Re: terms (Psychiatrists, State,Liberty and Schizophrenia)

Sylvia T. Paldhan (pald1208@tao.sosc.osshe.edu)
Sun, 06 Oct 1996 18:37:57 -0700

>
> Your "perfectly valid school of thought" is, in fact, warmed over Thomas
> Szasz. His ideas about mental disorder generally, and schizophrenia in
> particular, didn't withstand serious scrutiny even when they were in
> vogue: And THAT was about a quarter century ago.

Serious in what sense? By whom? Scrutiny of what kind? Where did
what not measure up to what?

What does "vogue" have to do with truth? And if you mean that the
enforcers of the Therapeutic State didn't want Berne, Szasz, Janov, and
others helping people to help themselves, rather than crawling, cap in
hand, to lick crumbs from the hands of the gods, you're undoubtedly
right.

Galileo had to recant, because his nutty notions wouldn't withstand
the scrutiny of state-sponsored experts, either.

>
> And you even trot out the tired old Rosenhan study: The "normals" who
> gained admission to a mental hospital by LYING and saying that they had
> symptoms that they didn't, in fact, have. And this remarkable piece of
> "science" proved... what? THAT YOU CAN CONFUSE A DIAGNOSTICIAN IF YOU
> LIE TO HIM/HER! Wow! What a revelation.

No, stupid, the point was that, the diagnosticians couldn't
recognize normal AFTER the admission.
Instead, they fit into the assigned pigeonhole all they saw and
heard, since that the was the only possible thing they could see or hear,
the Sacred And Unchallegable LABEL having been applied.
... "the personnel couldn't recognize normal." Possibly, of course,
because they weren't and it wasn't familiar to them.

-- "Truth is mighty and will prevail."