Audio: Readings by the author
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Advice for Smarties:
Indelibly stamped upon my memory, not least because my humour was strangely unappreciated, is a presentation I was invited to give to a convergence of psychiatrists, at which I posed the following question:
What is the difference between God and a psychiatrist?
Answer: God does not believe he is a psychiatrist!
It is evident from my experience and from discourse with people who have been put through the psychiatric system, that there is an attempt to control, rather than care for, individuals experiencing unusual states.
Incarceration, physical restraints, pain compliance techniques, takedowns, forced drugging [acuphase], compulsory ECT, psychosurgery, brainwashing, demonstrates the defectiveness rather than the effectiveness of psychiatric treatment and equates with state sanctioned torture.
I counsel the psychiatric fraternity, rather than obliterate anomalous experiences, that you assist integrate them in into people's lives in a coherent, constructive and creative way. To undertake this requires you to be profoundly insightful and demands a comprehensive knowledge of the interplay of the light and dark forces which affect us all. This, in turn, necessitates you to be receptive to human spirituality and to acknowledge the authenticity of your patient's reality.
By ‘pathologising’, ‘symptomising’ and ‘clinicising’ unusual states, psychiatrists debase, devalue, undermine and attempt to invalidate these experiences. This only serves to bewilder and exacerbate disturbance.
‘Judge-mental’ is a very revealing word.
Although ‘schizophrenic rationale’ does away with commonplace logic, reason is integral to this state of being but is encrypted in metaphor.
You may be given access to this code, but only if you open your hearts and minds and LISTEN. To appraise the psyche-sensitive you need to be aware that our experiences and perceptions are woven into the fabric of reality … believe it or not.
Rationalism is only one way of perceiving. It has a place, but not to the exclusion or detriment of the broad spectrum of thoughts and emotions that characterise the rich tapestry of the human experience.
The term mental health implies that our emotional well-being is determined by mental faculties or processes located in, and confined to the brain, somehow isolated or disconnected from the rest of our being, like a walnut rattling around the cave of the skull. Is this not the true ‘split’ that you, the clinicians, have made yourselves? The severing of mind and spirit. Mental health also evokes the converse, mental unhealthiness, which quite frankly, reeks of disinfectant!
Is the human condition itself to be regarded as a medical condition in urgent need of treatment?
I am reminded of my father's incisive definition of an expert:
‘An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less and in the end knows everything about fuck all.’
Life is suffused with spirit; we are a unification of diverse energies and elements both tangible and intangible. Our well-being is determined by our relationship to our whole being, by being whole, at One with Oneself.
The emphasis you the consultants, place on your patients' lack of insight, belies your own lack of insight. You project all you do not and cannot comprehend as ‘psychiatric disorder’. I counsel you further to accept the advice that one of your own fraternity once offered me:
‘Take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror…’
Indelibly stamped upon my memory, not least because my humour was strangely unappreciated, is a presentation I was invited to give to a convergence of psychiatrists, at which I posed the following question:
What is the difference between God and a psychiatrist?
Answer: God does not believe he is a psychiatrist!
It is evident from my experience and from discourse with people who have been put through the psychiatric system, that there is an attempt to control, rather than care for, individuals experiencing unusual states.
Incarceration, physical restraints, pain compliance techniques, takedowns, forced drugging [acuphase], compulsory ECT, psychosurgery, brainwashing, demonstrates the defectiveness rather than the effectiveness of psychiatric treatment and equates with state sanctioned torture.
I counsel the psychiatric fraternity, rather than obliterate anomalous experiences, that you assist integrate them in into people's lives in a coherent, constructive and creative way. To undertake this requires you to be profoundly insightful and demands a comprehensive knowledge of the interplay of the light and dark forces which affect us all. This, in turn, necessitates you to be receptive to human spirituality and to acknowledge the authenticity of your patient's reality.
By ‘pathologising’, ‘symptomising’ and ‘clinicising’ unusual states, psychiatrists debase, devalue, undermine and attempt to invalidate these experiences. This only serves to bewilder and exacerbate disturbance.
‘Judge-mental’ is a very revealing word.
Although ‘schizophrenic rationale’ does away with commonplace logic, reason is integral to this state of being but is encrypted in metaphor.
You may be given access to this code, but only if you open your hearts and minds and LISTEN. To appraise the psyche-sensitive you need to be aware that our experiences and perceptions are woven into the fabric of reality … believe it or not.
Rationalism is only one way of perceiving. It has a place, but not to the exclusion or detriment of the broad spectrum of thoughts and emotions that characterise the rich tapestry of the human experience.
The term mental health implies that our emotional well-being is determined by mental faculties or processes located in, and confined to the brain, somehow isolated or disconnected from the rest of our being, like a walnut rattling around the cave of the skull. Is this not the true ‘split’ that you, the clinicians, have made yourselves? The severing of mind and spirit. Mental health also evokes the converse, mental unhealthiness, which quite frankly, reeks of disinfectant!
Is the human condition itself to be regarded as a medical condition in urgent need of treatment?
I am reminded of my father's incisive definition of an expert:
‘An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less and in the end knows everything about fuck all.’
Life is suffused with spirit; we are a unification of diverse energies and elements both tangible and intangible. Our well-being is determined by our relationship to our whole being, by being whole, at One with Oneself.
The emphasis you the consultants, place on your patients' lack of insight, belies your own lack of insight. You project all you do not and cannot comprehend as ‘psychiatric disorder’. I counsel you further to accept the advice that one of your own fraternity once offered me:
‘Take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror…’
All you see reflected is all you have projected. You too are ‘under observation’.
I do not wish to condemn or hold in contempt those sincerely caring people who work within the current system, but if your calling was motivated by compassion, you should search your conscience. Human rights violations are endemic and epidemic within and throughout the psychiatric system; I urge you to convey what you have witnessed within your profession. For psychiatry to heal others it must first heal itself.
I do not wish to condemn or hold in contempt those sincerely caring people who work within the current system, but if your calling was motivated by compassion, you should search your conscience. Human rights violations are endemic and epidemic within and throughout the psychiatric system; I urge you to convey what you have witnessed within your profession. For psychiatry to heal others it must first heal itself.