In the bad old Soviet Union, psychiatry was abused for political purposes. If you dissented from the view that Actually Existing Socialism was the finest socioeconomic system ever created by man, and if you threatened to act on that conviction, you were at risk of being deemed insane, a sufferer from a vaguely-defined dysfunction called вялотекущую шизофрению; or “sluggish schizophrenia.” (I guess one could translate that as “flabby schizophrenia” also, but really.) You could be deprived of your liberty (such as it was under communism) by being confined in a locked psychiatric ward, forcibly stuffed full of psychotropic drugs, and tied down for electroconvulsive therapy, at least until you decided to stop being a dissident.
Needless to say this was all a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad abuse of human rights and was roundly denounced as such by many right thinking people, including non-Soviet psychiatrists.
Here in the West, of course, we are much more enlightened. Only if you dissent from the consensus view that life is a precious, wonderful gift and always worthwhile because virtue is rewarded and anyway tomorrow might be a brighter day, and only if you seem likely to act on your convictions, will you be deemed insane, a sufferer from a vaguely-defined dysfunction called depression, whereupon you will be locked in a psychiatric ward, forcibly stuffed full of psychotropic drugs and, just maybe, subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, at least until you agree to start seeing things society’s way.
We only practice punitive psychiatry against our moral dissidents, and that’s surely okay, right?
One Response to “Psychiatries, East and West”
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I’m reminded if this observation of Thomas Ligotti’s:
“Mental illness will remain taboo until it becomes universal. Not that it isn’t already universal from a certain perspective. But the very existence of the mentally and emotionally perturbed is a genuine threat to the socioeconomic system in which we are imprisoned. If you’re going to be crazy, your craziness better take the same form as that of your boss, the law-enforcement authorities, and the president of the United States. Otherwise, you are screwed.”