Author Topic: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill  (Read 1550 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill
« on: December 02, 2015, 11:08:37 pm »
It has been my experience that many anti-authoritarians labeled with psychiatric diagnoses usually don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities.

In every generation there will be authoritarians and anti-authoritarians. While it is unusual in American history for anti-authoritarians to take the kind of effective action that inspires others to successfully revolt, every once in a while a Tom Paine, Crazy Horse, or Malcolm X come along. So authoritarians financially marginalize those who buck the system, they criminalize anti-authoritarianism, they psychopathologize anti-authoritarians, and they market drugs for their “cure.”

What better way to maintain the status quo than to view anger, anxiety, and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than simply reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society.

 Authoritarians, by definition, demand unquestioning obedience, and so any resistance to their diagnosis and treatment created enormous anxiety for authoritarian mental health professionals; and professionals, feeling out of control, labeled them “noncompliant with treatment,” increased the severity of their diagnosis, and jacked up their medications. This was enraging for these anti-authoritarians, sometimes so much so that they reacted in ways that made them appear even more frightening to their families.


Today I witnessed how certain professionals in the mental health "treatment" system are quick to threaten you with being put in a cage simply for a defiant attitude.  It is not enough to have clean urines.  Some authorities want to control one's attitude as well.

I will continue to resist psychiatric medication.  I don't like the rope I am hanging from. 

I've been thrown on the front lines of this battle with authorities again ... forever fighting systematic stupidity and the sick pleasure the conventional get from having the unconventional at their mercy.

Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill by Bruce Levine:

Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?

Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized; but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will cause them existential death.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2015, 11:22:09 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter


Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2015, 06:59:36 pm »
I just have to see things in perspective:  I am in a "semi-institutionalized" situation, one of the many poor slobs caught in the net of "adult supervision" ...

Kicking and screaming is not the way to respond to such a situation.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2015, 07:55:30 am »
Who are the enemies of most human beings? 

We don't only have "criminal records" but "psychiatric records".

I wonder if I will be compelled to become some kind of activist in the fight against psychiatric oppression.  How blind are the professionals to the "police role" they are playing?

Our "attitudes" are policed.   >:(

The Fight Against Psychiatric Oppression

This Goddamn Perfect Mother Fuuckiing Day ... there's freedom, and there's the ILLUSION of freedom ... I want to have the freedom to acknowledge that I am not free.  This must be why, in my imagination, I am caught in an existentialist science-fiction dystopian philosophical horror. 

Will I exchange a walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?

What role am I playing in Bizarroland, USA?  I forgot my lines.

While I take the stance of Zappfe as far as zero population growth and voluntary extinction goes, while I am still a living breathing body, there is still the reality of being at the mercy of the mental health industrial complex to deal with.  My current strategy has been to simply fight for my own mind.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2022, 06:47:24 am by [Miserablist] Mike Woods »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
    Psychiatry is a profoundly political enterprise. The way we understand the problems we now refer to as “mental disorders” is strongly influenced by the social and political requirements to neutralize distress and manage disturbing behavior.

— Joanna Moncrieff, M.D., British Psychiatrist


    The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.


— Arnold Seymour Relman (1923 -2014), former Harvard professor of Medicine and Editor-in-Chief, New England Medical Journal


   
   It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine

— Dr. Marcia Angell


    There is no such things as a spontaneous anxiety or endogenous depression. If a patient is anxious, there is something to be scared of.  If a patient is depressed, there is something to be depressed about.  If it is not in consciousness, then it is unconscious.  If it is not in the present, then it is in the past and something in the present symbolizes it.


— Bert Karon, Ph.D.
_______________________________________________________________________
Some research available through Library Genesis: Scientific Articles:

The Palgrave Handbook of Adult Mental Health || Introduction: The Social Construction of Normality and Pathology

(Thanks to Ibra for pointing out to me the Scientific Articles flag.)
« Last Edit: August 26, 2018, 04:34:23 pm by Henry the Undeceived »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Mental Illness as Rebellion Against Society
« Reply #4 on: December 29, 2018, 02:23:20 am »
In Chapter 26, The Myth of Illness, the author of 33 Myths of the System mentions Living in America will drive you insane - literally by Bruce Levine, the author of Commonsense Rebellion who someone with AKA "purple?" from whywork.org forum introduced me to way back when.


Quote from: Bruce Levine
Quote from: Lewis Mumford
The most deadly criticism one could make of modern civilization is that apart from its man-made crises and catastrophes, is not humanly interesting. . . . In the end, such a civilization can produce only a mass man: incapable of spontaneous, self-directed activities: at best patient, docile, disciplined to monotonous work to an almost pathetic degree. . . . Ultimately such a society produces only two groups of men: the conditioners and the conditioned, the active and passive barbarians.  (Lewis Mumford  1951)

Once it was routine for many respected social critics such as Lewis Mumford and Erich Fromm to express concern about the impact of modern civilization on our mental health. But today the idea that the mental illness epidemic is also being caused by a peculiar rebellion against a dehumanizing society has been, for the most part, removed from the mainstream map. When a societal problem grows to become all encompassing, we often no longer even notice it.


And at the very end, something quite blunt and to the point.  It was a relief to read:

Quote from: Bruce Levine
The reality is that with enough helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation, and dehumanization, we rebel and refuse to comply. Some of us rebel by becoming inattentive. Others become aggressive. In large numbers we eat, drink and **** too much. Still others become addicted to drugs, illicit and prescription. Millions work slavishly at dissatisfying jobs, become depressed and passive aggressive, while no small number of us can’t cut it and become homeless and appear crazy. Feeling misunderstood and uncared about, millions of us ultimately rebel against societal demands, however, given our wherewithal, our rebellions are often passive and disorganized, and routinely futile and self-destructive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For some Americans, no doubt, the conscious goal is to get classified as mentally disabled so as to receive disability payments (averaging $700 to 1,400 per month). But isn’t that too a withdrawal of cooperation with society and a rebellion of sorts, based on the judgment that this is the best paying and least miserable financial option?

A withdrawal of cooperation with society and a rebellion of sorts?   Yes, I can see that it has been, in my case, very much in the spirit of rebellion which I passively accepted the diagnosis of "bipolar disorder".   In a real way, this is a kind of defiance.   :P



Remember that many of those doing the diagnosing and the "treating" of so-called mental illness, mood disorders, behavioral problems, etc, may be some of the most compliant, servile, and authority worshipping members of society.


From a previously cited article:


Quote from: Bruce Levine
Why Mental Health Professionals Diagnose Anti-Authoritarians with Mental Illness


Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world — a diagnosable one.

I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.

"these professionals" = systemoids = gorts ?
« Last Edit: December 29, 2018, 02:45:32 am by Kaspar the Jaded »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

raul

  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 3106
Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill
« Reply #5 on: December 29, 2018, 06:57:45 pm »
Hentrich,

Would a 100 hundred percent lazy take care of his mother the way you are doing now?

No one is lazy most of the time. I was taught that work, family and motherland were supreme values. Total buuulllshiiit. Rules and discipline had to be respected at all times.Crraaapp. Schools and factories/offices/institutions are both sides of the same coin. Schools are for the little slaves and the others are for the adult slaves. And last but not least the cemetery is for the dead slaves.

I once saw a picture where a Soviet worker was in a mine working a kind of drill. The picture had these words: Do what you love. Stakhanov. I agree. Let us love our chains.

I remember those movies about the concentration camps, specially Auschwitz, where the slogan was “Work Shall Make You Free.” Yes, they became free by being burned in the crematoriums and ending up as ashes. But now things are a little different. Millions of human beings condemned to automatic, and destructive jobs. What an accomplishment!

General Alfredo Stroessner who ruled this country from 1954 to 1989  was the master and the others were slaves. Of course we were temporary slaves while in prison most of the inmates were permanent. But at school and outside of the school we were told that the general was The Benefactor, The First Sportsman, and The Second Rebuilder of the Nation and Honorary President of the Colorado Party (the ruling party here).

Years ago they told me that the general went to Japan in the 1970s and saw how the Japanese worked day and night there. He was much impressed and so he came back with the idea that Paraguayans must be productive like those from the Rising Sun. Result: he failed and I am glad he failed at that time.

Yes, Hentrich, life is not a picnic and it will never be. Here from time to time I listen to the reporters, when they talk about the huge money soccer players make here. These players are treated like little gods or heroes for just kicking a ball. There is a millionaire industry behind soccer. This is nothing new.

Primary and secondary school teachers make little money every month. But these same teachers, who are soccer fans, do not think this is an insult. These professional soccer players give the children the illusion that they too can become famous and supermen one day. And the sad thing is that many of these players are punished for taking medication to boost their physical performance.

So keep studying math and programming.

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Philosophy and Medicine
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2021, 12:22:51 pm »
This one I found while exploring "phenomenological realism" : The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and their Cure: Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Vol. 1: Foundations by Josef Seifert.

Medicine suffers from philosophical diseases of different degrees of gravity if its theory and practice are based on errors about its proper ends. The cure from the life-threatening philosophical diseases of medicine lies in a critique of philosophical mistakes that influence the theory and practice of medicine and in an understanding and practical implementation of those ethically relevant goods that constitute its true ends. At a time when these goods are by no means universally recognized or embodied in laws of medicine, some basic philosophical understanding of them and of the foundations of medical ethics is urgently required. The purpose of this volume is to provide this largely neglected part of general and medical education.


Direct link to download
« Last Edit: October 14, 2021, 03:13:41 pm by Creepy Sleepy »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
This is not a drill
« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2021, 06:53:52 am »
It’s Happening Now But People Don’t See It - Roger Waters on Challenging Authority

Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Quote
Quote from: Bruce Levine

    Why Mental Health Professionals Diagnose Anti-Authoritarians with Mental Illness


    Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world — a diagnosable one.

    I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.


"these professionals" = systemoids = gorts ?

Maybe the term, systemoids, should replace the term "gorts" so as to liberate this concept from "gort-busters" ... systemoids ?  Degenerates in charge?
« Last Edit: March 29, 2022, 10:35:19 am by [Miserablist] Mike Woods »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~