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There are two issues here:
1. the coercive control of people who are a nuisance or a danger
2. speculative theories that claim behaviour has causes rather than reasons
Use of words like 'cure' and 'patient' are misleading; if there is no consent to altering one's bodily state, there is no patient and nothing to cure. "Patient" is a role that is voluntarily assumed; any person forceably constrained is a prisoner or detainee.
The use of a 'salvational rhetoric' by those who wish to constrain others doesn't alter the facts of the situation. Heresy is not illness.
"Very destructive behaviour" is just very destructive behaviour. It is a non-sequitar to argue that because drugs can be used to restrain that behaviour, that somehow the behaviour is chemically caused.
Example: you can stop someone from all sorts of behaviour, very destructive or constructive; stop them from going to work even. You can do this by using chemicals. That you can stop people from carrying out their wishes by chemical assault does not prove anything.
Ghandi refused to eat when he staged a hunger strike. No doubt if he was sufficiently assaulted by unpleasant substances he might have given up under so much torture and abandoned his political protest. Doesn't mean that his 'nuisance' behaviour was an illness or that the chemicals were a cure.
If there are people who want to do very destructive things, so what? One must be honest about dealing with that. Thousands of soldiers following leaders such as Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, etc. etc. carried out very destructive acts.
No doubt subjecting them to chemical straight-jackets might have curtailed there activities. This does not prove anything. Same applies to adults who are stubborn, repetitive, use cartoon-like exagerated behavioural strategies, experience waking dreams, or otherwise annoy people. That chemical weapons are effective against them proves nothing and justifies nothing. It is just counter-coercion to their alleged coercion; a counter-lie to their alleged lie.
Quote: "Is that kind of behavior OK with you? I suppose it's good for revolutionaries and terrorists. But I prefer to keep it out of my neighborhood."
Here is the real substance of what shizophrenia is all about: control of troublesome behaviour.
Of course very destructive behaviour is something I do not want in my neighbourhood. But I don't want psychiatrists persuading the troublemakers that they can do what they like because they are 'not responsible' and 'can't help it' and are 'sick'.
Nor do I want the troublemakers to be coercively subjected to religions they don't believe in, or 'saved' from their heresy by some medicalised Inquisition. Nor do I want the troublemakers to be tortured with chemical weapons, or turned into disciples of the anti-responsibility industry.
The troublemakers should be dealt with by proper legal processes between PARTIES; i.e. no forcing them into the pre-judged role of 'patient'. In some instances, disputes about behaviour are no more than prejudice and no action is needed. In others, a dispute-mediation procedure is called for. In others, a social security issue may be involved, and the arguments should be debated on their merits with NO involvement by psycho-religions.
In some instances society may prove in court that IT is IN danger; but any detention of an allegedly dangerous individual should be done honestly. That means it has nothing to do with psychiatry and everything to do with dispute-resolution. The exact nature of the charges levied on troublemakers must be made explicit and every remedy sought to maximise liberty, freedom of thought, of all concerned. That means people have the right to want to be very destructive and so on; but they do not have the right to impose their destruction on others- and others have no right to 'save' them according to some scheme of pscho-religion.
Quote: "BTW- You views on psychological disorders would not stand up in court- they would be considered anti-scientific". For hundreds of years the belief in witchcraft was so entrenched that the courts upheld it and the highest medical authorities supported it. My views are similarly up against a widespread mythology.
My views are only considered unscientific by those who evade the logical reality in the contrast evident between medical entries in pathology texts and the metaphorical entries in psychiatric tests. In practice the issues are evaded in the courts, logic and science are bypassed. Any good lawyer though should eventually be able to do to psychiatry what was done to the belief in witches: demolish it.
But as long as people want to validate their lives by de-meaning the selected scapegoats of society; the demand for the modern witch-blaming industry will go on I guess.
Fortunately a professor of psychiatry has laid the foundations for the end of the "Taliban" aspects. See www.szasz.com and the article about "psychiatry's phlogiston" for example.
As someone who has explored the nature of consciousness, I am concerned that people may be repressing knowledge of themselves because of the presence of thought-police type elements in society. The abolition of thought policing would open the world of the mystics to more popular investigation, I think.
-Regards,
dolphn |
