Antipsychiatry

Antipsychiatry is a movement started by radicals including Leonard Roy Frank, Dr. Peter Breggin, Dr. Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, Judi Chamberlain, and others. Frank has crusaded against shock treatment. Although this author (Olson) does not advocate shock treatment, these people throw out the baby with the bathwater. They complain about bad side effects of drugs, seeming to believe that drug side effects prove that there is no organic basis for mental disease. These people reject orthomolecular medicine, which is the baby!
It is true that there are adverse side effects of shock treatment and of drugs. However, there are terrible side effects of cancer treatments, which does not prove that there is no organic basis for cancer. The treatment of cancer should be organic, but there is no question that the organic treatments need to be improved. Surgery is not without problems, but it has cured some people. Breggin and Szasz are psychiatrists, and it seems a bit odd that they would be against psychiatry, which is how they make their money. Both favor psychotherapy. There has been a similar situation with E. Fuller Torrey, but Torrey is not as radical as the others. Torrey rejects psychoanalysis. Torrey, strangely, predicted the "death of psychiatry", which, presumably, would be taken over by neurologists. However, the neurologists didn't want it! This author (Olson) is in favor of psychiatry even though it is not perfect. Throw out the bathwater but not the baby (legitimate science). Maybe the drugs of the future will be better. Torrey feels that Szasz's views are "erudite nonsense".

Antipsychiatry got its start after the fiasco of lobotomy. There had been psychiatric abuses for centuries, including castration, the use of cocaine, etc. However, there was a public outcry against lobotomy. This clipart of Walter Freeman performing an "ice-pick" lobotomy comes from epub.org, an interesting website. Freeman's colleague, Dr. James Watts, became disenchanted with the whole thing and came to a parting of ways with Watts.

Shown here is Dr. Benjamin Rush, who is highly revered by the APA (American Psychiatric Association). Rush was born in 1746 and died in 1813. He was probably the first famous American psychiatrist. Rush was severely criticized by Dr. Peter Breggin in one of Breggin's many books attacking psychiatry. It seems that Rush used to bleed people.

Shown here is a clipart from the Alibris website, which is similar to Amazon.com. Alibris sells books online. Antipsychiatry rejects orthomolecular psychiatry because orthomolecular psychiatry, represented here by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, accepts the "medical model". The "medical model" means that mental illness is viewed as disease, or cluster of diseases (to be more precise). Radicals reject the "medical model", but they are wrong.

This book is a blistering attack on psychiatric drugs, which Breggin describes as "neurotoxins" which produce "shrunken brains". However, this author (Olson) feels that the tissue loss is due to the disease itself. The "shrunken brains" were reported in the 19th century, long before psychiatric drugs were invented. Meynert of Austria was one of the neuropathologists reporting this finding.

Even though this author (Olson) has blasted lobotomy, which was a factor in the birth of antipsychiatry in the Sixties, there is legitimate evidence in favor of mental disease being located in the frontal lobes. However, this does not justify frontal lobotomy because the frontal lobes need to be fine tuned. Doing damage to the frontal lobes is not likely to make things better. Nutrition is one way to fine tune the body and the brain. The Lafayette Clinic developed a drug, but it was never approved by the Food & Drug Administration. This drug was a tripeptide.

This clipart from epub.org shows the ice-pick lobotomy, invented by Freeman in 1945. At that time it was considered cutting edge technology. The Soviet Union wisely banned lobotomies.

Shown here is the bone of contention between the antipsychiatry forces and the propsychiatry forces (including yours truely). The antipsychiatry forces maintain that there is no basis for mental illness in the brain, and that psychiatry damages the brain with organic treatments. They are completely wrong on the first point, but their strength is in the second point, which is only true in certain circumstances. Orthomolecular psychiatry does not damage the brain.

Here is a book by R. D. Laing, who was one of the leaders of the antipsychiatry movement. The clipart is from Alibris. I do not recommend this book, but rather present it so that people can research antipsychiatry if they choose to do so.

Shown here is the cover of The American Journal of Psychiatry for the April 2003 issue. The clipart was taken from the American Journal of Psychiatry website, which is outstanding. Shown on the left is Watson and on the right is Crick. They published their famous paper on DNA in 1953. This is a fitting cover because the psychiatric Establishment regards mental diseases as being genetic. This is most likely correct, but it is a far cry from the views of Lidz, who blames the parents. There probably are some cases of child abuse where Lidz is correct. This journal is typical of the psychiatric Establishment.

This book reports that people with mental illness have been mistreated. The author traces this all the way back to Bedlam, which is an asylum in London. According to the author, patients have been given "brain damage" because of "bad science".