Over-diagnosed Britain has forgotten about freedom
- Being sick, once seen as unusual and temporary, has become a badge of identity
- Today's mental health debate promotes the notion that we are all perpetually vulnerable
- Being forced to view the world through a psychological lens is a threat to our freedom
However, we must always be aware that the interplay between psychiatry and society often reveals the social and political prejudices of the time. For example, in 1851, Samuel Cartwright detailed a ‘mental disorder’ he named drapetomania, which was said to afflict black slaves who fled captivity. Cartwright’s theory was widely mocked by some but embraced by others as an explanation as to why slaves wanted their freedom. They couldn’t consider that they wanted to be free, so it must have been a disease causing them to abscond.
In the former Soviet Union, political dissidents were often labelled mentally ill – with one dissident being told ‘your disease is dissent’. It was not until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was 1992 before the WHO followed suit and removed it from the tenth edition of its International Classification of Diseases.
These examples, and there are many more, illustrate the societal prejudices of their time around race, political ideology and sexuality. For example, the dropping of homosexuality was less due to advances within psychiatry and more to do with the changing social and cultural climate and the work of gay activists.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that failure to err on the side of liberty is not a new problem. Here's what D.H. Lawrence wrote about a fashion of his time - psychoanalysis.
First and foremost the issue is a moral issue. It is not here a matter of reform, new moral values. It is the life or death of all morality. The leaders among the psychoanalysts know what they have in hand. Probably most of their followers are ignorant, and therefore pseudo-innocent. But it all amounts to the same thing. Psychoanalysis is out, under a therapeutic disguise, to do away entirely with the moral faculty in man. Let us fling the challenge, and then we can take sides in all fairness.
D.H. Lawrence - Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921)
1 comment:
Yes, I remember studying Szasz and R.D.Laing at uni in the 70s. I even got a grant to study the politics of Laing's ideas, but was talked out of doing the doctorate.
One new point is the way that people are now very keen to get themselves labelled with some medical or psychiatric condition. Part of this is the "cry-bully" aspect, where people get their own way by saying that their behaviour is compromised or motivated by some obscure neurological condition.
I've often noticed that mad people are nowhere near as mad as people think. I've watched a fare-dodging "schizophrenic" delay a train by refusing to engage with a series of train employees who begged and threatened him. He just made odd gestures and chuntered nonsense, so was obviously "insane". But he gave up and got off when a big angry passenger threatened to throw him off.
Similarly, there's a nutter in Petersfield who chases after people walking their dogs, and barks at them. Medically unwell, possibly. But he doesn't do it to groups of young blokes, or people with big dogs.
Post a Comment