Paranoia Is A State Of Heightened Awareness

[Rakhmetov]

Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions. Those who are at ease are insensitive.

Psychiatric mystification is a powerful influence in the maintenance of people's oppression.

Schizophrenia is an experience saner than "normality" in this mad world.

Psychiatric deception of not being oppressed is at the root of people's alienation .

Personal liberation is only possible along with radical social reforms.

Psychiatry must stop its mystification of the people and get down to
work!


All persons competent in soul healing should be known as psychiatrists ... Extended individual psychotherapy silently colludes with the notion that people's difficulties have their sources within them while implying that everything is well with the world .... Adjustment to prevailing conditions [the status quo] is the avowed goal of most psychiatric treatment. Persons who deviate from the world's madness are given fraudulent diagnostic tests which generate diagnostic labels which lead to 'treatment' ... Psychological tests and the diagnostic labels they generate, especially schizophrenia, must be disavowed as meaningless mystifications ... Psychiatric disturbance is equivalent with alienation, which is the result of mystified oppression. Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions. Those who are at ease are insensitive ... Psychiatry is a political activity.

A radical psychiatrist will take sides. He will advocate the side of those whom he is helping. The radical psychiatrist will not look for the wrongness within the person seeking psychiatric attention; rather, he will look for the way in which this person is being oppressed and how the person is going along with the oppression. The only problem that radical psychiatry looks for inside someone's head is how he empowers and enforces the lies of the oppressor and thereby enforces his own oppression.

Claude Steiner et al. Readings in Radical Psychiatry

Steiner hedged his bet a little by stating that every psychiatric diagnosis "except for those that are clearly organic in origin" is a form of alienation. William Blum, West-bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir


http://www.emotional-literacy.com/rpprin.htm


http://www.emotional-literacy.com/rpman.htm

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1644452194036300213#

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1644452194036300213#docid=13556734 72758352799

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1644452194036300213#docid=65736604 41809242121


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radical_Therapist


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Steiner

[¿Que?]

This is a good post. I've always sorta felt this way about psychiatry, but didn't have any theoretical basis for it. I'm going to check out those authors and links!

[Rakhmetov]

Paranoia is not a disease.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IejGovxdy8&feature=related

[The Vegan Marxist]

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. It may be alright to be a little paranoid, in which these authors may point out, but once you find yourself at a certain level of paranoia you'll find yourself getting really sick & possibly hurt from it. And if you want to use movies to justify how paranoia is not harmful, then how about watching the movie "Bug".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwt2hk3CgXE

[Rakhmetov]

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. It may be alright to be a little paranoid, in which these authors may point out, but once you find yourself at a certain level of paranoia you'll find yourself getting really sick & possibly hurt from it. And if you want to use movies to justify how paranoia is not harmful, then how about watching the movie "Bug".

Hwt2hk3CgXE

Was he under the influence of some narcotic??? I'll do a wiki-search. Ok, he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That is is different. Lacking a class analysis this ex-soldier succumbs to silly fantasies about UFOs and Alex Jones-type nonsense.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Was he under the influence of some narcotic??? I'll do a wiki-search. Ok, he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That is is different. Lacking a class analysis this ex-soldier succumbs to silly fantasies about UFOs and Alex Jones-type nonsense.

In which increases the state of paranoia, which in conclusion is not healthy whatsoever. Like I said, a little paranoia isn't harmful, but it must be limited.

[Rakhmetov]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaYNlvdqLy4&feature=related

[Ele'ill]

Some of the situations I have lived through led to 'paranoia' at the time- but it was only paranoia by other people's standards.

To me paranoia is covering the angles, being organized and having a back up plan.

Paranoia leading to a successful working plan that unfolds like an artillery battery is one of the best feelings in the world- be it at work, school or personal life.

[Seer Travis Truman]

Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions. Those who are at ease are insensitive.

This is insightful and correct, as long as one correctly identifies that society is persecuting them, and exactly how and why society is persecuting them. Every human being is a tortured victim-creation of their society, and society is constantly trying to persecute them.


Psychiatric mystification is a powerful influence in the maintenance of people's oppression.
Correct. Your use of the word 'mystification' is beautiful and accurate. Modern use of psychiatry by society is deployed in a mystical fashion, where one must simply accept the statements of psychiatrists because of their authority. Any attempt to rationally unbase societal whore use of psychiatry is met with mystical and nebulous lie-based allegations against those who question it.


Psychiatric deception of not being oppressed is at the root of people's alienation .
Alienation from Self-Love and Truth, yes.

[Blackscare]

Ok, I am a person who takes the line in arguments that many social problems are due to class relations in capitalism. Crime, education levels, etc. But this is taking that idea so far it's in the fucking twilight zone.

Paranoia does exist, it may sometimes be a case of class-related phenomena, but it certainly can't be all the time. Not to mention, the people who can normally afford therapy, etc, are not the poorest or those getting the short end of the stick, so to speak. So this idea that somehow, psychiatry is some giant conspiracy to brainwash people who largely can't afford psychiatric treatment is absurd. Even if everyone had access to therapy, you're still basically asserting that psychiatrists are all aligned with capitalism in order to obfuscate people's dissatisfaction?

To imply that schizophrenia is more sane... what the fuck? Are you trolling? If you aren't, this site really has gone down the tubes.

You must not have ever had someone in your life effected by that disease to make such a claim. I've seen what it does to people firsthand and it is certainly not something to talk lightly about.

[Terminator X]

Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions. Those who are at ease are insensitive.

Psychiatric mystification is a powerful influence in the maintenance of people's oppression.

Schizophrenia is an experience saner than "normality" in this mad world.

*snip*

This is where I stopped reading.

[Rakhmetov]

Ok, I am a person who takes the line in arguments that many social problems are due to class relations in capitalism. Crime, education levels, etc. But this is taking that idea so far it's in the fucking twilight zone.

Paranoia does exist, it may sometimes be a case of class-related phenomena, but it certainly can't be all the time. Not to mention, the people who can normally afford therapy, etc, are not the poorest or those getting the short end of the stick, so to speak. So this idea that somehow, psychiatry is some giant conspiracy to brainwash people who largely can't afford psychiatric treatment is absurd. Even if everyone had access to therapy, you're still basically asserting that psychiatrists are all aligned with capitalism in order to obfuscate people's dissatisfaction?

To imply that schizophrenia is more sane... what the fuck? Are you trolling? If you aren't, this site really has gone down the tubes.

You must not have ever had someone in your life effected by that disease to make such a claim. I've seen what it does to people firsthand and it is certainly not something to talk lightly about.

I'm sorry if this offends you but these are the types of arguments I would expect a bourgeoise liberal to make not an enlightened revolutionary. What do you think of Freud? I think he and his sort are just bourgeoise distractions intended to throw dust in the eyes of the workers from seeing the true class enemy. Have you read Parenti's book The Culture Struggle? He has a nice little chapter called Psychiatry as a Control Weapon.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

Psychiatry as a Control Weapon.

Sounds like a certain cult's ideology.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Sounds like a certain cult's ideology.

Psychiatry isn't being used as a weapon. These claims come up & down through the conspiracy theorist cult & also through the Scientologists. They're highly against anything to do with psychiatry.

[Blackscare]

I'm sorry if this offends you but these are the types of arguments I would expect a bourgeoise liberal to make not an enlightened revolutionary. What do you think of Freud? I think he and his sort are just bourgeoise distractions intended to throw dust in the eyes of the workers from seeing the true class enemy.

Sorry, what? I'm a bourgeois liberal because I think the statement that "schizophrenia is sane" is, well, insane?

You're relying on a very elaborate conspiracy theory to hold up your point. Somehow everyone from Freud to Jung to Lacan is in on some big effort to control the masses.

Sounds a little crazy to me.

[al8]

Since I had the relevant book at hand I decided to provide a transcription of Parenti's article. Here it is;



Psychiatry as a Control Weapon

Science occupies an unusual place in society, for its methods can transcend the confines of culture. Scientists from different societies around the world are able to understand and build upon each other's work (at least within their respective disciplines). Nevertheless, scientific endeavor is often distorted by entrenched interests or by the prevailing ideological climate. What gets funded and promulgated may have little to do with disinterested inquiry. Tobacco companies produce scientific studies proving that cigarettes are harmless; oil interests promote a handful of scientists who reassure us that global warming is a chimera; the chemical industry sponsors scientific research demonstrating the purportedly benign nature of pesticides and herbicides; and pharmaceutical firms fund tests showing that various medications are perfectly safe; when in fact they sometimes have life damaging effects and have belatedly removed from the market.

Over the centuries, scientific innovators have paid dearly for maintaining views that have rubbed against more orthodox precepts. Their oppressors often ace been other scientists working in tandem with state authorities, or those in dominant positions within their professions. Time and again vested interests have preempted the field of discourse, defunding and denying the publication of alternative perspectives, discharging dissident researcher, allowing important scientific to be settled by injunction and fiat rather than by rigorous examination. Many established scientific opinions have been little more than embellished beliefs masquerading as objective findings. And some scientific controversies are little more than Kulturkampf dressed in laboratory coats. This seems especially true of the medical and psychiatric sciences.

For centuries, in service to male supremacy and colonial domination, learned men in western society produced scientific exegeses on the natural inferiority of women and the mental and moral deficiencies of the "darker races" and "lower classes," the latter also referred to as the "dangerous classes".(24) Medical and psychiatric practitioners treated illnesses by launching punishing assaults upon the stricken patients. In earlier times persons with serious physical complaints were bled, scalded, made to ingest sickening concoctions, burned with mercury, had their fractured limbs sawed off, or were subjected to all kinds of damaging surgical procedures - often with fatal results. Doctors regularly spread lethal diseases by remaining steadfastly indifferent to minimal hygienic practices.

Through much of the twentieth century, when tonsils became inflamed from resisting bodily infections, doctors would routinely solve the problem by surgically removing the tonsils, as if the organ were offending rather then defending the organism. By mid-century hysterectomies became all the rage: whenever fibroids (benign tumors) formed on the uterus, the uterus would be removed. Today gall bladders are routinely excised for doing their job of forming stones out of impurities that accumulate in the body. For the last half century, cancer has been treated with a slash, burn and poison strategy (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy) that is solely designed to destroy those body cells that have succumbed to the cancer.(25) Meanwhile alternative cancer treatments continue to be suppressed by the cancer industry and their allies in the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA).(26) Recently some women have been having their healthy breasts cut off to avoid the likelihood of breast cancer, a ghastly application of preemptive excision. A close friend of mine was recently urged by her knife-happy physician to have her perfectly healthy ovaries removed because there was a "five percent chance that cancer might develop."

Persons judged to be mentally disturbed have been similarly besieged: incarcerated (often for a lifetime), verbally abused, beaten, bound, gagged, starved, isolated, and drugged. Among the illnesses treated during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were "nymphomania," "masturbatory insanity," and disruptive behavior of almost any sort.(27) Psychiatrists and physicians long believed that hysteria was a malady caused by disturbances in the uterus, hence an exclusively female disease. One eminent nineteenth-century physician, William Goodell, suggested that it might be the economic thing "to stamp out insanity by removing the ovaries of insane women."(28)

Benjamin Rush, known to many as "the father of American psychiatry," defined sanity as the practice of "regular habits" and "an aptitude to judge of things like other men," while insanity was "a departure form this." Rush maintained, and many of his colleagues greed, that madness could be cured by treating the victim to hearty servings of "terror" and "flagellation" using "FEAR accompanied by PAIN, and a sense of SHAME." The total binding and confinement of "every part of the body" delivers tranquilizing effects on the patient that "have been truly delightful to me," Rush gushed.(29)

During antebellum days in the United States, some medical authorities gave serious attention to a mental condition that purportedly afflicted slaves. It was called drapetomania, the mad impulse that caused those held in bondage to "abscond from service." It was understood that slaves, who abandoned the happy confines of servitude and the solicitous care of their masters in pursuit of an uncertain freedom in strange locales, must be suffering from a serious disorder. In 1851, in his "Report on the diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race," Dr. Samuel Carwright concluded that drapetomania, which induces the slave to flee from slavery, "is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule." (30) The cure consisted of ferocious application of the bullwhip, and for repeat offenders: leg shackles, facial branding, cutting of ears, and in some cases, castration.

More recently, mental patients have been heavily medicated, electrically shocked, or lobotomized. The troubled brain is treated as the troublesome brain - as if the victims themselves were the problem rather than their illness. The overwhelming majority of patients so treated in public asylums come from the lower classes, presumably recalcitrant elements of society. "Doctors in all ages," concludes R.D. Laing, "have made fortunes by killing their patients by means of their cures. The difference in psychiatry is that it is the death of the soul."(31)


Here are additional examples of how faux science has served the dominant paradigm: In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) added homosexuality to its official list of emotional maladies in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, thereby stamping homosexuals as mental misfits. The listing lent a scientific imprimatur to existing anti-gay discrimination in housing, employment, and professional training, and so laws that treated gay liaisons and gay public gatherings as crimes.(32)

What was missing from the manual's listing was any explanation of the actual scientific means by which psychiatry had arrived at its conclusion. Where was the body of evidence to support the notion that homosexuality was a mental illness? And what specifically would such evidence consist of? Psychiatrists could point to a century of practice in which gays had sought - or been forcefully subjected to - treatment for their inversion (a favorite nineteenth-century psychiatric term later replaced by perversion). Such treatments included extended analysis, institutional confinement, medications, behavior modification programs, shock therapy, and even brain surgery, In their very attempts to treat unhappy people who happened to be gay, psychiatrists found self-confirming evidence that homosexuality was a serious pathology difficult to uproot.

Some homosexuals maintained that they were not ill, that gays had been taught by a homophobic culture to hate themselves for being gay. It was not their homosexuality that was afflicting them, it was other people's animosity, including that of parents and peers, along with the punitive practices of psychiatry and the law.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, homosexual men and women began to openly agitate for gay rights, insisting that their sexual orientation did not represent a pathology. At the 1971 convention of the American Psychiatric Association in Wahsington D.C., gay activists confronted the psychiatrists. As one writer noted, "Psychiatrists were not used to hearing from homosexuals who felt sane and normal"(33) Gay advocates were then invited to participate in a panel at the APA convention the following year. After further protest and debate the APA governing board voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorder, urging that "homosexuals be given protections now guaranteed other citizens." The association's membership ratified the decision in April 1974.

Nota bene, neither the listing of homosexuality as an illness nor the excision of that listing was based on scientific judgments. The 1952 listing was a response to a homophobic culture and longstanding self-confirming practices within psychiatry itself. And the 1974 decision to rescind was a response to the political struggle waged by gays against that homophobic culture. Both decisions demonstrate (a) how cultural bias permeates belief systems - including scientific systems that presume to be free of cultural bias, and (b) how culture is not always a fixed and immutable construct but sometimes can be changed by consciously organized agitation.


The claims of culture-free, scientific objectivity can also be questioned when we look at cross-cultural medical practices. Consider how British and American physicians administer antidepressants to children. Adjusting for population size between the two countries, we find that American doctors are five times more likely than their British counterparts to prescribe antidepressants to minors.(34) The way antidepressants are regulated in the two countries is a factor. After extensive clinical trials involving more than 2,300 youngsters, British drug regulators strongly urged doctors not to use certain medications for childhood depression. In the United States, cognizant of the very same data, the FDA has yet to issue safety warnings, and physicians continue to prescribe antidepressants to children in great volume.

Market distribution in the two countries is also a factor. In the United States, when the pharmaceuticals began finding it difficult to get doctors to prescribe their expensive drugs, they marketed directly to the patients. Today they run television advertisements urging potential patients to request the medications from their doctors. Such medical advertising to consumers is banned in Britain.(35)

Pharmaceutical companies in the United States tend to vend mental illness itself, not just the pills to treat it. New mental maladies are regularly designated, often by the companies themselves, especially in the areas of anxiety and depression. The listing of mental disorders in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual grew from 106 in 1952 to 357 by 1994. By promulgating new categories of mental disease, the industry creates expanding markets for new drugs.(36)

In 2004, President G. W. Bush's misleadingly named "New Freedom Commission On Mental Health" launched a plan to impose mandatory mental health screening on the entire population of the United States. The goal was to determine which people needed "treatment and support". The screening of adults was slated to occur during routine physical examinations while that of young people would occur in the school system. Pre-school children would receive periodic "development screens." According to critics, the mass screening was a pharmaceutical industry scheme to rope in customers and expand sales of the newest, most expensive psychiatric drugs. The program had more to do with marketing than with medicine. Screening the entire population would also give authorities an opportunity to medicate large numbers of private citizens, and possibly gain a new level of control politically troublesome personages.

Critics warned that Bush's New Freedom plan would bring state control of private lives and a massive increase in the use of psychiatric drugs. According to psychologist Dr. Daniel Burston, "any number of things that are, or could be, perfectly natural responses to an environment can be construed as a sign of mental disorder."(37) The Bush plan emphasized the importance of "state-of-the-art medications," with no acknowledgment that some drugs were of dubious benefit and sometimes deadly. Certain antidepressants appear to be linked to homicidal behavior in some adults. On FDA advisory committee urged that antidepressants should be labeled with the "strongest warning" for they can cause suicidal behavior in youngsters.

The New Freedom Commission's claim that the reliability of the drugs rests on "evidence-based" practices is not borne out by recent studies indicating that pharmaceutical firms manipulate what are supposed to be independent evaluations of new medications. An article in the British medical journal Lancet (24 April 2004) charged that it appears to be a common and continual practice to distort finding in the drug industry's favor. According to critics, the industry regularly uses its wealth and power to manipulate advocacy and professional groups. The nonprofit National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the American Psychiatric Association have both repeatedly faced such criticism, and both endorse New Freedom.
One could go on about the way a supposedly bias-free science is hijacked and put to use by entrenched interests who pretend to help others while mostly helping themselves. What has been presented here is but a small sampling.


(24)Darwing himself is guilty of this. Se his The Descent of Man (New York: Modern Library, 1936). For a critique, see Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York : Norton, 1981)
(25)See Barry Lynes, The Cancer Conspiracy: Betrayal, Collusion and the Suppresion of Alternative Cancer Treatments (Delmar, N.Y.: Elsemere Press, 2000)
(26)See Lynes, Cancer Conspiracy; and Alan Cantwell Jr., The Cancer Microbe (Los Angeles: Aries Rising Press, 1990), 115.
(27)Ann Goldberg, Sex, Religion and the Making of Modern Madness (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4. Goldberg studied a nineteenth century German asylum, but what she found holds for many mental institutions of other times and places.
(28)Quoted in Adrew Scull and Diane Favreau, "A chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure: Sexual Surgery for Psychosis in Three Nineteenth Century Societies," Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control (1986), quoted in Leonard Roy Frank, Influencing Minds (Portland, Oregon: Feral House, 1995), 160.
(29)Frank, Influencing Minds, and the sources cited therein. The critical literature on the abuses of psychiatry and psychotherapy is substantial. One might start with the writings of Thomas Szasz, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and Ronald Leifer.
(30)Cartwright's report was published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 185, cited in Leonard Roy Frank, "Understanding Psychiatry," Street Spirit (Berkeley, California), June 2003.
(31)Quoted in Frank, Influencing Minds, 163.
(32)Dudley Clendinen, "John E. Fryer - Gay Psychiatrist Who Spoke Out." New York Times, 7 March 2004.
(33)Dudley Clendinen, "John E. Fryer - Gay Psychiatrist Who Spoke Out."
(34)Sally Satel, M.D., "Antidepressants: Two Countries, Two Views," New York Times, 25 May 2004.
(35)See David Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship between the Pharmaceutical Industry And Depression (New York: New York University Press, 2004); also Satel, "Antidepressants: Two Countries, Two Views."
(36)"Profitably Inventing New Diseases," Health Letter, publication of Public Citizen Health research Group, August 2003.
(37)Ritt Goldstein, "Critics See Drug Industry Behind Mental Health Plan" IPS report, 18 October 2004, http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=25904 . This discussion of the New freedom Commission, including all the quotations, is from Goldstein's article.

[Blackscare]

Al8, you're a fucking champ.

[The Vegan Marxist]

I've gotta say, Al8, that was actually pretty enlightening. Looks like I'm going to have to re-think on my beliefs on this certain subject.

[Outinleftfield]

Its part right but there's bad paranoia and good paranoia.

Good paranoia is being aware of your surroundings and noting signs of danger and then incorporating that into thinking about the odds of it being a problem, the risks if it is, the benefits of acting on the assumption that it's not, and the best way to deal with it if you decide action is necessary. While thinking about before making a decision carry on with what ever you were doing before.

Bad paranoia is the first part but then immediately and irrationally reacting to it in a fight-or-flight type of response.

In other words its important to be able to be alert without freaking out about it.

So the problem with psychiatry is it sees a problem but then misidentifies it. By giving paranoids drugs that decrease their alertness it solves the problem of bad paranoia but also prevents good paranoia (along with general alertness since alertness to danger can't be easily separated from general alertness). Instead it would be better to teach schizophrenics the right way to use their paranoia.

The same goes for hallucinations. In ancient tribes if you started hallucinating you didn't fear going mad, it was a sign you were chosen by the spiritual world as a shaman. The tribe's elder shaman would train you about how to use your abilities for your benefit and the tribe's benefit. The shaman would learn how to distinguish what they were seeing that was "in the spiritual world" and what was in the "material world".

They might not have been really communicating with the spirit world, but they were able to use their hallucinations to give valueable insights to the tribe, and there's no reason why modern society wouldn't be able to use this. If we rediscovered the old methods instead of medicating away the hallucinations we could teach schizophrenics how to recognize the difference without throwing away the hallucinations, and then they could use the hallucinations to provide powerful insights. Schizophrenics could be the best therapists and advisors if we could figure this out.

[danyboy27]

psychology is a widely used science to manipulate peoples.

there is no conspiracy in that, 99% of the ads you see on tv and hear on radio is based on freud early work. the human being is nothing but emotion, and based on this principle, publicist and even politicians manipulate the masses.

i just heard a matteress ads on radio 2 min ago, they where talking about how lack of sleep can put people at risk of having car accident or diying of disease beccause of weak immune system.

this is a pretty clear appeal to fear, fear to die and fear to be sick if you dont sleep, and they propose the solution to that, a fucking costly mattress.

if people where mostly rational and would look up the fact, they would realize that most of the "facts" in this ads are just plain bullshit.

psychological manipulation should be a fucking crime.

[Rakhmetov]

Anybody heard of drapetomania? If this isn't using psychiatry as a control weapon then what is? The medical establishment is full of bourgeoise notions.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

[danyboy27]

Anybody heard of drapetomania? If this isn't using psychiatry as a control weapon then what is? The medical establishment is full of bourgeoise notions.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

come on man, it was the 1800s, people used to believe in all sort of creazy shit back then.

psychology can be used has a weapon, but also to make people better with themselves.

we need to take care not only of our body but our mind too, psychologist and psychiatrist can help a lot of people to resolve issues like thrauma and psychosis.

i am not saying all people cant help themselves, but sometimes, the help of a specialist can make a real difference.

[Outinleftfield]

come on man, it was the 1800s, people used to believe in all sort of creazy shit back then.

psychology can be used has a weapon, but also to make people better with themselves.

we need to take care not only of our body but our mind too, psychologist and psychiatrist can help a lot of people to resolve issues like thrauma and psychosis.

i am not saying all people cant help themselves, but sometimes, the help of a specialist can make a real difference.

People believe in all sorts of crazy shit today too. People believe capitalism fairly distributes resources. People believe the US is democratic.

Since the prevailing ideas in any society or culture are the ideas of the ruling class the "ideas" that gain traction in psychology are inevitably those that help the ruling class.

If mental health could be assessed outside of social norms, could be assessed according to what will actually lead to better lives and greater happiness for individuals and for society then the vast majority of people on this planet would be considered mentally ill.

One big problem with psychiatry is there's not enough consideration of subjective distress. A person might know that if something in their mind changed they would feel better and function better, but the psychiatrist says they're fine and don't have a disorder. Alternatively, someone might be labeled with a disorder but feel fine and maybe even function better with it than without it.

Another big problem is psychiatry really knows a lot less about how the mind works than they sell to the public. They have a bunch of theories, but even then they rarely ever diagnose a disorder with a chemical test and also there's the chicken-and-egg scenario. Which came first? The thought or the chemicals? There's been a study showing what we think about effects brain chemistry so sometimes psychiatrists might prescribed medication when the person just needs to change their attitude.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Just found this & read it. Seems quite relevant to this discussion:


How Psychologists Profit on Unending U.S. Wars

By BRUCE E. LEVINE

While U.S. military psychiatrists are prescribing increasing amounts of chill pills, America’s psychologists are teaching soldiers how to think more positively about their tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and wherever else they are next ordered to kill the bad guys and win the hearts and minds of everyone else.

The U.S. Army is planning to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in positive psychology and emotional resiliency. Army Research Psychologist Capt. Paul Lester, who leads the assessment of the program, told the National Psychologist (“Army to Train its Own in Positive Psychology,” July/August 2010), “As far as I can tell this is the largest, deliberate, psychological intervention in human history. . . . We don’t know when the global war on terrorism is going to end so we’re preparing to have to be engaged for a long period of time.”

Lester said the program would develop “communication skills, cognitive reforming skills and help soldiers not to catastrophize -- don’t think of the worse case scenario about every potential problem.” The program also teaches soldiers to focus on “expressing appreciation” and “correcting negative views of ambiguous events.”

In August 2009, the New York Times reported that Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, said the total cost of this program would be $117 million. The New York Times was alerted to the program by psychologist Martin Seligman, director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been consulting with the Pentagon. Seligman’s particular program at Penn is costing the U.S. Army $25 to $30 million, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which in its profile of Seligman (May 30, 2010) noted that he “confidently walked the line between grand and grandiose”; and it quoted him asserting, “We’re after creating an indomitable Army.”

Seligman initially thought that training the entire Army would be nearly an impossible chore because of the enormous number of teachers required. However, Gen. Casey informed him that the Army had 40,000 teachers. “You do?” Seligman said. “Yes,” Casey retorted, they’re called drill sergeants.” Now 150 sergeants come to Penn each month to take a course in positive psychology.

At one training session given at a hotel near Penn, according to the New York Times, 48 sergeants in full fatigues sat at desks, took notes, and role played. In one exercise, Sgt. First Class James Cole of Fort Riley, Kansas and his classmate transformed Sgt. Cole’s negative thinking about an order late in the day to have Sgt. Cole’s exhausted men do one last difficult assignment.

“Why is he tasking us again for this job?” the classmate asked, pretending to be Sgt. Cole. “It’s not fair.”

Sergeant Cole gave the “correct” positive-thinking response, “Maybe he’s hitting us because he knows we’re more reliable.”

While positive psychology makes some sense for teenagers who are catastrophizing their first relationship breakup to the point of becoming suicidal, how much sense does it make to teach soldiers who are trying to stay alive in a war zone to put a positive spin on everything? Moreover, wouldn’t soldiers like their officers to consider worst-case scenarios before ordering them into combat? And wouldn’t soldiers like politicians to take seriously worst-case scenarios before embarking on a war? The healthy option to negative thinking is not positive thinking but critical thinking. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bright-sided and astute critic of the dark side of positive thinking and positive psychology, points out:

It’s easy to see positive thinking as a uniquely American form of naïveté, but it is neither uniquely American nor endearingly naïve. In vastly different settings, positive thinking has been a tool of political repression worldwide. . . . In the Soviet Union, as in the Eastern European states and North Korea, the censors required upbeat art, books, and films, meaning upbeat heroes, plots about fulfilling production quotas, and endings promising a glorious revolutionary future. . . .The penalties for negative thinking were real. Not to be positive and optimistic was to be ‘defeatist’. . . . Accusing someone of spreading defeatism condemned him to several years in Stalinist camps.

While the U.S. military has only recently become excited about positive psychology techniques, it has, for the last decade, increasingly used psychiatric drugs to keep soldiers going. One in six service members is now taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to the Navy Times (“Medicating the Military,” March 17, 2010), with many soldiers taking “drug cocktail” combinations. Soldiers and military healthcare providers reportthat psychiatric drugs are “being prescribed, consumed, shared and traded in combat zones.” While soldiers’ increasing use of antidepressants is troubling enough (as the Food and Drug Administration now requires warnings on antidepressants about their increasing the risk of “suicidality” in children, teenagers, and young adults), what’s as or even more worrisome is the increase of other psychiatric drugs. In the last decade, antipsychotic drug use in the U.S. military has increased more than 200 percent, and anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills have increased 170 percent. These kinds of drugs impair motor skills, reduce reaction times, and generally make one more sluggish -- or what soldiers call “stupid,” as the Navy Times notes.

While pushing drugs and teaching positive thinking earns mental health professionals money and brownie points with the elite, there is another path for mental health professionals working with U.S. soldiers. First, offer soldiers respect for their critical thinking, even if such critical thinking brings them to conclusions unwanted by their superiors. Second, if soldiers are anxious or angry because they believe that an ego-tripping commanding officer is going to get them killed, do NOT tell them to stop “catastrophizing”; instead take what they say seriously. And if soldiers are depressed because they have seen too much death, instead of directing them to “express appreciation,” try offering genuine compassion. But don’t stop with only compassion. Speak truth to power. Tell politicians who are maintaining America’s wars and planning still others: Don’t kid yourself into thinking positive psychology and chill pills are the answers, especially if soldiers and veterans discover that you deceived them about the necessity and the meaningfulness of their mission. Psychologists should loudly warn politicians, military brass, and the nation that if soldiers and veterans discover that they have been deceived about the meaningfulness and necessity of their mission, it is only human for them to become more prone to emotional turmoil, which can lead to destructive behaviors for themselves and others.

http://counterpunch.com/levine07222010.html

[Rakhmetov]

... and what am I? ... chopped liver???

[Melebeb]

Ever heard about Edward Bernays and the "Engineering of consent"?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent

youtube.com/watch?v=3dA89CBBOC0

[Adi Shankara]

... and what am I? ... chopped liver???

God I fucking HATE it when motherfucking people say that motherfucking phrase.

/rant