Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity—Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)
With the mainstream media finally reporting that “depression is not caused by low levels of serotonin,” many people ask me: Why does psychiatry repeatedly get it wrong when it comes to not only to its theories of mental illness but in so many other areas?
While drug company corruption clearly has had a harmful effect, there is a more core problem—one which exists not only in establishment psychiatry and the vast majority of psychiatrists but also among many other mental health professionals, including psychologists. This core problem is a certainty that societal and cultural “consensus realities” are in fact natural realities.
Consensus reality is the agreed upon reality by a society and community. Genuine scientists and other critical thinkers recognize that consensus reality is not synonymous with reality, and that pursuing truth and reducing unnecessary suffering means a willingness to challenge certainties and the consensus.
Unless one is completely ignorant of history, one recognizes that consensus reality is often a fiction created by those atop of hierarchies to maintain the status quo and their power. Looking at U.S. history, we now see that the consensus reality of the superiority of European civilization was used to justify the genocide of Native Americans and theft of their land; that the consensus reality of superiority of the “white race” was used to justify kidnapping and enslaving Africans to steal their labor; and that the consensus reality of the inferiority of women was used to disenfranchise, disempower, and control them.
In any society, consensus reality is viewed as reality. So in previous eras, rebels who rejected the then consensus realities of the superiority of European civilization, the “white race,” and men were viewed as denying reality.
Today, the concept of “mental illness” is consensus reality, and so those who view mental illness as a paradigm that doesn’t fit the facts—not a reality—are accused by psychiatry and its apologists of denying reality. The “mental illness” individual-defect theory for our emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances, however, is only one “spoke” in the current “wheel” of consensus reality.
Ignored by establishment psychiatry, many renowned thinkers have questioned the entire wheel of current consensus reality, concluding that it is an unnatural construction that has dehumanized us. Many of these prominent thinkers—such as Erich Fromm, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Lewis Mumford, Ivan Illich, and E.F. Schumacher—attempted to uncover the “hub” of this wheel. They recognized that uncovering the root of our dehumanizing society meant going beyond conventional left or right political critiques to more profound cultural reasons, which include a societal embrace of unlimited economic growth, the worship of technology and speed, a departure from human scale, and the increasing institutionalization of society.
Institutionalization refers to the establishment of large, bland, uniform, impersonal, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and coercive entities that increasingly rule our lives. The consequences of ubiquitous institutionalization are a loss of: (1) autonomy—self-direction, experience of potency, and capacity to self-govern; (2) community—strong bonds among small groups that provide for economic security and emotional satisfaction, and (3) humanity—the variety of ways of being human, the variety of satisfactions, and the variety of negative reactions to feeling controlled rather than understood.
Just as human beings need oxygen, water, and food to remain biologically alive, we need autonomy, community, and the whole of our humanity to feel that life is worth living; and emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances are natural reactions to the loss of autonomy, community, and our humanity.
One of many societal examples of institutionalization is compulsory schooling. Consensus reality would have us believe that increased compulsory schooling equals increased education, however, a critical thinker questions this certainty. While some of us may have had a school teacher who inspired learning and energized our curiosity, such teachers often find themselves alienated or fired. Such inspiring and energizing teachers don’t fit into most standardized schools, which are large, bland, uniform, impersonal, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and coercive.
If a major part of true education is inspiring and energizing us to be curious and enjoy reading, there is empirical evidence of standard schooling’s anti-educational effects. A report released by Common Sense Media in 2014 stated: “The proportion of children who are daily readers drops markedly from childhood to the tween and teenage years. One study [Scholastic, 2013] documents a drop from 48% of 6- to 8-year-olds down to 24% of 15- to 17-year-olds who are daily readers; another [National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013] shows a drop from 53% of 9-year-olds to 19% of 17-year-olds.” Reported in 2024, a Book Trust survey found that reading enjoyment declines as children progress through primary school.
Critical thinkers are willing to challenge certainties and the consensus, and they ask: “Does compulsory and coercive reading turn off children from a love of reading in the same manner that compulsory and coercive demands reduce interest in other parts of life?” If instead of asking questions about the negative effects of compulsory schooling, one accepts the consensus reality that schooling is equivalent to education, one is likely to accept the consensus reality that not paying attention in school is evidence of the mental illness called “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” If one is certain of consensus reality, one ignores the reality that many school-inattentive children pay attention perfectly well to that which is stimulating and for which they have not been coerced; but, in contrast to many teachers and mental health professionals, such children are not controlled by fear of negative consequences used to coerce attention.
To be selected into medical schools and graduate schools, one must have evidenced a high degree of compliance to previous schooling. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals—in contrast to many of the individuals they treat—are by and large more sensitive to negative consequences for not complying with authority, and thus are more compliant with authorities. These professionals are selected and socialized to accept societal consensus realities, and to see a lack of adjustment to these consensus realities as evidence of a mental illness, disorder, or some other such term for an individual defect.
The Joy of Rethinking Our Certainties
If we are a critical thinker, we know that the more we are emotionally attached to a certainty, the more likely we will not rethink it; but if we have humility, we will try to rethink our certainties, especially if we are attached to them. The rewards for critical rethinking and humility are greater knowledge, wisdom, and joy. The following is a recent personal example with respect to this article.
For the opening epigraph, I used an Erich Fromm quote from The Sane Society (page 15). I had initially considered using another more famous quote with a similar sensibility— “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” which is often attributed to the philosopher and spiritual figure Jiddu Krishnamurti. However, my writing experience tells me that it is always best to dig deeper when it comes to certainties about quotation sources, and so I did some digging.
According to the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Krishnamurti repeatedly returned to the theme expressed in this famous quote, however, “we cannot attribute these exact words to Krishnamurti,” and they report that the nearest direct quote from Krishnamurti expressing this theme is the following:
Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?
So, Krishnamurti certainly believed in the sentiment behind the famous quote routinely attributed to him, however, according the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, he never stated those exact words. The Trust speculates that the origin of this famous quote being attributed to Krishnamurti is probably the Mark Vonnegut book The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity (1975), which attributes this quote to Krishnamurti without giving any source. The Trust surmises that Vonnegut “might have paraphrased or misquoted it, and it must have spread from there.”
By digging deeper, what I also learned from the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust was that Aldous Huxley was a close friend of Krishnamurti, and that Huxley has passage in his book Brave New World Revisited (1958) that expresses the same perspective as Krishnamurti and Vonnegut:
The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.
Going down the “rabbit hole” of this Huxley quote, I discovered that Mad in America editors had also discovered the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, and they reported what the Trust had said about that famous quote and Vonnegut, and they repeated the Huxley quote reported by the Trust. However, when I examined Brave New World Revisited, I discovered that the Trust did not have this Huxley quote exactly right, and that in some of this quote, Huxley is quoting Erich Fromm. So ironically, I had returned full circle to Fromm. Below is the Huxley quote with Fromm’s words in bold:
But “let us beware,” says Dr. Fromm, “of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting.” The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted . . .
The idiom “going down the rabbit hole” refers to getting deep into something or ending up somewhere strange, and critical thinkers know that sometimes going down the rabbit hole can be a waste of time, but not always. Perhaps some readers of this article will dig deeper into Fromm, Krishnamurti, Vonnegut, or Huxley, and discover something that is amiss in this article—or just learn something new. Maybe one of us will have a chance one day to talk with Mark Vonnegut, and ask him about the source of that Krishnamurti quote. Did his father, the novelist and counterculture hero Kurt Vonnegut ever talk with Jiddu Krishnamurti?
Summary
A handful of critically-thinking psychiatrists are well aware of the array of failures by establishment psychiatry: the invalidity of its DSM diagnostic manual; the invalidity of all of its bio-chemical theories of “mental illness; drug-company corruption; the ineffectiveness of its treatments; the severity of its treatment adverse effects; and the stigmatizing effects of its “genetic/brain disease” beliefs of the cause of severe emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances.
However, a more core error of establishment psychiatry, one shared by many other mental health professionals, is a certainty that societal and cultural “consensus realities” are in fact natural realities. This certainty is quite sad given that many prominent thinkers have questioned the sanity of societal and cultural consensus realities.
It is understandably emotionally difficult for those Mad in America readers who have been physically and psychologically harmed by the certainties of establishment psychiatry to feel sorry for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who don’t question consensus reality. However, when one recognizes that a rigid attachment to consensus reality and certainty deprives people of some of life’s great joys, one might muster up some pity for these professionals. Part of what makes life worth living is having curiosity to discover truths that are ignored or denied by consensus reality. Such curiosity energizes a joyful and empowering expansion of one’s being—an experience that professionals attached to consensus reality and certainties will not have.
