“... continued

As Thomas Szasz says, 'liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin'. He is right - you cannot champion one without championing the other and you cannot reduce one without also reducing the other. The DSM is the most powerful tool with which the state is now able to 'unburden' its citizens of their responsibilities... this is the language they use today ... 'relieving' us of the 'burden of responsibility'. Of course it's for our own good - just like slaves had it so good they must've been crazy to escape to freedom. And notice how only one side of the coin ever comes in to it - the 'burden' of responsibility. How compassionate of them to want to relieve us of that burden.

It is being done in the guise of medical help but if you look closely you will see there is nothing medical about it. That is why I encourage everyone who goes to a psychiatrist - or any medical /social professional to whom psychiatry has delegated its paternalistic powers - for help, and who has been given one or more of these so-called diagnoses, to ask to see the test results which show that the person has the disease. It is your right. The first rule in medicine going back to Hypocrates is 'Do no harm'. Prescribing someone mindaltering drugs without being able to show the person has a disease is a violation of this basic medical ethic. If a GP diagnoses someone as being a Diabetic and the person turns out not to have the disease, the GP stands to lose his medical licence should he fail to be able to furnish the test results. Millions of children are today being prescribed Ritalin, a drug stronger than cocaine, for ADHD which has yet to be proven to be a disease.

You only have to look at how much public money is poured into public healthcare programs to see the extent of power the state now has through medicine. And medicine was not always at the beck and call of the state. It is only since the birth and development of psychiatry that this scientific field has become tainted. But when we summon the courage to look unflinchingly at the emporer, called psychiatry, we will notice the emporer has no clothes. Again, the term 'mental illness' is a metaphor .... no more literal than 'broken heart'. If your GP diagnosed you with a broken heart after you broke up with your girl/boyfriend and booked you in for heart surgery to put it back together again, you'd think him a little crazy and you would rightly doubt the validity of the medical certificate hanging on his wall. Spring Fever, same thing - it's a figure of speech.

Now, that people suffer in life from problems which arise due to various reasons, some of which are unknown, is not something I would deny. I do not deny that people suffer in life from problems which they have. But sometimes the choice between a seemingly innocuous psychiatric label and a lengthy jail sentence is for many not a difficult choice. So that is another part of the problem: it suits people - mostly those guilty of a crime - to have this exculpatory option. But know this - excusing the guilty and incarcerating the innocent turns any civilised justice system upside down and causes chaos in society. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't say 'we are all equal under the law according to the interpretation of a psychiatrist', it says 'we are all equal under the law'.

Constant vigilence.”

“Hi Miltona,

You are correct when you say the examples I cited were based on political ideology rather than medical knowledge. That is exactly my point. And, sadly, not much has changed in this regard. The fact that it is occurring at this level of crime is all the more insideous as it is carried out as though it were done in the best interests of the person guilty of the crime by compassionate medical experts. Compassionate medical experts who admit they do not have a single cure for the problems people come to them for help with. Nor do these compassionate medical experts deny that they are unable to provide a definitive medical test to confirm the presence any of the hundreds of DSM entries as brain diseases. Would I deny that mental illness can affect individuals? No more or less than I would deny that an individual can be affected by having their heart broken or by experiencing Spring Fever. The term 'mental illness' falls into the same category - it is a metaphor, a figure of speech. Now I don't deny that people have problems in life and that there is suffering in the world but if we fail to distinguish between a metaphorical disease and a literal disease, we are in serious trouble. Mind is not a bodily organ like the heart, the liver and the kidneys. I maintain that the concept of disease has been twisted to suit the purposes of those of us who have a degraded viewpoint of man - who think there is nothing else to treat other than a body.

Thankfully I'm not alone but millions of people are taken in by the medical/scientific pretense that is psychiatry. As religion became the state's tool of choice and remained so in the western world until the French revolution, in so far as social control is concerned, so too, now, are psychiatry and the state almost indistinguishable. The state now has a very effective deterrent for anyone who would dare oppose its suppressive tendencies on an intellectual basis or anyone who appeals to reason. I can think of two good examples of how the state reacts to being publicy challenged.... one is on a small scale but shows what happens when the state gets backed into a corner(search for Aaron Russo's 'Freedom to Fascism' documentary on youtube and wait for the part where he interviews the IRS guy about the non-existent income tax law).... and the other is a more brutal example in the way intellectuals(those wearing glasses and those who questioned authority) were singled out for torture and subsequent murder during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (see wikipedia's entry or google 'Khmer Rouge' or 'Pol Pot'). I recently visited Phnom Penh, Cambodia where the S21 prison is located.. now a museum. China is another example. It was recently in the news for detaining political dissidents using only mental health law (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2010/09/02/2003481860).

Dr Szasz said something else which makes a lot of sense. He said were it not for two things, psychiatry would quite literally disappear overnight: involuntary mental hospitalisation and the insanity defense. If you got rid of those two things, there would be no psychiatry because those are the two practices which set psychiatry apart as a medical specialty. And they are the *only* distinguishing factors. You might say but many people have been helped by psychiatry. I don't deny that some people may have been helped during the course of their consultation - I mean many people will feel better about their problem simply by having someone to talk to about their problem. But certainly not by the use of either of those two practices. And if those practices are all that sets psychiatry apart, then you can get the same or better help from other people in many other fields of human endeavour.

This situation reminds me of other areas into which the state has become entrenched... private banking and the environmental movement to mention just two. By challenging psychiatry's scientific basis ”

“Jim, the examples you give deal with actions carried out by and against large groups of people. I think those examples are clearly based on political ideology rather than medical knowledge. However, I cannot believe you would deny that mental illness can affect individuals. I know that there are times we all feel frustrated at hearing someone claim they were not responsible for their actions because of insanity, but just because some people try to escape their just rewards it does not mean that there are no genuine cases of mental illness.
I think if we were to accept your views on punishment, we would be living in societies that would be just as bad as those of Hitler and the USA in the time of slavery.”

“Yes, Tom. That's me.

My site, wagthetail.org, supports the work of CCHR. I'm a huge fan of CCHR and the other organisations listed along with it on my site. I've read both L. Ron Hubbard and Thomas Szasz and consider them champions of human rights.

He-he. No, of course, m, we don't want independent-minded people capable of critical thought. That would lead to a shrinking of the state - heaven forbid! ;-)”

“" I'd say the last thing a sane society wants or needs is for its citizens to be less responsible for their individual actions."
obviously you didnt understand the labour manifesto,
we dont want people thinking for themselves, they might start asking too many awkward questions.”