Worth dying for

[Mr. Tea]

experiments were conducted where people could be made to appear schizophrenic to professional psychiatrists (and remember Laing was very much opposed to psychiatrists having the power to decide who was crazy) by putting them in situations where they were given contradictory instructions and information about a given situation.

 

[noel emits]

Poor HAL

 

[gek-opel]

Fascinating and chilling those experiments.

RD Laing was big on this - that mental illness could be seen as socio-structural - experiments were conducted where people could be made to appear schizophrenic to professional psychiatrists (and remember Laing was very much opposed to psychiatrists having the power to decide who was crazy) by putting them in situations where they were given contradictory instructions and information about a given situation.

Psychiatrists R.D. Laing, Theodore Lidz, Silvano Arieti and others argued that schizophrenia could be understood as an injury to the inner self inflicted by psychologically invasive "schizophrenogenic" parents, or as a healthy attempt to cope with a sick society. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz argues that "mental illness" is an inherently incoherent combination of a medical and a psychological concept, but popular because it legitimizes the use of psychiatric force to control and limit deviance from societal norms. Adherents of this view referred to "the myth of mental illness" after Szasz's controversial book of that name.

Madness is rare in individuals and commonplace in groups.

Im with the anti-psychiatrists on this one: these are just labels used to control people with beliefs, attitudes and behaviours which are deemed threatening to society.

 

[noel emits]

Also Sociopathy is hardly inately resistant to Capital. Indeed it sits there very well indeed (although it need not do so of course).

No, and yes. But it could definitely be seen as a resistance to being 'oedipalised' by just not giving a shit, opting out of the emotional hierarchy / social matrix whilst playing it for all it's worth. Not sure I agree with that though. I do get the impression that it is more like a congenital brain condition.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Im with the anti-psychiatrists on this one: these are just labels used to control people with beliefs, attitudes and behaviours which are deemed threatening to society.

Well they can be threatening to themselves, too. And I'm a part of society myself, and I'd rather be protected from people who irrationally want to do me harm (at least someone who wants to rationally do me harm might do so in a predictble way, that I can try to avoid).
That said, I think the way we treat people with these kinds of disorders is very far from ideal a lot of the time.

 

[nomadologist]

All of these points are really interesting... go for a walk to Natural Foods and come back with no idea where to start...

Genghis Khan was being called a proto-capitalist in the misinterpreted "pro-capitalist" D&G sense where people believe capitalism is a system that tends toward disorder and like this idea. This could start a whole new superlong argument though so I'll wait on it.

I'm with the anti-psychiatrists in that I think that "mental illness" and "pathology" are not the self-same thing. I think certain mental illnesses lead to less pathological states of mind (or states of being) than the average or person whose life aligns with normativity perfectly. On the other hand, the problem with mental illness, and the reason I believe studying it and treating it is important, is more about the danger the suicidally depressed or mentally ill pose to themselves (rather than society).

 

[Mr. Tea]

Sure, the risk of self-harm is a huge argument in favour of some kind of intervention when people suffer from certain kinds of mental illness, and like it or not there are some (a small minority, I know) who pose a severe threat to other people.

 

[Gavin]

This anti-psychiatry stuff is pretty interesting... any book recs for Laing and others? I've got Foucault's Madness and Civilization (not sure if that counts).

 

[Gavin]

Sure, the risk of self-harm is a huge argument in favour of some kind of intervention when people suffer from certain kinds of mental illness, and like it or not there are some (a small minority, I know) who pose a severe threat to other people.

To be human is to be a threat to others.

Edit: Sorry that just popped out.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There's always Dianetics.

 

[Mr. Tea]

To be human is to be a threat to others.

Some of whom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stone_(Russell_murder_case)
...are more of a threat than others:

. (for the dubious benefit of USsensians)

SHIT, I got them the wrong way round. Ah well, time I had some dinner I think.

 

[Gavin]

I am actually sympathetic to Scientologist attacks on psychiatry (if not much else)... Quite interesting to watch all the hysterical criticism thrown at Tom Cruise when he dissed it.

 

[noel emits]

Mr. Tea, please allow the Nu-Ravers.

 

[nomadologist]

Ehh, I don't know, it wasn't that Tom Cruise objected to the misuse of pharmaceuticals or the abuses of big pharma as an industry, he personally attacked women who had taken SSRIs for post-partum depression, which is a particularly lethal and potentially damaging disease. I think women, who already get enough shit when it comes to the mythology surrounding and fetishization of motherhood, weren't about to let Dr. Cruise tell them they were bad parents because they made the decision to medicate their severe depression so they could better care for their infants.

Also, he literally tried to make a connection between pharmaceuticals and Nazism, and here's how the argument went--and I am not making this up--

Adderall is bad because it's named for Adolph Hitler (yes, this is what he claimed). Yes, Adolph Hitler. Because there's an "a" and a "d" at the beginning!! Not because there are Greek origins for the brand name. Nope!

And it's not like the first psychoanalysts were Jews or anything! How silly of people to refuse to acknowledge the origin of psychoanalysis in Nazism!

 

[noel emits]

This anti-psychiatry stuff is pretty interesting... any book recs for Laing and others? I've got Foucault's Madness and Civilization (not sure if that counts).

I think it's "The Divided Self" and a biography (The Crucible Of Experience) that I read - was a while ago and I'm not sure how key these are to this discussion, it was just what I could find in the library when I got interested in that stuff.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Mr. Tea, please allow the Nu-Ravers.

Shit, you're not wrong! That outfit'd go down a storm at Bang Face...

 

[Gavin]

Ehh, I don't know, it wasn't that Tom Cruise objected to the misuse of pharmaceuticals or the abuses of big pharma as an industry, he personally attacked women who had taken SSRIs for post-partum depression, which is a particularly lethal and potentially damaging disease. I think women, who already get enough shit when it comes to the mythology surrounding and fetishization of motherhood, weren't about to let Dr. Cruise tell them they were bad parents because they made the decision to medicate their severe depression so they could better care for their infants.

Also, he literally tried to make a connection between pharmaceuticals and Nazism, and here's how the argument went--and I am not making this up--

Adderall is bad because it's named for Adolph Hitler (yes, this is what he claimed). Yes, Adolph Hitler. Because there's an "a" and a "d" at the beginning!! Not because there are Greek origins for the brand name. Nope!

And it's not like the first psychoanalysts were Jews or anything! How silly of people to refuse to acknowledge the origin of psychoanalysis in Nazism!

Hah, did not know that about Adderall... Tom Cruise strikes me as not very bright or articulate in general... Still, his comments seemed to strike a nerve harder than his words actually deserved. Certainly very little criticism of pharmaceuticals in the corporate media sphere.

[Actually I often wonder how many celebrities are on prescription uppers -- all of them? Maybe why teen pop stars suffer from exhaustion all the time?]

Is post-partum depression related to motherhood fetishization?

 

[nomadologist]

I think it's "The Divided Self" and a biography (The Crucible Of Experience) that I read - was a while ago and I'm not sure how key these are to this discussion, it was just what I could find in the library when I got interested in that stuff.

Well, what's weird about this--and I'm not entirely unsympathetic to Laing from what I'm understanding so far, I'd actually be interested in reading more--is that his definition of schizophrenia seems outdated at best. Schizophrenia is not split personality disorder, it's a disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations.

 

[noel emits]

Well, what's weird about this--and I'm not entirely unsympathetic to Laing from what I'm understanding so far, I'd actually be interested in reading more--is that his definition of schizophrenia seems outdated at best. Schizophrenia is not split personality disorder, it's a disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations.

Well it's an old book...but that's absolutely not what he means by 'The Divided Self', obviously he has a very good idea of how schizophrenia manifests.

One thing that he and his colleagues are famous for is the instituting of a residential treatment centre for people experiencing schizophrenic and psychotic episodes. It was freeform and non authoritarian and sought to provide a safe environment for patient to go through their 'process'. They were encouraged to freely express and get involved in art creation and music and so on. For a while it was very effective and they had non-remission rates that were vastly in excess of the norm for psychiatric treatment of these disorders.

I think something went wrong at one point - someone got hurt, and this provided enough ammunition for their many (you can imagine) opponents to get their practice discredited.

I'll have to check on the exact details.

They often spoke of this process taking 40 days and 40 nights. Sounds like I'm romanticising the whole business a bit - I just think it's a shame how progressive endeavors like this come up against the blinkered self interest of the establishment. Same thing with Reich.

 

[nomadologist]

Is post-partum depression related to motherhood fetishization?

Very much. Post-partum depression was also a hot-button issue at the time, because new research had just emerged that indicated that untreated post-partum depression in mothers made their own children several times more likely to suffer from depression and other mental illnesses down the road.

It's related to the fetishization of motherhood because post-partum depression was barely acknowledged by the medical community until recently, let alone the average person. Motherhood is SOO fulfilling to women, you see--it's the ENTIRE POINT of their existence, it's all women dream about from the time they're little girls (just like their wedding day! second only to wanting to be a mother)--it is so "natural" and consists of everything that should make women happy, that't there's NO WAY a new mother could be depressed. It's just not possible. Once women pop out a kid, all their wildest dreams have come true.

Oh yes, and they also stop wanting to have sex, because at that point they're so entirely devoted to their children that they cease to be sexual creatures. That and because moms can't have sexual urges, it's against the law of boyhood logic.