FSean,
i have worked with psychopaths and narcissists. You do not need a formal diagnosis to observe a pattern of sociopathical or narcissistic behaviour. Most narcissists and sociopaths are never formally diagnosed. That absence of a formal diagnosis does not negate the fact that they are antisocial.
any person can go to three different psychiatrists and get three different diagnoses. Psychiatry and the DSM is not etched in objective science. It is subjective and rooted in white male and western ideals of what is and ought to be.
contrariana alluded to the fact earlier on this thread that homosexuality was once classified as a mental illness in need of treatment and psychiatric chemical intervention. Many gay people lost their jobs and were forcefully institutionalized simply because white medical males in positions of power diagnosed them as being deviant and in need of forceful treatment and intervention. Forcing people to be chemically treated and forcefully restrained through institutionalization and restraints within those institutions because white male heterosexual psychiatrists viewed homosexuality as a disorder amounts to nothing more than barbaric torture and cruelty. You can call this legitimate medical treatment if you wish but psychiatry is a tool to forcefully remove unwanted people from mainstream society.
Homosexuality was voted out of the DSM as a mental illness not through scientific mechanisms at play but rather by a vote by attending psychiatrists. A democratic vote is not science nor is the creation of new DSM so-called mental disorders.
Susan Faludi devoted an entire chapter of her book Backlash: the Undeclared War against American Women to the role psychiatrists and psychiatry plays in oppressing women. She stresses the role of non-science and white male social values and attitudes in the creation of new female specific medical conditions that can be used by the courts to take away women’s children and to turn custody of the children over to their fathers some of whom are alleged to have abused their children.
Medical treatment simply means to do something. Although it is implied that treatment entails an improvement of an existing condition this is simply not true. We assume that people who are treated for so-called mental illness are properly rehabilitated yet this is another fallacy of the mental health system and does not hold merit. Far too many fail to realize that the drugs that psychiatrists and medical doctors prescribe for mental issues are highly toxic and create a long list of negative side effects. Major tranquillizers given to “schizophrenic” people reduce life expectancy by 25 years when used long term and causes tardive diskinesia -irreversible neurological damage.
counselling is also a form of brainwashing. The tenet behind counselling is that the client as ideas and beliefs that are wrong and through a three month counselling term the client is able to see the undesirability of their own ideas in favour of what the counsellor determines is a proper way to perceive the client’s situation.
Ive used this example beofre in another thread on Babble but I will use it again. There are African cultures where when a close family member dies you talk to the spirit of the deceased family member and you bring the spirit of the deceased into your own life to be a part of you. In white male western thinking ie psychiatry this ritual or process is viewed as a delusion, a psychiatric condition in need of chemical intervention and the refusal to accept chemical intervention results in forced institutionalization, a loss of a job or income, a medical diagnosis that can be socially stigmatizing and used against them in a court of law to discredit their integrity or testimony at trial and much much more. Yet they have been treated and if they refrain from believing in their cultural traditions they can be considered “rehabilitated”.
