I would like to read Frances Allen's book and have purchased it in order to do so.
As a retired psychiatrist I agree that psychiatry, just like all of the medical subspecialties, has been hijacked by the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, something which began in the early 1900's and was fostered by the Rockefellers. They realized they could make money using petroleum and turning them into drugs, so they spent money on medical schools and university hospitals in order to have a say in the medical school curriculum.
By the time I was a med student (1975-78) the curriculum was already compromised. For example germ theory, the notion that bacteria, fungi, and viruses CAUSE disease was treated as if it had been conclusively proven beyond all doubt. It wasn't until the COVID fraud became clear that I learned there was a group of medical clinicians and scientists who have shown that there is no evidence for the existence of viruses and that there is no evidence that bacteria and fungi cause "infections" either. Evidence shows that bacteria and fungi, which live on and inside our bodies and have done so for millions of years, actually only invade tissue that is dead or dying, and their role is to clean up the dead and dying tissue. Medical science, however, spurred on by the desire for creating blockbuster antibiotics and so-called vaccines, has insisted that the bacteria found in dead tissue were the cause of death. That is equivalent to seeing firemen at a fire and concluding that firemen are the cause of fires.
But all my life, since medical school, I believed what I was taught until just recently I realized we were all lied to and currently the doctors in practice are still under the sway of bad "science", i.e., scientific studies that have NOT proven the germ theory. It has shaken my confidence in doctors and the whole hospital system in the US.
Similarly, I became able to look at psychiatry as an ill-fated attempt to turn psychoanalysis into a medical subspecialty. It is now obvious to me that the push behind this were the drug companies, eager to make millions and millions of dollars selling drugs for these "diseases."
What is a more nuanced problem is that having been a psychiatrist and having cared for extremely ill people, it is not so clear to me that there is no such thing as mental illness.
What I think has happened is that the drug companies made strong efforts to jettison psychoanalysis as a treatment because drugs are not favored by psychoanalysts except in extreme situations, whereas psychiatrists are trained from the outset to think of mental disorders and the drugs that are used for them.
There is an important difference between psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Psychoanalysts must undergo psychoanalysis themselves for as long as needed in order to become able to start practicing psychoanalysis. Psychiatrists ARE NOT REQUIRED TO EXPERIENCE EVEN ONE PSYCHOTHERAPY SESSION.
Because I was in analysis, with an outstanding analyst, i became much more able to help my patients understand their feelings with or without medications. I had some patients who were unable to function, with crippling depression, who were even unable to benefit from talking about their feelings due to the intensity of their depression. So I did use medication, but also if a patient wanted to get off the medication when their most serious symptoms were improved, I was willing to help them with that.
What I found difficult to do was to sit with patients who were suffering, who I knew I could help to some degree with their suffering if I prescribed medication, and still not prescribe the medication: but that is also because I was taught that withholding needed medication is as unacceptable ethically as poisoning a patient with too much medication.
There are psychiatrists who feel all medication use for psychiatric patients is abusive. (Szasz but also Peter Breggin MD, for example who has a substack) I find this difficult to understand, because I am not convinced they ever had to care for the most suicidal or dangerously homicidal psychotic patients. Having cared for and been responsible for patients like this, I could not simply withhold the use of medication that could have saved their lives or the lives of others. It is easy to say all medications are bad, but being responsible for individuals makes this not a black and white issue.
I agree that there is a problem with any figure in authority (government or physician, eg.) defining reality, defining normality, e.g. But when faced with psychotic patients who are telling you they are hearing voices telling them to kill people, maybe you should be able to define normality at least just a bit. To call people with delusions and command hallucinations normal doesn't seem reasonable.
So to summarize, I think Professor Gil-White your thesis is interesting, but I also think there are limits to the idea that doctors should not be able to define what is normal and what is not normal.
On the positive side, from a psychoanalytic point of view, the goal isn't to decide if the patient is "normal" per se, the goal is to help the person talk about their feelings so as to ultimately understand the emotional pain that brought them to the doctor in the first place. As someone who went through psychoanalysis, I can say my understanding of what is "normal" and "sane" has widened considerably. When you look deeply into yourself, you realize just how much we all have in common as human beings when it comes to our emotional lives.
It is part of the ethics of psychoanalysts to be nonjudgmental of our patients. How can we help them understand themselves if we view our roles as to judge them? That said, if a patient tells us he is determined to kill someone, it is legally our responsibility to warn that person (for their protection) and we would have to tell our patient that in this one instance the confidentiality has to be broken.
Using psychiatrists for the purpose of imprisoning people who are political dissidents is unethical on the psychiatrist part and would be treasonous on the government official's part in our Constitutional Republic.
As a psychiatrist I would rather go to jail myself than reveal anything said to me in confidence by a patient of mine.
I am making a plea for understanding of the plight of physicians who were trained a certain way, and who were already amongst the most compliant members of society before they even start medical school. I cannot change the way I was trained, and if I erred as a result of my training. On the other hand, I feel it is incumbent on the part of doctors TO KEEP OPEN MINDS AND KEEP LEARNING. The one trait that is most important for a scientist is skepticism. This trait has all but vanished amongst medical school applicants, doctors, and those who teach medical students.
What we need is a revamping of medical school education, but this will likely result in great if not catastrophic financial losses to the big universities, hospitals, and medical centers that depend upon the philanthropy of Big Pharma. A plan for dealing with that must be in place, and then the curriculum should be revamped to encourage skepticism, encourage questioning of the teachers, encourage questioning of who funded which so-called "scientific" study, etc.
I would like to read Frances Allen's book and have purchased it in order to do so.
As a retired psychiatrist I agree that psychiatry, just like all of the medical subspecialties, has been hijacked by the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, something which began in the early 1900's and was fostered by the Rockefellers. They realized they could make money using petroleum and turning them into drugs, so they spent money on medical schools and university hospitals in order to have a say in the medical school curriculum.
By the time I was a med student (1975-78) the curriculum was already compromised. For example germ theory, the notion that bacteria, fungi, and viruses CAUSE disease was treated as if it had been conclusively proven beyond all doubt. It wasn't until the COVID fraud became clear that I learned there was a group of medical clinicians and scientists who have shown that there is no evidence for the existence of viruses and that there is no evidence that bacteria and fungi cause "infections" either. Evidence shows that bacteria and fungi, which live on and inside our bodies and have done so for millions of years, actually only invade tissue that is dead or dying, and their role is to clean up the dead and dying tissue. Medical science, however, spurred on by the desire for creating blockbuster antibiotics and so-called vaccines, has insisted that the bacteria found in dead tissue were the cause of death. That is equivalent to seeing firemen at a fire and concluding that firemen are the cause of fires.
But all my life, since medical school, I believed what I was taught until just recently I realized we were all lied to and currently the doctors in practice are still under the sway of bad "science", i.e., scientific studies that have NOT proven the germ theory. It has shaken my confidence in doctors and the whole hospital system in the US.
Similarly, I became able to look at psychiatry as an ill-fated attempt to turn psychoanalysis into a medical subspecialty. It is now obvious to me that the push behind this were the drug companies, eager to make millions and millions of dollars selling drugs for these "diseases."
What is a more nuanced problem is that having been a psychiatrist and having cared for extremely ill people, it is not so clear to me that there is no such thing as mental illness.
What I think has happened is that the drug companies made strong efforts to jettison psychoanalysis as a treatment because drugs are not favored by psychoanalysts except in extreme situations, whereas psychiatrists are trained from the outset to think of mental disorders and the drugs that are used for them.
There is an important difference between psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Psychoanalysts must undergo psychoanalysis themselves for as long as needed in order to become able to start practicing psychoanalysis. Psychiatrists ARE NOT REQUIRED TO EXPERIENCE EVEN ONE PSYCHOTHERAPY SESSION.
Because I was in analysis, with an outstanding analyst, i became much more able to help my patients understand their feelings with or without medications. I had some patients who were unable to function, with crippling depression, who were even unable to benefit from talking about their feelings due to the intensity of their depression. So I did use medication, but also if a patient wanted to get off the medication when their most serious symptoms were improved, I was willing to help them with that.
What I found difficult to do was to sit with patients who were suffering, who I knew I could help to some degree with their suffering if I prescribed medication, and still not prescribe the medication: but that is also because I was taught that withholding needed medication is as unacceptable ethically as poisoning a patient with too much medication.
There are psychiatrists who feel all medication use for psychiatric patients is abusive. (Szasz but also Peter Breggin MD, for example who has a substack) I find this difficult to understand, because I am not convinced they ever had to care for the most suicidal or dangerously homicidal psychotic patients. Having cared for and been responsible for patients like this, I could not simply withhold the use of medication that could have saved their lives or the lives of others. It is easy to say all medications are bad, but being responsible for individuals makes this not a black and white issue.
I agree that there is a problem with any figure in authority (government or physician, eg.) defining reality, defining normality, e.g. But when faced with psychotic patients who are telling you they are hearing voices telling them to kill people, maybe you should be able to define normality at least just a bit. To call people with delusions and command hallucinations normal doesn't seem reasonable.
So to summarize, I think Professor Gil-White your thesis is interesting, but I also think there are limits to the idea that doctors should not be able to define what is normal and what is not normal.
On the positive side, from a psychoanalytic point of view, the goal isn't to decide if the patient is "normal" per se, the goal is to help the person talk about their feelings so as to ultimately understand the emotional pain that brought them to the doctor in the first place. As someone who went through psychoanalysis, I can say my understanding of what is "normal" and "sane" has widened considerably. When you look deeply into yourself, you realize just how much we all have in common as human beings when it comes to our emotional lives.
It is part of the ethics of psychoanalysts to be nonjudgmental of our patients. How can we help them understand themselves if we view our roles as to judge them? That said, if a patient tells us he is determined to kill someone, it is legally our responsibility to warn that person (for their protection) and we would have to tell our patient that in this one instance the confidentiality has to be broken.
Using psychiatrists for the purpose of imprisoning people who are political dissidents is unethical on the psychiatrist part and would be treasonous on the government official's part in our Constitutional Republic.
As a psychiatrist I would rather go to jail myself than reveal anything said to me in confidence by a patient of mine.
I am making a plea for understanding of the plight of physicians who were trained a certain way, and who were already amongst the most compliant members of society before they even start medical school. I cannot change the way I was trained, and if I erred as a result of my training. On the other hand, I feel it is incumbent on the part of doctors TO KEEP OPEN MINDS AND KEEP LEARNING. The one trait that is most important for a scientist is skepticism. This trait has all but vanished amongst medical school applicants, doctors, and those who teach medical students.
What we need is a revamping of medical school education, but this will likely result in great if not catastrophic financial losses to the big universities, hospitals, and medical centers that depend upon the philanthropy of Big Pharma. A plan for dealing with that must be in place, and then the curriculum should be revamped to encourage skepticism, encourage questioning of the teachers, encourage questioning of who funded which so-called "scientific" study, etc.