THE REAL FUNCTION OF PSYCHIATRISTS

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.