to passively endure the gradual destruction of his mind and body is nothing short of saintly. And that is why his forced treatment with both drugs and ECT is so unjust.
One of the most disturbing things about this case is that Sandford's diagnosis, 'schizoaffective disorder", falls at least partly into the category of illnesses on the "schizophrenia spectrum" which I discussed in my last blog. Traditionally ECT has been prescribed, on either a voluntarily or involuntarily basis, primarily for depression. But Isaac and Armat, the mouthpieces of TAC, have recommended it specifically for schizophrenia in their book Madness in the Streets (p. 220) This is exceptionally dangerous since the "schizophrenia spectrum" includes disorders which are characteristic of the greatest minds in history, the people upon whom the survival of civilization depends. Some of these individuals-- Vincent Van Gogh is an example-- may be both psychotic and creative geniuses. Others-- usually referred to as schizotypes-- may have never experienced a psychotic episode in their lives. But their superficial resemblence to schizophrenics leaves them vulnerable to mis-diagnosis with its attendant jeopardy. To make things worse, the term "psychosis" has never been satisfactorily defined by psychiatry. The criterion of "being out of touch with reality" is clear enough when one is dealing with beliefs which are demonstrably contrary to fact-- for instance, that an airplane is a flying saucer. But what about-- and I am here quoting from a Wikipedia article on psychosis-- "the belief that one has some special purpose in or destiny (such as to save the world) or is being monitored or persecuted by government agencies"? Who are psychiatrists to say that an individual does not have a special destiny, when this is a religious belief not subject to proof or disproof? As for being monitored by government agencies, in fact today as in Ernest Hemingway's time millions of people are under surveillance for the most sinister of reasons. When we move from using forced treatment to deal with obvious mood disorders such as suicidal depression or homicidal rage to using it to treat so-called "perceptive disorders", there is no longer anything to stop it from being used for the purpose of political repression, and perhaps that is precisely what TAC intends.
Ray Sandford would not be an easy person to live around. I would not want to live around him. But in evaluating his case, we must recognize that ulitmately, what is being done to him can be done to anyone. If we allow people to have treatments forced upon them for any reason other than the imminent threat of violence, then we are opening up the door to an Orwellian nightmare. Today Ray is having forced ECT because he smeared excrement on a wall. Tomorrow it will be someone who smeared excrement on an American flag as a form of political protest. And the next day, someone who has merely publicly spoken out against government policy. With TAC providing the shock troops to enforce the nascent totalitarianism, it is time for us to draw an unequivocal "line in the sand".
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
THE TECHNO-QUACKS VERSUS THE NATURAL ARISTOCRACY
TAC, the Treatment Advocacy Center, has a simplistic view of mental illness. Its bible, Isaac and Armat's Madness in the Streets uses the term "mental illness" throughout as if it were synonymous with psychosis-- as if there is only one kind of mental illness, the most severe kind. This is false. Apparently E. Fuller Torrey, TAC's founder, formulated his views because the theory that schizophrenia was due to "bad parenting" made his mother feel guilty. It also seemed to him to defy evidence because his sister was diagnosed as schizophrenic and he was not. He did not feel that being hospitalized helped his sister, which caused him to conclude that schizophrenia was inherent and although it could be controlled it could not be cured. This was the beginning of the "throw-away people" approach that TAC takes today-- just drug and shock patients until they are vegetables and to hell with how they feel. But there are many factors he did not take into account. First of all, his sister's condition was bound to deteriorate in the hospital because hospitals then as now use exactly the same kinds of somatic treatments he favors for use on an outpatient basis. There is no difference between the way his sister was treated in the hospital and how someone would be treated on TAC's recommendation except that the psychiatric assault would extend into the home, thus raising serious civil liberties issues, and probably involve the continued influence of the person who caused the illness to begin with. Which of course brings us to the vacuity of Torrey's motive in opposing the psychogenic model of schizophrenia: did it ever occur to him that his mother might have been a bad parent to his sister but not to him? That she dumped her in the hospital because she loved her less than she did him? Finally, did it ever occur to him that his own experience actually supports the psychogenic theory of mental illness better than the somatic, one, for if Torrey and his sister had the same parents, why did she inherit a tendency toward schizophrenia while he did not? (see Wikipedia article on Torrey)
Whatever the personal motives which influenced Torrey to develop his theories, they are wrong. There are many kinds of mental illness, a substantial portion of which do not involve psychosis. What is psychosis? It is a mental state in which a person has delusions and hallucinations so that he believes things which are demonstrably false. An example of a psychotic episode was illustrated in a documentary I once saw concerning a teenage girl who was subjected to what seemed to me rather cruel experiments in brain electrode implants. The incident which put her in the hands of the people conducting these experiments could be described as a psychotic break. She was subject to such breaks, during which time she would become hysterical and run off, sometimes to places where her parents could not find her. Because he feared that she might find herself in a dangerous neighborhood at such a time, her father had given her a knife with which to defend herself. On the critical occasion, she was in a movie theatre with her father. She went into the restroom, and was standing in front of the mirror combing her hair when a woman came in and began to touch up her appearance in the same manner. As the woman stood next to her. As the woman stood next to her, it seemed to the girl, looking at herself in the mirror, that her own body was shrinking, and that the woman was the cause of it. So she turned and stabbed the woman with the knife her father had given her. It was the girl's own father who saved the woman by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and the girl later, upon learning what she had done, was horrified. Most people who have psychotic breaks are not dangerous and they should not be feared but rther pitied, because their inability to control their own minds puts them into the hands of a heartless psychiatric profession, as one can see by the brain electrode implant experiments to which this girl was subjected.
The most severe categories of mental illness, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are characterized by psychotic episodes. However, there are millions of people who are mentally ill but who have never experienced a psychotic episode in their lives (how do we know that they are not just denying it because they are "too sick" to know that they are sick? Because many in fact know that they are mentally ill and have made attempts to get help). These people have what psychiatrists term a "personality disorder". Since the disorder itself involves merely nonconformity--"an enduring pattern of experience and behavior which differs markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it"-- the illness itself could not be innate. Rather it is most likely caused by the interaction between the inidividual's unusual behavior patterns and a world which rejects him or her without reason. If one is rejected by one's parents, if one experiences teasing and bullying by one's peers, one tends to develop psychological problems, believing that one is somehow inferior when in fact one may be equal or even superior to those around one. One category of personality disorder is particularly important, because it is considered to be part of the "schizophrenia spectrum"-- those illnesses which are related to schizophrenia. It is called "schizoid personality" or simply "schizotypy". Since its symptoms-- above all a fondness for solitude-- are superficially similar, it is often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, but there is in fact all the difference in the world, because schizotypes do not have psychotic episodes. Indeed, they are special.
Recently there has been a good deal of research on the link between mental illness and creativity. One article, "Biological Basis for Creativity Linked to Mental Illness," appeared in Science Daily on October 1, 2003. It describes experiments in which psychologists found that creative individuals had a lower level of "latent inhibition", defined as a person's unconscious ability to ignore stimuli which are irrelevant to their needs, than normal individuals. "This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment." Previously, such low levels of latent inhibition had been associated with psychosis. But the scientists who directed thi study believe that it might also contribute to original thinking (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031001061055.htm). A second article published in Science Daily on September 7, 2005, is even more intriguing. It is entitled "Odd Behavior and Creativity May Go Hand in Hand," and involves a comparison between normal individuals, schizophrenics and schizotypes. I suspect that it was a little unfair to the schizophrenics, because such individuals are not always psychotic-- had they been tested when they were not having a psychotic episode they may have scored similarly to the schizotypes. Be that as it may, the study researchers showed subjects a variety of common household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them. "The results showed that the schizotypes were better able to creatively suggest new uses for the objects," while the schizophrenics and the normal controls performed similarly to one another. Brain scans made during the tests showed that although all groups used both hemispheres of their brains, "the activation of the right hemisphere in the schizotypes was dramatically greater than that of the schizophrenic and average subjects." As a result, researchers concluded that a number of famous creative luminaries, including Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickenson and Isaac Newton, had schizotypal personalities. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907101907.htm)
It seems that schizotypes come closest to that "natural aristocracy" which Thomas Jefferson believed exists and is essential to the maintainance of high civilization. Their personality characteristics, although innate, are not especially connected with any particular gender, race, ethnicity, or class affiliation. In an earlier age, they were celebrated. Today they face the destruction of their uniqueness by organizations such as TAC. Perhaps one of the first victims was Ernest Hemingway. In 1960, Hemingway became severely depressed, apparently because he felt he could no longer write. As a result he was placed in a mental hospital, where he was kept like a prisoner, with bars on the windows and limited contact with the outside world. It is unclear whether or not he was actually psychotic-- after all, the "delusion" which bothered his friends and family the most-- that the FBI was after him-- had a basis in reality, as they were indeed keeping tabs on him as a result of his activities on behalf of the Spanish Republican cause and his initial support for Castro's revolution (see Wikipedia article on Hemingway). Why he told his biographer, Hotchner, that they were after him because of his relationship with his young secretary and income tax irregularities I do not know, except that Hotchner was one of those who connived in placing him in a mental hospital and hence was not to be trusted. It is well known that Hemingway was given ECT against his will. As he told Hotchner when they were out for a walk where the doctors could not overhear, "Well, what is this sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient. It's a bum turn, Hotch, terrible." (A.E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, p. 280). ECT not only did not help Hemingway, it made him worse.
When Hemingway's wife complained that he was not receiving psychotherapy, Hotchner had a talk with his doctor, a techno-quack whom he called "Dr. Renown" but whom we now know was Howard Rome, later president of the American Psychiatric Association. Rome explained that Hemingway's "delusions" had surrounded themselves with an impregnable shell, and the fact that this "delusion-shell" was inpenetrable necessitated the use of electrical treatments. He added quite oddly that "Ernest's fears of impoverishment and of being in jeopardy physically and legally are probably related to his feelings of impoverishment as a writer, with attendant jeopardy to his identity and stature. His symptoms are a defense against recognizing this. They are so dominant that he cannot be reached by psychotherapy until they are neutralized by ECT." (Hotchner, pp. 292-3). But Rome was wrong. Hemingway recognized full well that he was having difficulty writing, and seemed to feel that he was "washed up" as a writer (pp. 285-6) A genuine psychotherapist would have tried to persuade him that this could just be "writer's block" and temporary, thus restoring his confidence in himself. One cannot help but ask, if Rome himself really believed that Hemingway was finished as a writer and could not bear to face the fact, why he did not leave the old man with his delusions? Was it not cruel to make him face such a fact, if fact it was? One can only hypothesize that having been given power over a man who was greatly his superior in intellect and creativity, Rome was jealous and wished to destroy someone with whom he knew he could never compete. And he succeeded. Hemingway committed suicide while he was being treated by Rome.
I think that this reveals the motive behind the movement for forced treatment, from E. Fuller Torrey on down. The mis-diagnosis of schizotypes as schizophrenics, which has been going on at least since Hemingway's final days, is a war of the inferior elements in society against their moral and intellectual superiors-- indeed, against civilization itself. One can imagine what unilateral ECT, which is so favored today (see my blogs on "ECT and Totalitarianism") would do to someone who relies so greatly upon the non-dominant hemisphere of their brains. Luckily, some of us have been spared it-- so far. As for neuroleptic drugs, I know from personal experience that a single dose can bring on tardive akathisia (the inability to sit or lie still, accompanied by feelings of terror and doom) which is so severe as to drive one to a nervous breakdown. Neuroleptics have effects which are every bit as horrifying as those of drugs which have been banned, such as LSD, and they became more dangerous from 1964 to 1979 so there is no reason to believe that they are less so today. I know, again from personal experience, that neuroleptics can drive a happy person who is coping adequately with his or her problems to panic and severe depression. If there were no way to avoid taking them, they would certanly drive the person to suicide. And yet Torrey's mouthpieces Isaac and Armat say that "schizophrenics" (who may not be that at all-- note that there is no entry in their index for schizoid personality, schizotype or schizotypy) should have precisely these extremely dangerous treatments forced upon them (see Madness in the Streets, "ECT: The Second Domino," and "Psychoactive Drugs: the Final Domino", pp. 194-245). To be sure, those individuals who are genuinely psychotic and a danger to themselves or others should be constrained in some way, although certainly ECT and neuroleptics would do them no good. But there are other drugs which have a sedating effect without the horrifying side-effects of the treatments TAC recommends, and they should be used only to calm the psychotic person until he or she can receive genuine psychotherapy. As for schizotypes, there is nothing that they need from anyone so much as civilization needs them.
Whatever the personal motives which influenced Torrey to develop his theories, they are wrong. There are many kinds of mental illness, a substantial portion of which do not involve psychosis. What is psychosis? It is a mental state in which a person has delusions and hallucinations so that he believes things which are demonstrably false. An example of a psychotic episode was illustrated in a documentary I once saw concerning a teenage girl who was subjected to what seemed to me rather cruel experiments in brain electrode implants. The incident which put her in the hands of the people conducting these experiments could be described as a psychotic break. She was subject to such breaks, during which time she would become hysterical and run off, sometimes to places where her parents could not find her. Because he feared that she might find herself in a dangerous neighborhood at such a time, her father had given her a knife with which to defend herself. On the critical occasion, she was in a movie theatre with her father. She went into the restroom, and was standing in front of the mirror combing her hair when a woman came in and began to touch up her appearance in the same manner. As the woman stood next to her. As the woman stood next to her, it seemed to the girl, looking at herself in the mirror, that her own body was shrinking, and that the woman was the cause of it. So she turned and stabbed the woman with the knife her father had given her. It was the girl's own father who saved the woman by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and the girl later, upon learning what she had done, was horrified. Most people who have psychotic breaks are not dangerous and they should not be feared but rther pitied, because their inability to control their own minds puts them into the hands of a heartless psychiatric profession, as one can see by the brain electrode implant experiments to which this girl was subjected.
The most severe categories of mental illness, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are characterized by psychotic episodes. However, there are millions of people who are mentally ill but who have never experienced a psychotic episode in their lives (how do we know that they are not just denying it because they are "too sick" to know that they are sick? Because many in fact know that they are mentally ill and have made attempts to get help). These people have what psychiatrists term a "personality disorder". Since the disorder itself involves merely nonconformity--"an enduring pattern of experience and behavior which differs markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it"-- the illness itself could not be innate. Rather it is most likely caused by the interaction between the inidividual's unusual behavior patterns and a world which rejects him or her without reason. If one is rejected by one's parents, if one experiences teasing and bullying by one's peers, one tends to develop psychological problems, believing that one is somehow inferior when in fact one may be equal or even superior to those around one. One category of personality disorder is particularly important, because it is considered to be part of the "schizophrenia spectrum"-- those illnesses which are related to schizophrenia. It is called "schizoid personality" or simply "schizotypy". Since its symptoms-- above all a fondness for solitude-- are superficially similar, it is often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, but there is in fact all the difference in the world, because schizotypes do not have psychotic episodes. Indeed, they are special.
Recently there has been a good deal of research on the link between mental illness and creativity. One article, "Biological Basis for Creativity Linked to Mental Illness," appeared in Science Daily on October 1, 2003. It describes experiments in which psychologists found that creative individuals had a lower level of "latent inhibition", defined as a person's unconscious ability to ignore stimuli which are irrelevant to their needs, than normal individuals. "This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment." Previously, such low levels of latent inhibition had been associated with psychosis. But the scientists who directed thi study believe that it might also contribute to original thinking (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031001061055.htm). A second article published in Science Daily on September 7, 2005, is even more intriguing. It is entitled "Odd Behavior and Creativity May Go Hand in Hand," and involves a comparison between normal individuals, schizophrenics and schizotypes. I suspect that it was a little unfair to the schizophrenics, because such individuals are not always psychotic-- had they been tested when they were not having a psychotic episode they may have scored similarly to the schizotypes. Be that as it may, the study researchers showed subjects a variety of common household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them. "The results showed that the schizotypes were better able to creatively suggest new uses for the objects," while the schizophrenics and the normal controls performed similarly to one another. Brain scans made during the tests showed that although all groups used both hemispheres of their brains, "the activation of the right hemisphere in the schizotypes was dramatically greater than that of the schizophrenic and average subjects." As a result, researchers concluded that a number of famous creative luminaries, including Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickenson and Isaac Newton, had schizotypal personalities. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907101907.htm)
It seems that schizotypes come closest to that "natural aristocracy" which Thomas Jefferson believed exists and is essential to the maintainance of high civilization. Their personality characteristics, although innate, are not especially connected with any particular gender, race, ethnicity, or class affiliation. In an earlier age, they were celebrated. Today they face the destruction of their uniqueness by organizations such as TAC. Perhaps one of the first victims was Ernest Hemingway. In 1960, Hemingway became severely depressed, apparently because he felt he could no longer write. As a result he was placed in a mental hospital, where he was kept like a prisoner, with bars on the windows and limited contact with the outside world. It is unclear whether or not he was actually psychotic-- after all, the "delusion" which bothered his friends and family the most-- that the FBI was after him-- had a basis in reality, as they were indeed keeping tabs on him as a result of his activities on behalf of the Spanish Republican cause and his initial support for Castro's revolution (see Wikipedia article on Hemingway). Why he told his biographer, Hotchner, that they were after him because of his relationship with his young secretary and income tax irregularities I do not know, except that Hotchner was one of those who connived in placing him in a mental hospital and hence was not to be trusted. It is well known that Hemingway was given ECT against his will. As he told Hotchner when they were out for a walk where the doctors could not overhear, "Well, what is this sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient. It's a bum turn, Hotch, terrible." (A.E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, p. 280). ECT not only did not help Hemingway, it made him worse.
When Hemingway's wife complained that he was not receiving psychotherapy, Hotchner had a talk with his doctor, a techno-quack whom he called "Dr. Renown" but whom we now know was Howard Rome, later president of the American Psychiatric Association. Rome explained that Hemingway's "delusions" had surrounded themselves with an impregnable shell, and the fact that this "delusion-shell" was inpenetrable necessitated the use of electrical treatments. He added quite oddly that "Ernest's fears of impoverishment and of being in jeopardy physically and legally are probably related to his feelings of impoverishment as a writer, with attendant jeopardy to his identity and stature. His symptoms are a defense against recognizing this. They are so dominant that he cannot be reached by psychotherapy until they are neutralized by ECT." (Hotchner, pp. 292-3). But Rome was wrong. Hemingway recognized full well that he was having difficulty writing, and seemed to feel that he was "washed up" as a writer (pp. 285-6) A genuine psychotherapist would have tried to persuade him that this could just be "writer's block" and temporary, thus restoring his confidence in himself. One cannot help but ask, if Rome himself really believed that Hemingway was finished as a writer and could not bear to face the fact, why he did not leave the old man with his delusions? Was it not cruel to make him face such a fact, if fact it was? One can only hypothesize that having been given power over a man who was greatly his superior in intellect and creativity, Rome was jealous and wished to destroy someone with whom he knew he could never compete. And he succeeded. Hemingway committed suicide while he was being treated by Rome.
I think that this reveals the motive behind the movement for forced treatment, from E. Fuller Torrey on down. The mis-diagnosis of schizotypes as schizophrenics, which has been going on at least since Hemingway's final days, is a war of the inferior elements in society against their moral and intellectual superiors-- indeed, against civilization itself. One can imagine what unilateral ECT, which is so favored today (see my blogs on "ECT and Totalitarianism") would do to someone who relies so greatly upon the non-dominant hemisphere of their brains. Luckily, some of us have been spared it-- so far. As for neuroleptic drugs, I know from personal experience that a single dose can bring on tardive akathisia (the inability to sit or lie still, accompanied by feelings of terror and doom) which is so severe as to drive one to a nervous breakdown. Neuroleptics have effects which are every bit as horrifying as those of drugs which have been banned, such as LSD, and they became more dangerous from 1964 to 1979 so there is no reason to believe that they are less so today. I know, again from personal experience, that neuroleptics can drive a happy person who is coping adequately with his or her problems to panic and severe depression. If there were no way to avoid taking them, they would certanly drive the person to suicide. And yet Torrey's mouthpieces Isaac and Armat say that "schizophrenics" (who may not be that at all-- note that there is no entry in their index for schizoid personality, schizotype or schizotypy) should have precisely these extremely dangerous treatments forced upon them (see Madness in the Streets, "ECT: The Second Domino," and "Psychoactive Drugs: the Final Domino", pp. 194-245). To be sure, those individuals who are genuinely psychotic and a danger to themselves or others should be constrained in some way, although certainly ECT and neuroleptics would do them no good. But there are other drugs which have a sedating effect without the horrifying side-effects of the treatments TAC recommends, and they should be used only to calm the psychotic person until he or she can receive genuine psychotherapy. As for schizotypes, there is nothing that they need from anyone so much as civilization needs them.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
SEUNG-HUI CHO: POSTER CHILD FOR TAC
It has long been possible to have people committed as legally insane even though they are not, simply because they do not conform. The effect can be devastating, causing the ruination of lives. Since lawmakers began gutting the U.S. Constitution in the wake of 9/11, organizations such as The Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), founded by E. Fuller Torrey, have taken this already existing threat one step further, trying to force people to accept "psychiatric treatment" on an outpatient basis. The treatments they advocate-- neuroleptic drugs and ECT-- are highly dangerous. And they are unnecessary. Most people who have complained about them to organizations like Mind Freedom are peaceful and law-abiding. Furthermore, it is manifestly obvious that no one who is genuinely concerned about violence would force horrendous treatments on people then leave them free to take out their inevitable rage upon whomever they choose. "Assisted Outpatient Treatment" is actually worse than involuntary commitment for three reasons. First of all, it ignores the environmental factors which contribute so much to mental illness and leaves people in the hands of those who may have been responsible for their illness to begin with. Secondly, it blurs the crucial distinction between the realm of freedom and that of coercion: while the old Anglo-Saxon adage says that "a man's home is his castle", AOT makes people liable to coercion even in their own homes, and, like giving the military the power to operate within U.S. borders, makes it easier for a totalitarian society to be erected. Finally, there is a tiny minority of people who actually do need to be legally restrained from violent acts and to that tiny minority, AOT is bound to act as a trigger, unleashing rather than preventing violence. After all, no psychiatric treatment takes effect immediately, and in the interim, the truly violent and psychotic person who has been subjected to AOT is like a walking timebomb.
The abuse of involuntary treatment is not something which developed suddenly in the wake of 9/11: indeed, 9/11 itself is the product of a long, slow deterioration of the cherished institutions of our once-free republic. Modern industrial civilization has become the nemesis of traditional Western civilization-- of all civilizations in fact. Whereas past civilizations celebrated excellence and achievement, it celebrates mediocrity. Whereas Western civilization, stretching back to that notorious psychotic, Socrates (did he not hear "voices"?) has celebrated individual freedom, it celebrates conformity and obedience, as well as promoting mindless mass hysteria. Those who call themselves "psychiatrists" are the priesthood of this new anti-civilization. But they have no right to that title. Whatever one may think of his sexist and dogmatic views, Sigmund Freud was an intellectual giant, a pioneer. He and his school-- people like Jung and Adler-- set humanity on a course to truly understanding the human psyche. Traditional psychiatry was making great strides in this area when all progress was abruptly halted by the advent of the somatic theory of mental illness, which uses chemicals and ECT to control it. Some of the early proponents of this new approach, like the inventors of the atomic bomb, viewed what they had introduced with horror: as Heinz Lehmann, the inventor of Thorazine (Chlorpromazine) said: "It frightens me now because everybody is fascinated by neuroscience and we're getting away from the personal element of psychiatry-- the actual patient. We are in danger of being seduced by the new instrumentation, of becoming intoxicated with technology." And that is exactly what has happened. The psychiatrists of today-- at least those who advocate the somatic approach to mental illness, as does E. Fuller Torrey-- might better be called "techno-quacks".
One example of their absolute failure-- and perhaps something more sinister-- is the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre, Seung-Hui Cho. When one reads about Cho's background, what stands out so tragically is how reachable he would have been by traditional psychotherapy. Although intelligent and a good student, Cho was afflicted with a speech impediment, which made him reluctant to talk. The impediment was not simply a language barrier, for his Korean family (who seem to have been religious fanatics who believed he was possessed by "demonic forces"), noticed it as well. In elementary and high school, Cho's classmates teased and bullied him, in part from racism, and in part because of his inability to communicate. One can imagine how rage would build up in a child who was picked on but unable to express his anger in words. At Virginia Tech, he remained withdrawn, as the co-director of the creative writing program Lucinda Roy put it, "The loneliest person I have ever met." But a ray of hope opened up for him there, which might have saved 33 lives had it been taken advantage of. An English major, Cho began to write plays. They weren't very good and were laden with violence and profanity, but as Professor Edward Falco said, "at least they were a form of communication". We have the complete text of two of his plays, which deal with the injustice inflicted by adults on young people and, perhaps significantly, homosexual rape. This offered a precious opportunity to help him and prevent him from turning to violence. A good therapist would certainly have begun by asking Cho to write a play and then read it aloud, perhaps even act it out. If Cho could be gotten to the point where he could verbally tell someone who was picking on him, "Go f___ yourself," it would have been a step toward mental health and away from physical violence. But he was never given the opportunity.
Cho frightened professors like Nikki Giovanni, who found him "menacing". He also harrassed female students by stalking them and hanging around their dormitory rooms. Complaints by professors and students to the campus police invariably brought an end to the behavior with the person in question, showing how easily Cho could have been dissuaded from violence if an effort had been made. In 2005, a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation found Cho "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization." Significantly, he was not hospitalized but ordered to obtain treatment on an outpatient basis. But what sort of help was available? For a student without unlimited funds, only the treatments offered by "techno-quackery", which would ultimately have turned him into a living corpse. Not surprisingly, Cho spurned such "treatments". Even if he had not, they would have initially have driven him toward violence rather than away from it, and perhaps that was exactly the intention. For there is another play Cho wrote, exactly a year before the massacre, whose contents have never been made fully public. Its subject? A campus massacre. In fact, Virginia Tech was aware of Cho's intentions a year before they were carried out. Why did it do nothing? Could the proximity of TAC, also based in Virginia, have had anything to do with it? After all, nothing could serve its purposes better than a spectacular mass murder perpetrated by a mentally ill person.
We cannot know for sure, but one thing that is certain is that Cho's last thirty-one killings were preventable. It can only be a form of mass insanity which accepts the story that after murdering two students, Cho could be able to proceed to the dormitory next door, change his clothes, remove the hard drive from his computer, spend two more hours in an unspecified location, go to the post office to mail a package to NBC News, only to return and kill 31 more people including himself, without the connivance of authorities. It is time that someone assume the courage shown by the child in the story, The Emperor's New Clothes, and declare, "This simply is not possible." In his suicide note, Cho said, "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you have decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and left me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands which will never was off." Who was he addressing? Society at large? The "psychiatric profession"? E Fuller Torrey? Cho was a very sick man, one of those rare cases in which it would have been justifiable to curtail a person's personal liberty-- at least temporarily--in the interest of public safety. But in writing these words, Cho was quite possibly right.
The abuse of involuntary treatment is not something which developed suddenly in the wake of 9/11: indeed, 9/11 itself is the product of a long, slow deterioration of the cherished institutions of our once-free republic. Modern industrial civilization has become the nemesis of traditional Western civilization-- of all civilizations in fact. Whereas past civilizations celebrated excellence and achievement, it celebrates mediocrity. Whereas Western civilization, stretching back to that notorious psychotic, Socrates (did he not hear "voices"?) has celebrated individual freedom, it celebrates conformity and obedience, as well as promoting mindless mass hysteria. Those who call themselves "psychiatrists" are the priesthood of this new anti-civilization. But they have no right to that title. Whatever one may think of his sexist and dogmatic views, Sigmund Freud was an intellectual giant, a pioneer. He and his school-- people like Jung and Adler-- set humanity on a course to truly understanding the human psyche. Traditional psychiatry was making great strides in this area when all progress was abruptly halted by the advent of the somatic theory of mental illness, which uses chemicals and ECT to control it. Some of the early proponents of this new approach, like the inventors of the atomic bomb, viewed what they had introduced with horror: as Heinz Lehmann, the inventor of Thorazine (Chlorpromazine) said: "It frightens me now because everybody is fascinated by neuroscience and we're getting away from the personal element of psychiatry-- the actual patient. We are in danger of being seduced by the new instrumentation, of becoming intoxicated with technology." And that is exactly what has happened. The psychiatrists of today-- at least those who advocate the somatic approach to mental illness, as does E. Fuller Torrey-- might better be called "techno-quacks".
One example of their absolute failure-- and perhaps something more sinister-- is the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre, Seung-Hui Cho. When one reads about Cho's background, what stands out so tragically is how reachable he would have been by traditional psychotherapy. Although intelligent and a good student, Cho was afflicted with a speech impediment, which made him reluctant to talk. The impediment was not simply a language barrier, for his Korean family (who seem to have been religious fanatics who believed he was possessed by "demonic forces"), noticed it as well. In elementary and high school, Cho's classmates teased and bullied him, in part from racism, and in part because of his inability to communicate. One can imagine how rage would build up in a child who was picked on but unable to express his anger in words. At Virginia Tech, he remained withdrawn, as the co-director of the creative writing program Lucinda Roy put it, "The loneliest person I have ever met." But a ray of hope opened up for him there, which might have saved 33 lives had it been taken advantage of. An English major, Cho began to write plays. They weren't very good and were laden with violence and profanity, but as Professor Edward Falco said, "at least they were a form of communication". We have the complete text of two of his plays, which deal with the injustice inflicted by adults on young people and, perhaps significantly, homosexual rape. This offered a precious opportunity to help him and prevent him from turning to violence. A good therapist would certainly have begun by asking Cho to write a play and then read it aloud, perhaps even act it out. If Cho could be gotten to the point where he could verbally tell someone who was picking on him, "Go f___ yourself," it would have been a step toward mental health and away from physical violence. But he was never given the opportunity.
Cho frightened professors like Nikki Giovanni, who found him "menacing". He also harrassed female students by stalking them and hanging around their dormitory rooms. Complaints by professors and students to the campus police invariably brought an end to the behavior with the person in question, showing how easily Cho could have been dissuaded from violence if an effort had been made. In 2005, a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation found Cho "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization." Significantly, he was not hospitalized but ordered to obtain treatment on an outpatient basis. But what sort of help was available? For a student without unlimited funds, only the treatments offered by "techno-quackery", which would ultimately have turned him into a living corpse. Not surprisingly, Cho spurned such "treatments". Even if he had not, they would have initially have driven him toward violence rather than away from it, and perhaps that was exactly the intention. For there is another play Cho wrote, exactly a year before the massacre, whose contents have never been made fully public. Its subject? A campus massacre. In fact, Virginia Tech was aware of Cho's intentions a year before they were carried out. Why did it do nothing? Could the proximity of TAC, also based in Virginia, have had anything to do with it? After all, nothing could serve its purposes better than a spectacular mass murder perpetrated by a mentally ill person.
We cannot know for sure, but one thing that is certain is that Cho's last thirty-one killings were preventable. It can only be a form of mass insanity which accepts the story that after murdering two students, Cho could be able to proceed to the dormitory next door, change his clothes, remove the hard drive from his computer, spend two more hours in an unspecified location, go to the post office to mail a package to NBC News, only to return and kill 31 more people including himself, without the connivance of authorities. It is time that someone assume the courage shown by the child in the story, The Emperor's New Clothes, and declare, "This simply is not possible." In his suicide note, Cho said, "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you have decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and left me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands which will never was off." Who was he addressing? Society at large? The "psychiatric profession"? E Fuller Torrey? Cho was a very sick man, one of those rare cases in which it would have been justifiable to curtail a person's personal liberty-- at least temporarily--in the interest of public safety. But in writing these words, Cho was quite possibly right.
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