Exceedingly Obvious Reflections on the Construction "Noun" + Phobia

The construction "noun + phobic" supposedly meaning "irrational fear of x,y,z noun" is quite widespread in "psychiatry", psychology, the "social sciences" and political culture and politics too.

It is a dubious construction, borrowed from the pseudo-science of psychiatry for dubious and sometimes morally questionable motives.

Possibly it's first use was in "hydrophobic" with relation to a strong and irrational - possibly "irresistible" - fear of water - an undoubted psychological near-physiological symptom of the physical illness of rabies.

It seems that this use dates back to about 1759 and that the word also meant "madness".

Now a point to make straight away with regard to political language is that "disliking or disagreeing with something" simply cannot be the same as being scared of it or having a strong (and irrational) fear of it.

For example, if I genuinely don't particularly like the taste of carrots when I eat them and I spit them out, I cannot possibly be "carrotphobic."

And of course an obvious point that follows from this is that therefore anyone can apply this term to someone who opposes them.

For example, if someone is a socialist and there is someone who disagrees with them the socialist (whatever that term means) can conceivably call his opponent "socialism-phobic" if he choses to; and could obviously use this as a tactic rather than say arguing with his opponent.

........

Kenan Malik has written an article questioning among other things whether there really is such a thing as "islamophobia"..
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/prospect_islamophobia.html


Thomas Szasz makes the point (in his set of esssays "The Medicalisation of Everyday Life" (2007)) that until about 1970 homosexuality or homosexual behaviour was an "illness" - whereas now aversion to homosexuality is - if not an illness - stigmatised, condemned and given a quasi-medical term - "homophobia".

"The Medicalisation of Everyday Life" (2007) is a very important set of essays that deal with
philosophical issues as well as the lie of "mental illness."
The breadth of learning is very wide.
It is a loss and a disgrace that it is not more highly regarded and read.

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If a piece of terminology with the meaning "(supposedly) irrational aversion to gay behaviour" is insisted upon; then surely "gayfobia" or more accurately "antigayism" would really be improvements as terms; even on the terms of those who insist we employ such politicized propagandistic buzzwords.

Especially for offended (Ancient) Greek-speakers of the world!!! :)

..........................

Szasz shoud be a feminist hero

Szasz shoud be a feminist hero.

Szasz's filosofy is a counter to Freud's malicious "ideas" and "works" that are MASSIVELY oppressive of women.

The first so-called "Mental Illness" that Szasz debunks is the utterly NON-EXISTENT "hysteria" - which is named after a female part of the anatomy. Another example of pure oppression in a single word.

Also, statistically the majority of people oppressed and caused to suffer by the ridiculous  ideology of "Mental Illness" were and still are FEMALE.

And conditions for them within the system and the gulags were and still are far worse than those for males.

The radical feminist filosofer Nina Power, for example, lists as one of her interests - "Hysteria".

This term certainly has no scientific meaning! It has a cultural one, regrettably!

Is she aware that this term is in origin pure oppression?! It is straight from the Greek for womb!

---------------------------------------------------


JFK was murdered by the US government in 1963.
His brother, Bobby, was murdered by the US government in 1968.
Their sister, Rose Marie, was murdered by the US government in 1941 at the age of 23. 

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

To be clear

To be clear - I have nothing against people helping people.

Which is presumably what people wish to do.

However, for centuries "Psychiatry" has clearly done very much the opposite - and has hence nearly irreperably damaged a fundamental human endeavour - Medicine.

The first principle - traditionally, correctly and obviously of Medicine - is "FIRST DO NO HARM".


-----------------------------

A decent "psychiatrist" should not only avoid "hospitalising"/imprisoning his clients/patients/victims AT ALL COSTS etc.

This has been very much the case now for some time and is starting to be even more so.

They should also - I believe - start to have exactly the same attitude to the highly questionable so-called "Medication" involved as well.

Why should ANY doctor define himself by medication given???
Why should an eye doctor define himself by giving out ocular glasses???....

Exercise, peace and quiet, exposure to the countryside, periods of quiet escape/retreat are - I would say - far more important for people who are experiencing PROBLEMS IN LIVING.

I have nothing personally against any Psychiatrist. They are often as trapped in an ideology and an institution as anyone else. If I had studied Medicine I could easily have ended up choosing Psychiatry as an option in the belief that I would be helping people by doing so. All Psychiatrists have to have medical degrees.

We owe a great deal to Szasz for having the clarity of mind to point out at an early point of his own career that the Emperor has no clothes on at all and yet keeps "trying to put more on" so to speak.

Let's not be victims of sheer stupidity - often with entirely innocent beginnings - and let's try and make things better.


I sincerely hope so. And that we can go forward peacefully and in a spirit of deep forgiveness.

Love and best wishes,

The Sofa.

(By the way, I do not genuinely believe myself to be a Sofa. It is just a metaphor. Or something like that. OK? Great!)

---------------------------

----------------------------

Incidentally, an interesting exercise would be to replace the piece of language "mental illness" with the piece of language "problems in living" or something like it whenever one can.

It could be quite revealing.

[Similar to "replacing" or "translating" "Economics" with/as "Household Management" which is both revealing and quite hilarious.
E.G. Stephanie Flanders, Household Management Correspondent of the BBC. etc. etc.]

A fundamental issue of human rights.

"THE MAGNA CARTA, THE PETITION OF RIGHTS, AND
THE BILL OF RIGHTS ARE DOCUMENTS WHICH ARE
HELD IN VENERATION BY DEMOCRATS
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD."

NELSON MANDELA.

In the UK people of African origin have been massive victims of the crime against humanity
that is psychiatry.

The ideology of "mental illness" includes A CLEAR, FLAGRANT
AND TOTAL BREACH of an old English legal principle of
HABEAS CORPUS which has been a strong principle since
at least 1215 and Magna Carta.

Truly, truly wicked in our time.

This means "the body will be present" at a legal trial before detention by the state.

This was to prevent arbitrary detention by the state - and is a basis of human rights today.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the UK specifically "The Mental Health Act" of 1983/2008 is a serious crime against humanity in itself.

All personnel involved in enforcing it are obviously and objectively criminals.

They should be liable to arrest by UN forces - just as Nazis were after 1945 and the liberation of the Death Camps.

This act is an embarrassment to the UK and would not be acceptable elsewhere in Europe.

It is one of the things that makes me sympathise with the German Bishop who recently called our so-called "country" a "Third World" country.

The situation is worse in other countries - particularly in Africa.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Incidentally Magna Carta - did she die in vain :) etc.? - also guaranteed 
"freedom for the English [Catholic] Church" (from state and other interference). 
The Barons efforts were in vain here too - since about 300 years later the Church became the State and vice versa....... and so it remains today......]

"The Sanity Plea"?

Declaration of "Insanity", "Diagnosis", Incarceration, Poisoning - these seem to be our contemporary Ultimate Punishment.

A "fate worse than death" indeed - as millions of innocents know.

"Insanity" DOES NOT EXIST.

A mass murderer now uses the new-fangled "Sanity Plea" :) as a DEFENCE :) ????

Even if Breivik thought genuinely that all he slew were alien beings from outer space he would still be guilty of a crime.

Mistaken beliefs are not an illness nor an exoneration.

Extremely obvious, extremely simple, extremely correct.

I am ashamed that I have to emphasise something so obvious and so simple.

Yet I repeat - to be clear - it could not be clearer - 
Mistaken beliefs are not an illness nor an exoneration.

This is ridiculous farce.

-------------------------------

Is it now required of Breivik to convince the world that he is a "normal", "run-of-the-mill", "good old fashioned", sensible, healthy, right-wing extremist? :) ? Is that it?.....

-------------------------------

Incidentally - a comparison between Anders Breivik and Tony Blair may be enlightening and perhaps helpful.

-------------------------------

Breivik perhaps fits more into the pattern of Michael Ryan/Hungerford, Dunblane, Columbine etc. etc. = the pattern of a "beserker"/mass killing.

This too is NOT an illness or "insanity". No behavior or misbehavior is or can be an illness.

The struggles against Psychiatry is the struggle against Nazism

The struggle against Psychiatry is the struggle against Nazism.

Want to help secure the 1945 victory - still not fully won?...

And secure HUMAN RIGHTS as established in 1948. Churchill was one of the architects of them.

Stage one - to achieve them here in Churchill's home - is without doubt :-

 destroy the crime against humanity that is Psychiatry....

NEVER AGAIN!

This organisation had a Pastor Niemoller poem in its literature:


"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In terms of the mass murder - the first to be killed en masse were - I repeat - the disabled and "mentally ill".

And like Niemoller, they were Germans.

And what I am saying VERY CLEARLY - is that this persecution and harm and, yes, this murder is not something I am warning you all about happening again.

I am saying to you all that IT CONTINUES in England and elsewhere right this very second and it is called Psychiatry itself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the UK at least Africans in particular have been victims of the crime that is Psychiatry on a particluarly large scale.

I mean this entirely seriously.

These are serious crimes. Harming people is harming people. Crimes are crimes.

Crimes MUST be recognised as such for civilisation to continue and flourish.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The solution is REMOVE ALL COERCION from Psychiatry.
This needs to be done as soon as can be managed - across the whole world.

Coercion is harm and is violence.

Even if this is a big change - it is a change that must occur.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I disagree totally about "manic depression".

R.I.P. ZOE SCHWARZ - 1972-2000. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/dec/11/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth

With full and due respect to the writers, I have read this and I disagree with some of what is written in it.
I believe that there is no such thing as "manic depression"; and further that there is no such thing as mental illness.

From the actual words of the woman who eventually took her own life, you can I think see that it may be the case that at least an aspect of what upset the woman was her treatment by the mental health system, the role in life she was being forced to take on by the mental health system and her incarceration by the mental health system.

Pyschiatry is fundamentally a fraud and a crime.

The parents think that it was unawareness of the "illness" and its characteristics that prevented proper so-called "treatment" and help.
Could it not possibly be the belief that there was an illness at all, and what that belief entailed that was part of the problem?

----

"Bipolar affective disorder, as the ancient illness is now called, has been associated down the ages with originality and charisma, often with genius: Byron, Coleridge, Melville, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Strindberg, Spike Milligan, Louis Althusser, Otto Klemperer, Stephen Fry, Vivien Leigh, Kurt Cobain, Francis Ford Coppola...
The illness is now regarded as a genetic neurobiological brain disease that affects one in 100 people to some degree."

An "ancient illness"? Would malaria be called an "ancient illness"? What an odd phrase!
I don't know of any Ancient Greek or Latin texts that refer to "manic depression"....
How do we know that all these people had this so-called "disease"?
Have we examined all of their brains?
Case not proven.

[Even if it were possible to examine all the brains of all the above-mentioned people and they were all found to have the same "brain lesion "X"" how could that prove that everyone who had severe highs and lows had the "disease"?
.....

Behaviour can be surely entirely determined by the (normal) functioning of the cortex or upper brain and surely any behaviour can be "generated" by this part of the brain without disease being present. ]

The illness is now "regarded" as "a brain disease"?
Would lung cancer come to be "regarded" as a lung disease?
Lung cancer woud surely be proven to be a lung disease.
Again this is an odd word - "regarded" - to use. Either it's a brain disease or it isn't.
Surely you can't "regard" it as one until you know it is one.
"Regard" implies an opinion.
It affects 1 in 100 "to some degree" - either it affects them or it doesn't. Strange.
Also, in this extract it is called a "disorder", an "illness" and a "disease" - which is it?
All three?
Also Byron may have had "manic depression" but he didn't spend his life being forced to take bullshit drugs, in and out of pysch wards against his will, on benefits etc...
He probably would do if he was around today!

These points reveal that what is being discussed is a social construct not a proven disease.

.....

"So, brainwashed, we didn't think of manic depression when she punched her elder sister in a quarrel (Zoë was very strong) and, in another quarrel, bit through her younger brother's sweater and into his chest."

What does the above extract imply? That violence is a symptom of so-called "manic depression".
How can that possibly be the case when it has been said that manic depression means "highs and lows in mood"?
???
If she had been violent and not had severe ups and downs in mood what would have been blamed then?
Violence is not itself a mental illness. It's a behaviour.
Who is really being "brain-washed" here?
Where is the evidence for what is being said?

" ...a terrifying place... very difficult to describe, which makes it harder for others to understand. The stigma is hard, too. It's hard to imagine being out of it... you feel you've gone mad even when you're lucid. Don't know what to do with myself. What to think? Where to start? Cannot envisage improvement in the future. Everything is quite frightening."

Does this refer to imprisonment on a psychiatric ward?
Is the stigma referred to the stigma of being labelled mentally ill?

"I love you all but I can't live like this."

Like what exactly?
Does she mean she can't live the life of a psychiatric patient?
She may have been very depressed but is psychiatry giving her the right help for this?

"her treatable but incurable illness."
Is there really an illness?
Where is the evidence that she was suffering from an illness of any kind?

"I'm living behind a glass wall." She contemplated a future on medication. In her last diary entry, she wrote: " ...if I don't get better, I will most probably have to accept a more humble job and more humble living arrangements than I would like. But make the most of things: I can work my way up... have to accept that at 27 I am not 'set up' job/house/relationship-wise.

The lifestyle she is being forced into and that she finds hard to accept is one that is perhaps determined by the fact that she is in the "mental health system."

One of her friends said that it was her "pride" that killed her.
Is pride a "mental illness'?

In the suicide note that she wrote, amongst the first words are: "No one is to blame for my death."
May I boldly suggest that if anything was to blame for her death it was Psychiatry!------

All these things are just observations on the article and the story of Zoe.
They are just a view. I don't pretend that they are anything more than observations.
I am sorry if they offend. They are not meant to.
They are meant to question things that I think need questioning.

------

OK. It is one thing to say there are loads of creative people who suffer very severe mood swings and patterns of behaviour and mood that are very similar.
It is another thing to say "therefore they must all have a brain disease xyz and need drugs xyz"
when there is no evidence whatsoever for this.
It does not follow. Non sequitur.

------

"Bipolar disorder is not a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders...." Wikipedia, May 2008...

....

-----------------------------------

As it says on a website in Zoe's honour:

"Zoë was a star. She refused to live out her days as a mental invalid.
On 22 August 2000 she took her own life."

This is surely implying that she took her own life to avoid so-called "psychiatric treatment" rather than due to or as a "symptom" of an "illness". Sorry if that seems like an inappropriate comment but I feel it is fully warranted.

I was also born in 1972.
I have also been what I can only call a victim of psychiatry for at least two decades.
I can only say that it sometimes feels like a miracle that I am alive.

-----------------------------------

The mental health system is a trap!

And there is no escape without assistance.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I am sincerely sorry if anyone is offended by anything in this post. 
I do feel it is fully warranted on freedom of speech grounds.

"Anorexia Nervosa" DOES NOT AND CANNOT EXIST.

"Anorexia Nervosa" DOES NOT AND CANNOT EXIST.


IF all that is being observed is SELF-STARVATION then that is all that is occuring. There is NO illness.


Was Bobby Sands "DIAGNONSENSED" with "Anorexia Politica"?


------


This logic applies to all so-called "mental illnesses".


-------------------------------------


Szasz's insights apply to ALL so-called "mental illnesses". Even if you feel empowered by saying that you "have" "ADHD" - IF it simply does not exist in any way whatsoever then this reality cannot be changed.

NOTA BENE - "Sectioning"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/dec/09/day-mental-health-professionals

"Sectioning" under the UK "Mental Health" Act is:-

- the effective temporary destruction of a human being;
- a crime and;
- a crime against humanity.

The people involved in it are criminals.

It must be abolished as soon as possible.

There is simply no such thing as mental illness.

http://www.szasz.com/manifesto.html

Don't think it couldn't happen to you.
It could happen to ANYONE including YOU and it is a CRIME.
----------------------------------------------------

IT IS A CLEAR, FLAGRANT AND TOTAL BREACH of an old English legal principle of HABEAS CORPUS which has been a strong principle since at least 1215 and Magna Carta.

Truly truly wicked in our time.

This means "the body will be present" at a legal trial before detention by the state.

This was to prevent arbitrary detention by the state - and is a basis of human rights today.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"THE MAGNA CARTA, THE PETITION OF RIGHTS, AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS ARE DOCUMENTS WHICH ARE HELD IN VENERATION BY DEMOCRATS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD."

NELSON MANDELA.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Autism" [and/or/WTF "Asparagus Syndrom"] SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST.

"Manic Depression" SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/dec/11/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth

"Manic Depression" SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

"Autism" is PURE BULLSHIT.

"Autism is an extreme form of the male brain."

"ALI H" / Simon Baron Cohen.

"Autism is an extreme form of the female brain --
as well as being a steaming pile of facking
horse shit that exists IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER."

Citizen Sofa.

EVEN IF "Autism" existed - and of course it does not at all - Baron Cohen's statement is SILLY and OFFENSIVE as it implies that masculinity is by its nature self-absorpbtion.


Where to start? :)

 ..... Women take 3 hours to get ready in the bathroom for a trip to the end of the garden. It is an effort to get men to enter the bathroom for longer than 3 minutes! :D.....

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Schizophrenia" and "Autism" were both invented by EUGENE BLEULER - a criminal idiot, and neither of them exist in any way whatsoever.

This needs to be faced up to at some point.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Depressant Drugs"

Would so-called "Depressant Drugs" be any more ridiculous than "Anti-Depressants"?......

Some people think they can do anything to animals.

The RSPCA don't.

Psychiatrists do.
--------------------------


"Don't conform, won't conform, can't conform??

Then we will persecute you, poison you, incarcerate you, mutilate you, electrocute you." :

This is one possible interpretation of psychiatry's message to the world.

---------------------------

REMEMBER LIVES RUINED BY PSYCHIATRY.

Manic Depression DOES NOT EXIST.

Manic Depression DOES NOT EXIST.

NOR do BISEXUAL POLAR BEARS - BIPOLARS.

Questioning "Autism"/"Asparagus Syndrome".

Questioning "Autism"/"Asparagus Syndrome".

"Autism" DOES NOT EXIST.

The Holocaust and the "mentally ill".

THE HOLOCAUST AND THE "MENTALLY ILL".

Letter to Holocaust Memorial Day. 30th November 2005. 

Dear Holocaust Memorial Day,            
                                                                                               

I was just wanting to enquire whether there are any plans to highlight the plight of the so-called "mentally ill" during the Holocaust. If I am not mistaken (and please tell me if I am) the "mentally ill" were one of the first groups of people to be systematically murdered by the Nazis.

I would be very interested in knowing more about this. I do not believe this is sufficiently acknowledged and considered. I know that this is not necessarily part of a genocide against a particular people.

However, I believe that this is definitely a part of gaining understanding of the ideology behind the Holocaust, and is an important aspect of it. I believe it has lessons for today and is a sobering reminder of the importance of how we treat those we deem to be "mentally impaired" in some way. I personally think the way that the "mentally ill" are treated today is still problematic.                                                                                           

Best wishes,

"Citizen Sofa."

--------

Reply from Holocaust Memorial Day.

Dear Mr

Thank you for raising this important issue. The answer to your question is yes.

We are currently drafting our theme paper for HMD 2007. One section says the following: Those with disabilities were excluded from all opportunity to live within society. Victims of mental illness were segregated. Some were sterilised; others were murdered. Victims of disabilities, including congenital diseases, were similarly removed as a threat to the purity of the race, which was not only seen as being pure by Aryan descent, but ideally free of congenital disease.

Over 70,000 patients of mental hospitals and disabled people were murdered as a part of the T4 euthanasia programme. In Nazi terminology, 'euthanasia' was a euphemism for the systematic killing of institutionalized mentally and physically disabled patients. Starting in October 1939, disabled children were murdered by overdoses of medication or by starvation.

This programme was then extended to adult disabled patients living in institutions and Hitler signed a secret authorization to protect participating doctors and staff from prosecution. The secret operation was code-named T4, referring to the address (Tiergartenstrasse 4) of its coordinating office in Berlin. An unknown number of victims were also sterilised.

Doctors, nurses and other professions normally associated in care-giving participated in this process. The euthanasia programme instituted the use of gas chambers and crematoria for systematic murder.

On reflection, your email raises an important point and we need to ensure that we appropriately distinguish between people who are disabled and those with mental illnesses. We are in the process of putting together a group to take responsibility for some of our community developments. I will make sure that we approach Mind or a similar organisation to be a member.

Regards,

-----------

http://www.hmd.org.uk/

www.T4holocaust.com



------------

My Reply to Holocaust Memorial Day.

Dear Mr.

Many thanks for your reply.

I suppose that it is right therefore to say that the "mentally ill" and disabled were the first group of people to be systematically murdered.

I think awareness of this has relevance today considering the some of the attitudes that people have towards those who suffer mental distress.

For example, "The Sun"'s treatment of Frank Bruno. I also personally think that psychiatry is basically still in a pre-scientific state, and that strictly speaking there cannot be such a thing as a specifically "mental illness".

Furthermore, I would like to draw attention to something that was not written in Germany in 1939, but published in "The Guardian" in 2005: ""On the face of it, Darwinism would suggest that the genes predisposing to schizophrenia would eventually disappear from the gene pool," said Dr Nettle."

(In "Mental illness link to art and sex," article by Ian Sample, science correspondent.

Wednesday November 30, 2005. The Guardian.)

This comment should shock anyone who reads it. When one thinks about it, it is truly astonishing.

Firstly, this comment should refer to Social Darwinism, not Darwinism, which is quite a different thing.

Thus someone is contending that if "Social Darwinism" were true then there would be no "schizophrenics".

There are still "schizophrenics" because people have simply been given that label. That is the simple truth.

Social Darwinism is here blandly accepted as science, when it is not science but was a philosophy linked to Herbert Spencer, and not Darwinian science and was also a contributor to Nazi ideology.

In my personal view, the idea that we are already in some post-Holocaust ideal world is gravely mistaken. There are still aspects of contemporary thinking and of our socio-economic system that are dehumanising and barbaric in a similar way to the Nazis' system.

This is itself related to the increase in so-called "mental illness" that we are seeing and will continue to see according to the UN.

I include some letters that I have written below.

Thanks again for your reply and I am very pleased to know that you are taking action on this question.

Yours faithfully,

-------------------------

Those designated as "mentally ill" who were murdered by the Nazis were doubly victims - victims of non-scientific psychiatry and victims of the Nazis.

It also needs to be mentioned that these people, amongst the first victims of The Holocaust, were also (non-Jewish) Germans.

To echo Goldhagen (author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners") - in a different way -

"Do not say that they were Nazis; they were Germans, Germans, Germans."

-----------------------------------

http://www.t4holocaust.com/

It should be noted that the technique of gassing people in the back of vans was first used on the mentally ill and disabled.

A "holocaust" is a term for any great slaughter;
a "GENOCIDE" - and there have been many in human history - is about the mass murder of a particular group of humans.

Web link to wiki article on genocide: GENOCIDE

-------------------------

Letter to The Guardian.

Dear Sir,

Re: "On the face of it, Darwinism would suggest that the genes predisposing to schizophrenia would eventually disappear from the gene pool", said Dr Nettle.

(In "Mental illness link to art and sex", Ian Sample, science correspondent. Wednesday, November 30, 2005. The Guardian.)

This comment is accepted as "scientific" fair comment in 2005.

It should shock anyone who reads it.

Amazingly, it was not written in Nazi Germany but in England in 2005.

The comment should refer to "Social Darwinism" not Darwinism.

"Social Darwinism" was part of Nazi ideology. I thought we defeated the Nazis in 1945.

I do not expect their views to be peddled in England in 2005 by The Guardian of all people.

This comment is in my view both utter nonsense and morally wrong.

So-called "schizophrenics" are as capable as anyone of having children and have as much right to.

Besides, the real reason so-called "schizophrenia" does not "disappear" is that powerful people continue to give powerless people this label.

There are no genes predisposing to "schizophrenia" because it does not exist.

A condition has been invented and then people are trying to find evidence for it. This is philosophically and scientifically absurd.

Well I've always thought that capitalism is almost as bad as fascism anyway. After all capitalism can entail a belief in Social Darwinism, competition, survival of the fittest - all things believed in by the Nazis - all in my view morally unacceptable and unsustainable.

All the best.


-----------------------------

Another ranting letter to The Guardian.

Dear Sir,

The "research" reported upon in today's paper regarding "mental illness" and creativity is evidence of how far psychology as a science has to go.

There is quite simply no such thing as "schizophrenia". There is no test for it, and no definition of it. It is just a descriptive catch-all label.

"Though "schizophrenia" is only a concept and a methodological convenience, most psychiatrists treat schizophrenia as if it were a well-defined illness"
(Eia Assen, 1986).

It is nothing of the kind. It quite simply does not exist as a distinct illness of any kind.

To talk of a "mental illness" is apart from anything else a logical and semantic error. The notion of a person having a "mental illness" is scientifically false. It rationalises the popular belief that so-called "psychiatric conditions" are basically similar to bodily diseases, and that people suffering mental distress have no power.

This "research" also overlooks the fact that all humans are by nature creative. There is no point in trying to overcome the collosal problem that we face with mental distress, until we have the correct scientific approach to this phenomenon. In some respects we are still "in the Middle Ages" scientifically when it comes to clinical psychology and psychiatry.

Psychiatry is still pre-scientific.
The U.S. American William James - a "founding father" of modern psychology -  said "psychology is not a science, it is the hope of a science."
We still need such humility.

Your faithfully,

------------

And another!

Dear Sir,

Re: "On the face of it, Darwinism would suggest that the genes predisposing to schizophrenia would eventually disappear from the gene pool," said Dr Nettle.

"Mental illness link to art and sex", Ian Sample, science correspondent.

Wednesday November 30, 2005. The Guardian.

Biological Darwinism would not suggest this, since there are no genes predisposing to "schizophrenia" because it does not exist.
Social Darwinism, in complete error, may suggest that "schizophrenia" could "die out."

Darwin did not popularise the phrase "survival of the fittest", though he did use it.

I have read that the phrase may have been coined by Spenser.

It was indeed popularised and applied to human social relations by Herbert Spencer.

Social Darwinism is clearly wrong. The supposedly socially "fittest" members of the human species do not always prosper and survive. And it's time this was taken on board.

For example, the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust clearly did not perish because their Nazi executioners were socially "fitter" than them in some way.

Social Darwinism is rampantly widespread in our culture and needs to be challenged in my view. Not least because it is profoundly mistaken.

I am disgusted by the parlous state of our culture that comments like this pass for intelligent analysis when they are obviously nonsense, and fascist nonsense at that!

Yours faithfully,

------

"Psychology is not a science, it is the hope of a science," the American philosopher William James, one of the "founding fathers" of modern psychology.

(One implication of this is that in Psychology as in any "social or human science" it is we ourselves that we are studying - hence we should be wary of what we definitively conclude.)

If only some people had the same humility about our knowledge of the mind today I think the world might be a saner - as in healthier - place, and we would make more progress.

There is no such thing as mental illness.

------------------------

A manifesto:

www.szasz.com/manifesto.html

Links:

www.szasz.com/

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Interesting link about so-called "mental illness":

http://www.idiom.com/~drjohn/review.html

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Remember lives ruined by psychiatry !

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[Note on the term "The Holocaust".

Conventionally it means the genocide against the Jews by the Nazis.

As does the Hebrew term "Shoah" - a possibly unique incidence of Genocide - which gave birth - sadly - to the term in 1948.

I personally think that the term "The Holocaust" should also refer to all the systematic murder perpetrated by the Nazis.

"Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' systematic murder of millions of people in other groups." 
Wikipedia.
]

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The Mass Murder that "Psychiatry" intrinsically represents continues all over the world. Until it is ended as a so-called Medicial Discipline.

This mass murder continues.

An innocent mass murder is still a mass murder.