CBT, psychiatry and identity
A sense of autonomy? Ha? I thought as George Szmukler, a Professor of Psychiatry, stipulated informally that Psychiatry promotes autonomy. I was reviled by such a comment as he went on to suggest that he aided a patients autonomy when he paid a patient their own money that the psychiatrists had withheld in order that the patient would take the prescribed medication for their ‘mental illness’. I don’t know the details of this patient’s case, except that the patient was frivolous with money, and that the patient was in debt- according to Szmuckler. Exploiting the patient, however, to take medication is not the part I want to address here. The point I am addressing asks how is psychiatry aiding a sense of autonomy, or self actualisation? Unless Szmuckler has a completely different meaning of the word ‘autonomy’ I would argue that psychiatry does not aid self actualisation:- involuntary treatment, reprogramming therapies and being labelled ill for behaving outside of the box is insanely oppressive.
A sense of autonomy? Ha? I thought as George Szmukler, a Professor of Psychiatry, stipulated informally that Psychiatry promotes autonomy. I was reviled by such a comment as he went on to suggest that he aided a patients autonomy when he paid a patient their own money that the psychiatrists had withheld in order that the patient would take the prescribed medication for their ‘mental illness’. I don’t know the details of this patient’s case, except that the patient was frivolous with money, and that the patient was in debt- according to Szmuckler. Exploiting the patient, however, to take medication is not the part I want to address here. The point I am addressing asks how is psychiatry aiding a sense of autonomy, or self actualisation? Unless Szmuckler has a completely different meaning of the word ‘autonomy’ I would argue that psychiatry does not aid self actualisation:- involuntary treatment, reprogramming therapies and being labelled ill for behaving outside of the box is insanely oppressive.
It’s the brain, it’s the chemicals, and it’s the neurons. What about all the shit people go through, heart break, hostility, poverty, etc... the daily nuances that make life that little bit more unbearable, which we bear and bear until cracks appear, our glands begin to secrete sweat, our heart races, and we tremor with anger; but oppressed by the force of watching eyes, always watching, we act in strange, seemingly inexplicable ways and we are burdened with the blame which should lie with the many flaws that pervade and permeate the organised crowd. How dare you react outside of the appropriate list of reactions!
And what of CBT, the new revolutionary treatment which is but a stone throw away of the philosophy of the stoics? CBT is not challenging the arseholes on the train that won’t let other passengers on, or TFL who increase rail fairs more than the rate of inflation, or the pricks at work who talk to you in manner that suggests they are less lowly then you, or the cunts at the bank who smugly tell you they are charging you for being overdrawn, when you never told them to give money that you don’t have. No, they teach how to cope better with it, so you crack less. To help you cope with the cesspool of a society where people get off on screwing over other people, ride their ego trip over the moon and pass the pain and suffering of the so called innocents. Programmed to withstand - even now I am reduced to writing my thoughts on scrap, not because I fear that people will judge me if I shout aloud, but as it isn’t even in my nature anymore.
And what of CBT, the new revolutionary treatment which is but a stone throw away of the philosophy of the stoics? CBT is not challenging the arseholes on the train that won’t let other passengers on, or TFL who increase rail fairs more than the rate of inflation, or the pricks at work who talk to you in manner that suggests they are less lowly then you, or the cunts at the bank who smugly tell you they are charging you for being overdrawn, when you never told them to give money that you don’t have. No, they teach how to cope better with it, so you crack less. To help you cope with the cesspool of a society where people get off on screwing over other people, ride their ego trip over the moon and pass the pain and suffering of the so called innocents. Programmed to withstand - even now I am reduced to writing my thoughts on scrap, not because I fear that people will judge me if I shout aloud, but as it isn’t even in my nature anymore.
From the periphery of my blood shot vision, bloodshot from the toxic caffeine ritualistically consumed and the deprivation of respite, I see a parent commanding their child into subordinance, to sit, to hush, to not disturb the empty whims of this tube carriage. Do not disrupt them, lest they may be stirred and let the zombifying rhythm ensue.
Learning is an awful practice, at first it may be met with some repellence, then neutrality, then it is sucked in like a black hole into an abyss of detritus; all the teachings of others, or rather of the other. We are all bombarded. Its not a plethora of ideas, but one gargantuan, repugnant, enforced idea. Enforced with violence on a mass scale.
Man, woman child, but an EROM – An erasable read only memory with structures that are fixed and units to be filled. Oh where is the will? Beaten into passivity? Disgusting. And even as my thoughts seem to challenge this oneness, I cannot escape. Clichés wish to pour from my pen. I won’t. Every thought is a thought transpired, as is every sentence, every word, every meaning; already in the mind of a machine. Imprisoned in language, how I wish to have never received it, infecting every bit of my being. Leaking into me and mutating the ineffable qualities of the ’I’. The ‘I’ that perhaps once was, before.
I wish to see again, without the perceptions of the master race of men, and hear unswayed; to smell the scents without civilization; and taste the blood drawn from my own touch.
Man, woman child, but an EROM – An erasable read only memory with structures that are fixed and units to be filled. Oh where is the will? Beaten into passivity? Disgusting. And even as my thoughts seem to challenge this oneness, I cannot escape. Clichés wish to pour from my pen. I won’t. Every thought is a thought transpired, as is every sentence, every word, every meaning; already in the mind of a machine. Imprisoned in language, how I wish to have never received it, infecting every bit of my being. Leaking into me and mutating the ineffable qualities of the ’I’. The ‘I’ that perhaps once was, before.
I wish to see again, without the perceptions of the master race of men, and hear unswayed; to smell the scents without civilization; and taste the blood drawn from my own touch.
Don’t give me this idea and tell me it is right. Don’t tell me your reasoning of the origin of a sound. Could it not be the sky that hums every time I board the train, or the moon that howls when full? Don’t give me that plate of meat from a being that was perhaps more sentient than I.
I want my will, my way. And I am not ill, I am not ill; in the mind or the body. And the agents of psychiatry will not inject me with the will of the master race, as they did from birth. I am too far gone. Psychiatry will not let me realise myself, psychiatry does not aid the realisation of the self. Psychiatry is a tranquiliser of the will, and CBT is a Red Herring. Ha.
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Identity' Issue 37
