From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Tue Oct 19 1999 - 04:35:55 MDT
Madame Ubiquitous
<eileen.krasowski@yale.edu>
provides a little except from the APA (presumably American Psychiatric
Association), entitled,
Antisocial Personality Disorder
I read this little piece and thought I could hear the tormented wails from
every Gulag, concentration camp, inquisitional "purification" chamber,
witch hunt, rack, ethnic-cleansing killing field, and pogrom since time began.
What kind of personality invents, or uses a mouth pear? (Or any of the
other monstrosities of medieval torture.) The kind of person so socially
and spiritually twisted that nothing is more important than the power they
cloak themselves in to cover their monstrosity.
To such a person, and the sick hierarchy of which they are a member, there
is no greater sin--and sin is truly the operative term--than rebellion
against (their) authority.
THOU SHALT NOT DISOBEY
Religious power madmen--priests, popes, mullahs, etc--claim the
unassailable authority of a god as the justification of their power.
Emperors and kings do the same ("God made us kings to rule over you.").
Modern governmental authorities aren't quite so direct in claiming divine
authorization, but they are quick to pay homage to this (seen to be)
ultimate source of all power and truth, claim its blessing, and then dance
the age old dance of power madness. And now the psychiatrist in the white
lab coat, raiment of the priest of science, claiming superior knowledge of
human nature, claiming, by years of study and psychoanalysis, to have risen
above his own irrational impulses, so that now, "purified", he may claim
the authority to judge and rule the lesser orders of humanity, claims his
right to the drug of power.
Well, fine. Sell that bullshit to whomever you can get to buy it. Rule
over the chittering sheep. And when spiritually wounded and vulnerable
people come to you desperate for help, revel in your power, take their
money, and victimize them in whatever manner satisfies you. And by all
means strive to spread the gospel to every slavish, obsequious
sheep-in-human-clothing that unflagging, unquestioned, and instantaneous
obedience is the greatest of all human values.
Generalizations are odious. There are many, many competent and caring
psychiatric counselors. But there is also a clear occupational hazard in
the psychiatric situation. Where there is so profound a power
imbalance--the powerful doctor, the vulnerable patient--one can caught up
in the vanity of power. I suspect a cult-like element, possibly dominant,
in the higher echelons of this hierarchical and politicized profession,
which is paternalistic, power-obsessed, dominance-obsessed, emotionally
coercive, and spiritually destructive.
The APA, in "Antisocial Personality Disorder" wants to cloak in legitimacy
a definition of socially disfunctional individuals, but I detect an
underlying and corrupt agenda whereby the oppressive authority structure
seeks to internalize the policeman, and buttress its position of power by
redefining, as a form of mental illness, a natural and healthy rebellion
against oppression. It justifies the net by the real sociopaths it will
catch, but casts it wide to round up those it is really after, those who
noisily challenge its authority.
But hey, it could be that I'm just a sociopathic paranoic.
But I'm not the only one.
Perhaps some day you'll join us.
And the world will live as one.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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