rigorousintuition.ca

Oops. Sorry, Bruce Dazzling. No offense intended.

Bruce Dazzling wrote:

Bruce Levine:

Those comfortably atop societal hierarchies have difficulty recognizing that many American institutions promote helplessness, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation, alienation, and dehumanization for those not at the top. One-size-fits-all schools, the corporate workplace, government bureaucracies, and other giant, impersonal institutions routinely promote manipulative relationships rather than respectful ones, machine efficiency rather than human pride, authoritarian hierarchies rather than participatory democracy, disconnectedness rather than community, and helplessness rather than empowerment.

Yes!

By fucking god, YES!

As a general statement, I got no argument with any part of the above.

However, psychiatrists are not, in the present, "comfortably atop societal hierarchies." They weren't really in 1955 either, but Fromm was totally right to critique psychoanalysis as then practiced in those terms. It was absolutely regarded as the most advanced and "scientific" intellectual model for thinking about individual behaviors as "healthy" or "sick" at the time. And classical Freudian analysis famously has some very singular and (again) 19th-century notions on that score. Most notably wrt homosexuality, female sexuality, and childhood sexuality. Additionally, the imperative of social conformity really was a crushing and oppressive force at that time in a broad-based and culture-wide issue-of-the-day kind of a way, to which objections -- The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, for example -- should have been and were quite rightly raised from a number of pertinent perspectives, of which Fromm's was one.

It's an issue now, too, of course. But it hardly helps to address it as if psychiatry was the primary driver or enforcer of the status quo. Because it's not. Not only do most people have no contact with it in practice, most people don't even know what it is. And that ADHD truism about how the bold and beautiful independent spirit of childhood is being pathologized and treated with drugs bears closer examination too, btw. A very grave disservice is certainly being done to many kids there, I'd say. But that's not what it is.

There's still a very small diehard cadre of classical analysts in the field, but they're not very numerous or influential anymore. Just btw.

compared2what? wrote:I guess that if anyone feels a truly urgent and burning need to know on what grounds I base that judgment, I'll share them. But otherwise, I'd rather just take a pass, honestly.

Okay, I won't call you on that and will help beat away anyone who does, if you answer the posts written in direct response to yours.

C2w, my primary concern is not specifically with Bruce Levine's blog post on Scientology' & Psychiatry in relation to the range of criticism that does indeed exist.

Rather it is with the broader points that his blog post raises. You repeatedly conflate all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and its fronts and I know you know better than that.

There are a lot of groups and individuals that you unfairly smear with this sort of broad brushstroke argument, and I have named them to you several times before but you persist with your conflation. It's as if the Mad Liberation Movement does not exist, neither Mad Pride, nor the many writers and social critics not part of Scientology who do express criticism of psychophamaceuticals.

I can't tell whether you ignore what to me is legitimate dissent from the Psychiatric Orthodoxy due to a personal blind spot and/or as rhetorical device.

Either way, I quite honestly think you can do much better than that in articulating your own position wrt psychopharmaceuticals.


Sincerely and with genuine good will, as I think you can be a truly awesome thinker and writer,

A.D.

AD, I think I may have addressed some of your concerns in my elaboration of the post above. Hold on one moment, okay?

I'll be back on edit.

compared2what? wrote:However, psychiatrists are not, in the present, "comfortably atop societal hierarchies."

Cops aren't either. You know well enough that's not an insulation from critique of the social role a profession or many of its practitioners might play.

.

American Dream wrote:C2w, my primary concern is not specifically with Bruce Levine's blog post on Scientology' & Psychiatry in relation to the range of criticism that does indeed exist.

Rather it is with the broader points that his blog post raises. You repeatedly conflate all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and its fronts and I know you know better than that.

No, I really do not. I've said (twice, once on this thread and once on a thread about, IIRC, suicides in the military) that virtually all of the standard, party-line popular criticisms of psychopharmaceutical medications were originated by people on the CCHR payroll. Which isn't, like, just some random thing I like to say once every year and a half or so for the sheer pleasure of it. It's a thoroughly considered statement based on the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. Which would, kind of obviously, be very burdensome to present in full, with all "i"'s dotted and all "t"'s crossed.

Which is why I don't usually make it. It's rhetorically unfair. In any event. If you can find any instances of my having repeatedly conflated all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and it fronts -- as opposed either to arguing my position on the merits or pointing out that the specific criticism being cited had been made by an apparatchik for one of Scientology's fronts -- feel free to show me up as a deluded fool and/or liar. I'd be happy to admit to being the former if I was confronted with the evidence of it. In fact, I'd want to know it.

There are a lot of groups and individuals that you unfairly smear with this sort of broad brushstroke argument, and I have named them to you several times before but you persist with your conflation.

To the best of my recollection, that has never happened. In part because I do not and have not repeatedly made that conflation. Or hadn't until yesterday. I have now made it twice.

It's as if the Mad Liberation Movement does not exist, neither Mad Pride, nor the many writers and social critics not part of Scientology who do express criticism of psychophamaceuticals.

As I believe I've said to you before (and as I indicated earlier in this thread, in a way) I stopped posting to the threads you started on those topics a long time ago. Because all that ever happened was that I would say whatever I had to say and then get swarmed by a bunch of (imo) well-meaning posters calling me an inhumane, vicious corporate shill and enemy of human rights, although I'm really not and really hadn't said anything that justified that view. I can totally remember the first time that happened, because I was so shocked and taken aback by it that I wasn't sure how to respond in a manner that was both soothing to the poster I'd pretty clearly upset and an honest representation of my (by my lights, non-offensive, non-partisan) position.

I might be able to remember all of them, as a matter of fact. There haven't been that many. For the reasons just stated.

As far as I can recall, I've never expressed any opinion one way or the other on the Mad Liberation movement, or on Mad Pride. I don't know very much about either, really. But I may very well have missed some threads expressing criticisms of psychopharmaceuticals, since I wasn't posting to them. FWIW, in principle, I'm definitely a very strong advocate for the proud liberation of people who have been stigmatized as mad, though.

And, as it happens, one of my criticisms of psychiatry as it's actually practiced in the real world by clinicians who are human beings with a wide range of aptitude for the work that they do is that, institutionally speaking, it's way, way too complacent in its belief that it already addressed and resolved that issue some decades ago. Like I said: The whole system needs an overhaul. Revisions and improvements to the extant foundations are just never going to cut it, the structure is simply too creaky and ancient to be saved by thoughtful restoration and, like, brand new modern plumbing and electricity or whatever.

But for what it's worth, at least to the best of my recollection, I've never seen any such criticisms here that didn't proceed from the categorical premises that (a) psychiatry was an ideologically monolithic, very powerful, wittingly evil and/or inhumanly unfeeling oppressive force; and (b) that all psychopharmaceuticals were extremely dangerous and ineffective at best, and very probably part of an intentional plot by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex to create a nation of compliant and drugged-out zombies. It's my considered opinion that such a position so grossly misstates the problem as to put solving it even further out of the question than it would be if there were no criticisms at all.

For one thing, it's all anti- and no pro-. That's never good news for the powerless. Ever. It really never has been one single time in all of history. Opposition is, obviously, a part of activism. And a very, very important part. But you do have to know who (or what) your enemy is, and not just casually. You have to have an informed and sophisticated understanding of who you're fighting, what their weapons are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and -- seriously, a too little mentioned factor -- what the potential areas of common ground you might share with them are. Just raging at big omnipotent vaguely defined forces is not, therefore, activism. If you ask me. It's rabble-rousing and it benefits fascism.

I can't tell whether you ignore what to me is legitimate dissent from the Psychiatric Orthodoxy due to a personal blind spot and/or as rhetorical device.

Either way, I quite honestly think you can do much better than that in articulating your own position wrt psychopharmaceuticals.

Well. I don't know that I can really help you with that. I do not ignore what to me is legitimate dissent from the Psychiatric Orthodoxy. And I don't really see how you or anyone else is in a position to demand that I do more than that. I do have a much more elaborated and detailed critical take on psychopharmaceuticals than I've ever expressed here. And when I first started posting, I did set out to express it a couple of times. But the atmosphere was too volatile for me to get very far, so I mostly just stayed out of it. As I indicated in an earlier post, that's hardly an issue that's unique to this board, in my experience. The battle-lines have been drawn too firmly for discussion on any other terms to be at all easy, and maybe to be at all possible. I don't really know. They're pretty entrenched, though. To the point that even the vocabulary of the debate is so highly charged with what are, strictly speaking, the externally imposed party values of one side or the other that you frequently have to tie yourself in knots of careful qualification just to make a simply, introductory remark.

Anyway. I await the examples of conflation and irrational rejection of valid criticism on my part. Although I can't really say I look forward to them, obviously. But l will try to bear them honestly and in good will and without animosity. So go for it.

Sincerely and with genuine good will, as I think you can be a truly awesome thinker and writer,

A.D.

ON EDIT: Sorry! I meant to say:

Thank you and back atcha.

JackRiddler wrote:

compared2what? wrote:However, psychiatrists are not, in the present, "comfortably atop societal hierarchies."

Cops aren't either. You know well enough that's not an insulation from critique of the social role a profession or many of its practitioners might play.

.

No, plainly not. It is an insulation from such a critique on the grounds that they rest comfortably atop societal hierarchies, however.

compared2what? wrote:

JackRiddler wrote:

compared2what? wrote:However, psychiatrists are not, in the present, "comfortably atop societal hierarchies."

Cops aren't either. You know well enough that's not an insulation from critique of the social role a profession or many of its practitioners might play.

.

No, plainly not. It is an insulation from such a critique on the grounds that they rest comfortably atop societal hierarchies, however.

Well, a number of both cops and psychiatrists get to play god to at least some of the people they treat. Which is a very high position in a one-on-one relationship, if not within the general social hierarchy.

Hope to see your reply to the last page's longer posts. I'm enjoying this thread (as an intellectual exercise, that is).

bks wrote:having just read jack's new post above, some of this might be redundant now, so apologies.

None required. I'm going out now. And I'll try to address your post and Jack's when I get back.

Hi c2w-

Regarding this:

American Dream wrote:
C2w, my primary concern is not specifically with Bruce Levine's blog post on Scientology' & Psychiatry in relation to the range of criticism that does indeed exist.

Rather it is with the broader points that his blog post raises. You repeatedly conflate all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and its fronts and I know you know better than that.

compared2what? wrote:

No, I really do not. I've said (twice, once on this thread and once on a thread about, IIRC, suicides in the military) that virtually all of the standard, party-line popular criticisms of psychopharmaceutical medications were originated by people on the CCHR payroll. Which isn't, like, just some random thing I like to say once every year and a half or so for the sheer pleasure of it. It's a thoroughly considered statement based on the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. Which would, kind of obviously, be very burdensome to present in full, with all "i"'s dotted and all "t"'s crossed.

Which is why I don't usually make it. It's rhetorically unfair. In any event. If you can find any instances of my having repeatedly conflated all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and it fronts -- as opposed either to arguing my position on the merits or pointing out that the specific criticism being cited had been made by an apparatchik for one of Scientology's fronts -- feel free to show me up as a deluded fool and/or liar. I'd be happy to admit to being the former if I was confronted with the evidence of it. In fact, I'd want to know it.

Here are some quotes of yours from this thread:

compared2what? wrote:

Scientology is virtually the only source for the popular criticism of psychopharmaceuticals, however. And if it wasn't for their tactical alliance with a few organizations fronting for the crypto-eugenicist Christian-nationalist extreme right wing, that would be so close to "only," the difference wouldn't be worth fighting over. And the OP (which concerned psychopharmaceuticals) elicited a very standard-issue hissing and tomato-throwing response directed at the CCHR-originated vision of psychiatry's unreserved and fully pre-granted willful evil and inhumanity, as well as at the CCHR-originated vision of all psychopharmaceuticals as pure poison, wittingly created to function as one, nothing more and nothing less.

And snippets from an earlier thread:

compared2what? wrote:

There aren't any perfect analogies that I can think of from days prior to the CCHR's introduction of the basic model for anti-meds activism in its present form

American Dream wrote:

CCHR, the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights (an anti-Psychiatry Scientology front group), is important to mention but I would point out that they did not introduce "the basic model for anti-meds activism" because there is not just one simple model. For example, Sascha, the author of the OP, helped start the Icarus Project- which encourages people "living with mad gifts" to take control of their own regimes, be they with or without meds. This is a very important form of anti-meds activism, imo...

While you were somewhat correct to criticize Sascha for painting with broad brush strokes, I feel that you have done the same by repeatedly blurring the lines between the Mad Liberation Movement and Scientology. The movers and shakers in the former are well aware of the dangers of the latter, and avoid it like the plague.

So making a thread to pillory Scientology is good work but using Scientology's sins to cast aspersions on all the good people in Mad Lib is not...

compared2what? wrote:

But for what it's worth, at least to the best of my recollection, I've never seen any such criticisms here that didn't proceed from the categorical premises that (a) psychiatry was an ideologically monolithic, very powerful, wittingly evil and/or inhumanly unfeeling oppressive force; and (b) that all psychopharmaceuticals were extremely dangerous and ineffective at best, and very probably part of an intentional plot by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex to create a nation of compliant and drugged-out zombies. It's my considered opinion that such a position so grossly misstates the problem as to put solving it even further out of the question than it would be if there were no criticisms at all.

Quoting from Sascha of the Icarus Project on the first page of this thread:

We need to draw a clearer distinction between the usefulness of some modern psychiatric medications,and the reductionist biopsychiatric paradigm that reduces our emotions and behavior to chemicals and neurotransmitters ...

When I think about solutions to this mess, I envision a vibrant social and political movement made up of coalitions of locally based community groups and professionals in the field – people who understand the importance of economic justice and global solidarity and the critical need for accepting mental diversity and not falling into the trap of trying to fit into a society that is obviously very sick.

Those are all the quotes I'll pull for now (I remember a similar early encounter with you about this that I can't find right now) but I'll just say that I know there is plenty of questioning of the Biopsychiatric Model and its fixation on questionable psychopharmacology out there- from writers such as Bruce Levine and Martha Rosenberg, Sascha and others at the Icarus Project, not to mention MindFreedom, the Freedom Center and others of that ilk. If you think it's fair to dismiss all the various critiques by tarring them with the brush of CCHR and the Church of Scientology, please explain why...

anyone know about these folks?
http://www.mindfreedom.org/

justdrew wrote:anyone know about these folks?
http://www.mindfreedom.org/

Some anti-psychiatry websites and psychiatric survivors groups have sought to distance themselves from Scientology and the CCHR. Lawyer Douglas A. Smith stated in his anti-psychiatry web page:

No Scientologists, please: Volunteers will be asked for assurance they are not affiliated with the ‘Church’ of Scientology or its Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which have publicized the harm done by psychiatry but which we want no affiliation with.[40]

Similarly—:

Mind Freedom attorney David Atkin has provided a letter to clarify and emphasize that MindFreedom has no connection to CCHR or Church of Scientology. This clarification is not to criticize any organization, but to just state the facts.[41]

Lol

Despite sharing notable anti-psychiatry views on some issues with the secular critics, Scientology doctrine does differ in some respects. Scientology has promoted psychiatry-related conspiracy theories, including that psychiatrists were behind the Yugoslav wars[42] and that September 11 was caused by psychiatrists. [43] Scientologists are religiously committed never to take psychiatric drugs and to reject psychology outright.

WTFlol!?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_psychiatry

American Dream wrote:Hi c2w-

Regarding this:

American Dream wrote:
C2w, my primary concern is not specifically with Bruce Levine's blog post on Scientology' & Psychiatry in relation to the range of criticism that does indeed exist.

Rather it is with the broader points that his blog post raises. You repeatedly conflate all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and its fronts and I know you know better than that.

compared2what? wrote:

No, I really do not. I've said (twice, once on this thread and once on a thread about, IIRC, suicides in the military) that virtually all of the standard, party-line popular criticisms of psychopharmaceutical medications were originated by people on the CCHR payroll. Which isn't, like, just some random thing I like to say once every year and a half or so for the sheer pleasure of it. It's a thoroughly considered statement based on the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. Which would, kind of obviously, be very burdensome to present in full, with all "i"'s dotted and all "t"'s crossed.

Which is why I don't usually make it. It's rhetorically unfair. In any event. If you can find any instances of my having repeatedly conflated all criticism of PsychoPharm with the discourse coming out of Scientology and it fronts -- as opposed either to arguing my position on the merits or pointing out that the specific criticism being cited had been made by an apparatchik for one of Scientology's fronts -- feel free to show me up as a deluded fool and/or liar. I'd be happy to admit to being the former if I was confronted with the evidence of it. In fact, I'd want to know it.

Here are some quotes of yours from this thread:

compared2what? wrote:

Scientology is virtually the only source for the popular criticism of psychopharmaceuticals, however. And if it wasn't for their tactical alliance with a few organizations fronting for the crypto-eugenicist Christian-nationalist extreme right wing, that would be so close to "only," the difference wouldn't be worth fighting over. And the OP (which concerned psychopharmaceuticals) elicited a very standard-issue hissing and tomato-throwing response directed at the CCHR-originated vision of psychiatry's unreserved and fully pre-granted willful evil and inhumanity, as well as at the CCHR-originated vision of all psychopharmaceuticals as pure poison, wittingly created to function as one, nothing more and nothing less.

And snippets from an earlier thread:

compared2what? wrote:

There aren't any perfect analogies that I can think of from days prior to the CCHR's introduction of the basic model for anti-meds activism in its present form

American Dream wrote:

CCHR, the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights (an anti-Psychiatry Scientology front group), is important to mention but I would point out that they did not introduce "the basic model for anti-meds activism" because there is not just one simple model. For example, Sascha, the author of the OP, helped start the Icarus Project- which encourages people "living with mad gifts" to take control of their own regimes, be they with or without meds. This is a very important form of anti-meds activism, imo...

While you were somewhat correct to criticize Sascha for painting with broad brush strokes, I feel that you have done the same by repeatedly blurring the lines between the Mad Liberation Movement and Scientology. The movers and shakers in the former are well aware of the dangers of the latter, and avoid it like the plague.

So making a thread to pillory Scientology is good work but using Scientology's sins to cast aspersions on all the good people in Mad Lib is not...

compared2what? wrote:

But for what it's worth, at least to the best of my recollection, I've never seen any such criticisms here that didn't proceed from the categorical premises that (a) psychiatry was an ideologically monolithic, very powerful, wittingly evil and/or inhumanly unfeeling oppressive force; and (b) that all psychopharmaceuticals were extremely dangerous and ineffective at best, and very probably part of an intentional plot by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex to create a nation of compliant and drugged-out zombies. It's my considered opinion that such a position so grossly misstates the problem as to put solving it even further out of the question than it would be if there were no criticisms at all.

Quoting from Sascha of the Icarus Project on the first page of this thread:

We need to draw a clearer distinction between the usefulness of some modern psychiatric medications,and the reductionist biopsychiatric paradigm that reduces our emotions and behavior to chemicals and neurotransmitters ...

When I think about solutions to this mess, I envision a vibrant social and political movement made up of coalitions of locally based community groups and professionals in the field – people who understand the importance of economic justice and global solidarity and the critical need for accepting mental diversity and not falling into the trap of trying to fit into a society that is obviously very sick.

Those are all the quotes I'll pull for now (I remember a similar early encounter with you about this that I can't find right now) but I'll just say that I know there is plenty of questioning of the Biopsychiatric Model and its fixation on questionable psychopharmacology out there- from writers such as Bruce Levine and Martha Rosenberg, Sascha and others at the Icarus Project, not to mention MindFreedom, the Freedom Center and others of that ilk. If you think it's fair to dismiss all the various critiques by tarring them with the brush of CCHR and the Church of Scientology, please explain why...

Well, thank you very much for holding back on the quote-pulling for now.

And thanks also for quoting my words from earlier in the thread as if I'd been trying to disown or hide from or otherwise deny them. That bolding and contextualization really does something for them. Kind of lends them a little bit of a chain-rattling, I-am-the-ghost-of-statements-AD-says-you-made-citations-yet-to-come air that they just didn't have on their own. Way to make the most out of a limited budget.

Thanks yet once more for choosing as your other little "snippet" something that's so blatantly out of context that it actually comes from a post that starts with my saying plainly that I don't consider all criticism or all critics of psychiatry to be, a priori, shills or dupes of Scientology.

Although just in case people who go the second page via your link get the impression, oh, I don't know, that the Scientology thing was my main point, which I'd gone out of my way to drag into the discussion and then refused to drop or something like that, I guess I should add that it also comes from a thread on which I stated my problem with the emphatically anti-psychiatry, anti-meds, pro-nothing-much terms in which the OP made its case in great detail and at length on the first page completely without reference to Scientology, before adding:

I mean, it doesn't help that they were actually promulgated by an enormously wealthy and highly motivated sinister force that has a highly destructive agenda that goes far, far beyond demonizing psychiatry and psychopharmaceuticals. But even if they didn't exist, framing it in those terms would still be an inherently anti-human-agency-and-choice modality.

Subsequent to which I referred to Co$ only in response to posts from you and others suggesting, wrongly, that I was conflating all criticism of psychiatry with Scientology.

BTW, the reason I'm thanking you for that is that due to it, I feel comfortable in saying that sadly, reason leaves me no option other than to conclude that despite your avowal of good will, you just might not have come to this thread armed with nothing but the aim of having a fabulous and open discussion of our differences and an innocently mistaken notion you'd somehow formed somewhere about my repeated and serial conflating habits, but rather with the hope of forcing me into a debate that put me on the wrong side of popular opinion on this board on a topic regarding on which you have unyielding and doctrinaire views that you don't care to have challenged.

Which is why I almost never post to the threads you start along those general lines. Life is just too short to waste time trying to explain yourself to someone who isn't interested in anything except prevailing, especially when it's on a topic one cares about.

Speaking of which: For the purposes of this thread, I'll respond to you further when you start dealing in good faith. Which I reserve the right to judge unilaterally, though I promise to judge it fairly.

Until then, no hard feelings. I look forward to your indignant protestations of innocence and regretful examinations of whatever horrible flaw you decide to assign my unaccountable words and attitude to. Anger, probably, that seems to be in these days. Which is funny. To me, anyway.

But fwiw, I really do have no hard feelings. Okay?

c2w, I do value the intelligence and expressiveness that you bring to this board.

And honestly, I really did hope that once you took a good look at what you had been writing, you just might say, "You know what? I did kinda conflate Scientology's agenda with all dissent from the mainstream psychopharmacological agenda." "Since that is not historically accurate and also not the best sort of a rhetorical device to use, I will acknowledge that I did this and I will try not to do it any more."

I really did hope that you would say something like this. Because I hold you in that high esteem.

At this point using scientology is like having no argument at all.