In response to:

> The Hypocrisy of Antipsychiatry

> Coercive psychiatry and antipsychiatry are two sides of the same coin.

> By Mark L. Ruffalo D.Psa., L.C.S.W.

> Posted Nov 09, 2017

> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-illness-metaphor/201711/the-hypocrisy-antipsychiatry

> "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C.S. Lewis

1. Fallacy: Appeal to authority [C.S Lewis]

2. Fallacy: False equivalency [Tyranny in this sense is not equivocal to Psychiatry vs Critical Psychiatry]

3. Fallacy: False dilemma [Only choices are two tyrannies?]

4. Fallacy: Not-as-Bad-as [One tyranny is better than another, therefore good]

5. Fallacy: Justificationism [This justifies tyranny]

> Those associated with critical psychiatry or the antipsychiatry movement frequently claim that all or almost all psychiatric treatment is inherently harmful and that it should be banned as a result. To these individuals, seemingly anything done by psychiatrists or psychotherapists—any service provided in the name of psychiatric treatment—is dangerous and must be made unlawful by the state.

1. Psychiatry, antipsychiatry and critical psychiatry are not a monolith.

2. Fallacy: Straw man argument. [frequently use to promote monolithic belief]

3. Fallacy: Redutio ad abusurdem. [asking for evidence is not akin to what is presented here]

4. Fallacy: Argument from ignorance/personal induction. [No citations given; therefore implies that this is a non-statistics-based rigid personal belief/perception of antipsychiatry/critical psychiatry]

5. Weasel-words: all, almost, anything, must [exaggerated terms]

> While I have long maintained a position against the misuse of coercion in psychiatric practice including involuntary mental hospitalization and the involuntary administration of psychotropic drugs (see Ruffalo, 2016), the claim that all psychiatric treatment—even treatment freely undertaken by the patient—is inherently harmful falls flat and is without merit.

1. Fallacy: Denying the antecedent [If Patient-Health is Non-force, No force, therefore Patient-Health]. Just because force isn't used doesn't mean all psychiatric practices are legitimate, healthy, or science-based. Therefore taxes should not pay for it. Most psychiatric practices are paid for with taxes.

2. Fallacy: Straw man argument. [frequently use to promote monolithic belief]

3. Fallacy: Redutio ad abusurdem. [asking for evidence is not akin to what is presented here]

> Undoubtedly, some psychiatric treatment does inflict harm, regardless of whether it is volitionally undertaken or imposed coercively.

1. Ethical fallacy: Hypocrisy [This statement contradicts your above statement that uncoersive psychiatry should be legal on the basis it is not coersive; non-coersivity is not equal to health or honesty and is therefore not inherently ethical. Few current practices are based on science.]

2. Question: Can you give an example of a common psychiatric practice which is proven to do no harm? Or a provide a detailed meta-study that looked at long term effects of treatments, including controlled studies looking into brain damage and social obstruction due to stigma? The Lancet studies omit these sorts of investigations.

> For example, there is evidence to suggest that tardive dyskinesia, a disabling side effect of neuroleptic medication, is grossly underestimated and mild cases frequently go undiagnosed. Tardive dyskinesia frequently persists long after neuroleptic treatment is stopped (see Breggin, 1991).

Ok.

> However, it is an error to suggest that everything done by mental health professionals is wrongheaded, harmful, or dangerous.

1. Fallacy: Straw man argument. [frequently use to promote monolithic belief]

2. Fallacy: Redutio ad abusurdem. [asking for evidence is not akin to what is presented here]

3. Bias: Continued Influence Effect. [You've been corrected on your straw man mischaracterization multiple times before, yet you persist this myth of "all" and "any".]

> Not only does it fly in the face of reason, it is also unsubstantiated by the empirical research.

1. Fallacy: Appeal to Stone [calling critical analysis of psychiatric protocol anti-reason without providing reason other than straw man arguments and reduction ad absurdem arguments.]

2. Fallacy: Ipse Dixit [No empirical research has empirically identified a way to objectively test for what are called mental illnesses, nor have there been any empirical foundations for declarations that moods, thoughts or behaviors are diseases, and so on. To declare empiricism is on the side of the psychiatric establishment is to declare something from a point of epistemic, ontological and deontological ignorance. There is no objectivity in psychiatry; therefore there can be no objectivity to support psychiatry.].

3. The above is still different from saying "everything psychiatrists do is wrong"; instead this is synonymous with "nothing in psychiatry is objective or scientific".

> Patients can and do get "better" on psychiatric medication and with psychotherapy, though the reasons they get better are more complicated than they may seem (see Kirsch, 2009).

1. Who determines what is better?

2. Who determines who gets better?

3. Who determines what was not better?

4. Teleological-fallacy based concepts should be avoided at all costs.

> What the antipsychiatrists don't seem to realize is that in opposing voluntary, consensual psychiatric treatment, they are doing exactly what the coercive psychiatrists are doing—limiting the freedom of patients because they know what is "best" for them.

1. Fallacy: False equivalency [obstructing dishonest practices that inherently harm lives through conditioning learned-helplessness, blame-shifting, myth-building and conditioning dependency is not the same thing as violating people's freedoms to choose from practices in line with laws concerning ethics; there is no more evidence for psychiatry as there is for new age healing or similar non-science based practices.]

2. Point of concern: Many people are pushed into services and this is called non-coersive and "freely exercised" psychiatry. Parents, teachers, social workers, and so on can push people into signing paperwork or can sign the paperwork for them. From that point they are at the mercy of the system; one which has a poor record in regards to fraud, abuse, manipulation and profiting off of stigma.

> Just as coercive psychiatrists deprive patients of their constitutional protections under the guise of medical treatment, the antipsychiatrists insist that certain treatments or psychiatry altogether must be banned in the name of protecting people from harm.

1. Fallacy: False equivalency [demanding retractions of all non-science based practices is not the same thing as a conspiracy ("guise") to interfere in people's rights.]

2. Point of concern: You have gone from "all" and "every" to "certain" while at the same time reverting back to the hyperbolic "altogether" and "must".

3. Banning non-science based practices isn't just about harm reduction and ethics, it's also about economics and logic.

4. Additionally there are concerns about faux-accessability services that are in reality backdoors for cursive abuse.

> This is the same argument made by the biopsychiatrists so intent on using the power of the state to lock people up; the antipsychiatrists insist on using the power of the state to ban treatment that they deem to be dangerous or unsafe.

1. Fallacy: False equivalency. [One is about violating rights, the other is about stopping the violation of rights; force isn't the only unethical concept, as dishonesty is also an unethical concept.]

2. This is the same reason why pseudo-science practices are banned.

> In this sense, coercive psychiatry and antipsychiatry are two sides of the same authoritarian coin: both seek to limit autonomy in the name of "safety." But as Benjamin Franklin wisely said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

1. Fallacy: Appeal to authority [Benjamin Franklin]

2. Fallacy: Quoting out of context [https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century]

3. Fallacy: False dilemma [Liberty and regulation are not either-or totalities]

4. It isn't a liberty practice for a system of non-science to coersively take tax money to pay for pseudoscience just because some people want it.

> The famous psychiatrist Szasz frequently asserted that the distinction is not to be made between psychiatry and antipsychiatry but rather between coercive psychiatry and consensual psychiatry. This is one of the common misunderstandings of Szasz's work; he was never an antipsychiatrist despite the fact that he is frequently grouped alongside those who are.

1. Fallacy: Appeal to authority [Thomas Szasz]

2. Fallacy: Red herring [Quoting Szasz's beliefs do not effect the argument against tax-based psychiatry or legalizing scams]

3. Fallacy: Conditional guilt by association [implying that antipsychiatry is a monolith]

> He saw "mental illness" as undermining liberty and personal responsibility and as a post hoc justification for the use of state coercion in psychiatry. Although Szasz himself did not prescribe psychiatric medication (instead practicing a form of therapy he called contractual psychoanalysis or autonomous psychotherapy), he did not believe that the state had any role in banning medication.

1. Fallacy: Red herring [Quoting Szasz's beliefs do not effect the argument against tax-based psychiatry or legalizing scams]

2. Fallacy: Chronological snobbery/out of context [Szasz is deceased and was not alive for the more recent studies that show how modern medications cause brain damage, nor how psychiatric practices have embraced commercializing pseudoscience; the statistics on diagnosis have rocketed after his death]

> In fact, he favored an unrestricted free market in drugs. To Szasz, patients should remain free to seek psychiatric medication, electroconvulsive therapy, and even lobotomy if it is volitionally undertaken by the patient. To believe otherwise would be antithetical to freedom.

1. Fallacy: Red herring [Quoting Szasz's beliefs do not effect the argument against tax-based psychiatry or legalizing scams]

2. Fallacy: False equivalency [limiting known harms by challenging known dishonest harmful structured systems is not the same as promoting aggressive force. The basis for Civilization and Authority is to deal with aggressive and dishonesty in an organized format]