Why Failed Psychiatry Lives On: Its Industrial Complex, Politics, & Technology Worship
How can psychiatry retain its authority and influence despite its scientific failures? That’s been the question posed to me in 2023 by interviewers, I have talked about the components of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical-industrial complex, along with how psychiatry meets the political needs of the ruling class and dysfunctional families. In addition to these financial and political explanations, a fundamental cultural reason why psychiatry lives on is Western society’s worship of technology.
Psychiatry’s Control-Freak Medical Model vs. Healing and Healers
If one has a dark sense of humor, psychiatry’s medical model can be seen as the root cause of a comical farce in which an institution charged by society to decrease suffering actually increases it. What then is a helpful alternative to psychiatry’s medical model? The simplest answer is its complete opposite. Here, I will spell out exactly what that means.
UC Health Fails to Back up Electroshock Claims
Cincinnati Enquirer July 25th, 2023 Many people are surprised to discover that electroconvulsive therapy, commonly called electroshock, is offered by UC Health in Cincinnati. The UC Health’s “Electroconvulsive Therapy” website claims, “Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the gold standard for treatment of severe depression, and other psychiatric disorders,” and that “ECT is an extremely effective form of treatment.” […]
The Tragedies of Ted Kaczynski
Of all the public figures I profile in this book, Ted Kaczynski’s story is, for me, the most tragic—tragic, of course, for his murder victims; tragically traumatizing for his injury victims and near-miss victims; tragic for the position that he put his family members in; tragic for enabling authoritarians to marginalize causes that many nonviolent […]
The APA’s Apology for Racism Omits Psychiatry’s Essential Bigotry
In 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the guild of U.S. psychiatrists, acknowledged its history of racism. However, it is difficult to imagine how psychiatry will ever acknowledge that its entire edifice is built on a fundamental bigotry. Bigotry is defined by Merriam-Webster as: “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices.” Racism […]
Once Radical Critiques of Psychiatry are Now Mainstream, So What Remains Taboo?
One need not be a Marxist to acknowledge the logic behind Karl Marx’s observation: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” It is especially important for the ruling class that the general public’s ideas about our emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances be the ideas of the ruling class. Twenty […]
From Peer Support to Psychedelics: Psychiatry’s Co-Optation & De-Radicalization
How can psychiatry co-opt the psychedelic underground subculture, discard its radical anti-authoritarian message of rejecting a dehumanizing society, retake psychiatry’s lost power and authority, and make both drug companies and the ruling elite happy? To strip psychedelic use down to its chemicals is to de-radicalize its communal and anti-authoritarian roots.
From Nazi Blitzkriegs to ADHD Treatment: What Stimulant Drugs Can and Cannot Do
When humans are forced to be cogs in a machine—be it a war machine, a workplace machine, or a school machine—we need to become more machinelike, which can be expedited by some psychostimulant drugs. Commonly used legal psychostimulants are caffeine, nicotine, methylphenidate (including Ritalin) amphetamine (including Adderall), and methamphetamine, all of which may help us better attend to boring and unpleasant tasks. With caffeine and nicotine, we are likely to retain our emotional awareness; however, with methylphenidate, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, our angst or anguish can be eliminated—making these three drugs better suited to create efficient cogs in war, workplace, and school machines.
Leading Psychiatrists Unwittingly Acknowledge Psychiatry is a Religion, Not a Science
Since the seventeenth century, Enlightenment thinkers have distinguished science from religion, and by at least one critical distinction, leading psychiatrists have unwittingly acknowledged that major constructs in contemporary psychiatry are religious ideas, not scientific ones.
The New York Times Uncritically Repeats Discredited Antidepressant Claims
Furthermore, if all one knew about the serotonin imbalance theory of depression was from that November 9, 2022 New York Times article, one would believe that psychiatry has long known it was untrue but is not responsible for the fact that much of the general public has been unaware that it was disproven decades ago.
