isn't it nuts how sanity perfectly aligns with the interests of bosses, landlords, and neoliberal lobbyists?

  • Moonrise [comrade/them,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    as someone who also suffers from mental illness, I think psychiatry deserves way more criticism than this post which is not even talking about psychiatry as a whole but just the conditions caused directly by capitalism.

      • SeizeTheseMeans [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        yeah, but there's more to anti-psychiatry than Scientology. It's like saying all Communists are like the Khmer-Rouge.

          • SeizeTheseMeans [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            They called themselves communists but their claims had no legitimacy. Scientology is very similar. It's anti-psychiatry, but offers no valid solutions, and their criticisms are suspect. There are many legitimate psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers associated with anti-psychiatry. Equating anti-psychiatry solely with the views of L Ron Hubbard and Scientology is precisely what they would want, and is just overly reductive and incorrect. Just read the Wikipedia page on it to get a better picture of the scope.

              • SeizeTheseMeans [none/use name]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Totally valid and I see what you mean. Antipsychiatry is the broad term often used to describe a lot of people critical of psychiatry, like on Wikipedia - despite many categorized under this term reject the label or never thought of themselves with that label. Everyone from L Ron Hubbard, Micheal Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I'm the one really nitpicking here because I really like Deleuze and Guattari and I wouldn't want people to get the idea that they're ableist because they're associated with the definitely ableist Scientologists on Wikipedia or the folks you mention suggesting diet and meditation to cure mood disorders. Apologies for grinding this axe with your comment haha. My issue is more with the word antipsychiatry and how others define who's a part of it than anything you've actually said. It is very unfortunate imo that Scientologists are in the same category as D&G, who don't at all claim that psychiatry in general does more harm than good (they would claim that Freudian psychoanalysis and some old institutional psychiatric treatments do however). I bring these guys up because their writings have helped me conceptualize and understand what happened to me during and after a drug induced psychosis, and ultimately get past it. Something that the psychiatrist I seen did absolutely nothing to help with besides prescribe anti-psychotics - great for physical brain disorders like schizophrenia, not so much for complex psychological problems that are not the result of a brain disorder.