Having had my fill of anti-theism, the emergence of anti-psychiatry comes as a welcome diversion. Any attempt to debunk psychiatry is commendable, partly because psychiatrists are usually in greater danger of permanent mental instability than their patients and partly because psychiatrists have not come to any consensus on what it is they are treating: some think the mind is entirely treatable by manipulating the brain through chemicals or electroshock, others favour therapy through the kind of exchange people used to have with a bartender \u2013 or a priest in prior ages. Almost none admit to the existence of the human spirit, so almost all are at sea.<\/p>\n
Batty though most psychiatrists are, those who gathered recently in Toronto for a conference called PsychOUT, are battier still and, ironically,\u00a0 remind me somewhat of the grand-loon of psychiatry, R. D. Laing<\/a>, whose theories included: psychotic behaviour is a valid expression of distress; psychiatry is not a science (well, true)<\/em>; schizophrenia should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience; and psychiatrists themselves are responsible for the madness of many of their patients \u2013 hard to argue against that last point.<\/p>\n From the National Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n David Carmichael, a mentally-ill youth fitness advocate and aspiring federal politician who drugged and suffocated his 11-year-old son in a hotel room, is not your typical academic conference presenter.<\/p>\n Then again, PsychOUT, a controversial strategy session this weekend at the University of Toronto for “organizing resistance against psychiatry,” is not a typical conference.<\/p>\n A rare global event for the anti-psychiatry movement, with speakers from as far as Ghana, it is billed as a celebration of Mad Pride with an eye to the future overthrow of psychiatry, which has replaced religion as the primary oppressor of the human mind.<\/p>\n As organizer Bonnie Burstow puts it, modern psychiatry is beyond saving, and destroying it “is unachievable in the short run. But the long run is a very different thing.”<\/p>\n As a first step, the conference will promote new Ontario legislation aimed at defunding electroshock therapy, seen by anti-psychiatrists as a particularly brutal assault on people unfairly labelled as crazy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having had my fill of anti-theism, the emergence of anti-psychiatry comes as a welcome diversion. Any attempt to debunk psychiatry is commendable, partly because psychiatrists are usually in greater danger of permanent mental instability than their patients and partly because … Continue reading