by Justice Lover
The articles below were sent to me by the author,Peter H. Donnelly, a survivor of both child abuse past and of subsequent abuse by the shrinks. One by one the author exposes and invalidates some very common practices by the shrinks, so common that not only the shrinks consider them valid and acceptable, even the public at large does the same.
Having read the articles some immediate questions beg the reader for urgent answers, such as : why have the shrinks got away so far with their horribly unjustifiable stigmatisation of their victim-patients, to the point of complete destruction of the victims' lives ? Why are psychiatry and its practitioners allowed to falsely and fraudulently claim to impose "treatment" as a "medical specialty"on their victims when the opposite is true, namely, they impose torture, destruction and death rather than healing and help ?
Even without the deadly poisons of Big Pharma, and without the electric shocks, and without the "psychosurgery", the mere psychiatric terminology can destroy any person, and turn life into hell, and it does, so why allow such terrorism to be imposed on the public ?
Here are the articles :
Reality Testing and Reality Assumption
There are many reasons why I am critical of the term and label "psychotic". Firstly, because it is a term, or similar term, sometimes referred to in an argument to invalidate or suppress another person's point of view or perspective. The term or label of "psychotic", could therefore be used simply to deny and suppress other persons' valid point of view or perspective, personally, interpersonally, socially, politically, and so on.
The label of "psychotic" is therefore a perspective controlling machine, and like a machine, it often operates mechanically, and without it’s own true or unique perspective or consciousness.
I am also in some ways critical of the meaning of the term and label "psychotic", which means, "out of touch with and not corresponding to reality".
There are many different philosophical, political, and theological interpretations of reality, but where psychiatric social and mental health is concerned, anything which differs from the professional medical psychiatric and social or mental health perspective, can therefore be deemed to be out of touch with and not corresponding to reality, and therefore "psychotic".
In fact, this mentalist labelling of "psychotic", is in itself exclusive, and is in itself out of touch with other interpretations of reality - which are just as corresponding to reality - and just as realistic. Thus, the absence of the knowledge of the mentalism of the term, process, and label "psychosis", could itself be said to be "psychotic" in some ways. It is "psychotic" in the sense that it is trying to suppress another point of view or perspective, as in this way, it is out of touch with and not corresponding to another person’s living reality.
The other main reason why I am critical of the term "psychotic", is that whilst I accept that a person can be hallucinating and having delusions of people, things, and forces which are unreal and untrue, on some deeper level of social interpretation their ideas might fit reality in a different way, and their ideas might make a lot of sense, in context to the person’s past and present social and life-experiences, and in context to the voices social and cultural meaning.
Reality testing, can also often make assumptions about another person’s grasp of reality, in order to feel superior and to feel more in touch with reality. The main assumption this makes, is to assume that just because in some part of the person’s brain, the person is hallucinating voices or whatever, then to assume that whole person’s brain and consciousness must be out of touch with reality and therefore hallucinating.
From personal experience, I know that is possible to be both hallucinating voices, and agreeing or colluding with some of the delusions of those voices, and yet to still to be in touch with reality, and still be in touch with the knowledge and awareness that the voices and their content are not real. This complex configuration is very difficult for psychiatrists to grasp and understand, partly because medical psychiatry - which is a very linear thinking - fails to grasp or understand dialectical thinking, and which can operate differently, and somewhat paradoxically, on many different levels.
In order to understand madness, it helps if you have experienced it, or experienced something similar to it. There is indeed a point which the delusions of hearing voices, can take over completely, as in the throes of a mental breakdown, but otherwise it is quite possible to experience both delusion and reality at the same time.
This dialectical thinking is in some ways much better than the exclusive reality perspective, because it can grasp reality and have a firm grip on real people and things, and yet it still has the creativity and imagination to receive other interpersonal, social, and cultural meanings of things. The voice hearer can therefore sometimes be an interpersonal, social, and cultural filter, which takes interpersonal, social, and cultural meanings, and places them together in different patterns, in order to have a much wider dialogue and understanding of society and reality.
Peter H. Donnelly
2005
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Am I Normal?: Spirituality
In this TV programme, shown on the 28th of April, 2008, on BBC 2 at 9 p.m., as part of the documentary series Am I Normal?, Dr Tanya Byron explored what some consider the fine-line, between religious devotion and so-called psychiatric disorder. She began the programme, by asking what place does religious belief - which depends not on rational thinking and scientific proof, but simple faith - have in the modern world? She asked, are people who devote their lives to something that can never be proved, wasting their time?, and is the very idea of religious belief, evidence of flawed, or even demented, thinking?
Tanya Byron spoke to a street preaching born-again Christian, who when asked if he ever wondered that people might think he’s crazy, said that people who say this are crazy themselves, and trying to push their craziness and negativity onto others. She then spoke to a nun, who said that monastic isolation helped her to face her inner demons. The nun said that she knew her beliefs in God were true, but it was not something she knew with her head, but more similar to something a person knows with their heart.
Tanya Byron then said, that a lot of mental health professionals, say that a high percentage of people with diagnosed schizophrenia have religious beliefs, but that this helps them with their problems and life in general. A psychiatrist said that religion has had a bad press in psychiatry. Because of religious delusion, the psychiatrists tend to see spirituality as something that needs treating. The shrink continued by saying, that this prejudice about the religious beliefs, of people with mental health problems, stems from the fact that religion and science have been separated, in the history of psychiatry, and that we need to bring science and religion back together.
Former MP, and newspaper columnist, Matthew Paris said that he had no problem with many Christians, but that he got irritated with laziness of mind, using bad arguments, and finding comfort in something, that they know in some part of their brain just isn’t true.
Tanya Byron then mentioned that it has been said, that if you talk to God, then you are religious, but if God talks back to you, then you are a schizophrenic. Richard Benthal, the author of Madness Explained, said that we all have an inner voice, and that it’s well known in child development, that at age 2 we all start talking to ourselves. He said that diagnosed mad people are treated as another species, and considered that they are deluded, out-of-touch with reality, and that others have a privileged access to reality, and diagnosed mad people are seen as not responsible for their actions and need controlling.
Tanya Byron then said that, what if people who hear voices are not mad, but are just unhappy people who have had bad experiences in their lives, and that they need to be listened to, and not labelled as mad and feared. She attended the Manchester Hearing Voices group, who are working with the University of Manchester’s new research, to look at hearing voices in a new way.
Peter, from the Manchester Hearing Voices Group, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and been in a out of psychiatric hospitals, said that his negative voices, were taken over by more positive voices, of his mother and grandmother. He said that psychiatrists trying to suppress the experience of hearing voices, were not helpful, because we need to not fragment the voices, but integrate them - have a relationship with them - get to know the voices and understand them. Tanya Byron concluded the programme, by saying that we need to accept the spirituality of diagnosed mad people, and not label this as part of their diagnosed mental illness.
I thought it was a good programme, but I have one major criticism of it. It’s not a simple matter of religious belief on the one hand, and rational thinking on the other, or religion and science, and simply bringing the two together. It’s a slightly more complex matter, of the dialectical relationship between the two, and that they can be connected or related, and yet still remain very separate. As a writer, and experienced person on mental health matters and creativity, I am basically a rationalist and a scientist, but I also believe in creativity, and realise the importance of things like spirituality too, in order to further the rationalist and scientific quest.
As a voice hearer, I hear positive, educative, friendly, caring, and supportive voices, which are female. I need to have these hearing voices experiences for my own well-being, and to create and think fully and effectively, and I would be depressed and devastated without them. I often initially have to create the voices with my mind, by setting up a basic dialogue with another in my thoughts, and then the voices have some autonomy from my conscious thoughts, and engage in discussion and debate with me.
When I am not hearing the voices, I know that they are not real, and are just an extra function of my mind or brain, but whilst experiencing them as autonomous, and relating and engaging with them, I have to suspend rational thinking and belief, and believe that they are real people, otherwise I would not hear or experience them, and otherwise I would not be able to come up with new knowledge and findings, and write about them.
This means, that the rational belief aspect of the mind has to be suspended, for a different modality of thinking and feeling to take place, and in order for new rational and scientific thinking to occur. Even though this involves temporarily believing in things which do not exist, it is not laziness of mind, or bad argument, as Matthew Paris simply put it. It is often a much more complex, and more deeper way of thinking, which is a more dialectical thinking, and a different mode of consciousness.
Peter H. Donnelly
2008
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Paranoia-Inducing, Projection, and Internalisation
To begin this article on paranoia, I first want to say something about paranoia-inducing, paranoia projection, and the internalisation or introjection of this. Some people in power and society, will try to induce paranoia in people diagnosed with mental health problems, because they get a kick out of it, it makes them feel superior in terms of power and awareness, and it makes them feel and think that they have a better grasp and understanding of reality.
For example, whilst it may be argued that the drug cannabis induces paranoia, there is also the reality of the discrimination against the drug and its use, because it is illegal, and which can also induce paranoia.
By persecuting, terrorising, and hounding individuals, this can be a way of making the victimised person feel frightened, angry, paranoid or upset, and which are all ways to control and label the person, as having symptoms of so-called mental illness. This may also be a projection of paranoia - perhaps a mass paranoia - upon individuals or small groups. This projection of paranoia, can then become internalised by the person, but could also be an awareness of what could happen, if this discrimination and abuse to induce paranoia, became extended to actual or more violence, became more extreme, and got out totally of hand.
There is also the matter of sensitivity with paranoia. Some people who are labelled as paranoid may have a sensitivity to their local surroundings, and be sensitive to some aspects of social and cultural animosity, that others cannot see or admit to about themselves, or are not as aware of. Paranoia can be a more social way of thinking, because it is connecting to others, albeit in a negative way.
One opposite of paranoia, is the denial of power abuse, repression, and oppression in society and reality. A normal person may be tolerant towards some abuse and oppression, whilst the so-called paranoid person is aware of it and protests against it.
Paranoia can also be part of a creative process, where a detail or details get enlarged or exaggerated for atmosphere and effect, whilst there is some corresponding so-called delusion thinking, although once the blocks or delusions have passed, and the person can see the whole picture, this can then be part of a personal, cultural, social, or political critique.
Paranoia labelling can simply be a denial of rights to protect persons and people from persecution, discrimination, abuse, and oppression. On the BBC TV programme The Doctor Who Hears Voices, a female member of the Manchester Hearing Voices group, said that she was frightened that aliens were going to take her away, remove her eyes, and blind her. This might mean, that she is frightened that she could be sectioned, or incarcerated, in psychiatric hospital, if she told others about the voices, and that she could become alienated, and have her perceptions and thoughts about the experiences of the voices, taken away from her by psychiatric incarceration and drugs.
What is curious and interesting, is that in my experience, paranoia can be taken as a general personal criticism by another person - particularly a parent or other family member - even though the critical aspect of the paranoia is not directly about that person. Again, this might be because the paranoia is warning people of what could happen, if things became extreme or out of control, because it highlights the so called sane person’s denial or tolerance of abusive power and repression, and because it is in a way seen as mad, irrational, and delusional. It is at the least, an extension of the so-called sane person’s intolerance against another person having a different opinion or experience.
Paranoia that exists alongside or are also delusions, can stem from the fact that harm, abuse, and bullying has been done to the person in the past, and that events are somewhat overlapping in the mind. What the person needs is to understand are that the events are separate, but that they are also somewhat interconnected and interrelated.
Paranoia can also be about the person needing love, reassurance, and protection, and about his or her way of expressing that need. Paranoia can also stem, from the way that children or young people can be threatened or told that bad things will happen to them if they misbehave. This can induce paranoia in the child or in later life.
Peter H. Donnelly
2008
***
Stream-of-consciousness
Stream-of-consciousness (SOC) is accepted as a sane, literary style, if it is written, but it is sometimes perceived as madness if it is spoken by people in everyday conversation or communication.
Some psychiatric-diagnosed people, use SOC in their speech or communication, because they see life events as being in some way very much interconnected, whether through some religious notion such as Karma, or from some more social or personal notion. SOC is used in a person's speech or communication, because it adheres, in some ways, to how people see life-events, along with their beliefs and values.
The interconnectedness and over-lapping of events, plays a big part in our influences, dreams, and subconscious, and can tell us a lot about our present experiences and behaviour. SOC can also be used because a person's life events may seem fragmented, and streaming is seen as a way of linking and reconnecting events and experiences in the mind.
In literature, SOC is used to describe a character’s actual thoughts-patterns, and their responses to external stimuli in their environment, but it is questionable whether stream-of-consciousness actually represents objective reality, as it is a more subjective approach to expression, learning, and understanding.
Another reason SOC might be used in speech or communication, is because if the mind is releasing a lot of ideas in one go, then there may be more possibility of another person connecting to these ideas, if the other person can keep up with the density or pace.
A psychiatric-diagnosed person I used to know, would talk very fast in streams, and then if you responded with a word or statement, he would then ask you what that word meant and was all about. This was his way of trying to encourage the other person to think in streams of ideas, and suspend their critical faculties, but he was also anticipating a rational approach being used against his streaming, and so he would anticipate this or assume, that the other person was going to ask him what he meant, as a way of the other person controlling his consciousness, thinking, relating, and communication.
SOC is sometimes used if a person is stressed out, and can be a form of so-called brainstorming. Brainstorming is where the mind uploads ideas on a given subject, usually within a group, so a person can get many ideas on paper in a short space of time. This can also be a way of releasing stress and anxiety. Another reason why some psychiatric-diagnosed people brainstorm, is because they may have a problem with memory and connecting their ideas and thoughts together.
A person may be half-way into a conversation, and then forget what they were going to say, but by brainstorming and releasing a stream of ideas, the person can then think associatively, and possibly reconnect to what they were trying to say beforehand. This is a way of overcoming short-term memory blocks. On the other hand, the person might just fly off into another direction, and reconnect to something completely different, suspending all rational, critical, and structuring faculties.
Peter H. Donnelly
2008
***
Abuse Survival, Speaking Out, Professionals and Society
The whole subject of child abuse is a very complex one, especially if one is to come out as an abuse survivor to social work and mental health professionals or to the public.
I am a child abuse survivor, but I have now understood and forgiven the person that abused me, because I realise that although they wasn’t abused as a child by their parent or parents, they grew up in a very emotionally hard, and a very socially and economically poor environment. Also, since being a very bad parent towards me as a child, they have been very good to me as an adult, and I am absolutely convinced that there is now mutual respect and love between us.
Most people in some ways have been oppressed or abused by the system. Whether this involves oppression and bullying by parents, teachers, or from other children, or oppressed and bullied in work, people in general have more or less suffered from some sort of abuse. However, it is still important to make a distinction between actual child abuse, and abuse by the system against people, although I make the comparison because it relates to when and how a person speaks out about being abused, and what responses they can receive from professionals or society.
Whilst there are some very good reasons to come out as a child abuse survivor, there are also some very good reasons for hiding this information until the appropriate time. From my experience and knowledge, it can be unwise to come out as a child abuse survivor, to some social work and mental health professionals, as this can make them feel guilty, because they are part of a system that should have prevented the abuse. This guilt can turn defensive and aggressive, and involve the professional insulting and attacking the abuse survivor verbally, or even justifying the child abuse as being part of tradition, discipline, or family values. Child abuse can also be justified as being seen as a form of protest, whilst the child abuse survivors protest for change gets denied and ignored.
I spoke to a fellow child abuse survivor recently, and she said that people who haven’t been abused as children don’t understand. I replied to her, that whilst it’s true that they don’t understand, it also true that they just don’t care, because they don’t know the degree of suffering of being abused as a child, and because they also believe that they too have suffered from some sort of abuse by the system, and in a way believe that they have suffered more. Unfortunately, we have no means of measuring who suffers more in society, although experience, intelligent common sense, and knowledge, tells us that abuse survivors suffer more as children from the rest of society.
There’s also a tendency amongst some abuse survivors and professionals, to believe that only men abuse children, and that all abuse is only sexual. Some women abuse children too, mentally, physically, and emotionally, and in some cases can be accomplices to child sexual abuse.
It’s important to come out as child abuse survivors at some stage, as we can start to try and change things for the better, and defend children's rights and welfare, and there is less likelihood of ourselves becoming abusers if we don’t repress our anger, hurt, conscience, and loving and caring emotions. People who indefinitely hide the fact that they’ve been bullied or abused as children, tend to become abusers in some ways, like some social workers and mental health professionals who have power over other child abuse survivors.
We need to come out about being abuse survivors at the appropriate time, when we can protest and survive together, otherwise it can be used against us by a repressed, misunderstanding, and uncaring society, and by some social work and mental health professionals.
Peter H. Donnelly
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
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