What a quirky, brilliant old psychologist Szasz was.
Now I don't agree with Tom Cruise that the whole movement of psychiatry is somehow 'evil', but basically every industry is infused with the profit-making incentive and an evolution of more ancient activities.
You might've thought before that there's something a little odd about the numbers when it is said that 5% of people are allegedly suffering from disorder A, while another 3% are from disorder B and another 6-10% from disorder C. By these numbers, everybody, it would seem, has at least about 10 disorders, and some people have >50.
Now I'm not saying that there aren't an incredible variety of ailments, of things that can go wrong with the human body - things which go "wrong" causing pain or biological dysfunction. But the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) used by psychologists has a history of calling every normal human condition (and things which don't affect functioning) a disorder. Until 1973, homosexuality was classed in the DSM as a mental disorder. Masturbation was also said to be a symptom of insanity! The DSM continues to say that behaviours deemed socially unacceptable are in fact disorders...
It's also important to disentangle "moral"/un-scientific statements from real science. It's true that being fat reduces your life expectancy somewhat, but not by a lot. Historically, a lot of the digust obesity is not based on health concerns (as it might've been for lepers) but based on religious-moral paradigms - for example, thinking that eating too much was sinfully greedy and therefore should be avoided, even if it didn't really harm the subject anyway.
In fact, prior to Kraepelin's classification system, everyone a tiny bit different was "mad", and it was caused by the devil. Electro-convulsive-therapy, it was thought, could be used "to harm the evil spirits inside". Not surprising, when you consider that the Medical Model that most humans were supposed to be using when they thought up their 'scientific' theories was an extremely superstitious/religious one...I mean in most of the world, exorcisms to drive away "evil spirits" are still being performed! In the 21st century!
If you're on the same page as me, you might like this quote from Szasz:
"Mental illness...is a myth, whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations”...
I disagree with this, because he is saying that ALL mental illness is a myth, and I don't think ALL mental illness is a myth. I don't want to be seen to be playing-down the reality, that a lot of people have crippling disorders...but a lot of "mental conditions" are just concepts created to make profits off people in the form of drugs and/or consultations, or to control them.
What is more primary, pervasive, perpetual and problematic is struggle between humans cloaked up as morality, not mental disease. The vast majority of us are organisms which function incredibly well, and there are reasons why we feel supposedly 'dysfunctional' or 'negative' emotions such as anger, jealousy, spite etc. Here, medicine is acting in the service of social control, not our understanding of nature. It is is unconstrained by the requirement pertaining to all good science, which is to be concerned with fact and entirely ethically disinterested, not concerned with values. "Science" concerning value systems is religion, not science.
And Szasz again:
"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western [movie/novel] two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.
Also, Rosenhan's study in 1973: Eight well-adjusted people acted as patients, presenting themselves for admission at psychiatric hospitals, reporting that they were hearing noises/voices...they otherwise told the truth about themselves. All but 1 diagnosed were diagnosed as schizophrenic, and then hospitalised and prescribed medication. Perhaps to be expected. But what was interesting was that the psychiatric staff interpreted all of their otherwise normal behaviour as being somehow "insane"...
2 comments:
In hindsight, though, tracing back what constitutes a "dysfunction" is very tightly linked to the functioning of human groups and societies, so there's probably not as large a distinction as one would naively assume there might be between things which impact negatively on health and things which prevent us fitting in to human societies.
I've been asked recently a few times to name an example of something which could be diagnosed as a disorder, but which is highly individual and often adaptive.
I name narcissism as an example of something adaptive. It could be characterised as pathological delusion.
However, a slight degree of narcissism is adaptive as it it compels the person towards improving itself. Irrational pride in one's own greatness (and desire to be greater), combined with a touch of realism at other times, makes one strive to be better.
Where there is cognitive dissonance, a gap between perceived abilities and later demonstrated abilities, the shame the narcissist feels can compel them to engage in self-improvement behaviours.
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