Gender and the struggle to abolish psychology

By HC116 and [email protected], April 20, 2005

As I am writing this, Larry King on CNN's Larry King Live in the united $tates is scheduled to do a show dealing with depression. "Tanya Tucker, Chad Allen, Linda Dano and Margot Kidder talk about their battles with depression."(1) Some suspect missing District Attorney Ray F. Gricar committed suicide. And recently, there has been further coverage in the mainstream television news media of the shootings on the Red Lake Reservation . The public is again--since "Zoloft defense" Christopher Pittman--questioning the role of children's psychiatric drugs in school violence; at the same time, the Red Lake incident has precipitated another wave of support for scrutinizing children--surveilling them, interrogating them, and forcing them to undergo mental health treatment among other things. For decades, psychiatry in the united $tates has targeted children as a group for the pettiest reasons involving children's defiant behavior, and has especially targeted oppressed-nation youth in the internal semi-colonies. The movement to pathologize the oppressed and pressurize them into the mental health care system is deeply reactionary irregardless of the particular techniques used-- therapy or drugs. Although MIM does not envision a reformist end to psychology before the seizure of power, the question arises how the proletariat of the oppressed nations is going to undo the consequences of the present movement to expand the reaches of psychology--tool of the oppressors.

The persistence of ideological effects from the mental illness label, habits of behavior and thinking arising from therapy and other treatment, and continuing effects of psychiatric drugs, will contribute to making the abolition of psychology after the seizure of power a struggle. For example, MIM opposes the biology-focused view of so-called mental illnesses except for extremely rare cases, but MIM has not advocated simplistically that everyone go off all their psychiatric drugs cold-turkey. (MIM in MIM Theory no. 9 talks about different ways for individuals to deal with their "neuroses" in this inherently dysfunctional oppressive society in order to participate more fully in the revolutionary struggle.) It is unfortunately the case that psychiatric drugs have a real material physiological effect--despite the tenuous biological basis of most so-called mental illnesses--and that this effect may have to be handled at the physiological level in part. So, there is a basis for struggle here: psychiatrists after the seizure of power may latch on to the possible continued use of some psychiatric drugs to justify new diagnoses of mental illnesses. The continued use of medicine with psychiatric "patients" may conflict with the overall decline of psychiatry.

People often assume mental illness symptoms are undesirable regardless of their cause. They ask: "what is the best way to improve the mental health of the population?" MIM is not white nationalists, so MIM's focus is on what bearing do so-called mental illnesses, and the attention paid to them, have on the revolutionary struggle. A related question is whether "mental illnesses" in the oppressor nation actually benefit the exploited and oppressed in the world. It would be even more reason to abolish psychiatry if psychiatry helped oppressor mental illness patients, but did not help the oppressed. Psychiatry for the rich helped them obtain draft deferrments for the Vietnam War, and during the same years psychiatrists labelled gays and protestors as ill. Drugs and therapy are tools of the oppressors, and some oppressors who undergo mental health treatment benefit from the drugs and therapy despite their consequences for the oppressed. The oppressors have a romance culture that exists to the detriment of the oppressed. Adjusting to it should not be our goal as the psychiatrists promote. The oppressors also have a therapeutic lifestyle and culture.

Behavior that is normal among the oppressed is often considered to be mental illness symptoms. Mental illness diagnoses serve to control that behavior. However, imperialist decadence and the decay of old patriarchal forms--often but not always imperialism-caused--may result in what psychologists call mental illness symptoms. Psychologists who do not disagree with psychology on principle, for example Louis A. Sass, have pointed to a connection between "modern society" and psychologically-defined schizophrenia.(1) From a Marxist viewpoint, movie culture reviews in MIM Notes and on MIM's Web site have touched on the relationship between so-called mental illnesses, particularly schizophrenia, and parasites' lives in imperialist countries, and manifestations of this relationship in movies. MCB52 in MIM Theory no. 9 notes: "The manifestations of schizophrenia are social even if there is a chemical component or basis. The gross individualism and violence in Amerika may lead people diagnosed as schizophrenics to shoot up a McDonald's or worry about constant surveillance, while in a socialist society their behavior would manifest itself differently." (p. 37) Imperialist decadence may be "mentally" debilitating for imperialist-country parasites.

The question arises is there a difference between psychology and psychiatry, a question of significance in abolishing psychology, and defining psychology in order to abolish it. The following quote, concerning the inclusion of "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" in editions of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , is illustrative:

"But even after they were told about women who had been harmed, they continued to deny publicly that any harm had been done. Trying to give the impression that the only harm done was from the public's stigmatizing of people called mentally ill, they would discuss no other kinds of harm and instead preached that stigmatizing is wrong. [Oh-so-caring mental health professionals still pull this stunt. --HC116] In this way, the world's most influential psychiatric organization irresponsibly said simply that there ought to be no negative fallout from their actions and then ignored evidence of such fallout, without taking responsible steps to ensure that no one else would be unjustifiably categorized as abnormal."(3)

What's interesting about the above quote is that the speaker describes herself as a mental health professional and in fact accepts individual therapy, without politics in command, as legitimate. Caplan's gripe in They Say You're Crazy , righteous as it is, is not even with psychiatry as a whole, but with "irresponsible" and "unscientific" practices among particular psychiatrists. There are anti-psychiatry psychologists, but these, too, do not disagree with therapy on principle. MIM discusses pseudo-feminist therapy in MIM Theory no. 9.

In fact, those who make a big deal about the distinction between psychiatry and psychology tend not to reject the therapy culture on principle. What they forget is that psychiatry is not medicine with a psychological veneer, but psychology with a false medical veneer. The viewpoint of psychiatry is not medicine, but psychology. Psychiatry and psychology are ideologically related despite their divergence in origin and development. In this context, psychiatry can be scientifically subsumed under psychology, as the practice of psychology. The fact that there may be more psychological practice in marketing professions than in academic departments does not mean we should start talking about marketing being separate. As far as revolutionary science goes, the underlying problem is still the same.

Not even medicine and medical work are above the class struggle and social struggle. And psychology (apart from the behaviorist school of "Pavlov dog" fame which does not belong in psychology) is a popular pseudoscience taking the individual abstract humyn as its starting point--just as Marx warned that "contemplative materialism" would. The struggle against psychology intersects with struggles on other fronts currently dominated by the oppressors' reactionary theory of humyn nature. So when MIM talks about "psychology" it's important not to be overly semantic: we are talking about something that is in common and underlying psychiatric practice, much of marketing, the academic field of psychology and the popular ideology of psychology concerned with individual motivations.

So-called mental illnesses that impair people's functioning seem individually based, but nonetheless must be handled by taking the proletarian feminist revolutionary stand, eliminating the social causes of mental illness, and putting politics in command in the treatment of mentally ill persyns--not by treating mentally ill persyns as politically inert and inept deadweight, failing to conform to the rules prevailing under the status quo. In the struggle for the revolutionary stand, both in questions of mental illness and bourgeois Liberalism, the most difficult part is making people see social causation connected to society-at-large, and that is why the ideology known as psychology falsely named a science should be abolished for the benefit of the people. A large part of abolishing the framework underlying psychiatry is the MIM line that "all sex is rape," which forces the question of social causation most firmly. In response we inevitably receive questions about love, masturbation, asexuality and children and all of this is very analogous to questions about pills--whether for depression or hyperactivity. The underlying premise of all these questions is the adjustment to an oppressive order and the notion of causation at the individual level that is in no way improved since the first Pilgrim settlers believed in pre-destination of the individual.

Pills and therapy sessions may benefit some of the nation and gender oppressors who have turned therapy into a lifestyle, especially those who own stocks in the big pharmaceutical companies, but the mental health care system is designed to meet the needs and demands of the oppressors, not the oppressed. The oppressors' only criticisms of psychological practices are pragmatic: "The right balance of risk and benefit is still harder to strike for a raft of heavily promoted drugs that treat common, persistent, daily life conditions: like anti-inflammatories, antacids, and pills for allergy, depression, shyness, menstrual crankiness, waning sexual powers, impulsiveness in children - you name it."(4) Psychiatrists now are promoting electroshock therapy as an alternative to drugs.(5) These approaches disregard the variation in "schizophrenia" incidence rates within countries and in the world, and do nothing to change the status quo. In fact, they reinforce the status quo--at the expense and to the detriment of the oppressed. The difficulty of ending unevenness, not only within countries, but also on a global scale, is a roadblock in the struggle to abolish psychology. Nothing short of a revolutionary remedy will change the social factors and practices that give rise to "mental illness" and the inability of mentally ill persyns to participate in revolutionary society and struggle.

Psychology, psychiatry in particular, is a reactionary assault against oppressed nationalities, homeless persyns, children, wimmin, gender and sexual minorities, many of whom are outright forced into the mental so-called health care system for purposes of social control. The movement to establish universal and potentially mandatory mental health screening is attempt to raise psychological surveillance and control to a qualitatively higher level where mental health screening is even more frequent for oppressed-nation children than dental check-ups.

The oppressors engage in the therapy culture because that culture corresponds to their parasitic interests and does not threaten the whole system of privilege. In the united $tates, most people are oppressors and one of the few dynamics opposing petty-bourgeois individualism is the natural humyn curiousity in math and science. We hope to interest the oppressor in long-term questions of math, probability and statistics--so that the petty-bourgeoisie can understand why psychology is so ineffective. The same path is open to oppressed to escape the intellectual dominance of the oppressor.

The oppressed must develop their own independent institutions and practices for handling "neuroses," institutions that do not pretend as if an oppressive society without anxieties and conflicts were possible. Revolutionary politics must be in command, not Liberal phony promises of drug/therapy cure-alls for socially caused "mental illnesses." The exploited and oppressed seek to cultivate revolutionary feelings, not stifle and extinguish them through drugs or therapy sessions that pretend to have no political viewpoint. The therapy culture is disgusting reactionary decadence and a slap in the face to the oppressed, who need and demand better than that.

"Experts" who encourage people to think of themselves (or their children or their intimate partners) as psychiatric patients or therapy clients represent a reactionary trend. What motivates this trend is not just money, but also the oppressors' desperation in the face of an increasingly decadent imperialist society. The struggle to abolish psychology and psychiatry involves a struggle to eradicate the whole decadent and oppressive mentality of therapy and psychiatric drugs.

Notes:

1. http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/

2. Louis A. Sass, " 'Negative Symptoms,' Commonsense, and Cultural Disembedding in the Modern Age," in Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity : The Edge of Experience , ed. Janis Hunter Jenkins and Robert John Barrett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 303-328.

3. Giovanni Stanghellini, Disembodied spirits and deanimated bodies : The psychopathology of common sense (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

4. Paula J. Caplan, They Say You're Crazy : How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 10.

5. "America The Medicated : Americans Buy More Medicine Than People In Any Other Country," April 21, 2005, http://wcco.com/health/health_story_111183644.html

6. Miranda Hitti, "Electroshock Therapy May Help Schizophrenia : Antipsychotic Medications Still the First Choice for Treatment, Say Researchers," April 21, 2005, http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/104/107571.htm

7. April Bethea, "Turning attention to suicide," April 20, 2005, e.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/north_carolina/counties/gaston/11438539.htm

"Starting next fall, Gaston County Schools' ninth-grade health courses will include a new lesson: how to spot suicide warning signs in a friend or classmate. . . . The 90-minute class was developed by a nonprofit company called Screening for Mental Health Inc. of Wellesley Hills, Mass. . . . The task force also developed a step-by-step guide on how school staff should interview a student who appears suicidal and how to refer them to appropriate medical treatment or to law enforcement. . . . The plan also requires that parents be notified if a school staff member thinks the student is depressed or has suicidal thoughts."