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The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct by Thomas Szasz
It's obvious that the advice given by Szasz was ignored and dismissed by the psychology profession, and it's obvious why that is. The mainstream "acceptance" of mental illness does not de-stigmatize it, instead it only solidifies the stigma into the popular mythology under pseudoscientific rationale. Psychology is not a science, as it does not and cannot follow the scientific method, since the scientific method does not account for living beings and subjective consciousness. The three biggest reasons for the popularity and expansion of the psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience industries is not because they contain any truth, but because they enforce conformity, silence the outcasts, and produce drug addicts through the pharmaceutical companies which are mostly just legal drug cartels validated by pseudoscience and capitalism. Involuntary psychiatric treatment is an obvious example of this, but even those who voluntarily accept a diagnosis without treatment are committing themselves to a life of being infantilized and dismissed by those who are made aware of the label with which they identify. Psychology is replacing the Church in controlling the population in a time of decentralized religion and nonreligion.
The invention of new categories of so-called mental illness does not make them any less illegitimate. These categories, unlike actual medical diseases, are defined by the "symptoms" without the necessity of having to discover a root cause. Every "mental illness" is nothing other than a cluster of pseudosymptoms that a committee decided should be considered an "illness" that can be diagnosed and treated. The insurance companies, who are not scientists or doctors in the slightest, have a pretty significant say in what should be considered a diagnosis. What passes for "mental illness" can either be a physical disorder that can be identified medically (such as head trauma, premature birth, or down syndrome), a maladjustment to the ways of society, or the result of a person being suggestible by the belief in the existence of mental illness. This third possibility often occurs when someone looks up symptoms and identifies themselves with an "illness" believing it is real. After some time of being convinced of the illness, they play the role of the "patient" and it can often be as convincing to others as it is to themselves. A lot of people go to therapy after reading about symptoms online and the therapists just take their word for it that they have whatever "illness" and prescribe them drugs. While we no longer have the ritual murder and witch hunts of "psychotics" in which they are "treated" with shock therapy and lobotomies, basically left as zombies, our society is much too accepting of the mass prescription of drugs that have a similar effect, often with permanent repercussions.
In addition, the pseudoscience of neurology is used to rationalize bigotry and popular mythology. The assumption, for instance, that men and women are neurologically by nature and biologically destined for the social roles they are given, is usually backed up with references to shoddy meaningless data taken by neurologists, much like their phrenological antecedents. No consciousness can be measured through an external reading of brainwaves. No matter how advanced technology becomes it will always be impossible to "read" a person's mind. Mindreading always has been and always will be nothing but fantasy, yet here we have tech bros and "serious" scientists alike talking without a hint of irony about the possibility of reading people's minds in the future using technology. In over a century of psychology being considered a science, not one thing in the entire field has been proven scientifically nor gone through the scientific method, and yet people believe in it like it's some kind of irrefutable fact. At best, psychology can be considered a school of philosophy. And that is how it should be treated by everyone.
Psychologists posing as medical doctors should be considered a human rights violation, in the same way as a priest making the same claim would be. The job of a psychologist, instead, should be the role of a philosopher, like the sophists of Ancient Greece. The psychologist should not be seeing "patients" or even "clients" but pupils instead. Their job should be to serve as guides to help people break out of the prisons they've trapped themselves in, or that society or a bad or confusing upbringing has trapped them in. Instead of bending to the will of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies by letting them define what is worthy of coverage based on pure ignorance, the state should subsidize access to psychologists without the need of any diagnosis, so that everyone can benefit from them without risking having their lives ruined by the outdated paradigm of so-called mental illness. There should be no diagnostic requirement for seeking therapy, and there should also be no diagnoses for anything that is not a true medical illness. Doctors and psychologists can work together in some cases, when a physical condition affects the mind, but they should be considered fully separate professions that are not even remotely related, like a doctor and a teacher.
4.25
Taken from the summary at the end of the book:
The principal arguments advanced in this book and their implications may be summarized as follows.
1. Strictly speaking, disease or illness can affect only the body; hence, there can be no mental illness.
2. "Mental illness" is a metaphor. Minds can be "sick" only in the sense that jokes are "sick" or economies are "sick."
3. Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels, phrased to resemble medical diagnoses and applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others.
4. Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as "neurotic"; those whose behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as "psychotic."
5. Mental illness is not something a person has, but is something he does or is.
6. If there is no mental illness there can be no hospitalization, treatment, or cure for it. Of course, people may change their behavior or personality, with or without psychiatric intervention. Such intervention is nowadays called "treatment," and the change, if it proceeds in a direction approved by society, "recovery" or "cure."
7. The introduction of psychiatric considerations into the administration of the criminal law—for example, the insanity plea and verdict, diagnoses of mental incompetence to stand trial, and so forth—corrupt the law and victimize the subject on whose behalf they are ostensibly employed.
8. Personal conduct is always rule-following, strategic, and meaningful. Patterns of interpersonal and social relations may be regarded and analyzed as if they were games, the behavior of the players being governed by explicit or tacit game rules.
9. In most types of voluntary psychotherapy, the therapist tries to elucidate the inexplicit game rules by which the client conducts himself; and to help the client scrutinize the goals and values of the life games he plays.
10. There is no medical, moral, or legal justification for involuntary psychiatric interventions. They are crimes against humanity.
It's obvious that the advice given by Szasz was ignored and dismissed by the psychology profession, and it's obvious why that is. The mainstream "acceptance" of mental illness does not de-stigmatize it, instead it only solidifies the stigma into the popular mythology under pseudoscientific rationale. Psychology is not a science, as it does not and cannot follow the scientific method, since the scientific method does not account for living beings and subjective consciousness. The three biggest reasons for the popularity and expansion of the psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience industries is not because they contain any truth, but because they enforce conformity, silence the outcasts, and produce drug addicts through the pharmaceutical companies which are mostly just legal drug cartels validated by pseudoscience and capitalism. Involuntary psychiatric treatment is an obvious example of this, but even those who voluntarily accept a diagnosis without treatment are committing themselves to a life of being infantilized and dismissed by those who are made aware of the label with which they identify. Psychology is replacing the Church in controlling the population in a time of decentralized religion and nonreligion.
The invention of new categories of so-called mental illness does not make them any less illegitimate. These categories, unlike actual medical diseases, are defined by the "symptoms" without the necessity of having to discover a root cause. Every "mental illness" is nothing other than a cluster of pseudosymptoms that a committee decided should be considered an "illness" that can be diagnosed and treated. The insurance companies, who are not scientists or doctors in the slightest, have a pretty significant say in what should be considered a diagnosis. What passes for "mental illness" can either be a physical disorder that can be identified medically (such as head trauma, premature birth, or down syndrome), a maladjustment to the ways of society, or the result of a person being suggestible by the belief in the existence of mental illness. This third possibility often occurs when someone looks up symptoms and identifies themselves with an "illness" believing it is real. After some time of being convinced of the illness, they play the role of the "patient" and it can often be as convincing to others as it is to themselves. A lot of people go to therapy after reading about symptoms online and the therapists just take their word for it that they have whatever "illness" and prescribe them drugs. While we no longer have the ritual murder and witch hunts of "psychotics" in which they are "treated" with shock therapy and lobotomies, basically left as zombies, our society is much too accepting of the mass prescription of drugs that have a similar effect, often with permanent repercussions.
In addition, the pseudoscience of neurology is used to rationalize bigotry and popular mythology. The assumption, for instance, that men and women are neurologically by nature and biologically destined for the social roles they are given, is usually backed up with references to shoddy meaningless data taken by neurologists, much like their phrenological antecedents. No consciousness can be measured through an external reading of brainwaves. No matter how advanced technology becomes it will always be impossible to "read" a person's mind. Mindreading always has been and always will be nothing but fantasy, yet here we have tech bros and "serious" scientists alike talking without a hint of irony about the possibility of reading people's minds in the future using technology. In over a century of psychology being considered a science, not one thing in the entire field has been proven scientifically nor gone through the scientific method, and yet people believe in it like it's some kind of irrefutable fact. At best, psychology can be considered a school of philosophy. And that is how it should be treated by everyone.
Psychologists posing as medical doctors should be considered a human rights violation, in the same way as a priest making the same claim would be. The job of a psychologist, instead, should be the role of a philosopher, like the sophists of Ancient Greece. The psychologist should not be seeing "patients" or even "clients" but pupils instead. Their job should be to serve as guides to help people break out of the prisons they've trapped themselves in, or that society or a bad or confusing upbringing has trapped them in. Instead of bending to the will of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies by letting them define what is worthy of coverage based on pure ignorance, the state should subsidize access to psychologists without the need of any diagnosis, so that everyone can benefit from them without risking having their lives ruined by the outdated paradigm of so-called mental illness. There should be no diagnostic requirement for seeking therapy, and there should also be no diagnoses for anything that is not a true medical illness. Doctors and psychologists can work together in some cases, when a physical condition affects the mind, but they should be considered fully separate professions that are not even remotely related, like a doctor and a teacher.
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
informative
4.5
If all forms of advertising were made illegal, it would be much easier to destroy patriarchy and consumerism.
This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray
2.5
French feminism has this annoying tendency to be pretentious and verbose while saying close to nothing. Woman-as-commodity and woman-as-fetish-object were not new ideas, and they did not require a Derrida-like "deconstruction" of Freud and Marx, the gods of French postmodern pseudo-philosophy. There's nothing useful about this, nothing to learn, she just seems to be showing off how effectively she could annoy the reader by trying to sound poetic, and keeping Lacan's Freudian revival bullshit alive.
Democracy in America and Two Essays on America by Alexis de Tocqueville
The intellectual achievements of Americans today are still pretty small in comparison to other countries considering the population size, and our country still has not produced any outstanding philosophers. Democracy tends to mediocrity in taste and achievement, with any exceptions being lucky accidents and rarely achieve popular success. Here is Tocqueville's take:
informative
2.75
For the most part the analysis of democracy is too optimistic and full of unearned praise, even though it does admit flaws. As a European in an era where people were tired of monarchy and the inequality it brings, the author has reasons to support democracy and exaggerate its good qualities, so that should be kept in mind while reading. But also as a non-American, he doesn't share the embarrassingly arrogant patriotism that makes most Americans blind to the problems of their country, so he's also not afraid to point out the problems that Americans of that time turned a blind eye to. There were some interesting observations, like the motive for banning slavery in the North being more of an effort to reduce the black population than anything to do with human rights. Probably the most important idea here is the fatal flaw of democracy being the tyranny of the majority, which still holds true today, the only difference now being that the majority are being manipulated by the ultra wealthy into serving their desires. Although his assessment was moderately racist, he was able to predict the fate of the races here. He predicted that the Native Americans would be killed off and forced into increasingly smaller reservations as the US expands, until they have basically no land of their own. He also predicted that after emancipation, blacks and whites would remain separate, with increasing hostility as the whites tyrannize over the blacks, since the whites are the majority, and minorities cannot benefit from democracy.
In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.
When an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority, and implicitly obeys its injunctions; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority, and remains a passive tool in its hands; the public troops consist of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain States even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the evil of which you complain may be, you must submit to it as well as you can.
The intellectual achievements of Americans today are still pretty small in comparison to other countries considering the population size, and our country still has not produced any outstanding philosophers. Democracy tends to mediocrity in taste and achievement, with any exceptions being lucky accidents and rarely achieve popular success. Here is Tocqueville's take:
America has up to now produced very few writers of distinction; it possesses no great historians, and not a single eminent poet. The inhabitants of that country look upon what are properly styled literary pursuits with a kind of disapprobation; and there are towns of very second-rate importance in Europe in which more literary works are annually published than in the twenty-four States of the Union put together. The spirit of the Americans is averse to general ideas; and it does not seek theoretical discoveries. Neither politics nor manufactures direct them to these occupations; and although new laws are perpetually enacted in the United States, no great writers have yet inquired into the general principles of their legislation. The Americans have lawyers and commentators, but no jurists; 1 and they furnish examples rather than lessons to the world. The same observation applies to the mechanical arts. In America, the inventions of Europe are adopted with sagacity; they are perfected, and adapted with admirable skill to the wants of the country. Manufactures exist, but the science of manufacture is not cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few inventors. Fulton was obliged to proffer his services to foreign nations for a long time before he was able to devote them to his own country.