Many American mental health professionals were born, and the vast majority started their professional career after the appearance of the DSM-III, which dropped the then prevailing tendency to view certain psychiatric disturbances as neuroses – that is something purely psychogenic in nature and lacking any biological background. From then on the former neuroses were regarded (and treated) as “real” psychiatric illnesses. I am fortunate to have been educated in a country where the neuroses and psychopathies still exist, so I have a chance to compare the two points of view.

It is important to see that the moment the concept of neuroses was abandoned, nothing really happened to people suffering from them. Their symptoms did not change; what changed was how they were now being treated. It is as a consequence of this change that people started adjusting their own attitudes toward their problems, losing the notion of personal responsibility, and developing the sense of dependence on their doctors. To get rid of neuroses was obviously a social decision, not a medical one. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I bought a very promising book, called “It Ain’t Necessarily So – The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions” by Richard Lewontin. I have only gotten as far as the middle of the introduction, and I am already writing about it. The part that inspired me is as follows.

“The success of physicalizing biology has encouraged biologizing the psychic and the social. After all, if thoughts, attitudes, temperament, and culture are manifestations of the activity of a physical organ, the brain, does it not then follow that the causes of thoughts, attitudes, temperament, and culture are identical with the causes that specified that physical organ? More specifically, it is easy to think that if organisms are largely the consequences of the genes that they have inherited, then the similarities and differences of organisms are the consequences of the similarities and differences in their genes.” (Italics in original.)

Let us, for the sake of analogy, compare the genome to a pile of blueprints, according to which a complicated product (such as laptop computer) can be built at a factory equipped for such work. Looking at the blueprints, a skilled engineer can make certain predictions about the capabilities of the future product, such as the amount of data it will be able to hold or the number of colors it will be able to display. By means of altering some parts of the blueprint we can make our potential computer more capable in some areas and less in others; we can even restrict its future abilities by cutting down on memory size or processor speed.

But what would you think of a person who would browse the blueprints looking for the information about the particular programs that will be run on our laptop, or the particular images that its monitor will display? The idea that knowing everything about the hardware gives us insights into all the software perturbations over the lifespan of the machine is simply ridiculous.

Yet, every biological psychiatrist will build his arguments on this very presumption.

I spent my holidays at work, and have been reading and thinking a lot. In particular (thanks to free access to library materials) I read most of the articles from the only published scientific journal that is oppositional to modern mainstream psychiatry – called Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. For the most part it was such an influential and enlightening reading, that I strongly suggest that anyone interested in these matters stop wasting their time here, go to the library, and read this journal.

In short, my impression is that not only most of my humble critique of modern psychiatry practices turns out to be shared by many professionals, but also the problem appears to be much more serious than I could expect. And that challenged the very basis of my desire to become a mental health professional. Just like it often happens in clinical practice, I had given my informed consent only to have found out that the information presented to me was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Peter Breggin (www.breggin.com) puts quite correctly in one of his articles, that psychiatry has to a large extent become a new faith; I would add that it is also becoming a new religion. The notions of faith and religion are somewhat indistinguishable for many people, which strikes me. To me, faith is a set of personal beliefs, whereas religion (at least in modern civilized societies) is a system of inflicting the correct beliefs onto masses.

Many people have faith; yet they rarely seek religion when they are well. Even if they were trained in the childhood, they usually perform religious procedures rather superficially unless they really need something from the divinity figure of their choice. But when people get in trouble, they do go to church; or for that matter, to any place where they will be told (with enough authority for them to believe), essentially, two things: (1) You are not responsible for your problems, and (2) There exists a system of simple rituals that, if followed, will make your problems go away. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like to suffer. But if I had to, I would rather suffer from the evilness of my enemy than from the kindness of my friend. An enemy I can fight or avoid; a friend sincerely willing to help is much more difficult to neutralize. Hence, my friend can do me good more efficiently. That is what psychiatry realized long time ago.

There is a thing about modern psychiatry, that makes it both more humane in its nature and, paradoxically, more cruel in its outcome for some patients. Psychiatrists and mental health workers sincerely believe that they do good. That their mission is not that of punishment and suppression, as it was so well portrayed in a famous movie, but that of help and guidance. Now, this is wonderful, but there is one thing that sets psychiatrists apart from many other people who like to help and guide. It is the issue of involuntary help. Read the rest of this entry »