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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
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href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/10/psychiatrys-hysterical-defense/">madinamerica.com</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">Psychiatry’s Nightmarish 2022 & Its
Hysterical Defense Against Criticism - Mad In America</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Bruce Levine, PhD</div>
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<p><span>T</span>his year has been an especially
nightmarish one for psychiatry defenders.</p>
<p>Receiving widespread attention in the mainstream media
was the July 2022 article “<a
href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0">The
Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Systematic Umbrella
Review of the Evidence</a>,” published in the journal
<em>Molecular Psychiatry</em>. In it, Joanna Moncrieff,
co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network, and
her co-researchers examined hundreds of different types
of studies that attempted to detect a relationship
between depression and serotonin, and concluded that
there is no evidence of a link between low levels of
serotonin and depression, stating: “We suggest it is
time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of
depression is not empirically substantiated.”</p>
<p>Psychiatry apologists <a
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ssri-right-wing-attack-joanna-moncrieff-1388067/">tried
to convince</a> the general public that Moncrieff’s
findings were not newsworthy, as psychiatrist David
Hellerstein, professor of clinical psychiatry at
Columbia University Medical Center and director of
Columbia’s Depression Evaluation Service, attempted to
belittle Moncrieff in this manner: “Wow, next she’ll
tackle the discrediting of the black bile theory of
depression.” However, given the reality that the vast
majority of society had heard nothing from psychiatry
about the discarding of this serotonin theory of
depression, what followed has been public <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVSogil0Vao">mockery
of psychiatry and its Big Pharma partners</a> for
their duplicity.</p>
<p>Then, in August of 2022, receiving less attention was
an even more devastating blow to psychiatry, so damaging
and so indefensible that psychiatry’s only response was
to ignore it. Published in the journal <em>Neuron</em>,
Raymond Dolan—considered <u><a
href="https://www.science.org/content/article/computer-program-just-ranked-most-influential-brain-scientists-modern-era">one
of the most influential neuroscientists in the world</a></u>—co-authored
“<a
href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(22)00647-X.pdf">Functional
Neuroimaging in Psychiatry and the Case for Failing
Better</a>,” concluding, “Despite three decades of
intense neuroimaging research, we still lack a
neurobiological account for any psychiatric condition.”</p>
<p>Reflecting on the more than 16,000 neuroimaging
articles published during the last 30 years, Dolan and
his co-authors concluded: “It remains difficult to
refute a critique that psychiatry’s most fundamental
characteristic is its ignorance. . . . Casting a cold
eye on the psychiatric neuroimaging literature invites a
conclusion that despite 30 years of intense research and
considerable technological advances, this enterprise has
not delivered a neurobiological account (i.e., a
mechanistic explanation) for any psychiatric disorder,
nor has it provided a credible imaging-based biomarker
of clinical utility.”</p>
<p>So in 2022, research reviews published in prestigious
journals have made it clear that there is no
neurobiological evidence—no chemical imbalance, no brain
structure evidence—for any psychiatric condition.</p>
<p>But that’s not the end of psychiatry’s 2022 nightmare.</p>
<p>From one of the most prominent establishment
psychiatrists in the world, we heard in 2022 that the <em>DSM</em>
(psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, published by the
American Psychiatric Association) lacks validity. Thomas
Insel, when National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
director in 2013, had quietly stated in his NIMH blog
that the <em>DSM</em><em>’</em>s diagnostic categories
lack validity, and he announced that “NIMH will be
re-orienting its research away from <em>DSM </em>categories”;
then, in 2022, he informed the general public about <em>DSM</em>
invalidity in his book <em>Healing</em>, which has
received mainstream media attention. In this book, Insel
states: “The <em>DSM</em> had created a common
language, but much of that language had not been
validated by science.” In plain language, Insel is
calling the <em>DSM</em>, in a scientific sense, <em>bullshit</em>.</p>
<p>In 2022, increasing numbers of Americans also heard
about psychiatry’s abysmal treatment outcome record.
Insel, as NIMH director in 2011, had quietly
acknowledged: “Whatever we’ve been doing for five
decades, it ain’t working. And when I look at the
numbers—the number of suicides, number of disabilities,
mortality data—it’s abysmal, and it’s not getting any
better.” In 2021, the <em><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/mental-health-treatments.html">New
York Times </a></em>concluded that psychiatry had
done “little to improve the lives of the millions of
people living with persistent mental distress. Almost
every measure of our collective mental health—rates of
suicide, anxiety, depression, addiction deaths,
psychiatric prescription use—went the wrong direction,
even as access to services expanded greatly.” And in
2022, in <em>Healing</em>, Insel repeated to the
general public what he had previously acknowledged about
psychiatry’s history of abysmal outcomes, noting: “While
we studied the risk factors for suicide, the death rate
had climbed 33 percent” despite increased treatment,
reporting that, “Since 2001, prescriptions for
psychiatric medications have more than doubled, with one
in six American adults on a psychiatric drug.”</p>
<h5><strong>Psychiatry’s Defense: “Don’t Throw Out the
Baby with the Psychiatric Bathwater” </strong></h5>
<p>Earlier in 2022, responding to Robert Whitaker in a <em><a
href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/05/mia-harm-good/">Mad in
America </a></em><a
href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/05/mia-harm-good/">dialogue</a>,
psychiatrist Jim Phelps, in his article “The Baby in the
Psychiatric Bathwater,” stated the following: “Don’t
throw out the baby with the psychiatric bathwater. Mr.
Whitaker, I fear you’re doing harm while trying to do
good.”</p>
<p>The idiom “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”
is an admonition against discarding something valuable
along with something not wanted. However, the question
for any critical thinker is—especially given what has
been made public about psychiatry in 2022—what exactly
is valuable about psychiatry?</p>
<p>A rational critical analysis of an institution—in
contrast to a theological defense of it— would evaluate
whether that institution is in fact valuable and can be
reformed to be better. Such an analysis of a professed
medical institution would evaluate whether (1) its
fundamental paradigm and core tenets have scientific
merit, and whether with reform in its practices, it can
be improved, or (2) its fundamental paradigm and tenets
are scientifically invalid, and thus, no matter how many
of its practices are reformed, it will continue to do
more harm than good.</p>
<p>Critical freethinkers—in contrast to theologians
attached to their institution—would be open to all
possible conclusions of this analysis, including (1) not
discarding an entire institution because it is
fundamentally sound and valuable, and needs only to
improve its practices, or (2) discarding an entire
institution because it is fundamentally invalid and
unsound, as its core principles are unscientific and
unjust.</p>
<p>In any given time in U.S. history, there have been
institutions that have had a central role in U.S.
society that were eventually—with great
struggle—discarded, and which today most Americans are
embarrassed ever existed. Thus, any critical freethinker
who has knowledge of American history will not be
intimidated to consider the possibility that <em>any </em>current
institution may need to be completely discarded. That is
part of the essence of being a critical freethinker.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious example in U.S. history of a
dominant institution that was ultimately discarded—and
which today most Americans are embarrassed by its past
existence—is the institution of slavery.</p>
<p>I bring up the institution of slavery not to
hyperbolically equate psychiatry with slavery—though
there are certainly many <em>Mad in America</em>
readers who have been involuntarily forced into ruinous
psychiatric treatment, and who would not view such a
reference as hyperbolic. However, for the majority of
psychiatric patients, it is hyperbolic to equate
psychiatry with slavery in terms of cruelty. I bring up
slavery as a reminder of the historic reality of (1) the
longtime existence in the United States of a shameful
institution, and (2) that when it was being attacked by
slavery abolitionists, slavery’s supporters used several
defenses of it, including the “don’t throw out the baby
with the bathwater” defense.</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp#:~:text=Defenders%20of%20slavery%20argued%20that,Rice%20would%20cease%20being%20profitable.">various
defenses of slavery</a> included: how the abolition of
slavery would destroy the Southern economy; how slavery
has existed throughout history and thus is quite normal;
that slavery is not viewed as immoral in the Bible; and
that slavery is legal. Another major defense of slavery
was that it was beneficial for slaves, and that it would
be bad for slaves to throw out the baby with bathwater.
Specifically, this argument went like this: If slaves
were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and
chaos, and that in comparison to workers in the Northern
states, slaves were better cared for, especially when
sick or aged. In 1837, as senator from South Carolina,
John C. Calhoun (formerly a vice president of the United
States) <a
href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/speech-on-abolition-petitions/">stated</a>:
“Never before has the black race of central Africa, from
the dawn of history to the present day, attained a
condition so civilized and so improved, not only
physically, but morally and intellectually.”</p>
<p>Again, I review this history not to equate psychiatry
with slavery in terms of cruelty but to remind readers
that in U.S. history, (1) there have been institutions
that have had a central role in society that were
eventually—with great struggle—discarded, and which
today are a source of embarrassment for most Americans;
and that (2) among the many defenses of such now
discarded shameful institutions, one defense was not to
throw out the baby with bathwater.</p>
<p>Slavery is not the only such shameful institution in
U.S. history. Another more recent example is the House
Committee on Un-American Activities (dubbed the House
Un-American Activities Committee or HUAC), which was an
investigative committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives created in 1938 to investigate the
disloyalty and subversive activities of American
citizens and institutions. After HUAC destroyed the
careers of many Americans who had broken no laws but
were targeted for their political beliefs, HUAC
eventually came to be <a
href="https://www.archivesfoundation.org/newsletter/the-loyalty-test/">denounced
even by former President Harry Truman</a> in the late
1950s as the “most un-American thing in the country
today.” HUAC changed its name to the House Committee on
Internal Security, which itself was abolished in 1975.</p>
<p>Slavery and HUAC are by no means the only examples of
powerful institutions in U.S. history that we are now
ashamed to have allowed to exist. What slavery and HUAC
have in common is that they were based on invalid
paradigms. Slavery was based on the invalid paradigm of
racial inferiority of African Americans, and HUAC was
based on the invalid paradigm of what it meant to be
“un-American.” If an institution’s essential paradigm is
scientifically invalid and unjust, then all attempts at
reform will be pointless. To put it idiomatically, “You
can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.”</p>
<h5><strong>Is Psychiatry’s Self-Defense <em>Hysterical</em>?</strong></h5>
<p>While most of establishment psychiatry simply ignores
critical freethinking about psychiatry, there are a
handful of psychiatrists who respond to psychiatry
critics, and I can only speculate as to why. Perhaps
their role is to make psychiatry <em>appear</em> to be
open to criticism while in reality imposing limits as to
what is allowable criticism; or perhaps their role is to
co-opt truly critically freethinking publications such
as <em>Mad in America</em>. In any case, along with
psychiatrist Jim Phelps, I would include in this group
psychiatrists Ronald Pies, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of
the <em>Psychiatric Times,</em> and Awais Aftab, who
has an interview series in the <em>Psychiatric Times</em>.</p>
<p>In 2020, <a
href="https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/battle-soul-psychiatry-ronald-w-pies-md">Pies
told Aftab</a> that he distinguishes between two quite
different groups of critics. There are, he tells us,
“sincere and well-intentioned critics of psychiatry—many
of whom are psychiatrists—whose aim is to improve the
profession’s concepts, methods, ethics, and treatments.”
However, Pies then goes on to say that there are also
critics whose “hostile and vituperative rhetoric is
clearly aimed at discrediting psychiatry as a medical
discipline.” For Pies, it is simply unallowable to
question the legitimacy of the institution of
psychiatry, and to do so is inexcusable.</p>
<p>Aftab, like Pies, makes clear that he believes there
are critiques of psychiatry that are responsible and
useful versus critiques that are irresponsible and
dangerous. <a
href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/08/holy-shit-psychiatrys-cognitive-dissonance-display/">In
August, Aftab tweeted</a>, “Holy shit. . . Whitaker at
Mad in America is calling for a class-action lawsuit
against the American Psychiatric Association &
scientific advisory boards of orgs such as NAMI,
alleging that the infamous serotonin hypothesis paper
reveals these entities engaged in ‘medical fraud.’”
Earlier, in his <a
href="https://twitter.com/awaisaftab/status/1550661887330865152">July
2022 tweets,</a> Aftab admonished, “Anyone not attuned
to the emerging intersection of psychiatric critique
& far-right politics is not paying attention. We’ve
already seen previews of this relationship when it comes
to gender critical ideology & anti-vaccine
sentiment; it’s going to become more explicit with
time”; and then offered this warning: “Those engaged in
a Faustian bargain will realize too late, if they
realize at all, what ugly forces they have unleashed.”</p>
<p>Phelps, Pies, and Aftab are open to criticism of
psychiatry as long as it stops short of acknowledging
the increasingly well-documented reality that psychiatry
lacks any scientific merit, which logically results in
the questioning of the legitimacy of psychiatry.</p>
<p>To be a critical freethinker, one need not conclude
that psychiatry should be abolished. One need only be
open to questioning psychiatry’s legitimacy, as a
critical freethinker would be open to questioning the
legitimacy of any institution.</p>
<p>A critical freethinker may even conclude that while
there is no scientific merit to psychiatry, given the
nature of modern society and psychiatry’s role in it,
psychiatry’s abolition might result in an even more
problematic institution taking psychiatry’s societal
role of controlling inconvenient people and providing
fictional explanations for unhappiness.</p>
<p>While being a critical freethinker does not necessarily
mean coming to the conclusion that it would be a good
idea for psychiatry to be abolished, it does mean being
open to any and all facts, and being open to any and all
logical conclusions from such facts. In their lack of
openness, Phelps, Pies, and Aftab make clear that they
are not critical freethinkers.</p>
<p>Webster’s Dictionary <a
href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hysterical">offers</a>
both a formal and informal definition of <em>hysterical</em>.
The formal definition of <em>hysterical</em> is
“feeling or showing extreme and unrestrained emotion.”
The informal definition is “very funny.”</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just me, but with respect to both the formal
and informal definition of <em>hysterical</em>, I find
Hellerstein’s equating Moncrieff’s recent review to “the
discrediting of the black bile theory,” Phelps’s “don’t
throw out the baby with the psychiatric bathwater”
defense, Pies’s good-and-evil categorization of
psychiatry critics, and Aftab’s apocalyptic fear
mongering of what will be unleashed by freethinking
critics of psychiatry all to be… hysterical<em>.</em></p>
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