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New World War: Revolutionary Methods for Political Control

Dedication & Thanks


Volume I: Current Political Situation


Volume II: The New War


Volume III: Weapons of The New War


Volume IV: The Coverup


Appendix


Political Considerations
Schizophrenia Serves a Purpose

Despite the fact that the disease model of schizophrenia has repeatedly failed scientific testing, it is still promoted by the industry’s front groups. It is sustained because it serves the influential forces that shape our society’s ideological commitments.1

Dr. Leifer says that labeling some thoughts and actions symptoms of an illness is a covert form of social control, which allows for violations of human rights to be masked as medical treatment. He traces the beginning of this mechanism back to major political changes in Europe and America, such as the American Revolution, which resulted in a change from tyranny to democracy.

Prior to our transition to a society that guaranteed individual liberty, a person judged to be acting against those who ran the state could simply be imprisoned by officers of the king. Under the rule of law, however, a person cannot be deprived of his freedom until he has been convicted of a crime. Therefore, because the rule of law limited the power of the state, illnesses such as schizophrenia were invented in order to control certain types of behavior.

The disease model appeared in the 1800s within the context of the asylum movement when insanity was medicalized. It was developed by doctors and supported by those who thought that what they considered to be bizarre behavior was the result of a disease.

It was during this time that medical practitioners introduced many new types of mental disorders. In response to dealing with behaviors that some believed to be unwanted, medical practitioners formulated many new diagnoses, one of which was dementia praecox, and eventually schizophrenia.

The creation of the asylum (which was later renamed mental hospital) allowed for people to be regarded as objects. New laws and judicial acts legalized the medical practices which occurred in these institutions. On the advice of physicians, the courts almost always gave unlimited powers to doctors who worked in these asylums in order to protect society.

Labeling someone mentally ill allowed for doctors to be given legal power over certain people to do, basically, anything. In addition to the legal power, there was, and remains, an implied silent premise that doctors are morally superior to those they’re “treating” for a mental illness. “The mental hospital filled a number of societal needs,” remarked Professor Sarbin, “the most salient of which was social control—the maintenance of order.”

Over the last 150 years or so the treatment practices have changed, but they have included: locked wards and physical restraints, bloodletting, forced vomiting, electroshock, lobotomy, and others. Each treatment had a particular theory for its justification. The current theory, the dopamine hypothesis, justifies the use of neuroleptics, which cause literal destruction to the brain.

Because a society could not be considered free if it regulated free speech and behavior, the disease model of schizophrenia was used to disguise and justify covert forms of social control. Without claiming that schizophrenia spectrum disorders are medical illnesses, those who run the state would not be able to have innocent people forcibly separated from society.

A Covert Method of Social Control

Besides the rule of law, our society has unwritten social rules that have been created and sustained by some very wealthy and influential people. When individuals violate these social rules, they are identified, separated, and reformed.

The medical model of schizophrenia is upheld because it provides a concealed method of destroying people who others believe are not acting in accordance with their assigned roles. As explained by professors Sarbin and Mancuso, the idea of roles in our society can be illustrated by envisioning our status occurring within a vertical social spectrum. Each role places us at certain points on the spectrum. Often, the amount of respect we receive corresponds to on our location on the spectrum.

At the bottom of the spectrum is the bare minimum of roles, which grants all adult members of our society the status of person. This lowest role is granted in exchange for conforming to social norms, including communication rules, modesty codes, control of aggression, procedures, rules governing property, etc.

In addition to being given the bare minimum of rights after having conformed to social norms, and therefore, achieving the status of person, some people acquire other roles. Accompanying these roles include various awards, titles, and certificates of achievement. These roles place them higher on the social spectrum and offer implicit increases in respect and/or power.

There are those in our society who have achieved a higher status/role on the social spectrum, and who value these social norms. When these people perceive that an individual has either disrespected them, or is not in their proper “place” on the social spectrum, a norm has been violated.

A vast powerful bureaucratic network that legitimizes the idea of schizophrenia exists to identify, separate, and regulate certain individuals. It exists at all levels of the political structure. The network includes institutions such as legislative bodies, the courts, law enforcement, governmental institutions, and the medical field, which subscribe to very subtle (often unrecognized) ideologies.

According to Sarbin and Mancuso, this bureaucracy provides behavior regulation services for the entrenched members of our society. When a person does not accept a role that society has assigned to them, and its corresponding location on the social spectrum, the network is mobilized to “fix” the situation.

One method of fixing these violations, they suggest, is to declare someone a nonperson. However, because the term nonperson is not part of any diagnostic system, and because we allegedly live in a free society under the rule of law, labels such as schizophrenia are used. Like all other status labels on the social spectrum, this label has implicit meanings. Particularly, it means that someone is not worthy of respect; that they are below human.

The policy of identifying and segregating certain members of society serves sociopolitical purposes rather than medical ones, they suggest. These sociopolitical purposes are better served if the criteria which defines the mental illness is kept vague, leaving the interpretation open to the evaluating clinician.

The individual that has been identified is then separated and placed in an environment for behavior modification. The environment provides little opportunity for the individual to confirm their status as a person. It places the individual at a constant risk for failure and degradation. Conditions in the environment are deliberately created to accomplish this. All of this is done under the guise of providing medical treatment.

When people seek psychological help, they’re usually having trouble with irrational thoughts and feelings. They think that their mental and emotional state is out of their control. Obtaining an official diagnosis makes them feel better. They may even demand a diagnosis, frequently being satisfied that their condition has a name, and not wanting any further treatment.

Although for some, being diagnosed with a mental disorder confirms that their feelings of helplessness are justified, at the same time they are taught that it is beyond their control. They’re told that ongoing medication is the primary treatment. The diagnosis is often immediately followed by medication, which the person may take indefinitely.

Depression, guilt, anxiety, shame, anger, and other negative emotions are normal states, which may last hours or even days. These emotions are natural reactions to dealing with our lives and our interaction with society. A normal but often uncomfortable part of our growth is learning how to control our mental and emotional processes.

However, a majority of those that have been diagnosed with schizophrenia did not seek out a doctor for relief of pain. Instead, they exhibited nonconforming behavior which led their employers, police, neighbors, or family members to arrange for them to be evaluated.

In his book, The Reign of Error: Psychiatry, Authority, and Law, Dr. Lee Coleman explains that most of the people who are forced into mental hospitals and medicated appear as voluntary patients to the outside world. The people who resist hospitalization are usually coerced into signing a voluntary admission paper on the basis that a formal involuntary commitment process will begin if they don’t.

So, thinking that they’ll be treated more leniently, they comply. Dr. Coleman portrays this method as a concealed involuntary commitment process. Because of this, he suggests the quantity of forced commitments is vast.

During the hospitalization a psychiatric dossier is formed on the person, which, according to Dr. Coleman, is filled with distortions and exaggerations. As ridiculous as it seems, family and friends are often the source of this falsified information.2 Once the record is formed, it automatically becomes fact, following the person around for life, and reducing them to second-class citizenship.

Even with the use of diagnostic manuals, clinicians have much say over which beliefs may be considered delusional. These variations can be observed between different countries, different time periods, and even different doctors within the same country during the same time period.3

These researchers conclude that political attitudes have a profound influence on psychiatric diagnoses. Typically, if an individual complains about problems with society, they have a greater risk of being considered psychologically disturbed. They also suggest that the doctors and staff of these hospitals where people are “treated” are unwitting believers of an ideology, and have undergone a type of indoctrination. The patient is considered “cured” when their beliefs become consistent with that of the hospital doctors and staff, who, through indoctrination are basically the most institutionally submissive members of society.

“To deny that involuntary hospitalization is a form of covert social control,” Dr. Leifer stated, “seems absurd and dishonest, approaching fraud. Most psychiatrists are aware, and will admit in private, that involuntary hospitalization is a form of social control. But they deny it in public, insisting it is necessary for the medical treatment of mentally ill people.”

After they are released from the hospital, they may still be coerced into receiving “voluntary” treatment indefinitely. Although many stop taking their medication due to their natural revulsion to such toxins, a guardian can force them to comply on behalf of a doctor, with the threat of another hospitalization.

Because there is no scientific measurement to determine the existence of schizophrenia, there are often major inconsistencies among these clinicians regarding what constitutes a diagnosis. This particularly appears to be the case regarding delusions and hallucinations.

Of all the behaviors that are considered symptoms of schizophrenia, delusions and hallucinations are the most characteristic. The Encyclopedia of Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders says a delusion is, “a false personal belief based on incorrect inference about external reality,” which is “firmly maintained despite the consensually accepted beliefs of most others.”

Other publications on schizophrenia define it in similar ways. So, basically, a delusion is a belief that is not shared by others. More specifically, it is just a belief. Whether or not a particular belief is judged as delusional has nothing to do with “truth.”

The judgment is based on the ideology and training of the evaluating clinician, who, in most cases, is not concerned with any relative information that might support the beliefs of the individual in question. In fact, they are trained to ignore a person’s evidence of their beliefs. An evaluation of the literature put out by the industry confirms this.

The industry calls the seemingly rational presentation of multiple delusions that form a coherent theme, a systematized delusion, or an organized system of delusions. The word hallucination belongs to behavioral terms that include daydreaming, fantasy, fiction, invention, fabrications, creative imaginings, and religious and mystical experiences.

Examples of these include voices of conscience, romantic fantasies, dreams of glory, communication with religious figures, imaginary interactions with celebrities, imaginary childhood companions, etc. The imaginings experienced by normal people are from the same range of topics as those admitted by diagnosed schizophrenics.

In addition to being part of a class of normal behaviors, hallucinations belong to a negative class of behaviors, which gives the term a psychotic meaning. The decision as to whether or not a normal activity such as a hallucination is psychotic is made by a person with greater social power than the one experiencing the hallucination.

Professor Sarbin explained that his skepticism of the disease model began about 50 years ago when he encountered hospitalized patients who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, including those who thought they were being attacked with electromagnetic weapons.

He says that because the types of behavior he noticed were the result of each person’s individual history and experiences, it was difficult for him to conclude that they were suffering from a mental disorder. He became interested in the judgmental process which clinicians used to determine if someone was hallucinating, and began researching hallucinations over the next several years.

What he discovered was that the conduct upon which the attribution of a hallucination is made is no more than an individual making a comment on their imaginings to another person. And that, no matter how wild an imagination is, if it’s not reported through words or deeds, then it is not considered a hallucination.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, says Professor Sarbin, psychologists have accepted the idea that hallucinations are normal. Religious hallucinations are common. In some cultures these experiences result not in a person’s forced incarceration, but in the assignment of an honorific social status.

Other researchers have arrived at similar conclusions, that delusions and hallucinations are distortions of normal functions. “The conclusion to my efforts to understand hallucination and delusion,” reported Professor Sarbin, “was that the process of constructing imaginings and beliefs was the same for so-called schizophrenics and so-called normals.”

Hallucinations, or, more socially acceptable terms such as daydreaming, visions, fantasies, creative imagination, etc., are normal experiences. The evidence suggests that schizophrenia, which as we’ve learned doesn’t exist, is used by an influential ruling class primarily to identify and reform non-conforming people.

“There is, thus,” Dr. Leifer added, “a public mandate for a covert form of social control which supplements rule of law. Medical-coercive psychiatry, in alliance with the state, performs this function disguised as medical diagnosis and treatment.” One of the best examples of how an entire system can be complicit in identifying and destroying people under the guise of providing medical treatment is what occurred in Communist Russia.

Sources

1. In addition to the industry profiting from the sale of drugs to treat the fake mental illnesses that they market, in some cases private psychiatric hospitals themselves appear to profiting. This factor can be observed by the increase in the number of these hospitals, some of which are owned by drug corporations. In 1992 US Representative Patricia Schroeder investigated the practices of some of these private psychiatric hospitals. She declared: "Our investigation has found ... that thousands of adolescents, children, and adults have been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment they didn't need; that hospitals hire bounty hunters to kidnap patients with mental health insurance; that patients are kept against their will until their insurance benefits run out; that psychiatrists are being pressured by the hospitals to increase profit; that hospitals 'infiltrate' schools by paying kickbacks to school counselors who deliver students; that bonuses are paid to hospital employees, including psychiatrists, for keeping the hospital beds filled; and that military dependents are being targeted for their generous mental health benefits. I could go on, but you get the picture." See Lynn Payer's book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers are Making You Feel Sick.

2. In Russia, the KGB would often not forcefully commit people into mental hospitals itself; instead, it would use its gigantic informant network to conceal its practices. Friends and family members of those targeted by the Russian government were often the first to alert the authorities.

3. In 1973 a Stanford University psychology professor named David Rosenhan conducted a study where he and seven other normal people visited twelve different mental hospitals and complained of hearing vague voices. The auditory hallucinations were the only false symptoms they gave. Otherwise, they behaved calmly and described their situations with friends and family as they were. In every case but one they were diagnosed with schizophrenia. While in the hospital they stopped complaining of symptoms but no hospital staff noticed them as "normal." Instead they were given neuroleptics in pill form and treated like nonpersons. After this, Rosenhan conducted another experiment where he told a prestigious teaching hospital that at some point during a three-month period he and his colleagues would attempt to gain entry into a psychiatric unit. During that period, the teaching hospital claimed that out of the 193 psychiatric patients that it received, 41 were Rosenhan's imposters. But, in fact, no pseudopatient had tried to gain admittance. Rosenhan's findings were published in an article called, On Being Sane in Insane Places that appeared in a 1973 issue of Science. See the book Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, by Robert Whitaker.