Mental illness

Hi

I think you could do a lot worse than get into the ideas of Maurice Brinton, especially "The Irrational in Politics"...

http://www.af-north.org/irrational.html

Brinton (pen name of Chris Pallis) was a celebrated neurologist, and had a great deal to say about mental disorder...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5155211-103684,00.html

His partner in crime was one Cornelius Castoriadis, as well as being a superb economist was also a practicing psychoanalyst...

http://www.psychomedia.it/jep/number6/castoriadis1.htm

That should keep you going for a couple of months.

Cheers

Chris

Hi,

Just an observation really on how certain anarchists have responded to several posters that they disagree with. They regularly use the term 'nutter', 'nutcase', 'nutjob' etc. Not only is this a cheap replacement for political discussion, it is an insult to those with mental health problems, and another capitulation to the capitalist ideology of scapegoating and degrading those who mental powers have been destablised by the mericiless laws of capital.

How does any one with a mental health problem feel when they read these insults!? Maybe these 'radicals' don't care about the feelings of others. It's not a question of being PC but of showing respect for those who are victims of the system, and not using their condition as a term of abuse.

Beltov.

redmedic - welcome to the boards... this has been brought up on a number of threads hear and there so have a look around :)

Yeah there was a discussion here too:

http://libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2990

For views on other aspects of Mental Health Issues you might like to read the following thread too...and perhaps add your comments to it...

http://libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4766

Some good arguments on tha thread. Personally i've had limited experience of the mental health system in the UK, working for part of the organisation in the mids at the mo and there does seem to be a lot of problems not only with the disciplin of psychiatry and the mental health system in general. Theres the obvious things like the emphasis that is put upon the individual as opposed to their surrounding environment, the prevalence of drugs in treatment, the number of incidences in care homes where force is used to control patients, the low pay of your average care worker, etc etc.

However what does seem just as pertinent at the mo is the prevalence of diagnosis of mental health problems amongst younger people, apparently there was a time when those in care homes were predominantly old people, now people as young as 40 are being referred due to dementia, more young people seem to be being diagnosed with mental health problems, now is this just a matter (as was touched upon in one of the threads) of their being more definitions of mental health 'maladies' with which to attach to people (owing much to the pharaceutical industry) or is it because whilst producing more diseases clinically modern society is socially creating more mental health problems through the way society is ordered?

Now, some people I met who weren't on section, but who clearly had mental illness would be unable to fend for themselves with the support of psychiatric/social/other services, however, proper community organisation, communist distribution and rationalisation of work would mean they'd be much better off in a libertarian communist society, especially since the crises and stresses which often cause hospital stays for people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder would be much less if there's no debt/rent/bureaucracy to deal with.

To ignore the environments role in mental health difficulties is to disembody and dissociate the individual from their experience. I’d love to see one of you tell an anorexic that her problems are merely part of a disease process, never mind the fact that she has been sexually abused, exposed to an unrealistic cultural thin ideal, dominated by over controlling parents etc etc…don’t be silly its just your brain!!! [

Does the stress associated with economic precarity, living in built up, clostraphopic environments, having huge pressure put on you at school and in education, the prevalence of radio waves and magnetic fields in the environment, the time people spend watching screens in work and at home, the shit thats in the water, living to someone elses dictates etc have a detremental effect on peoples mental well being? And if so how the hell do we research or prove that any one of these elements is a defining factor when non can really be seperated and isolated?

I asked a similar question on Urban75's philosophy/history/theory(/summat like that) forum a couple of months ago.

Hi redmedic

I

Perhaps as you get older, neurological changes just make you more conservative. Maybe it’s got something to do with the feelings of anxiety or insecurity identified as mid-life crises. Please enjoy this link, and related reports. Hope no-one minds me posting them…

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/undergrad/research/amass_thesis.pdf

http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/01/02/do0202.xml

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1017505,00.html

Is it possible that people get more right wing as they get older because of neurological changes in the brain?

Cheers

Chris

Lazy Riser

Is it possible that people get more right wing as they get older because of neurological changes in the brain?

I doubt it.

Hi

That doesn't fill me with confidence. Why am I so attracted to the idea do you think?

Peace and Love

Chris

It's a stupid idea. I mean political persuasion doesn't arise from neurological characteristics in the first place does it?

Hi

Well, I'm certainly less convinced of the notion than I was earlier. This is largely as a consequence of other peoples' reaction to the idea.

But, as Kylie would say, I can't seem to get it out of my head, it's nagging away at me. Only she wouldn’t say the last bit.

For some reason when I read the sources above, I'm left thinking that there's something to it. So then I kind of suggest it, and I get kicked back really badly.

And I’m wondering, this is weird.

So there you go. Is everything OK with that, or is there something I’m missing?

Peace and Love

Chris

Hi again

I'm sorry to post this so quickly, but it suddenly came to me.

Have you ever read Brinton's "The Irrational in Politics"? If you have, do you think it's dodgy?

Sorry for the bookishness.

Love

Chris

Just thought I'd post back to this having read the discussions, and not having a chance to reply to them earlier. Redmedic, if you're looking for something to read you could try Madness Explained by Peter Bentall, it gives a theory of madness that says that it isn't outside the realms of everyday experience. People become mad due to traumatic events, and other empirical processes like losing too much sleep due to those traumatic events. Now this guy isn't a radical, but he does seem to explain madness in a more humane way from that of the eugenicist that it's something fundamentally wrong with the individual. Then there's Users and Abusers of Psychiatry by Lucy Johnstone, which basically catalogs the dangers of ECT and medication. And having seen about seven or eight people I know die in the last five years due to complications with their medication, I can assure you she isn't being far-fetched. She is more radical, and she also points up alternatives to current treatments being tried in this country and elsewhere, not that I've been able to find any of the ones running in Britain on the internet. Anyway, hope that is of some help. :bb:

And opposed to the psychology approach, there's also EPA research which shows, or might show that there's a fatty acid in the brain, called EPA, which people can take more of that restores their normal brain functioning. THis might be individual-centred, but it's a lot less harmful than medication, (i.e. no noticeable side effects) and if people end up sane, then it might be good!! Dr Basan Pouri is the guy to check out, although I might not have spelled his name properly.

Cheers

D :@:

Intrigued by the notion of as one gets older one gets more conservative. It's well known that after the age of say, 25, one starts to lose brain cells at a high rate of knots. Perhaps we can equate conservativism with cerebral sclerosis, both degenerative diseases.

I spent years studying psychiatry. Then got a friendly consultant to admit me to a psychiatric ward as a "pretend patient". I learned more about psychiatry in my three days of admission than I had in all my career. I came away no longer able to believe in psychiatry. All sorts of career implications in that.

Peter Good (of The Cunningham Amendment)

Intrigued by the notion of as one gets older one gets more conservative. It's well known that after the age of say, 25, one starts to lose brain cells at a high rate of knots.

yeay go me. more than halfway dead already and i still kick ass :twisted:

seriously though i fail to see the connection between the loss of brain cells and exhibiting more conservative behaviour. why is that more likely than any other type of behaviour to be generated by the breakdown of neural connections in the brain?

Well I guess if you're not able to make as many new neural connections, you'll end up being kind of stuck in the same thought patterns and less open to new ideas. Which is, in a sense, conservative.

Oh yeah, and if you want to know what psychosis is like, read The One by Paul Reed, it's an insider's view on the brain when you're crazy. But all he needed was a cup of tea and a chat. :D

I think a more likely explanation for people becoming more conservative as they become older is that they acquire more responsibilities, which forces most people to modify their behaviours to raise families etc. Much in the way that Thatcher introducing the sell-off of council housing was a master stroke by her class, as it made people think twice before action that might compromise their families homes.

I categorise that kind of stuff in the 'rubbish' file together with the criminal and gay genes.

I also agree that most illness of that kind is related to traumatic experiences, poverty or alienation in general.

thaw

I think a more likely explanation for people becoming more conservative as they become older is that they acquire more responsibilities.

Quite.

Still, increasing difficulty in making new neural connections could still be a contributing factor. But probably a very minor one compared to the responsibility thing.

Hi

I'm closer to your positions than, perhaps, you think.

The angle that I’m pursuing is that authoritarian conditioning (such as “accepting one responsibilities”, Thatcher’s masterstroke above etc) set up a feed-back cycle of behaviour, perception and changes in the brain’s chemistry.

The perception of responsibility as a conditioned response made easier by chemical changes in our brains as we age.

It’s far away from the “crime-gene” style axe that some may be forgiven for thinking I’m grinding.

I’m thinking along the lines of linking authoritarian conditioning and, say, depression or mid-life neurosis and the material neurological phenomena that accompany them.

I’m fascinated by the how reactionary thought is linked to a particular psychological outlook towards maintenance of self esteem and status, and how that is effected by brain chemistry and social conditioning. I’m wondering if, in a limited sense for some people, natural chemical changes in our brain make us more “worried” about these things (perhaps to enable us to bring up families or some other evolutionarily advantageous effect).

If you watch too much East Enders and read too much Daily Mail you become conditioned to emulate them (as a Citizens Advice Bureau volunteer I have evidence to suggest this is really happening). I’m wondering if there is an “addictive” loop effect here caught up with the changes in the brains seritonin uptake due to the particular psychological effects of digesting this material. That would be a similar habituating effect similar to mood changing drugs.

I’m going to post some links…

Maurice Brinton’s - The Irrational In Politics

http://www.af-north.org/irrational.html

Veblen and status

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class#Economic_drive

Serotonin and anxiety

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin

There’s a lot of material about the place on the brain chemistry of anxiety, how authoritarian conditioning causes anxiety and how aging is associated with anxiety and changes in brain chemistry. The discussion is cyclic, but then that befits it’s nature as it explores a complex feed-back based process.

I’ve no right wing agenda here, but I am up for a ruthless exploration of the connection between neurology, psychology and politics.

I’m pretty sure Brinton/Pallis would approve.

Love

Chris

I apologize for posting this before I've even read all this thread but was just wondering if you've any thoughts on Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality of Fromm's Fear of Freedom? I'm supposed to be reading both of them for my dissertation but am procrastinating like fuck.

I've read bit of Adorno and come across a few criticisms - the main one being that the book focusses on on individual psychology rather than existing social relations (although I think that was their expressed intention and they intended to deal with social factors later. A mate told me Fromm might be better because he's more of a social psychiatrist and relates authoritarian personality traits to class rather than an individual syndrome.

Sorry if this a bit random.

Hi lucy82

lucy82

seriously though i fail to see the connection between the loss of brain cells and exhibiting more conservative behaviour. why is that more likely than any other type of behaviour to be generated by the breakdown of neural connections in the brain?

That's an important question. I'm no expert, but I've read acedmic texts which suggest that disorderd behaviour arises as a consequence of having a distorted percepetion of reality.

I'm imagining that reactionary politics arise from a similar distorted perception of reality.

I'm concerned with linking sociopathic hostility and reactionary politics via authortarian conditioning. I'm also interested in the brain chemistry of the conditioned mind and how the relates to advertising, drug addiction and questions of self esteem and that kind of thing.

Love etc

Chris

Fromm is a God! Sane Society especially deals with the concept of society's affect on mental ill health, how that exists through unequal political and economic systems and ways of dealing with that. His conclusions are libertarian socialist if not anarchist, though I'm not aware he ever associated himself with anarchism.

Hi

Bodach gun bhrigh

People become mad due to traumatic events, and other empirical processes like losing too much sleep due to those traumatic events

I concur with your perspective. Would you agree that personality disorders and neuroses have similar causes?

Do you see authortarian conditioning as a kind of "traumatic event", and do you think that neurological effects can occur both as a consequence and as a cause in a complex feed back loop of behavior and thought.

Is consiousness a physiological phenomon, or is it supernatural?

Cheers

Chris

Yeah, I think all psychological problems are linked, I got most of my ideas from reading this book by Bentall, and actually being crazy. And he reckons that neuroses are caused by similar processes to psychosis, although he doesn't actually cover them in his book. Certainly, I think Authoritarian conditioning causes a lot of mental health problems, if someone treats you like shit constantly, and you have no way of avoiding that, like bullies in school, authoritarian parents, bosses, then you begin to doubt yourself and feel bad about yourself. And taken to extremes then this doubt and anxiety can cause chemical changes in the brain that lead you to doubt reality as well. And if people are angry and bitter and unhappy, then they're more likely to turn to simplistic explanations of society and their problems, like poverty will always be with us, blaming neds for anti-social behaviour, and thus more likely to believe the Daily Mail, as it feeds their hate, as that has been their first rational response to their problems. Thus creating more authoritarian conditioning. Instead of seeing the problem in the authoritarian conditioning in the first place. Phew.

Yeah, Fear of Freedom is a damn fine book, I used it for my dissertation as well, on Gaelic novels, although he talks more about Protestants than mental illness, which is kind of useful in the Highlands. Most adorno stuff is good, if a tad depressing.

Abolish Psychiatry! Freedom for the Mad! Be nice to one another! :D

Hi

Bodach, I can see that you and I are as one on this and many other matters. You're a breath of fresh air my friend.

redyred

It's a stupid idea. I mean political persuasion doesn't arise from neurological characteristics in the first place does it?

Now redyred, I think you may have been a bit quick to dismiss my investigation. For the sake of those joining this thread recently I’m going to repost the three (I’ll concede of questionable providence) links that first set me off on this sorry episode in the first place…

How the brain changes as you age…

http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/01/02/do0202.xml

How psychology affects political philosophy…

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

How anxiety feeds reactionary philosophy…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1017505,00.html

My position is that there is a cycle of authoritarian conditioning, behavioural coercion and psychological changes that create a tendency towards a family of misanthropic philosophical outlooks. The psychological changes have a neurological rather than a supernatural cause. The neurological changes in question are partially concerned with the cycle of conditioning, but are also encouraged by natural changes in brain physiology as we age.

Here is a fascinating thesis on the psychology of ideology…

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/undergrad/research/amass_thesis.pdf

I suppose my premise is that the neurological changes in our brains associated with ageing give rise to psychological effects that tend towards those that drive conservatism. Close mindedness, intolerance, anxiety, misanthropy.

Unfortunately, I’ve recently discovered that this field of research has only been looked at properly in the last 10 years or so, which leaves me, at best, in something of an inconclusive position.

I wonder where redmedic has got to? I’d like to think he could shed some light on this. Peter Good, maybe you can add some insights.

I still haven’t quite got to the bottom of why the likes of redyred and John. are so hostile to the suggestion. I hope it isn’t personal, maybe they’re just uptight about something, is it taboo?

I always think that the most aggressive posters, with all their bitching and swearing, are displaying a degree of inner unhappiness. Anxiety breeds a short temper. In a distasteful piece of self-promotion, I’ll point everyone off to what’s happening on a different thread…

http://libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=61777#61777

As if that isn’t enough, I read a fascinating (if self-contradictory) article on “The Sociology And Psychology Of Terrorism”. The psychological differences and similarities between, say, PIRA operatives and Islamists were especially interesting. The role of depression in acts of misanthropic violence is as clear within terrorist organisations as it is in the public at large.

Peace + Love

Chris

Actually, Chris, I think your hypothesis is total bollocks. Just my opinion.

Peace & love

Hi thaw

thaw

I think your hypothesis is total bollocks.

You're probably right, I am learning a lot about neuropharmacology though.

The more I think about it, the more bollocks it seems. I'll leave it.

Love

Chris

Chris, You are offering some pretty complex and challenging ideas. Myself, I'm suspicious of most neurological and genitic theories. Yes, they do play a part but then so does the weather, food and pollution. I am much more inclined to look at people as social animals. Much more interested in how human conditions are entries into already moving streams of consciousness, i.e., depression has used the same metaphors for centuries.

I'm a follower of Mikhail Bakhtin in both psychiatry and Anarchism. My book, "Language for those who have Nothing" (Kluwer 2000), argued that psychiatry is too big an institution to take-on at face value. I found that my questions were in the same "voice" as the answers. Thus, I attempted to approach psychiatry from acts of cunning and mischievous disguise. It was research that shook me up for years! I just stopped believing in it as a science. I still work with people with mental health problems. I just do it differently now.

It's good to see unorthodox ideas posted.

Peter Good (of The Cunningham Amendment)

It also kind of suggests that only stupid people are in charge of the world - an underestimation I think.

I just wondered if anybody on this site was interested in the ideas of Mosher Soteria? I attended a Soteria Network conference in Birmingham at the weekend, and have now become a part of the Network.

Their next meeting will be held in Burnley, Lancashire, on 26th October at 1.30pm, however the venue has not been sorted yet. Anyone with any interest in the subject is welcome to come along.

http://www.moshersoteria.com/

sorry pushka but i went on the amazon sight to look at one of the books and underneath it says

Customers interested in Soteria: Through Madness To Deliverance may also be interested in

Punk Socks

Your online source for old school striped punk socks

www.skatersocks.com

what?? :D

Hi Lucy82

(Hey, did you just edit the post this next bit is replying to?)

I'm thinking it’s more of a tendency rather than an absolute rule. Maybe it's more pronounced in males, like, say, Asperger’s or something?

Perhaps the self psychotherapy you get by having such excellent politics, Lucy82, makes you immune to the effect.

Grumpy old man syndrome, midlife crises, narrow mindedness, inexplicable depression, belligerence and loneliness, selling out, a crushing sense of duty. I’m just exploring the connections between them for the fun of finding out about the species.

Peace and Love

Chris

lucy82

sorry pushka but i went on the amazon sight to look at one of the books and underneath it says

Customers interested in Soteria: Through Madness To Deliverance may also be interested in

Punk Socks

Your online source for old school striped punk socks

www.skatersocks.com

what?? :D

LOL :D

I did, Lazyriser. sorry about that

writing posts and then editing them to mean something else in the heartbeat it takes for someone to respond is a kind of psychogeographical exercise, a playful, inventive strategy for exploring predictable paths and jolting those who reply into a new awareness of the forum landscape (to shamelessly paraphrase wikipedia).

or maybe i just got bored with my own words and decided to have some new ones :D

It is always worth remembering there are lot of people who work in mental health who are totally moral people despite the negative repercussions of a state owned health system. All coercive sate systems whether it is the army, the police or anything else have good people in them. They also have the opposite and the opposite is made inevitable and more likely to occur because of the hierarchy.
In an anarchist system there would need to be people who deal with mental health, crime and there would definitely be forms of voluntary defence. The difference between the system we have now and a potential libertarian socialist one is that coercion would cease or at least be very rare. All of our institutions would be voluntary and equalised.

I qualified as a psychiaric nurse back in the late 7o's. I still work in mental health today. I 've always been, well since the early 70's a socialist, and since the late seventies an anarchist. At times it has been very hard working in a generally authoritarian regeime. It has always been my self-appointed task to take the corner of the 'service-user' and to encourage co-workers to do likewise, and to get involved with the user-movement. There is, like Ted says, a lot of good people working in the system. Anyway, going back to the original question about libertarian medics etc - I would always recommend to anyone in the system to read Franz Fanon, a psychiatrist - on race, culture and imperialism. Another medic is psychiatrist, sexologist and gerontologist Dr Alex Comfort.

I think a cental issue has been overlooked here that deserves comment. The Sozialistische Patientenkollektiv (Heidelberg, Germany) was a seminal organisation of nutters. Talk about one bite of the cherry and cracking the stone and their teeth. Just to give you a touch of them a good publication: Make a weapon out of illness introduction by Jean Paul Sartre. When I had more brain cells and the SPK was still running about a decade ago I was going to write a dissertation on what they were up to. Never came to fruition. Perhaps for the best as conspiricists have since pointed out to me that they were more than likely an American military experiment in thought control. Some links for the interested.

Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre to SPK - Turn Illness into a Weapon
Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv
Talk about theory and praxis

The idea of a revolutionary vanguard (whether of those who are most opressed in society - the mentally ill - or others) should obviously strike the readers of libcom as false.

A 'libertarian approach to mental illness':

'Benzodiazepine. Give me the prescription
and I will be you. I’ll pretend to be you
and if i cannot, well, I’ll tell you about your walls
the interpretation of the cracks, divination etc
you probably don’t wanna know. give me the paper
its fine I’ll never remember a thing.
you’ll say things tomorrow I’ll have said them last week.
just right. I know explosives. magic I know and dialectics.
just write the fucking prescription ok.
I have conversations with the dead'

Extract of Poem by Sean bonney