03:40 "If you read my books you will see, I have said more than once, 'Psychiatry is not a branch of medicine, it is a branch of the law;' unlike endocrinology, or ophthalmology."
Psychiatry is as disgusting as religion. Everyone is afraid to trust their own minds and thoughts. I choose to think outside of the box. Psychiatry is not the answer, and neither is religion. We have to accept and embrace difference, including different brains. We have to stop trying to eliminate difference. There are illnesses where folks DO actually feel sick, and it has much more to do with living in a sick society that doesn't acknowledge them as real people. Difference is a POSITIVE thing.
People get traumatized as well, which can result in brain changes and symptoms long term. We are born with sensitivities and the environment plays a huge role. Authoritarian models are bad for traumatized people. Psychiatry is Authoratrian to an extreme.
Professional Liars. Nothing but LIES. They know VERY WELL that there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with me, and NEVER was! They just don't like that I'm a Christian.
Power imbalance with concern of conflict of interests. One is paying for listening and solving but the other is a stigmatizer, prescribing for stabilizing jobs and income. Individuals up against professions using a system trap-a net of diagnosing mental ailments labeled as illness. It’s a huge trap-exploring the weak and vulnerable. ETA 🌹
20:55 I clapped. That sense of "clinicality" and sterility, the coldness was the first red flag I encountered when I was a teen. It only made me feel even worse, in a sense I couldn't explain. I tried to explain it to my mom, but she was just annoyed with my comments on the particular smell public health institutions have and the unsettledness I felt from the sterile, white walls and the atmosphere overall. I opted for private, "cozy and colorful, casual-looking" offices instead, which aren't covered by the health insurance, but I felt completely the same regarding the actual "treatment". They only have more time and space to preach on you and to give you the advice you can't question at all, and you've made to feel like a criminal if you question anything even slightly. Also, the clinical terms that were given even to the pure speculations even for short quotes of my speech. Anything that seemed interesting to them, they could tie to something that was something so horrifying to have some diagnosis and thus a pass for them to think certain dubious things about me and to manipulate me and people around me to think the same. Nowadays I'm scared to go to any person with a white coat, and I have serious lifelong effects from the years of taking drugs, even though I don't take them anymore. But, even the doctors for those things traumatized me, as a woman with women's reproductive issues, so that's that. I'm stuck with nowhere to go, without the resources, and I'm still too disillusioned to look more intensively for help with this issue. Having no one to turn to, since those issues are taboo, and can only make people paternalize as Szasz explained.
Nina J: You have my compassion and I recognize a lot of what yo wrote. But I wrote diary , which helped me psychically, and have read, studied, to better undersand and , as I wrongly believed, help myself. (I didnät realize that one has to and can do a lot of work alone on one's own, but was convinced that only a psychotherapist could help one heal! How have you een with reading, studying and DOING self-help books though? Because they are for free off the Library! And buying some 2d hand is much cheaper than therapy. i have been stolen my home and money , am broken down by a lot of mistreatment over most of my life, but realize I have to make an effort to get myself out of the pit I have been in for long. if I was in an English-speaking country, I'd probably buy the online course"Win without a lawyer by Graves. Although i don't agree with him leting one have the course only for 1 year or something, and i need unlimited access, since my case is complex and I stress-sick, burnt out, traumatized and ill + with Aspergers.but earlier, I had great help by an American self-help attourney book" How to get what you want without pushing others down" or something, By Dolan. REcommend! " I jave tried several types of therapy, but for me, the theraPIST has to be spiritually developed, mature, empathic, wise, healed, and have a calming, empowering effect on me. I have now found someone, not a psychotherapist, who might be wide-sighted and mature enough, along with my recent information about self-healing and knowledge of some tools, which have just mostly beeen to sleepless-tired-stressed and aspegian to im+lement without support and guidance. I am only given food-money off my tiny sick-pension(!), but am determined to find a way to pay and get well.I'll make some street-music and sell herb-tea with organic sandwiches, see how it goes. Or go to him riding for free on the train, lying up on the luggage-shelf, if need be. He charges + -$80 per session, which is a lot of money to me, but very fair if it is efficient, whcih I believe it is. I have wanted to go to him for some years, but know I have to get some sleep first, and stabilize, since one must be in a state conducive to healing/ improvement or even just sabilizing recovery. I have been eating 2d hand vegetables and fruit from bins and getting left-over chicken etc from a church, in order to be able to buy supplements(malnourishment) and homeopathic medicines.I have sold a 3 -course "saved-food" dinner (too cheaply) occasionally, and dried herbs and fruit and sold at a Christmas market.Ridiculously little pay compared to my work hours thoigh. Now I'll see if )I can sell some bottles of home-made organic wine. but I just saw that prices have gone down even here, probably since we joined EU. So maybe I won't be able to charge $30 per bottle as is the minimum for my hand-work. I also make some jam, but haven't sold much of that yet. And making it by hand takes far too long; can't charge for my time. As I get better, which I intend , I might even apply for a little job maybe. Even offer coaching, natural therapy, painting-course. Cutting hair, making Waldorf-dolls. I have to get better a selling myself, though, be seöf-assertive and self-confident, and grounded. I count on God's help. What do you think? And what can you do to afford therapy?
NIna J: oh , you might check out the 12-step programs, they have helped many people. AA you might have heard about, and its daughter-programs ACA, OA, SLAA, AlAnon, CoDa and more. I have done AA's program in Overesters anonymous, which uses their Big Book. It is simply structred 8or so I believed) and the book has beautiful, soul-and spiitually nourishing language. I an'rt relate to much of the lesser modern written language here today. But I'll probably aveanother go at ACA, Al-Anon, and maybe SLAA, later. Unless i get really healthy before! They are for free, and one seeks a sponsor who guides one throught the 12 steps. I wish I'd found good sponsoring much earlier an notlost so many years.
Yes, I can still remember the psychiatrist Barry Maletzky jotting down whatever on his little index card in Portland OR in 1982. The “facility” has long since been replaced by apartments. An unlucky Hispanic man was murdered by police IN the facility. Psychiatrists hate freedom (except for themselves) and love violence. Thank you for sharing, I empathize with you. Hope you are doing better. Take care.
Very powerful misconception that should be resolved. The problem is that if someone behaves "strange", it means something is wrong with the body. An easy example for this is someone who drinks alcohol, and starts to behave strangely, isn't it? This means that the gut actually caused the behavioral change into the person. If you understand this simple example it can be applied to almost every strange behaviors that are usually chronic. Why? Because the underlying condition is never treated.
Harry Stack Sullivan would sit down with a patient, have intense conversations with him - to find out a few of the problems he was having. Then he would arrange cathexis Talent Training for him!
Totally agree with you there. The mind isn't even an organ recognised by medicine its a philosophical thing. And many people have neurological issues totally ignored by this medicine branch ... only time I've experienced anxiety was when i took an antibiotic which chemical caused a physical effect the manifesting of which was a mental symptom. When i was depressed it was anemia. Psychology deals with the mind. Medically if they were doing anything it should be neurological. Not mental. Since mind is not an organ in the body. And it may not be the brain causing the problem just as a sore foot is not always something in the foot.
I love this man!!! He's so radical in some ways, but he really has a point when it comes to how we control others. There is this thing, where people attempt to assume power over others, presumably for their own good... but really, what is it of my business to tell others how to behave? :) I like his views on control - it is very fascinating....
Szasz believed , as an existentialist, that human beings were free and responsible. He saw various forms of emotional disturbance or what he called 'problems in living' as being based on the refusal of an adult individual to partake in the everyday demands of life based upon contractual reciprocity. This could be implied informal contractual reciprocity as in relationships with family and friends or explicit as in relationships with employers etc. He describes people who are diagnosed as suffering from mental illness as people with problems in living. He explains their condition as being engaged in an 'escape from freedom' and he admitted borrowing this idea from the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. Szasz might also add escaping from responsibility. He described the job of good parents as enabling their children to develop sufficient self control so that they could eventually become independent of their parents. Thomas Szasz also claimed that self esteem varies proportionally with the degree of emotional self control that a person has developed. He also claimed that the degree to which one wishes to control or be controlled by others varies inversely with the degree of emotional self control they have developed. He says the reason why we learn to control ourselves is so that others won't have to, and that we do this because we love freedom, although we do so with some ambivalence. Dr Szasz says that there are two main ways that parents may undermine their children developing sufficient self control to live independent and responsible lives. One way is basically to spoil them and not teach them sufficient self control and the other way is to over dominate them and leave them so that they don't develop sufficient self assertion. Dr Szasz says that both groups of people tend to be power oriented in their relations with others. The first group tend to try to dominate others and the second group are only comfortable being directed by others and being submissive. He explains conditions like Schizophrenia as being a denial of responsibility, even to the degree of not taking responsibility for one's own emotions and thoughts. Thus a person diagnosed as suffering from Schizophrenia and claiming to hear voices telling them they are useless etc., is someone who is defending themselves against a sense of their own guilt for having lived a useless life etc.. Szasz describes Schizophrenia as being 'the cancer of conceit'. Similarly he would see someone who was bipolar as someone who wasn't able to maintain sufficient emotional control in the face of the demands and expectations of everyday adult life. And the same type of explanation is used for other conditions that are termed mental illness by psychiatrists. He puts an emphasis on the underlying interpersonal relations that people persistently develop with significant others in the world, and that in order to understand anyone's emotional state one had to look at their actual relationships (the infra structure) and not just their conscious view of themselves and their relationships (the super structure), in fact there is often quite a difference between these two. Dr. Szasz says that an illness can only be an illness if there are physical lesions. He views mental illness as a metaphor. He claims that giving someone diagnosed as suffering for mental illness medical treatment is on the same level as giving someone who is described as having no guts a stomach operation. He describes such confusion of the metaphorical with the literal as being a common way for humans to avoid taking or giving responsibility and would include religious beliefs as being examples of this practice.Professor Szasz (he was a professor of Psychiatry at Syracuse University until he lost his post when his book 'The Myth Of Mental Illness' was published in the mid fifties) claims to have been influenced in his approach by a number of philosophers and thinkers engaged with the problems of freedom and responsibility in everyday life. These included John Stuart Mills but also in particular the less well known U.S philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Szasz was fond of saying that language was important with regard to our intentions and quoting Peirce 'we call an object a hammer because we intend to hammer something with it' and Similarly Dr Szasz says when we call a person a 'patient' it's because we intend to treat them in a certain way, similarly when we say that someone is mentally ill we intend to treat them differently to so called normal people. Szasz was also very fond of George Herbert Meads ideas to do with the development of the self, relatedly he thought a lot of the Russian semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin for his ideas on the relationship between the development language and the development of the self as a process of developing self control. Szasz was somewhat ambivalent towards psychoanalysis. He admired what the German satirist Karl Krauss said about psychoanalysis 'it is the disease that it purports to cure' the idea of the unconscious being used as an escape from responsibility. However he still thought there was some truth in what psychoanalysts like Freud said and that they should be studied. His favorite psychoanalytic writers were the Ronald. Fairbairn, Harry Stack Sullivan (who was also influenced by George Herbert Mead) , and Erich Fromm. Dr Szasz was also impressed with the ideas of Alfred Adler and his emphasis on responsibility, he also was impressed by some of the writings of the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre although he didn't agree with his political conclusions. He thought highly of D. P. Ausubel's theory of ego development though he disagreed with his opinion that mental illness was a real illness. Dr Szasz thought it was vital to be clear about the concepts we used in psychiatry (which he regarded as being properly a sub division of social psychology and not medicine). He said that the relationship between the mind and the brain was similar to the relationship between running a marathon and the anatomy and physiology of the legs. He identified 'mind' as a verb or activity and was able to demonstrate that the word 'mind' was not used as a noun before the end of the 18th century. To 'mind' something was to pay attention to it. The word mind became a noun under special historical circumstances. In the late 18th century the number of suicides rose dramatically with the rise of commercial life from it's feudal straight jackets. Normally at this time if someone committed suicide then their widows would not be allowed to inherit their wealth and would be left destitute. British lawyers strove to get over these circumstances by arguing that the person who committed suicide had lost his 'mind', or as we now say had a sick mind. Mind eventually became identified with the brain.Dr Szasz would argue that mind is an activity and that just as it wouldn't make sense to explain a marathon by giving a description and analysis of the anatomy and physiology of the thighs and calf muscles, so it doesn't make sense to describe mind in terms of the anatomy and physiology of the brain. He totally rejects all arguments which link brain physiology to mental illness. He argues that schizophrenia has never been listed in any of the main textbooks of neurology because there is no real evidence for this. Even today with CAT scans and advanced methods of looking at the brain's structures people cannot be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia or other forms of mental illness with these methods. There has never been an identification of lesions in the brain that can definitively distinguish between people with who are diagnosed as being mental ill and those who haven't. In short for Szasz the problem is with the software and not the hardware. He likens someone being said to have a brain disturbance as an explanation for their problems in living as being like blaming a rotten television programme on the television's electric circuitry. And he argues that if someone sustains a brain injury and isn't able to meet the expectations and demands of everyday life due to this injury then their problem is neurological and not a problem for psychiatry.
Sorry for the late reply. My sources are mainly Thomas Szasz's writings in particular his following books; 'The Myth of Mental Illness', ' Schizophrenia; The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry', ' The Ethics of Psychoanalysis' , 'The Meaning of Mind' and lastly and probably for me at least 'The Untamed Tongue'. Szasz was strongly influenced by Alfred Adler's individual psychology, especially his view of the purposive nature of neurosis and psychosis. He was also influenced by the neo Freudians, in particular Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm (especially his book 'Fear of Freedom) and Karen Horney,also W.R.D Fairbairn's object reltions theory of personality and as I mentioned D.P.Ausubel's theory of ego development. Szasz's philosophical influences included Charles Sanders Peirce in particular Peirce's claim that what we call something indicates how we're going to act towards it so if we call something a hammer we're going to use it to hit things, if we call someone a mental patient then we're going to act towards them and define them differently than others who we define as normal. George Herbart Mead strongly influenced Thomas Szasz as did the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle who wrote 'The Concept of Mind' , the Russian Semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin also had a strong influence on his ideas. I've been reading Szasz on and off for nearly the last thirty years, mostly because working in the field for this time has left me with more questions than answers. I admire him but I don't consider myself one of his followers. I have had too much experience of working with psychotic people, people who have lost the ability to discern their metaphors from their literal truths. Simply put Szasz maintains they refuse to discern because to do so would put them in touch with their relative insignificance as well as having to face the everyday existential guilt that comes with adult responsibility. I maintain they can't help this for a number of reasons that have to do with their early development which impedes their ability to take on adult responsibility.
He wasn't a fenomenologist, he was sociologist. Phenomenology is something that describes a phenomena, without judgement. The only phenomenologist of psyche was James Hillman, phenomenology is a necessity to create new state, new vision of humanity. New language means a new state. You must give a worth to psyche. It's about semantics and higher vision.
Listening to thomas sach makes me a bit depressed cause it basically brings me mentally back to when i was a kid/teen, and felt responsible for every mistake i had ever done, and where i distrusted the idea of me having autism despite a diagnosis earlier, because it felt like cheating responsibility And i partly came away from that stress by embracing my diagnosis. But listening to sach basically makes it feel like diagnosises is a scam, and im starting to think again in the old days of “i am responsible for every failure in my life” And it kinda gives me some of the learned helplessness and paralysis that i had I dunno. I dont feel like listening more to this guy. (Aside from me simply not aggreeing with a lot of it)
I think if you read the work of Thomas Szasz, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault you will see their anti-psychiatry perspective. They don't deny people suffer or that people need help. That has been evident since the beginning of time. Shakespeare wrote about it Macbeth 1606, The anatomy of Melancholy (1634), The English Malady (1733) all discussed madness, melancholy, lunacy other terms which have now become linked to the field of psychiatry and psychology. Szasz was a psychiatrist, in his own words he wouldn't have become a psychiatrist if he didn't think people could be helped. His argument starts at the origins of Psychiatry, how it came to be recognised and how diagnosis traditionally was aimed at people that's behaviour deviated from social norms and posed a threat to social order. That's why psychiatric asylums were so popular up until 1954. His fundamental disagreements are, psychiatry is not a branch of medicine. Treatment should be voluntary not coercive. And you cannot help someone by harming them. How can the mind (the mind is a concept, the mind does not physically exist) suffer from a disease or an illness. Who decides a person has a mental disease or disorder. Szasz accepts diagnosis, when it is between consenting adults. And he agrees with treatment, when it is between consenting adults. His disagreement is the coercive element, which is sadly the origins of psychiatry. He is questioning the motive behind the multitude of diagnosis in the psychiatry field and whether diagnosis helps or harms a person when it is against their will. There is utility for some people in receiving a diagnosis, and there is nothing wrong with that. And if you engage in consensual treatment then this is your right. And if it helps then it is great. His argument returns to the medical value "Do no harm" and you cannot help a person by treating them against their will. I think you have misunderstood Szasz, he would have stood beside you championing your right to seek consensual treatment and consensual diagnosis. But if you wanted to withdraw yourself from treatment he would have also said that was your right and that is not the case if you are detained under the mental health act which is where he disagrees that Psychiatry is branch of medicine, because you cannot be forcibly treated in medicine but you can in psychiatry. I hope that helps your understanding of the subject he is discussing. Also, I wish you and your health the best. Don't be a stranger.
Dr Szasz is _not_ "a founder of the antipsychiatry movement." He has emphatically stated, in several articles and books, that psychiatry can sometimes help people. However he has insisted that to be of any value it must be freely contracted for by patient and psychiatrist. Both the patient and the psychiatrist must be free to end their relationship at any time. He has been very critical of the so-called "anti-psychiatry" movement as represented by Laing and Cooper. He has described the activities of both Laing an Cooper as being fraudulent. He has described Laing as being hypocritical.
If someone could answer from Szasz points of view/arguments that would be amazing: The reason, correct me if I'm wrong, that mentally ill patients get detained under the MHA/MH laws and dont have a choice on the matter, is because they dont have the capacity or logical/rational thinking to agree or disagree to treatment. Unlike general/physical medicine, people who refuse medical treatment have the capacity and sanity to say they dont want it for whatever reason... yet mental health patients cannot think logically or know whats best of them so cannot disagree? So, does Szasz think that mental health patients always do have capacity to agree/refuse? or does he think that if they do or dont, it doesnt matter, its still their choice even if they dont know whats best for them? I've watched several interviews and videos like this one, and no one has asked Szasz this question, what i'm surprised at, and its been bugging me for ages. Thanks
+Jack Jackson The reason he thinks they have the capacity of disagreeing or agreeing, in some cases, the doctors prescribe placebos which are sugar pills. Several studies have been made with placebos showing that most of the time people would get better with a sugar pill if you told them they would. Now what he's trying to explain is this: we are more likely to give credibility to someone wearing a white uniform and telling us we are ill and telling us this pill would cure us when in fact, even the psychiatrist knows it's all in your head due to social constructs and brainwashing." In other words, psychiatry works on a belief system that many people believe in and that's the only reason why it exists just like religions and such.
In Los Angeles, the psychiatrists come with police escort and if you refuse the 72 hour hold you are forcibly arrested. Either way, you are doomed and you have no human rights at all (unless you are very, very clever and strategic). You can be forced to take drugs and even be given psycho active drugs intravenously without your consent. This is truth. This is America.
In essence it seems to be all organic. If one has depression or bipolar disorders, the claim of psychiatrists is that one has unbalanced neurotransmitters or hormone imbalances, right? Now, what are the causes of these imbalances. But psychiatrists never look at that, causes. Why? Because they don't profit from solving causes, only symptoms of illness.
Physical: someone who has cancer Mind: someone who has debilitating anxiety soul: someone grieving because they lost a loved one Those 3 things are interconnected, all those things can get sick, also the mind, and from the mind comes behavior, thus behavior defines someone state of mind, or mental wellbeing.
okay it gets a little weird when the guy in the audience asks about Scientology and their coercive tactics and he says if they were coercive then they would be in jail because it's against the law. While talking about how psychiatric patients are coerced and locked up legally.
4:28 This seems to be difficult to justify. How do we determine if a patient is of sound mind in order to enter into some non-coercive form of treatment which could alter his life? In fact, this perhaps includes the question of state-sanctioned suicides as well, of which require certain parameters in order to justify. How can we convince ourselves that a patient is of sound enough mind to want a lobotomy? And how can we argue that his quality of life will improve? Is it dependent on his own subjective experience (self-report) or the testimonial of family/friends?
This mentioning of the most extreme of behaviors does well to distract from the real issues to be discussed about present-day psychiatry and its social-engineer practitioners. More importantly, may I suggest, is not about individuals flapping their arms, trying to fly, or, who might think he is Jesus Christ. The fundamental discussion is of the presence of psychiatrists, who as agents of the state, are in the position to socially engineer, e.g. drugging children into conformity.
I'm a bit late to this video..... Since 2008 everyone has the international human right to refuse medical treatment, including prisoners, and including psychiatric treatment. This is contained in Article 15 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Article 15 - Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment: 1. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his or her free consent to medical or scientific experimentation. Note that the right to refuse medical treatment is achieved as a direct implication of the first sentence. Note further that successful psychiatric treatment requires the cooperation of a (free) patient. "Experimentation" means a scientific procedure to determine something. Psychiatric treatment without consent is experimentation because without cooperation the efficacy of a treatment can only be determined from observations following treatment, rather than from the patient. This is a subtle but critical distinction because psychiatric treatments already heavily rely on observations, and are already intrinsically experimental. No DSM (ie. probabilistic) based diagnosis has the certainty required to commence a psychiatric treatment without a high risk of misdiagnosis. Experimentation (eg with different types of drugs) is an absolutely necessary feature of all psychiatric treatment, and all DSM treatments are necessarily experimental. Psychiatric treatment of prisoners without consent is all the more so experimentation because any free consent they provide is unfalsifiable in as much as it cannot be validated as "free".
*seems to be missing the pretty clear public disturbance wo insight. i agree, but it is not really fair on the family forced to call the police on a family member during an episode.* but we cld come up w a batr sys: but it will end in the same - trespass, assault, criminalization. but free access to non restrictive, in pt, care as desired we could pay for. _JC
September 8, 2012, at his home in Manlius, New York, after a fall that occurred less than a week earlier. When he fell at home, he broke T-10, the tenth thoracic vertebrae in his spine, confirmed by a physician at a local hospital using x-ray.
There needs to be money in aesthetic Talent Training - like happy clapping, stomping and laughing classes {PBS T.V., 2006}. At the present time, there plenty of money - when people get corralled as cash cows!
A psychiatrist that discriminates someone because of their behavior is anything but a good psychiatrist,!! A genuine, good psychiatrist (which is also a medical doctor by the way) knows that mental illness is part of that person, and not the person himself.
if you are extremely upset, wishing to die and thinking false and distressing things, what does the person do if the only option seems to be the psychiatrist or the mental home? If psychiatrists have cornered the market, so to speak, what does the layman do?
In some cases, it's the opposite. Almost like atheism is a "mental disorder." Or alternative religious beliefs. After all, mainstream religious folks are often obedient and follow along, with a belief in absolutes and "to be human, you MUST be this way and do such and such." It may depend on which concept of God you have. After all, there are Christians radically opposed to psychiatry and atheists who swallow it up as unquestionable "science." They take an individual approach to mind control.
Some of Szasz's arguments are not to the point. At the start he compares the way psychiatry acts to the legal system. But, that only leads to a further question; is the legal system acting correctly? It's better to ask; is psychiatry acting correctly? Straight away I can say; absolutely not. You can bypass most of the arguments and look directly at the kind of evidence they are using to justify their actions. The evidence they are using is insufficient. And that leads to another question; does psychiatry do more harm than good? It must because without using sufficient evidence it's as if we are all lobotomized. An observation is that psychiatry is attached to society, so if you condemn it you also condemn the society that practices it. (I can go on further.)
mental disorder or psychiatric disorder is a psychological pattern or anomaly, potentially reflected in behavior, that is generally associated with distress or disability, and which is not considered part of normal development in a person's culture. Mental disorders are generally defined by a combination of how a person feels, acts, thinks or perceives. This may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain or rest of the nervous system, often in a social context.
It was in a cold day on May 2006 that I decided to change the world, or at least Australian government refugee policy, by what I believed was a heroic action. In a desperate attempt to stop the torturing of refugees in Australia and prisoners in Guntamo bay , and disappointed about the public conformity and passivity and angry of actions of some left wing group that had pulled out their members from refugee campaign, I decided to go to Melbourne university and write slogans against torture and for human right of those who sought asylum and wanted better life in Australia. Something or someone was “telling” me this is a right thing to do. NO MORE TORTURE!! In 10 minute I wrote more than 7 slogans inside and around the Student Union building but security guard did not like the idea of writing anti torture gratifies , why? Do they support torturing people or did they just do their jobs? I am not sure! Three big men from three sides attacked me and push me on the ground. I resisted but after couple of minutes I was in the ground and one of them twisted my hands while other one kept my neck so I could not move. They called cops and cops arrived after a short time and they called ambulance. Why ambulance? Are they going to do something about my injuries, caused by the guards? Do they want to take my blood pressure? .There were not any nurse in the ambulance and no treatment either!! Only two cops one man and one woman that there were no sign of sympathy in their faces .They were doing their job as the security guards in Melbourne uni and prison guards in Guantanamo bay prison or detention center facilities. After a short time we were in St Vincent hospital and it was there that a big, rough tatted man told me that I am suffering from Schizophrenia! He also said to me that I believe God is talking to me and that they are going to inject something that is suppose to shut up God!! (Other word shut me up!!) I don’t want to tell you the details, remembering what happened to me it is not pleasant at all. What I can say is the man, that later I was told this prison guard in mental health ward, was rude and behaved in disgusting and humiliating manner, and when he said they are going to inject some “medication” and I ask if I can refuse he said to me with a cold and humiliating voice “no but all you can do is to choose if you want it in your arm or your bum” He injected me with something that I did not know what it was and never told that what it was until two years later that I ask for my medical report. To be honest I am not sure if they told me the truth because they report is full of lies! Anyway the medication put me in sleep but I wake up after, I don’t know for how long and when I wake up I was so sleepy that I did not know where I am or what I am doing I rang one of my comrades and spent my night in his house .Cops came to my house that night and did not find me. They told my parents that I have to go to hospital for medical check they also warned them that I can be very dangerous and might hurt myself or others....... and my life as mentally ill man began!! After that day I was labelled as mentally ill and I met many doctors and other specialist and they all believe that I cannot get well!! They diagnosed me as having different illnesses and changed my medications, but I was always the one that was sick and could not decided what is good for him, I had to admit I am sick, I had to admit that I cannot get well, when I did not have any right and very things that I was saying or believe was either a lie or somehow made up by an ill, paranoid mind!! So I had to swear for very thing and people around me would not believe me, I had no right for feeling or thinking differently. W then I was angry, I was violent and off course the answer was medication! When I had a strange dream I was paranoid and I needed another medication to fix me up! When I was thinking too much it was another medication available!! And my poor parents were so sensitive about what I am doing and for any “suspicious” thing that I was doing they call Crises Assistants Team (CAT) group of kind people that come to your house when you “need help”, they are nice as long as you think or act as they wish. But if you think differently or refuse to take medication (refuse to be a vegetable just grow and put on weight) they can transform from a cat to a wild and aggressive tiger and force you to eat your latest medication (fertilizer!) Now, after five years and after doing a course in transpersonal art therapy when I look back to the whole experience I see it completely different than I used to see it . As RD Laing one of the leading figures in anti-psychiatric movement once said psycho ices can be a break-through rather than a break down. If you take your imagination, daydreams or nightmares “serious ”and acknowledge them and “experience” them they might guide you and tell what you need to do. They can be horrific, weird and don’t look so nice, but they are part of” your psychological build up”. We need to acknowledge them and let them to help us in our spiritual and psychological development. So if you ask m e now if God is talking to you my answer would be something like this:” yes there is a God INSIDE me that guide me and want me to do something for make the world more just and beautiful, BUT I have tamed my inner God so it is not going to tell me to help the world by doing stupid things!!”
The good thing is that they can restrain someone from committing an irresponsible act, that is much better than allowing them to commit a murder, destroy people's lives, and rots in jail as a consequence.
23:28 And at THAT point, if you break the law you get incarcerated. Too many "tough love" people not understanding that they are ruining the lives of children who are still learning. Stunt a child thru prison and you destroy that life before it gets started.
Human Psychology is clearly a legitimate science and always has been. It is the legitimate science of the two. Psychiatry is not. The profit incentive needs to be removed from it, or it needs to be eliminated as a "medical science", as it is not. The thing that helps people, which Psychiatry has removed, is the psychological counseling, discussion, advise, and perspective that psychology facilitates and Psychiatry substitutes drugs for.
People have to recognize that what they eat is more important than the drugs they make up their brains with. And why people eat crappy food? They are not free to nourish their bodies healthily.
@@Sovereign_Citizen_LEO My reply to you has been removed. I probably wrote: Psychiatric Abolitionists Peter Breggin, Peter Gotzsche and Robert Whitaker!
If they weren't lovers of money more than people, then why else would they forcibly lock someone up who is seriously ill, and then call it "treatment". It's an excuse to make a bunch of money, they never treat the cause, only the symptoms of illnesses.
0:51 Despite all the midogynists, come election-time here, you ordinarily need a real good reason to lock someone up, not JUST that you don't like them. This is where psychiatry becomes the hero to anyone who doesn't like you. Just point, and make a spurious claim, and you can literally get anyone locked up and incarcerated, even if only briefly. There was an attorney, I wish I could remember her name to invoke it, who posted a video a few years back, whom this was done to. To her, it was explained like it came out of the Twilight Zone. After about a month the video was taken down. I still remember it, because of my own nightmare being targeted, without the credibility armor and zero people standing up for me.
Thomas Szasz was a champion of a free market in psychiatric services. His critique of the coercive and involuntary features of psychiatry never denied YOU of your right to frame your psychical self. Your misapprehension is not the esteemed doctors doing.
36:05 Hungarian-American guy says "interlapping." Not sure why I've never heard anyone say "interlapping" before today, but it seems like they should have.
The soul is not necessairily something that is within a religious context, it can also be in a figurative or subjective context eg, relating to emotions. With that said, Body, mind and soul are all one. Have you ever heard about that statement? you probably have and it's true. The body and mind are all within one being or organism. Both can get ill, since they are interconnected to each other. In other words, if you have a somatic illness, you can get mental problems and vice versa.
Your question, "Do you always act on your thoughts?" - is a useful inquiry! When a pianist plays a sonata, it is his actions that matter. When someone catches a football - this is performance, not thought. So, when someone joins a class where everyone is clapping, stomping and laughing - this Laughter Yoga class is pure action, whereby happiness + physiology are triggered together, which the subconscious mind takes literally. Then, after many such classes, he will develop a mental + emotional cathexis. So action, lead by loving intention - creates Mental Health!@@64bluegrass
Now what seems a more positive scenario to you, locking someone up for a couple of months, and treat him, or allowing that person to possibly commit a crime, thereby destroying people's lives and then allowing them to go to prison for years? I will go with psychiatry.
You can prevent someone from commiting suicide by institutionalizing them. No matter how painful I know it is to forcibly lock someone up, you have a moral duty to see to it that that person does not do himself any harm.
After being locked up and becoming Disassociated from the "treatments" of iatrogenic doctors. Someone who has developed Tardive Dyskinesia might have trouble jumping off a bridge!@@64bluegrass
Your extreme illustration(s) say nothing about the discussion of somatic disease. There are all manner of odd behavior, some dangerous to others, some not, however, this fact does not reinforce the notion that mental (read: mind) illness is somatic illness. Where is this notion of "mind", which "mental" assumes? Is it a secretion of the brain, and if so, where is mental illness (any one of the more than 350 now in the DSM-V) located? Nowhere.
Yes I understand his treatment was barbaric, and it took 6 months total, I get it... but on the other side of the story that you don't want to understand is him thinking that the army was coming to kill him and that he was the messiah was also pretty bad for him.
Calling the Church of Scientology and the Catholic Church equal in any sense, is complete horseshit. Catholicism has been a recognized religion for 2000 years, while Scientology is an insane, extremely modern concept, which has been exposed for many bizarre things. Look up the different levels of scientology and tell me it isn't a joke.
@@rue2636 Catholics believe eating a wafer and drinking wine literally turns into the 'body' of jesus christ is sick. Cannibalism. Puts Jeffrey Dahmer eating his victim and those who eat Jesus on the same level. Ycchh. And religious lyrics in Christian music about being washed in the blood or covered, etc is disgusting. Who the fukk would want to be washed in blood whether lamb or human? Gawd damm, folks! WTF!!!
I know you will try to neglect this but what if that person cannot make his own choice that he needs treatment. I'll give you an example, if someone is psychotic and yells at his walls all day and does not go outside anymore, and the parents of that person call a psychiatrist to treat him, but he keeps denying that he is sick, then what can you do but to forcibly institutionalize them? It sounds very harsh but come out with better options then. If locking up is not a good choice then what is?
If someone is yelling at his walls all day and is disturbing the peace by doing so, you can have him arrested for disturbing the peace, especially if he is nearby, doing this at night, and preventing people from sleeping. Most likely this will work better to get him to stop doing it in the future. The police will hold him for a night, let him out in the morning with an appearance ticket or small amount of bail, and he has to go to court later and deal with the charges. Most people, no matter how crazy, will not yell at the walls again nearly as much, after this happens to them. If alternatively you call his psychiatrist, the psychiatrist can get him out of your hair only if he lies and says the person is threatening you or himself. Then the police will come, as before, but treat him condescendingly and take him to a mental ward. He may be stuck there for 30 days. Most likely warehoused there and TOLD to get treatment from a private psychiatrist to discuss why he is acting disturbingly, and maybe drugs to calm him down.. He agrees to that, gets out, never goes to a psychiatrist, and starts yelling a the walls again, keeping people up at night again. These are the most likely 2 alternative scenarios. Don't even get me started with the story about my neighbor whose wife complained he was having sexual relations with her 8-year old daughter, and how the psychiatric intervention worked out. In short, I could be wrong, but I believe a police intervention would have worked out better.
Evil is subjective in my opinion, and also, an evil is something that is comitted that is wrong AND has no right justification, in the case of forcing someone to stay alive, it has a good justification and is therefore not nessecarly evil.
Fundamental weakness in Szasz anti-psychiatry - he confines his criticism to what he calls coercion, but as one questionner intimated, there's a form of coercion in the power imbalance - and I would go further, in the ideological lie that a psychiatrist is an expert (in what? Certainly not in my mental and emotional reality). Science doesn't even know what 'the mind' is, if anything! It's called 'the hard problem of science'. So what can a psychiatrist know? How to violently derrange the natural workings of the mind with a menu of pharmaceuticals. Now that's certainly not a science. Any drugs dealer can achieve as much, probably with far more efficacy. Moreover, there is a coercion through LIES, like the 'chemical imbalance theory' which was disproven in 1994: like the suggestion that 'these medicines help...' - no, they actually harm, in a medical sense. They may make life easier, but so can cocaine or ecstacy or heroin - not in the long term, but neither do psychiatric medicines. All have been shown to lose efficacy quickly, to damage the brain (by which I mean 'derange normal function'), and lead to dependency or withdrawal effects - and for what? A statistically significant alleviation of symptoms in an aggregate population in the short term. But for any one person, often an unnoticable benefit (anti-depresents) or way too general and incapacitating effects (e.g. many anti-psychotics). Psychiatry is far from a true science. It's certainly well deserving of the label 'psuedo-science'. That is a fact.
And you have to understand to forcibly locking someone up is a LAST RESORT option, when ALL OTHER OPTIONS are EXHAUSTED. Psychiatrists must know that forcibly locking someone up is a final resort option.
If someone is mentally ill, and the psychiatrists don't help him, than that is a form of neglect on the psychiatrists part, they know that person is ill and is suffering from his abnormal behavior, but don't do anything, it is negelct. Psychiatry bridges a gap in that way.
What if that person lacks the capacity to make a good choice, that is the time an authority must intervene and try to help that person get back on track, with or without coercive tactics.
No one can know ahead of time whether their choice is good or bad. People have something to gain from a choice of behavior. Sometimes that choice of behavior turns out not so good. That's what learning is. Real teaching is help without coercion. It's called respecting the individual. Forcing someone to believe something is wrong. There used to be serious consequences if you said you didn't believe in God. Now there are serious consequences if you don't believe in Mental Illness. You don't need to convince somebody of something that is self evident. Thanks
Reactions? Isn't that a thought process that happens in the brain? What if the reaction is distorted? then that is an illness. Period. Depression is such a reaction, so is anxiety. it is a negative reaction, it denotes of poor health. You have to agree with at least this or perhaps we should better stop this discussion, because it has seemingly no end. Let's just agree to disagree with each other. I will hold no grudges, each his own opinion.
"psychiatry is not a branch of medicine. It is a branch of the law" Damn Straight
Cojultad Oh don't fight..your only making it harder on yourself.LOL
Not much different from morality police in some situations. Other people's Ideals drive people crazy.
i realize Im kinda randomly asking but do anybody know a good place to stream newly released tv shows online?
@Terrance Langston Try Flixzone. You can find it on google :)
@Terrance Langston I watch on Flixzone. You can find it by googling =)
One of the most brilliant humanitarians in history. Brings a tear to my eye to witness such greatness.
I think he's perfectly clear. And yet, I'm astonished how many people don't seem to understand. Love this, thanks!
Man why I didn’t find this gentleman, before this scammers fuck my life and health.
Also: Peter Breggin, Robert D. Whitaker, Caroline Leaf, Peter Gotzsche...
If I only had 1% of his confidence. What a great speaker.
03:40 "If you read my books you will see, I have said more than once, 'Psychiatry is not a branch of medicine, it is a branch of the law;' unlike endocrinology, or ophthalmology."
Psychiatry is as disgusting as religion. Everyone is afraid to trust their own minds and thoughts. I choose to think outside of the box. Psychiatry is not the answer, and neither is religion. We have to accept and embrace difference, including different brains. We have to stop trying to eliminate difference. There are illnesses where folks DO actually feel sick, and it has much more to do with living in a sick society that doesn't acknowledge them as real people. Difference is a POSITIVE thing.
People get traumatized as well, which can result in brain changes and symptoms long term. We are born with sensitivities and the environment plays a huge role. Authoritarian models are bad for traumatized people. Psychiatry is Authoratrian to an extreme.
@espouse de SACRECOEUR fuck that
Lockstep!@@aliceingraham7637
Psychiatry is a priesthood full of more liars than there are child molesters.
Psychiatrists seem to love money more than that they care about the well being of the population, that's how they roll.
They are lockstep with Freudian ideology, verified by their own research papers - while ignoring Cathexis Training!
Thomas Szasz is a legend.
Horrible horrible things happend to human beings he knew.
@@heidiscott4363 Remarkably, he refused to stop opposing what happened to them because he never stopped working for human rights.
Yes, what the Mental Health Industry has been effectively doing to people!@@heidiscott4363
Thank you for sharing this and making it freely available
R.I.P. Thomas Szasz
Knowledge is power!
Psychiatrists are not very nice people totally lacking in sincerity
Professional Liars. Nothing but LIES. They know VERY WELL that there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with me, and NEVER was! They just don't like that I'm a Christian.
Yes
Psychiatrists hate Christians, they are very wicked Psychiatrists are, Psychiatry is a cult.@@MarkBH70
Actually, their sincerity is very Luciferian!
This man is my hero. Tom Hall RMN,
Me to
Power imbalance with concern of conflict of interests. One is paying for listening and solving but the other is a stigmatizer, prescribing for stabilizing jobs and income. Individuals up against professions using a system trap-a net of diagnosing mental ailments labeled as illness.
It’s a huge trap-exploring the weak and vulnerable.
ETA 🌹
Disease-like Labels are really an adolescent labeling trick. Then it's neurotoxic drugs/ECT - and making sad people into cash cows!
20:55 I clapped. That sense of "clinicality" and sterility, the coldness was the first red flag I encountered when I was a teen. It only made me feel even worse, in a sense I couldn't explain. I tried to explain it to my mom, but she was just annoyed with my comments on the particular smell public health institutions have and the unsettledness I felt from the sterile, white walls and the atmosphere overall. I opted for private, "cozy and colorful, casual-looking" offices instead, which aren't covered by the health insurance, but I felt completely the same regarding the actual "treatment". They only have more time and space to preach on you and to give you the advice you can't question at all, and you've made to feel like a criminal if you question anything even slightly. Also, the clinical terms that were given even to the pure speculations even for short quotes of my speech. Anything that seemed interesting to them, they could tie to something that was something so horrifying to have some diagnosis and thus a pass for them to think certain dubious things about me and to manipulate me and people around me to think the same. Nowadays I'm scared to go to any person with a white coat, and I have serious lifelong effects from the years of taking drugs, even though I don't take them anymore. But, even the doctors for those things traumatized me, as a woman with women's reproductive issues, so that's that. I'm stuck with nowhere to go, without the resources, and I'm still too disillusioned to look more intensively for help with this issue. Having no one to turn to, since those issues are taboo, and can only make people paternalize as Szasz explained.
Nina J: You have my compassion and I recognize a lot of what yo wrote. But I wrote diary , which helped me psychically, and have read, studied, to better undersand and , as I wrongly believed, help myself. (I didnät realize that one has to and can do a lot of work alone on one's own, but was convinced that only a psychotherapist could help one heal! How have you een with reading, studying and DOING self-help books though? Because they are for free off the Library! And buying some 2d hand is much cheaper than therapy. i have been stolen my home and money , am broken down by a lot of mistreatment over most of my life, but realize I have to make an effort to get myself out of the pit I have been in for long. if I was in an English-speaking country, I'd probably buy the online course"Win without a lawyer by Graves. Although i don't agree with him leting one have the course only for 1 year or something, and i need unlimited access, since my case is complex and I stress-sick, burnt out, traumatized and ill + with Aspergers.but earlier, I had great help by an American self-help attourney book" How to get what you want without pushing others down" or something, By Dolan. REcommend! "
I jave tried several types of therapy, but for me, the theraPIST has to be spiritually developed, mature, empathic, wise, healed, and have a calming, empowering effect on me. I have now found someone, not a psychotherapist, who might be wide-sighted and mature enough, along with my recent information about self-healing and knowledge of some tools, which have just mostly beeen to sleepless-tired-stressed and aspegian to im+lement without support and guidance. I am only given food-money off my tiny sick-pension(!), but am determined to find a way to pay and get well.I'll make some street-music and sell herb-tea with organic sandwiches, see how it goes. Or go to him riding for free on the train, lying up on the luggage-shelf, if need be. He charges + -$80 per session, which is a lot of money to me, but very fair if it is efficient, whcih I believe it is. I have wanted to go to him for some years, but know I have to get some sleep first, and stabilize, since one must be in a state conducive to healing/ improvement or even just sabilizing recovery. I have been eating 2d hand vegetables and fruit from bins and getting left-over chicken etc from a church, in order to be able to buy supplements(malnourishment) and homeopathic medicines.I have sold a 3 -course "saved-food" dinner (too cheaply) occasionally, and dried herbs and fruit and sold at a Christmas market.Ridiculously little pay compared to my work hours thoigh. Now I'll see if )I can sell some bottles of home-made organic wine. but I just saw that prices have gone down even here, probably since we joined EU. So maybe I won't be able to charge $30 per bottle as is the minimum for my hand-work. I also make some jam, but haven't sold much of that yet. And making it by hand takes far too long; can't charge for my time. As I get better, which I intend , I might even apply for a little job maybe. Even offer coaching, natural therapy, painting-course. Cutting hair, making Waldorf-dolls. I have to get better a selling myself, though, be seöf-assertive and self-confident, and grounded. I count on God's help.
What do you think?
And what can you do to afford therapy?
NIna J: oh , you might check out the 12-step programs, they have helped many people. AA you might have heard about, and its daughter-programs ACA, OA, SLAA, AlAnon, CoDa and more. I have done AA's program in Overesters anonymous, which uses their Big Book. It is simply structred 8or so I believed) and the book has beautiful, soul-and spiitually nourishing language. I an'rt relate to much of the lesser modern written language here today. But I'll probably aveanother go at ACA, Al-Anon, and maybe SLAA, later. Unless i get really healthy before! They are for free, and one seeks a sponsor who guides one throught the 12 steps. I wish I'd found good sponsoring much earlier an notlost so many years.
Yes, I can still remember the psychiatrist Barry Maletzky jotting down whatever on his little index card in Portland OR in 1982. The “facility” has long since been replaced by apartments. An unlucky Hispanic man was murdered by police IN the facility. Psychiatrists hate freedom (except for themselves) and love violence. Thank you for sharing, I empathize with you. Hope you are doing better. Take care.
"Fraud and force!" - Thomas Szasz@@64bluegrass
Very powerful misconception that should be resolved. The problem is that if someone behaves "strange", it means something is wrong with the body. An easy example for this is someone who drinks alcohol, and starts to behave strangely, isn't it? This means that the gut actually caused the behavioral change into the person. If you understand this simple example it can be applied to almost every strange behaviors that are usually chronic. Why? Because the underlying condition is never treated.
Harry Stack Sullivan would sit down with a patient, have intense conversations with him - to find out a few of the problems he was having. Then he would arrange cathexis Talent Training for him!
Totally agree with you there. The mind isn't even an organ recognised by medicine its a philosophical thing. And many people have neurological issues totally ignored by this medicine branch ... only time I've experienced anxiety was when i took an antibiotic which chemical caused a physical effect the manifesting of which was a mental symptom. When i was depressed it was anemia. Psychology deals with the mind. Medically if they were doing anything it should be neurological. Not mental. Since mind is not an organ in the body. And it may not be the brain causing the problem just as a sore foot is not always something in the foot.
I love this man!!! He's so radical in some ways, but he really has a point when it comes to how we control others. There is this thing, where people attempt to assume power over others, presumably for their own good... but really, what is it of my business to tell others how to behave? :) I like his views on control - it is very fascinating....
He was only radical relative to and against a tide going the other way
Help someone to develop a cathexis, or - as Marianne Williamson says, "Produce Yourself!"
his books will live on
Szasz believed , as an existentialist, that human beings were free and responsible. He saw various forms of emotional disturbance or what he called 'problems in living' as being based on the refusal of an adult individual to partake in the everyday demands of life based upon contractual reciprocity. This could be implied informal contractual reciprocity as in relationships with family and friends or explicit as in relationships with employers etc. He describes people who are diagnosed as suffering from mental illness as people with problems in living. He explains their condition as being engaged in an 'escape from freedom' and he admitted borrowing this idea from the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. Szasz might also add escaping from responsibility. He described the job of good parents as enabling their children to develop sufficient self control so that they could eventually become independent of their parents. Thomas Szasz also claimed that self esteem varies proportionally with the degree of emotional self control that a person has developed. He also claimed that the degree to which one wishes to control or be controlled by others varies inversely with the degree of emotional self control they have developed. He says the reason why we learn to control ourselves is so that others won't have to, and that we do this because we love freedom, although we do so with some ambivalence. Dr Szasz says that there are two main ways that parents may undermine their children developing sufficient self control to live independent and responsible lives. One way is basically to spoil them and not teach them sufficient self control and the other way is to over dominate them and leave them so that they don't develop sufficient self assertion. Dr Szasz says that both groups of people tend to be power oriented in their relations with others. The first group tend to try to dominate others and the second group are only comfortable being directed by others and being submissive. He explains conditions like Schizophrenia as being a denial of responsibility, even to the degree of not taking responsibility for one's own emotions and thoughts. Thus a person diagnosed as suffering from Schizophrenia and claiming to hear voices telling them they are useless etc., is someone who is defending themselves against a sense of their own guilt for having lived a useless life etc.. Szasz describes Schizophrenia as being 'the cancer of conceit'. Similarly he would see someone who was bipolar as someone who wasn't able to maintain sufficient emotional control in the face of the demands and expectations of everyday adult life. And the same type of explanation is used for other conditions that are termed mental illness by psychiatrists. He puts an emphasis on the underlying interpersonal relations that people persistently develop with significant others in the world, and that in order to understand anyone's emotional state one had to look at their actual relationships (the infra structure) and not just their conscious view of themselves and their relationships (the super structure), in fact there is often quite a difference between these two. Dr. Szasz says that an illness can only be an illness if there are physical lesions. He views mental illness as a metaphor. He claims that giving someone diagnosed as suffering for mental illness medical treatment is on the same level as giving someone who is described as having no guts a stomach operation. He describes such confusion of the metaphorical with the literal as being a common way for humans to avoid taking or giving responsibility and would include religious beliefs as being examples of this practice.Professor Szasz (he was a professor of Psychiatry at Syracuse University until he lost his post when his book 'The Myth Of Mental Illness' was published in the mid fifties) claims to have been influenced in his approach by a number of philosophers and thinkers engaged with the problems of freedom and responsibility in everyday life. These included John Stuart Mills but also in particular the less well known U.S philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Szasz was fond of saying that language was important with regard to our intentions and quoting Peirce 'we call an object a hammer because we intend to hammer something with it' and Similarly Dr Szasz says when we call a person a 'patient' it's because we intend to treat them in a certain way, similarly when we say that someone is mentally ill we intend to treat them differently to so called normal people. Szasz was also very fond of George Herbert Meads ideas to do with the development of the self, relatedly he thought a lot of the Russian semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin for his ideas on the relationship between the development language and the development of the self as a process of developing self control. Szasz was somewhat ambivalent towards psychoanalysis. He admired what the German satirist Karl Krauss said about psychoanalysis 'it is the disease that it purports to cure' the idea of the unconscious being used as an escape from responsibility. However he still thought there was some truth in what psychoanalysts like Freud said and that they should be studied. His favorite psychoanalytic writers were the Ronald. Fairbairn, Harry Stack Sullivan (who was also influenced by George Herbert Mead) , and Erich Fromm. Dr Szasz was also impressed with the ideas of Alfred Adler and his emphasis on responsibility, he also was impressed by some of the writings of the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre although he didn't agree with his political conclusions. He thought highly of D. P. Ausubel's theory of ego development though he disagreed with his opinion that mental illness was a real illness. Dr Szasz thought it was vital to be clear about the concepts we used in psychiatry (which he regarded as being properly a sub division of social psychology and not medicine). He said that the relationship between the mind and the brain was similar to the relationship between running a marathon and the anatomy and physiology of the legs. He identified 'mind' as a verb or activity and was able to demonstrate that the word 'mind' was not used as a noun before the end of the 18th century. To 'mind' something was to pay attention to it. The word mind became a noun under special historical circumstances. In the late 18th century the number of suicides rose dramatically with the rise of commercial life from it's feudal straight jackets. Normally at this time if someone committed suicide then their widows would not be allowed to inherit their wealth and would be left destitute. British lawyers strove to get over these circumstances by arguing that the person who committed suicide had lost his 'mind', or as we now say had a sick mind. Mind eventually became identified with the brain.Dr Szasz would argue that mind is an activity and that just as it wouldn't make sense to explain a marathon by giving a description and analysis of the anatomy and physiology of the thighs and calf muscles, so it doesn't make sense to describe mind in terms of the anatomy and physiology of the brain. He totally rejects all arguments which link brain physiology to mental illness. He argues that schizophrenia has never been listed in any of the main textbooks of neurology because there is no real evidence for this. Even today with CAT scans and advanced methods of looking at the brain's structures people cannot be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia or other forms of mental illness with these methods. There has never been an identification of lesions in the brain that can definitively distinguish between people with who are diagnosed as being mental ill and those who haven't. In short for Szasz the problem is with the software and not the hardware. He likens someone being said to have a brain disturbance as an explanation for their problems in living as being like blaming a rotten television programme on the television's electric circuitry. And he argues that if someone sustains a brain injury and isn't able to meet the expectations and demands of everyday life due to this injury then their problem is neurological and not a problem for psychiatry.
Stuart Schneiderman this is brilliant is it from one of his books or are these from a variety of sources?
Wow. Great summary.
Sorry for the late reply. My sources are mainly Thomas Szasz's writings in particular his following books; 'The Myth of Mental Illness', ' Schizophrenia; The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry', ' The Ethics of Psychoanalysis' , 'The Meaning of Mind' and lastly and probably for me at least 'The Untamed Tongue'. Szasz was strongly influenced by Alfred Adler's individual psychology, especially his view of the purposive nature of neurosis and psychosis. He was also influenced by the neo Freudians, in particular Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm (especially his book 'Fear of Freedom) and Karen Horney,also W.R.D Fairbairn's object reltions theory of personality and as I mentioned D.P.Ausubel's theory of ego development. Szasz's philosophical influences included Charles Sanders Peirce in particular Peirce's claim that what we call something indicates how we're going to act towards it so if we call something a hammer we're going to use it to hit things, if we call someone a mental patient then we're going to act towards them and define them differently than others who we define as normal. George Herbart Mead strongly influenced Thomas Szasz as did the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle who wrote 'The Concept of Mind' , the Russian Semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin also had a strong influence on his ideas.
I've been reading Szasz on and off for nearly the last thirty years, mostly because working in the field for this time has left me with more questions than answers. I admire him but I don't consider myself one of his followers. I have had too much experience of working with psychotic people, people who have lost the ability to discern their metaphors from their literal truths. Simply put Szasz maintains they refuse to discern because to do so would put them in touch with their relative insignificance as well as having to face the everyday existential guilt that comes with adult responsibility. I maintain they can't help this for a number of reasons that have to do with their early development which impedes their ability to take on adult responsibility.
He wasn't a fenomenologist, he was sociologist. Phenomenology is something that describes a phenomena, without judgement. The only phenomenologist of psyche was James Hillman, phenomenology is a necessity to create new state, new vision of humanity. New language means a new state. You must give a worth to psyche. It's about semantics and higher vision.
Thank you Stuart for taking the time; this is enlightening to someone like me taking baby steps in the field.
What a great person he was :).
Nothing about Scientology's behavior disqualifies this man's expertise.
Why would it. Hes not a scientologist is he?
I suspect he's a jew not a scientologist. Nothing about what isreal are doing dicounts him either.
I love Dr Szasz!!❤️❤️❤️
Thank God for the honest ones in this profession, as few of them that there are.
thank you for sharing. humans are capable of so much more, cheers to the future.
He believed in people and their potential - like Howard Glasser and Madan Katara!
Listening to thomas sach makes me a bit depressed cause it basically brings me mentally back to when i was a kid/teen, and felt responsible for every mistake i had ever done, and where i distrusted the idea of me having autism despite a diagnosis earlier, because it felt like cheating responsibility
And i partly came away from that stress by embracing my diagnosis. But listening to sach basically makes it feel like diagnosises is a scam, and im starting to think again in the old days of “i am responsible for every failure in my life”
And it kinda gives me some of the learned helplessness and paralysis that i had
I dunno. I dont feel like listening more to this guy. (Aside from me simply not aggreeing with a lot of it)
I think if you read the work of Thomas Szasz, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault you will see their anti-psychiatry perspective.
They don't deny people suffer or that people need help. That has been evident since the beginning of time. Shakespeare wrote about it Macbeth 1606, The anatomy of Melancholy (1634), The English Malady (1733) all discussed madness, melancholy, lunacy other terms which have now become linked to the field of psychiatry and psychology.
Szasz was a psychiatrist, in his own words he wouldn't have become a psychiatrist if he didn't think people could be helped. His argument starts at the origins of Psychiatry, how it came to be recognised and how diagnosis traditionally was aimed at people that's behaviour deviated from social norms and posed a threat to social order. That's why psychiatric asylums were so popular up until 1954.
His fundamental disagreements are, psychiatry is not a branch of medicine. Treatment should be voluntary not coercive. And you cannot help someone by harming them.
How can the mind (the mind is a concept, the mind does not physically exist) suffer from a disease or an illness. Who decides a person has a mental disease or disorder.
Szasz accepts diagnosis, when it is between consenting adults. And he agrees with treatment, when it is between consenting adults. His disagreement is the coercive element, which is sadly the origins of psychiatry. He is questioning the motive behind the multitude of diagnosis in the psychiatry field and whether diagnosis helps or harms a person when it is against their will.
There is utility for some people in receiving a diagnosis, and there is nothing wrong with that. And if you engage in consensual treatment then this is your right. And if it helps then it is great. His argument returns to the medical value "Do no harm" and you cannot help a person by treating them against their will.
I think you have misunderstood Szasz, he would have stood beside you championing your right to seek consensual treatment and consensual diagnosis. But if you wanted to withdraw yourself from treatment he would have also said that was your right and that is not the case if you are detained under the mental health act which is where he disagrees that Psychiatry is branch of medicine, because you cannot be forcibly treated in medicine but you can in psychiatry.
I hope that helps your understanding of the subject he is discussing.
Also, I wish you and your health the best. Don't be a stranger.
Mental health is the development of a mental + emotional dedication - a cathexis. So, this is what Mental Health personnel need to bring forth!
6:53 It's impossible for sane people to argue or debate circular logic. Rosenhan proved this.
Why is there a cut in the video at 14:58? Szasz was making a very important point.
I thot I wanted to be one. Was he I ausch witz
He left his Czech home in 1938.@@heidiscott4363
Dr Szasz is _not_ "a founder of the antipsychiatry movement." He has emphatically stated, in several articles and books, that psychiatry can sometimes help people. However he has insisted that to be of any value it must be freely contracted for by patient and psychiatrist. Both the patient and the psychiatrist must be free to end their relationship at any time. He has been very critical of the so-called "anti-psychiatry" movement as represented by Laing and Cooper. He has described the activities of both Laing an Cooper as being fraudulent. He has described Laing as being hypocritical.
If someone could answer from Szasz points of view/arguments that would be amazing:
The reason, correct me if I'm wrong, that mentally ill patients get detained under the MHA/MH laws and dont have a choice on the matter, is because they dont have the capacity or logical/rational thinking to agree or disagree to treatment. Unlike general/physical medicine, people who refuse medical treatment have the capacity and sanity to say they dont want it for whatever reason... yet mental health patients cannot think logically or know whats best of them so cannot disagree?
So, does Szasz think that mental health patients always do have capacity to agree/refuse? or does he think that if they do or dont, it doesnt matter, its still their choice even if they dont know whats best for them?
I've watched several interviews and videos like this one, and no one has asked Szasz this question, what i'm surprised at, and its been bugging me for ages.
Thanks
+Jack Jackson
The reason he thinks they have the capacity of disagreeing or agreeing, in some cases, the doctors prescribe placebos which are sugar pills. Several studies have been made with placebos showing that most of the time people would get better with a sugar pill if you told them they would.
Now what he's trying to explain is this: we are more likely to give credibility to someone wearing a white uniform and telling us we are ill and telling us this pill would cure us when in fact, even the psychiatrist knows it's all in your head due to social constructs and brainwashing."
In other words, psychiatry works on a belief system that many people believe in and that's the only reason why it exists just like religions and such.
In Los Angeles, the psychiatrists come with police escort and if you refuse the 72 hour hold you are forcibly arrested. Either way, you are doomed and you have no human rights at all (unless you are very, very clever and strategic). You can be forced to take drugs and even be given psycho active drugs intravenously without your consent. This is truth. This is America.
Forcing someone to take neurotoxic drugs is 2nd Degree Assault!@@atwaterpub
In essence it seems to be all organic. If one has depression or bipolar disorders, the claim of psychiatrists is that one has unbalanced neurotransmitters or hormone imbalances, right? Now, what are the causes of these imbalances. But psychiatrists never look at that, causes. Why? Because they don't profit from solving causes, only symptoms of illness.
Jeffrey A. Schaler says: "Show me the Chemical Balance Tests!" He edited the 2004 book - Szasz Under Fire
I think,I can understand why!
Physical: someone who has cancer
Mind: someone who has debilitating anxiety
soul: someone grieving because they lost a loved one
Those 3 things are interconnected, all those things can get sick, also the mind, and from the mind comes behavior, thus behavior defines someone state of mind, or mental wellbeing.
okay it gets a little weird when the guy in the audience asks about Scientology and their coercive tactics and he says if they were coercive then they would be in jail because it's against the law. While talking about how psychiatric patients are coerced and locked up legally.
3:40 psychiatry is not a branch of medicine, it is a branch of the law. And it always has been.
4:28 This seems to be difficult to justify. How do we determine if a patient is of sound mind in order to enter into some non-coercive form of treatment which could alter his life? In fact, this perhaps includes the question of state-sanctioned suicides as well, of which require certain parameters in order to justify. How can we convince ourselves that a patient is of sound enough mind to want a lobotomy? And how can we argue that his quality of life will improve? Is it dependent on his own subjective experience (self-report) or the testimonial of family/friends?
29:22 "This is a profound deception of Psychiatry..."
Dissimulation!
dear poster of this video. please do not cut sections of this video when posting this video
Thomas Szasz is in a category with Oskar Schindler.
Thanks :)
This mentioning of the most extreme of behaviors does well to distract from the real issues to be discussed about present-day psychiatry and its social-engineer practitioners. More importantly, may I suggest, is not about individuals flapping their arms, trying to fly, or, who might think he is Jesus Christ. The fundamental discussion is of the presence of psychiatrists, who as agents of the state, are in the position to socially engineer, e.g. drugging children into conformity.
Psychiatrists who market for their Mental Health - pharmaceutical co-franchise, within an Orwellian state - they hope!
These folks disagree due to their shock at suddenly realizing that they're out of a job.
I'm a bit late to this video..... Since 2008 everyone has the international human right to refuse medical treatment, including prisoners, and including psychiatric treatment. This is contained in Article 15 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:
Article 15 - Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment:
1. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his or her free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.
Note that the right to refuse medical treatment is achieved as a direct implication of the first sentence.
Note further that successful psychiatric treatment requires the cooperation of a (free) patient. "Experimentation" means a scientific procedure to determine something. Psychiatric treatment without consent is experimentation because without cooperation the efficacy of a treatment can only be determined from observations following treatment, rather than from the patient. This is a subtle but critical distinction because psychiatric treatments already heavily rely on observations, and are already intrinsically experimental.
No DSM (ie. probabilistic) based diagnosis has the certainty required to commence a psychiatric treatment without a high risk of misdiagnosis. Experimentation (eg with different types of drugs) is an absolutely necessary feature of all psychiatric treatment, and all DSM treatments are necessarily experimental.
Psychiatric treatment of prisoners without consent is all the more so experimentation because any free consent they provide is unfalsifiable in as much as it cannot be validated as "free".
Why do you people don't focus on the argument, instead of debate about scientology?
Does mental illness exist? Does it warrant compulsion?
Forcing people to take neurotoxic drugs - is 2nd Degree Assault!
*seems to be missing the pretty clear public disturbance wo insight. i agree, but it is not really fair on the family forced to call the police on a family member during an episode.* but we cld come up w a batr sys: but it will end in the same - trespass, assault, criminalization.
but free access to non restrictive, in pt, care as desired we could pay for. _JC
When words come to the mind what can you do?
I'm fighter brother,you came to the right place & a former victim!
EXCELENT
September 8, 2012, at his home in Manlius, New York, after a fall that occurred less than a week earlier. When he fell at home, he broke T-10, the tenth thoracic vertebrae in his spine, confirmed by a physician at a local hospital using x-ray.
Didn’t he suicide?
There is no money in the cure
There needs to be money in aesthetic Talent Training - like happy clapping, stomping and laughing classes {PBS T.V., 2006}. At the present time, there plenty of money - when people get corralled as cash cows!
A psychiatrist that discriminates someone because of their behavior is anything but a good psychiatrist,!! A genuine, good psychiatrist (which is also a medical doctor by the way) knows that mental illness is part of that person, and not the person himself.
“Good” psychiatrist? Seriously. And how do they determine a disease? Sorry, I can’t agree.
From the DSM labeling system that Gary Greenberg opposes!@@64bluegrass
Demoralization, distraction and depression - can be investigated and then overcome!
if you are extremely upset, wishing to die and thinking false and distressing things, what does the person do if the only option seems to be the psychiatrist or the mental home? If psychiatrists have cornered the market, so to speak, what does the layman do?
How is your scenario a medical matter?
Have the Mental Health Committees of your State Legislature institute new Procedures for Mental Health!
Yes, distracted or depressing thoughts are not a medical matter! @@64bluegrass
In some cases, it's the opposite. Almost like atheism is a "mental disorder." Or alternative religious beliefs. After all, mainstream religious folks are often obedient and follow along, with a belief in absolutes and "to be human, you MUST be this way and do such and such." It may depend on which concept of God you have. After all, there are Christians radically opposed to psychiatry and atheists who swallow it up as unquestionable "science." They take an individual approach to mind control.
Be Imago Viva Dei - which is mental health!
When Thomas started out in his 20s, psychiatry would be a lot different than it is now I’d imagine?
Yes, it would have been. Times, theories, research, attitudes, insights all change.
Building human potential - not corralling them as cash cows!@@TSCooner
Rock n' roll dude! You are right on everything, thus i agree.
Great humanist. There are few & people in his time knew to value each other impulsive...
I'm really sorry they did this to you.
Some of Szasz's arguments are not to the point. At the start he compares the way psychiatry acts to the legal system. But, that only leads to a further question; is the legal system acting correctly? It's better to ask; is psychiatry acting correctly? Straight away I can say; absolutely not. You can bypass most of the arguments and look directly at the kind of evidence they are using to justify their actions. The evidence they are using is insufficient. And that leads to another question; does psychiatry do more harm than good? It must because without using sufficient evidence it's as if we are all lobotomized. An observation is that psychiatry is attached to society, so if you condemn it you also condemn the society that practices it. (I can go on further.)
Yes, with what Psychiatry is effectively doing to people {regardless of their rationales}!
mental disorder or psychiatric disorder is a psychological pattern or anomaly, potentially reflected in behavior, that is generally associated with distress or disability, and which is not considered part of normal development in a person's culture. Mental disorders are generally defined by a combination of how a person feels, acts, thinks or perceives. This may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain or rest of the nervous system, often in a social context.
Mental disorders are recast as disease-like Labels - for marketing purposes!
"The expert should be on tap, not on top."
The people in that room were not worthy of being in his prescense.
It was in a cold day on May 2006 that I decided to change the world, or at least Australian government refugee policy, by what I believed was a heroic action. In a desperate attempt to stop the torturing of refugees in Australia and prisoners in Guntamo bay , and disappointed about the public conformity and passivity and angry of actions of some left wing group that had pulled out their members from refugee campaign, I decided to go to Melbourne university and write slogans against torture and for human right of those who sought asylum and wanted better life in Australia. Something or someone was “telling” me this is a right thing to do.
NO MORE TORTURE!! In 10 minute I wrote more than 7 slogans inside and around the Student Union building but security guard did not like the idea of writing anti torture gratifies , why? Do they support torturing people or did they just do their jobs? I am not sure! Three big men from three sides attacked me and push me on the ground. I resisted but after couple of minutes I was in the ground and one of them twisted my hands while other one kept my neck so I could not move. They called cops and cops arrived after a short time and they called ambulance. Why ambulance? Are they going to do something about my injuries, caused by the guards? Do they want to take my blood pressure? .There were not any nurse in the ambulance and no treatment either!! Only two cops one man and one woman that there were no sign of sympathy in their faces .They were doing their job as the security guards in Melbourne uni and prison guards in Guantanamo bay prison or detention center facilities.
After a short time we were in St Vincent hospital and it was there that a big, rough tatted man told me that I am suffering from Schizophrenia! He also said to me that I believe God is talking to me and that they are going to inject something that is suppose to shut up God!! (Other word shut me up!!) I don’t want to tell you the details, remembering what happened to me it is not pleasant at all. What I can say is the man, that later I was told this prison guard in mental health ward, was rude and behaved in disgusting and humiliating manner, and when he said they are going to inject some “medication” and I ask if I can refuse he said to me with a cold and humiliating voice “no but all you can do is to choose if you want it in your arm or your bum”
He injected me with something that I did not know what it was and never told that what it was until two years later that I ask for my medical report. To be honest I am not sure if they told me the truth because they report is full of lies! Anyway the medication put me in sleep but I wake up after, I don’t know for how long and when I wake up I was so sleepy that I did not know where I am or what I am doing I rang one of my comrades and spent my night in his house .Cops came to my house that night and did not find me. They told my parents that I have to go to hospital for medical check they also warned them that I can be very dangerous and might hurt myself or others....... and my life as mentally ill man began!!
After that day I was labelled as mentally ill and I met many doctors and other specialist and they all believe that I cannot get well!! They diagnosed me as having different illnesses and changed my medications, but I was always the one that was sick and could not decided what is good for him, I had to admit I am sick, I had to admit that I cannot get well, when I did not have any right and very things that I was saying or believe was either a lie or somehow made up by an ill, paranoid mind!! So I had to swear for very thing and people around me would not believe me, I had no right for feeling or thinking differently. W then I was angry, I was violent and off course the answer was medication! When I had a strange dream I was paranoid and I needed another medication to fix me up! When I was thinking too much it was another medication available!! And my poor parents were so sensitive about what I am doing and for any “suspicious” thing that I was doing they call Crises Assistants Team (CAT) group of kind people that come to your house when you “need help”, they are nice as long as you think or act as they wish. But if you think differently or refuse to take medication (refuse to be a vegetable just grow and put on weight) they can transform from a cat to a wild and aggressive tiger and force you to eat your latest medication (fertilizer!)
Now, after five years and after doing a course in transpersonal art therapy when I look back to the whole experience I see it completely different than I used to see it . As RD Laing one of the leading figures in anti-psychiatric movement once said psycho ices can be a break-through rather than a break down. If you take your imagination, daydreams or nightmares “serious ”and acknowledge them and “experience” them they might guide you and tell what you need to do. They can be horrific, weird and don’t look so nice, but they are part of” your psychological build up”. We need to acknowledge them and let them to help us in our spiritual and psychological development. So if you ask m e now if God is talking to you my answer would be something like this:” yes there is a God INSIDE me that guide me and want me to do something for make the world more just and beautiful, BUT I have tamed my inner God so it is not going to tell me to help the world by doing stupid things!!”
The good thing is that they can restrain someone from committing an irresponsible act, that is much better than allowing them to commit a murder, destroy people's lives, and rots in jail as a consequence.
So you believe in preventive detention? Do you believe in the rule of law or rule of the totalitarian?
Red Flagging is often personal or political animus. This is being opposed by CCHR FL!
exactly!
Source ?
23:28 And at THAT point, if you break the law you get incarcerated. Too many "tough love" people not understanding that they are ruining the lives of children who are still learning. Stunt a child thru prison and you destroy that life before it gets started.
One of biggest disappointments in life. I never got a chance to meet Thomas Szasz
Human Psychology is clearly a legitimate science and always has been. It is the legitimate science of the two. Psychiatry is not. The profit incentive needs to be removed from it, or it needs to be eliminated as a "medical science", as it is not. The thing that helps people, which Psychiatry has removed, is the psychological counseling, discussion, advise, and perspective that psychology facilitates and Psychiatry substitutes drugs for.
People have to recognize that what they eat is more important than the drugs they make up their brains with. And why people eat crappy food? They are not free to nourish their bodies healthily.
Caroline Leaf!
@@stevekaylor5606 - Who is that?
@@Sovereign_Citizen_LEO My reply to you has been removed. I probably wrote: Psychiatric Abolitionists Peter Breggin, Peter Gotzsche and Robert Whitaker!
Coercion is baked into this anti-human field.
If they weren't lovers of money more than people, then why else would they forcibly lock someone up who is seriously ill, and then call it "treatment". It's an excuse to make a bunch of money, they never treat the cause, only the symptoms of illnesses.
Seriously ill? Please define. Serious like cancer? How is it an illness. This is the problem. Conflict, communication or behavior is not a disease.
Illness labeling is an adolescent ploy!@@64bluegrass
0:51 Despite all the midogynists, come election-time here, you ordinarily need a real good reason to lock someone up, not JUST that you don't like them. This is where psychiatry becomes the hero to anyone who doesn't like you. Just point, and make a spurious claim, and you can literally get anyone locked up and incarcerated, even if only briefly. There was an attorney, I wish I could remember her name to invoke it, who posted a video a few years back, whom this was done to. To her, it was explained like it came out of the Twilight Zone. After about a month the video was taken down. I still remember it, because of my own nightmare being targeted, without the credibility armor and zero people standing up for me.
*13:00** all of medicine has this imbalance. but full autonomy is part of the answer.* betr education in school on topics that matr. _JC
Hope Hugh's ok
Thomas Szasz was a champion of a free market in psychiatric services. His critique of the coercive and involuntary features of psychiatry never denied YOU of your right to frame your psychical self. Your misapprehension is not the esteemed doctors doing.
seems a shame he gave so much time to the mad Scientologists.
"religion" as understood by non-theologians.
That woman began the talk asking a really stupid question.
36:05 Hungarian-American guy says "interlapping." Not sure why I've never heard anyone say "interlapping" before today, but it seems like they should have.
There is word for it when instead of saying interacting or overlapping you say interlapping. Unfortunately I can't remember the word.
Czech
9:53 is a self fulfilling prophesy
The soul is not necessairily something that is within a religious context, it can also be in a figurative or subjective context eg, relating to emotions. With that said, Body, mind and soul are all one. Have you ever heard about that statement? you probably have and it's true.
The body and mind are all within one being or organism. Both can get ill, since they are interconnected to each other. In other words, if you have a somatic illness, you can get mental problems and vice versa.
I wonder what the deal is with the woman on his right.
Aren't your actions, if they are well intended, a consequence of your thought processes and your mental well-being?
Do you always act on your thoughts?
'Intentions + assumptions are central!' - Wayne Dyer@@64bluegrass
@@stevekaylor5606 ?
Your question, "Do you always act on your thoughts?" - is a useful inquiry! When a pianist plays a sonata, it is his actions that matter. When someone catches a football - this is performance, not thought. So, when someone joins a class where everyone is clapping, stomping and laughing - this Laughter Yoga class is pure action, whereby happiness + physiology are triggered together, which the subconscious mind takes literally. Then, after many such classes, he will develop a mental + emotional cathexis. So action, lead by loving intention - creates Mental Health!@@64bluegrass
Actions + performances will build a cathexis!@@64bluegrass
Now what seems a more positive scenario to you, locking someone up for a couple of months, and treat him, or allowing that person to possibly commit a crime, thereby destroying people's lives and then allowing them to go to prison for years? I will go with psychiatry.
Okay Johnny. Try getting some sunlight. You’re looking pretty pale and suicidal yourself.
Let’s hope you’ve already won your Darwin Award.
psychiatreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
You can prevent someone from commiting suicide by institutionalizing them. No matter how painful I know it is to forcibly lock someone up, you have a moral duty to see to it that that person does not do himself any harm.
No you don't. I disagree. And people commit suicide AFTER being locked up. Maybe because of it.
After being locked up and becoming Disassociated from the "treatments" of iatrogenic doctors. Someone who has developed Tardive Dyskinesia might have trouble jumping off a bridge!@@64bluegrass
Your extreme illustration(s) say nothing about the discussion of somatic disease. There are all manner of odd behavior, some dangerous to others, some not, however, this fact does not reinforce the notion that mental (read: mind) illness is somatic illness. Where is this notion of "mind", which "mental" assumes? Is it a secretion of the brain, and if so, where is mental illness (any one of the more than 350 now in the DSM-V) located? Nowhere.
Yes I understand his treatment was barbaric, and it took 6 months total, I get it... but on the other side of the story that you don't want to understand is him thinking that the army was coming to kill him and that he was the messiah was also pretty bad for him.
Yes, into buying drugs and behaving like a submissive slave to their will.
As soon as he started supporting the organization of Scientology, I just could not believe it.
Calling the Church of Scientology and the Catholic Church equal in any sense, is complete horseshit. Catholicism has been a recognized religion for 2000 years, while Scientology is an insane, extremely modern concept, which has been exposed for many bizarre things. Look up the different levels of scientology and tell me it isn't a joke.
The Catholic church is also insane & has been exposed for many bizarre things.
rue yet, more people have been murdered in the name of Christianity throughout History than Scientology.
@@rue2636 Catholics believe eating a wafer and drinking wine literally turns into the 'body' of jesus christ is sick. Cannibalism. Puts Jeffrey Dahmer eating his victim and those who eat Jesus on the same level. Ycchh. And religious lyrics in Christian music about being washed in the blood or covered, etc is disgusting. Who the fukk would want to be washed in blood whether lamb or human? Gawd damm, folks! WTF!!!
Szasz and L. Ron Hubbard co-founded the CCHR International in 1969.
I know you will try to neglect this but what if that person cannot make his own choice that he needs treatment. I'll give you an example, if someone is psychotic and yells at his walls all day and does not go outside anymore, and the parents of that person call a psychiatrist to treat him, but he keeps denying that he is sick, then what can you do but to forcibly institutionalize them? It sounds very harsh but come out with better options then. If locking up is not a good choice then what is?
If someone is yelling at his walls all day and is disturbing the peace by doing so, you can have him arrested for disturbing the peace, especially if he is nearby, doing this at night, and preventing people from sleeping. Most likely this will work better to get him to stop doing it in the future. The police will hold him for a night, let him out in the morning with an appearance ticket or small amount of bail, and he has to go to court later and deal with the charges. Most people, no matter how crazy, will not yell at the walls again nearly as much, after this happens to them. If alternatively you call his psychiatrist, the psychiatrist can get him out of your hair only if he lies and says the person is threatening you or himself. Then the police will come, as before, but treat him condescendingly and take him to a mental ward. He may be stuck there for 30 days. Most likely warehoused there and TOLD to get treatment from a private psychiatrist to discuss why he is acting disturbingly, and maybe drugs to calm him down.. He agrees to that, gets out, never goes to a psychiatrist, and starts yelling a the walls again, keeping people up at night again. These are the most likely 2 alternative scenarios. Don't even get me started with the story about my neighbor whose wife complained he was having sexual relations with her 8-year old daughter, and how the psychiatric intervention worked out. In short, I could be wrong, but I believe a police intervention would have worked out better.
Enlist him into Peter Breggin's emphatic Talent Training classes!
Evil is subjective in my opinion, and also, an evil is something that is comitted that is wrong AND has no right justification, in the case of forcing someone to stay alive, it has a good justification and is therefore not nessecarly evil.
To become dullard and then a cash cow!
Fundamental weakness in Szasz anti-psychiatry - he confines his criticism to what he calls coercion, but as one questionner intimated, there's a form of coercion in the power imbalance - and I would go further, in the ideological lie that a psychiatrist is an expert (in what? Certainly not in my mental and emotional reality). Science doesn't even know what 'the mind' is, if anything! It's called 'the hard problem of science'. So what can a psychiatrist know? How to violently derrange the natural workings of the mind with a menu of pharmaceuticals. Now that's certainly not a science. Any drugs dealer can achieve as much, probably with far more efficacy. Moreover, there is a coercion through LIES, like the 'chemical imbalance theory' which was disproven in 1994: like the suggestion that 'these medicines help...' - no, they actually harm, in a medical sense. They may make life easier, but so can cocaine or ecstacy or heroin - not in the long term, but neither do psychiatric medicines. All have been shown to lose efficacy quickly, to damage the brain (by which I mean 'derange normal function'), and lead to dependency or withdrawal effects - and for what? A statistically significant alleviation of symptoms in an aggregate population in the short term. But for any one person, often an unnoticable benefit (anti-depresents) or way too general and incapacitating effects (e.g. many anti-psychotics). Psychiatry is far from a true science. It's certainly well deserving of the label 'psuedo-science'. That is a fact.
Works for many
And you have to understand to forcibly locking someone up is a LAST RESORT option, when ALL OTHER OPTIONS are EXHAUSTED. Psychiatrists must know that forcibly locking someone up is a final resort option.
Except that is not the way it works in reality. Some psychiatrists jump to this option sooner than others.
"religion" as defined by a victim of such system.
"clinical love" lol
If someone is mentally ill, and the psychiatrists don't help him, than that is a form of neglect on the psychiatrists part, they know that person is ill and is suffering from his abnormal behavior, but don't do anything, it is negelct. Psychiatry bridges a gap in that way.
Psychiatry creates dullards and people with uncontrolled jerky movements!
What if that person lacks the capacity to make a good choice, that is the time an authority must intervene and try to help that person get back on track, with or without coercive tactics.
No one can know ahead of time whether their choice is good or bad. People have something to gain from a choice of behavior. Sometimes that choice of behavior turns out not so good. That's what learning is. Real teaching is help without coercion. It's called respecting the individual. Forcing someone to believe something is wrong. There used to be serious consequences if you said you didn't believe in God. Now there are serious consequences if you don't believe in Mental Illness. You don't need to convince somebody of something that is self evident. Thanks
"Mental Illness" by itself - is disease-like Labeling!@@64bluegrass
Reactions? Isn't that a thought process that happens in the brain? What if the reaction is distorted? then that is an illness. Period.
Depression is such a reaction, so is anxiety. it is a negative reaction, it denotes of poor health.
You have to agree with at least this or perhaps we should better stop this discussion, because it has seemingly no end. Let's just agree to disagree with each other. I will hold no grudges, each his own opinion.
Thought proces is in brain, but your brain isnt isolated from situations that happens to you
Szasz is suffering from the modern form of drapetomania.
Godzilla against sheeeeepsssssss