talkpolitics | American Psychiatry: A Far Cry from German National Socialism

The recent breakdown of a Southern California Christian who attempted to profit from the misery of African children gave some our students food for thought. One imagined him strapped to a gurney ranting against the forces of evil as a kind physician injected him with mind altering substances. Another pictured him in a padded room wearing a straitjacket blabbering on about Satan's plan to cheat him of his pile of gold as he gladly downed brain damaging pharmaceuticals. Although our students were not happy with Jason Russell's business plan, they completely sympathized with his mental distress.

When the topic of medical treatment of mentally deranged patients comes up, some people think of physicians such as Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung. An association with German scientists of the 1930's who treated their victims as laboratory animals comes to mind only to the elite few with the inside skinny on how psychiatry actually operates in the US. Those effete elitists can be easily dismissed as a lunatic fringe who could not find their way around the cranium of a rhesus monkey. They have never severed the corpus callosum of a living victim and probed for differences between hemispheres, so what do they know?

American psychiatrists are not the same as their German counterparts because of at least one essential distinction. Unlike German National Socialist scientists, American psychiatrists obtain the permission of the victim's family before they administer destructive "treatment" in the interest of scientific inquiry. That makes it all okay. A psychiatrist in our network claimed that psychiatrists treat all people equally. One could interpret this as a claim that all psychiatrists conform to egalitarian principles. On the other hand, one could interpret this to imply that psychiatrists treat all of their patients like laboratory animals.

What are your hopes and wishes for Jason Russell? Do you hope that those nice physicians will help him to eliminate enough mental capacity that he can move forward in life as a Christian entrepreneur? Or, do you hope that he survives his hospitalization without an addiction to brain damaging pharmaceuticals?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And yet here you are citing his work of a half century ago to bolster your CURRENT claims against the profession as if a) those changes you acknowledge ar bupkas and b) as if there has been no growth in the knowledge or practice in the field in the intervening decades. Your OP does not compare an electroshock operator of 1960 to a Nazi. You compare the entire field NOW to a Nazi.

But please do continue to regale us with how only you know anything.

Pst, you might've been caught in a trap!

Damn, is that why my feet feel all sticky?

I did not say that psychiatrists were Nazis. On the contrary: I advocated at least one difference. That is a contrast, not a comparison.

As for the timeliness of my criticism, Szasz's original observations still hold true. The profession enacted some reforms but continues to practice abuses. Also, as I alluded to in the previous comment, more recent publications by Szasz have documented ongoing abuse and a continued need for reform.

It is not only I who have made inquiries into the profession. The difference between you and I is that I investigate, where you simply kowtow.

When you cite but one difference between two groups of people and one of those groups are mong history's greatest criminals, you are comparing them, not contrasting. Have the courage to stand by your own words.

The difference between you and I is that I investigate, where you simply kowtow

I had no idea that vague allusions to the work of half a century ago constituted inquiry. But if you ever just came out and for once just FUCKING SAID what you were getting at, everyone might pass out from the shock.

Yes, Szasz's seminal work was published a century ago. The most recent work that I have read was published less than a decade ago, yet you keep harping on that first text. The points made in all of those works are still relevant today.

Why should one not place two historically great criminals side by side and see where they differ? It seems apropos.

I "harp" on it because you make zero distinction between his critiques of 50 years past and the present. And frankly, because your enormous accusations require far more than vague name dropping of someone who's most salient work to your premise was written before a huge portion of the knowledge base in modern psychology had been discovered.

You're a hack.

Why should one not place two historically great criminals side by side and see where they differ?

What matters is you trying to weasel out of your outrageous comparisons.

You are right. The knowledge base of getting people addicted to drugs is a recent phenomenon. We can find no comparison in the ancient world nor can we find instances of it a half century ago.

Yes, there is a hack here. There is someone who justifies charlatan practice with hyperbole about discoveries in psychology.

I understand how you can feel that placing psychiatry next to German national socialism could be seen as appalling. People like me should be rounded up and subjected to a regime of chemical treatment. I am familiar with the mindset.

The difference between you and I is that I investigate, where you simply kowtow.

While I'm sure there are huge differences between you and for instance malasadas, you shouldn't claim that people "kowtow" when you don't have half a clue on that.

I recognize a kowtow when I see it.

The difference between you and I is that I investigate, where you simply kowtow.

Careful with that whole 'open mind' thing, let it go to far and your brain falls out.

American Psychiatry: A Far Cry from German National Socialism

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