Bibliography

  • "The Myth of Mental Illness", Thomas Szasz, 1961.
  • "The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement", Thomas Szasz, 1970.
  • "Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 1976.
  • "Anti-Freud - Karl Kraus' Criticisms of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 1976.
  • "The Theology of Medicine", Thomas Szasz, 1977.
  • "The Myth of Psychotherapy", Thomas Szasz, 1978.
  • "Insanity - the Idea and its Consequences", Thomas Szasz, 1987.
  • "Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market", Thomas Szasz, 1992.
  • "The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality and Neuroscience", Thomas Szasz, 1996.
  • "Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide", Thomas Szasz, 1999.
  • "Faith in Freedom", Thomas Szasz, 2004
  • "The Medicalisation of Everyday Life", Essays by Thomas Szasz, 2007.
  • "Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 2007.
  • "Psychiatry: the Science of Lies", Thomas Szasz, 2008.
  • "Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared", Thomas Szasz, 2009.
  • "Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine", Thomas Szasz, 2011.
  • "Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good", James Davies, 2013.

"Recovery and Well-Being Plan"?

I was given a "Recovery and Well-being Plan" - as we all were.

How many of the scowls that this pamphlet was greeted with were due to the fact that there is NO illness - hence NOTHING to recover from???
- except the continuing attempt to destroy our WELL-BEING throo DEADENING INCARCERATION and POISONING.

Fucking astounding stupidity!

Just give us what is supposed to be our normal birthright - our freedom! We can't do anything without that anyway!....

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Someone said to me:
"So you think you are some kind of "miscarriage of psychiatric justice" then?"
You could here a slight "smiley man" in their voice. :)

I said "Nice one! Well yeah! 
But the point is - there is no such thing as Psychiatric justice!
In fact Psychiatry is one big massive injustice!"......

In fact being declared "mentally ill" nowadays could be thought of as a bit like the diametric opposite of winning the lottery. Equally random but utter and total bad luck.
......

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Just got out of Colditz !

Just a brief note regarding 5th - and hopefully final - IMPRISONMENT (objectively speaking) in a "Pysch Ward"; more like a "holding pen" really - at least the one I was on.

I am by the way in no way the only victim of all this bullshit who is to say the least DISSATISFIED with what is still occurring.

The old wards I was on 10 years ago were not full of people who were very familiar with real prisons as many on them are now. I don't mean to namedrop but HMP Pentonville and HMP Brixton spring to mind. Many prisons are indeed now FAR more humane than "Psych Wards".

As I said to the staff - "Did you join the Medical Profession to be Jailors?"

Also - this is echoed in the way that the new hospital is more like a holding pen and less like a recuperative space.

It is the same "double whammy" for us victims - MEDICALISATION and also QUASI-CRIMINALISATION of something that SIMPLY DOES NOT AND CANNOT EXIST.

Then on top of this you are expected to feel positive! :)

I am speaking for many people here.

At least they make the effort to give everyone the chance to have something like proper exercise....

The emphasis is now rightly on getting people out of the place as quickly as feasible.
The question of course - as it always was - is why do we have these prisons at all?

Why did the Allied Soldiers bother fighting and dying if we don't even have human rights in England?

Yesterday, I had to  listen to a fully grown man bellowing very loudly below me for half an hour or more:
 "Let me go home! I have been here for 2 bloody weeks! I just want to go home! To do what I want and have the food I want! Oh please let me go home! Please!". Repetitively - over and over again.
He sounded very infantilised by his confinement.
If you treat people like infants they can behave like infants.
They should frankly just let him go home!  The poor man was on a ward called "Picasso Ward".

The wards at the local psychiatric hospital are all named after visual artists. Would they name prisons after visual artists?

Hepworth, Moore, Monet, Turner, Ogura, Morris, Picasso.....
Are they saying all visual artists are "insane"??!
Is this an unintended comment on English boorishness regarding visual art??!
Would they name them after other kinds of artist..... or even philosophers?...!...


I have to think of it as some kind of monastery to keep me in a reasonable frame of mind regarding the place.
The piece of terminology "ward" does have its origins in monasticism. European monasticism was the driving force of European civilisation for 1000 years or so and England was an important centre of it.
Barking Abbey was just down the road - Barley Lane being named after the last Abbess, Dorothy Barley (Women were especially important at Barking Abbey as I discovered in an amazing history book entitled "Essex Girls" by Karen Bowman).

I was on "Turner Ward" myself. With loads of really lovely people. Three old friends from the system were in there when I got there. One has been in the "Mentalism" system since the 1980s. Another since the early 90s. He has also been hit by a large "hummer" car. He has no car and bikes everywhere. His legs were badly injured. He was in pain and needed to be in a conventional hospital really. But as he was already in the mental system - this was where he ended up. Another since the late 90s. I was shocked to see all three - to be honest! It is a self-replicating system! And you can get stuck in it... and end up getting stuck in the door!!
A chap who was on there last Christmas is still lingering there and is now quite obese - he wasn't at all when I last saw him.

Some now suffer obesity and diabetes from years of pointless toxic dogshit medication and years of idleness due to this criminal system.

I add that "Turner" officially refers to the proto-Impressionist stormy weather painter J.M.W.; and not to Tina - tho she is also of course a bit of a crazy artiste!

The whole place should be sub-titled "CHRIS OFILI HOSPITAL" - in honour of the fact that Psychiatry is shit.
This prize-winning artist paints using elephant dung.



About Me

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I am an amateur FILOSOFER. (I am not really a sofa). I dropped out of Cambridge University though I got an "S" grade in the entrance examination. I eventually received a 1st class Bachelors degree elsewhere. I received A.H.R.B. funding to pursue postgraduate study, but did not do so. Please enjoy my blogs. To parafrase Orwell, I am trying to make political blogging into an art. My intellectual heroes are Kenan Malik, Thomas Szasz and Noam Chomsky. I have made some mistakes in my life - and I would like to apologize wholeheartedly and from the depths of my cushions for any problems I may have caused and may be causing for anyone anywhere.