whatever it may have been, or whatever it is presented as, there can be no serious doubt that psychiatry is regarded as the enshrinement of what is desirable/undesirable, sane/pathological in human types, and it would be more than possible to say that society on every level has not escaped its influence, particularly as many authors have said, since the effective collapse of the power of organised religion in the west ... and more
Forgive me for possibly rotting my own thread but... what, the fuck, are you on about?
that psychiatry is an ideology, and an ideology with significant cultural influence, which instills into people notions of what is "sane" or "insane" behaviour/attitudes etc.
Before psychiatry existed as a discipline, do you not think human societies had ways of categorizing people into desirable and undesirable types?
i do. it's intrinsically in the nature of any culture to fix upon arbitary values & enforce them upon the people within it. psychiatry though was supposedly a branch of medicine and not, particularly, a religion or ideology though it has become this.
Do you think diagnosing someone with schizophrenia prevents them also being an artist? Or, to pretend we're on topic, are you under the impression that diagnosing someone with Stupidly Homophobic/Racist Syndrome will prevent them still being stupidly homophobic/racist?
to diagnose someone with anyone pretty much implies, in the main, that their way of experiencing the world is invalid.
if the culture at large is led, over time, to believe that homophobia & racism are strongly undesirable qualities it may, over time, evolve to a point where they are less and less prevailant.
Now if psychiatry proves able to successfully treat schizophrenia, it might change a person's style as an artist, sure. But all artists are not schizophrenic, and artistic ability (or philosophical vision or what have you) is not the same thing as mental illness.
well i agree wholeheartedly. though the two are often confused.
If this model is at all valid, which I doubt, and psychiatry proves able to treat SH/RS, it might remove a person's compulsion to be morbidly afraid of teh gais and teh bl*cks, but it won't prevent them just being an asshole with racist opinions.
they may be able to be helped to come to an understanding of where their own particular hatred & fears stem from and the irrational basis of them exposed. for the rest of society it may help if it is believed that engaging in this type of behaviour may result in having a Section 3 slapped on one's ass.
psychiatry is an ideology which still has a very real means of enforcing itself. mock that assertion if you will, but you will be revealing yourself to be hopelessly naieve in the process. |
