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.