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".
Friday, December 19, 2008
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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