Drama

First of all, thank you to everybody, Stephany, Rossa, and, well, you know who you are, for your understanding, support, and your critique, and not least for the "reminder" to keep my cool another time. No, my approach wasn't exactly buddhist. 

I saw the picture of Mark Becker, and read the post, and what both immediately turned into in my mind was a mug shot of me, and a call to have me locked up and thrown away the key (= feed me Geodon, if necessary -- and I can assure everybody that it would be necessary -- forcibly). I actually went right into the trap of ego-identification, and my ego, feeling deeply insulted, threw the insult back at Doug Bremner, supplying him with the ammunition to fire back at me with. And so he did. I asked for it, I got it.

This is what The Drama is made of: get at people, and make them react. Add to that the ingredient of denying that you were getting at them ("We're only trying to help you!"), and what you get is madness. Because unless they've seen through these dynamics, people will inevitably start and yell louder and louder in their desperate attempt to make the other recognize and admit to that what they're doing isn't helpful in any way, but actually harmful, and stop it. And if you just yell loud enough, all of a sudden you fit the criteria for a psych label, all of a sudden your protesting becomes symptoms of an illness. What up to then was "You must be crazy to imagine this" or "You're not quite right in the head to think that" something along those lines, suddenly becomes "295.(pick a number)". And if that doesn't has you see through the dynamics, and for most people it won't, you, of course, start to yell as loud as you possibly could. Which is what everybody has been waiting for, as it allows them to lock you up, and shut you up with Geodon. Ah, peace and quiet, finally! They don't do it consciously, but still, it is what they're doing: getting at you, harassing, bullying you, ever more violently, in order to have you react ever more violently. So that, eventually, they can shut you up, without ever having to admit to, neither to you nor, and maybe even more important, to themselves, that what they call "help", "care" and "love", indeed is abuse, violence.

Doug Bremner writes that he isn't responsible for whatever happened to me, and certainly, in as far as he never harassed, bullied, abused me directly -- at least not until his response to my criticism --, he isn't. But from a broader perspective, in supporting, working for a system that more often than not denies respectively covers up the violence in our society, laundering it, so that it appears to be help, he so is.

Of course, Doug Bremner is far from alone in this. We all do it/have done it, at one time or the other. But that's no excuse for not taking responsibility. And it certainly is no excuse, if you have chosen help and care for people in crisis as your profession. If no one else, as the expert he claims to be, Doug Bremner should be capable of recognizing the dynamics of violence in society, and what they do to people. It isn't impossible. There have been, and there are others who did/do recognize it. R.D. Laing, Silvano Arieti, Richard Bentall, John Read, are just a few of them. Instead, he choses to dismiss both people's personal experiences, calling them for a "symptom" of "schizophrenia", a "delusion", establishing a razor sharp distinction between PTSD and "schizophrenia" -- in lack of biomarkers using terminology: flash backs become "hallucinations", hypervigilance becomes "paranoia", avoidance becomes "withdrawal", "mutism", "catatonia", etc. etc. --, as well as any research that takes people's personal experiences seriously as the "return of the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother", thus issuing a carte blanche for the violence to be continued. 

I've seen it being done innumerable times before. Which had me go through the roof this time, are the particular circumstances that made it particularly insidious. The fact that somebody, who, allegedly, is an expert in trauma -- not only professionally, but also and even personally -- denies trauma, and in doing so, adds considerably to it, made the dehumanization I witnessed on his blog, and that I, as someone who got an "sz" label thrown at herself, very non-buddhist, took very personally, so much more appalling in my eyes. So, off I went, right through the roof, and my ego told me exactly how to get at Doug Bremner, and return the insult most efficiently. It is not that I mention his mother, his own history of trauma, but that I do it sarcastically, setting up a trap for him -- which he, or his ego, walked right into -- in not pointing out the fact that I for one, who didn't experience anything but pure emotional abuse/neglect, the most invisible, and hardest to trace and prove kind of abuse/neglect, certainly not am in a position to play down anyone else's trauma. "If he can't figure that out, too bad for him, ha!" That was mean, yes. And I should have taken a step back from my ego, before I wrote my first post about this matter. I'm guilty of not having done that. That I didn't do it consciously, on purpose, doesn't free me from having to take responsibility for it, and I'm sorry.

What I'm not sorry about is that I brought up the matter of discrimination against and dehumanization of labelled people for discussion. An important and necessary discussion to take, I think. 

Note that Doug Bremner refers to me as "they", anonymizing me, which could be said to be fine if it wasn't that I was out here, with my full name. Doug Bremner has several times been attacked -- indeed, attacked -- by his own in the past. I've read most of these attacks, and they weren't exactly edifying reading. Some of it was, IMO, clearly below the belt. Nevertheless, and as far as I remember, in his replies to these attacks, Doug Bremner never once anonymized his opponents. So, where is the difference between these people and me? Well, these people, in Doug Bremner's eyes, aren't "mental patients", but people, human beings, persons, with names. No matter how "mean" their attacks, they thus still deserve the respect to not be called "they", as if they were some sort of nonperson. As the "schizophrenic" (=nonperson) I am in his eyes, I don't deserve this respect.

That I have a background in academia, probably broader than Doug Bremner's, and in, among other disciplines, philosophy, according to Wikipedia (yeah, I know... - but it actually sums it up quite well) "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language", (my italics) while there so far exists no scientific evidence that definitely proves crisis to be a medical, and not an existential problem, is of no importance the moment, I also am the identified "mental patient". Neither is the fact that I am crisis experienced, that I can draw knowledge about crisis not only from observations from the outside, but also from experience from the inside. This is the difference between somatic illness and "mental illness". "Mental illness" isn't and will never be the same as somatic illness, it will never be "like diabetes". Someone suffering from diabetes who says: "This intervention/these pills make/-s me feel sicker," is listened to and taken seriously. The identified "mental patient" who says: "The Geodon makes me feel lousy," is, at best, ignored, if s/he keeps on "complaining", "looking for attention", not to mention if s/he tosses out the Geodon, that makes him/her feel lousy, if s/he rejects psychiatry's "help", and says: "This is not the help I feel, I'm in need of," it qualifies him/her to be forcibly subjected to this very same "help". Any expression of not feeling helped by psychiatry is explained away by defining it as just another "symptom" of the "illness". It is not ever taken seriously, not taken as a sign that maybe the "help" isn't help, that maybe the helpers have overlooked something, that maybe a different approach is needed. It can't be, because the present approach is carefully thought out to do exactly what it does: silencing any protest, any resistance, any dissent, in relation to both psychiatry itself as well as in relation to society in general. As the institution of psychiatry represents the very essence of societal, cultural norms and values, and is designed to protect these against any protest, resistance, and dissent.

Now, it's not that I think that my educational background would make me in any way more respectable, more "worthy", than anybody else. Anybody, disregarded their social, educational, cultural, etc. background and status, deserves to be respected equally, not discriminated against. All life forms actually deserve to be respected. But this isn't how our civilization works. We've established an artificial pecking order where things like education, material wealth, race, gender, and the power they provide, are a lot more important than life itself. We all know that psychiatry promotes this pecking order big time. But since Doug Bremner can't really dismiss my criticism arguing that i would lack education and knowledge -- he tried that, it didn't work out too well -- he resorts to the ultimate dismissal, pathologizing my criticism, and declaring me a nonperson, defining me. That is the power he and his colleagues have been assigned by society, and that I do not have. The power to define others.

The following is taken from an article in a Norwegian journal, Magasinet Selvsagt!, about ableism:

"To deprive people of the power to define themselves is at the core of discrimination, says Salman Rushdie. This is language of power, you are in control of the person in question. The first step on the way to respect people, or groups of people as equal, is to listen to them when they define themselves. The greatest victory for the other discriminated against groups [the article refers to women, gay people, and black people] has probably been that they won the power to define themselves. They have decided on their own who and what they are. They have defined their own group's problems, and they've acted out of this definition. We disabled people haven't managed to do this. We've left it to medical and other professionals, to politicians and the media to define us. We've left it to them to describe us in their language, out of their understanding of us. And we have adopted this understanding, and made it our own." (My translation)

I wouldn't even adopt the term "disability" as the prefix "dis-" usually implies something that is perceived as negative. Anyhow, my mistake was that I actually did it, that I adopted others' definition of myself. I identified with Mark Becker, and Doug Bremner's definition of him as the "schizophrenic", the pickaxe killer, the nonperson, so I confirmed Doug Bremner's power to define me. Instead of taking it from him. It may well be that psychiatrists have the power to define people, but they only have this power to the extent that we react to their provocations, playing the part they've assigned us in their drama. 

"Went off medication - and did not ask for permission before afterwards" - A note to consumers

As mentioned in my post about why the latest Danish research showing "schizophrenics" to do better off drugs won't change a bit about treatment the title of the article caused some indignation among consumers and survivors, and had somebody start a discussion at a Danish mainstream forum:

"What do you think about this title?
As a mentally ill person, don't you have any right to control your own body?
Comments, anyone?"

Well, of course you don't have any right to control your own body - or anything else - as a mentally ill person.

According to mainstream psychiatry "mentally ill" means brain diseased. Now ask yourself which part of your body, which organ, do you make use of as a tool when you have to estimate a situation, and decide how to react to it? Your shin bone? Your pancreas ("It's like diabetes, you know.")? I suppose not. Probably you'll make use of your brain.

I recently watched an interesting documentary about the Mary Celeste , the "archetypal ghost ship", according to Wikipedia. Which the Wikipedia entry, as far as I can see, doesn't tell is that it recently has become known that the Mary Celeste left New York for Genoa, Italy, with only one single chronometer on board. Usually an ocean-going ship of her size would not go anywhere without several, at least three or four, chronometers on board. Turns out, the one single chronometer on board of the Mary Celeste is defective, which of course renders it impossible for her captain, Benjamin Briggs, to calculate the position of the ship accurately. This, in addition to the Mary Celeste taking in water after having been through some rough weather, probably has led to his decision to abandon the ship. A very bad, in fact for him, his family and the rest of the crew fatal, decision made on the basis of inaccurate measurements (make that an inaccurate estimation) of the ship's position (make that any given situation), carried out with a defective chronometer (make that a diseased brain).

The situation would have been different had Briggs known that the chronometer was defective, in which way, and to which extent. He then could have taken the margin of error into account, and calculated the ship's position more accurately - and he maybe wouldn't have panicked and abandoned the ship, as she, although she was taking in some water, easily could have made it to her destination from where she was abandoned.

However, in the latter situation, the only correction tool at Briggs' disposal would have been his brain. And if it is your brain that is the defective chronometer, it is self-evident that you can't use it as a tool to correct itself, and expect accurate calculations. So, to the extent someone accepts the biological model and identifies as "mentally ill" they accept their tool for decision making to be defective, and will consequently have to accept that their estimation of any given situation may be inaccurate rendering their decisions potentially disastrous, maybe even fatal. They will have to accept being defined as incapacitated in regard to everything that requires brain activity. You can't have your cake and eat it. This is either-or, not both-and. Either you identify as "mentally ill", and you will have to give up on your freedoms and rights as a human being, or you don't, and you will have to take responsibility for yourself. For all that you do.

You can't righteously claim control of your body, for instance in regard to whether you want to reduce the dosage and number of psych drugs you're on, or maybe even whether to go entirely off of them, you can't righteously claim control of anything in your life, and at the same time whenever it suits you hold on to the idea that you can't be held responsible for any of your decisions that turn out bad, because you're "mentally ill". You can't even righteously feel offended by a title like the quoted one. It is only logic that you will have to leave all decision making to others, and ask for permission, no matter what you'd like to do if all you've got is a defective chronometer, a broken brain.

This by the way also applies to those who do not necessarily identify as suffering from a biological brain disease, but still think of their mind as being ill, as that which constitutes your mind are your thoughts and feelings, and as it is these you make use of in your decision making.

So, you may want to make up your mind. Do you want freedom, or do you want to be "mentally ill"?

Why Merete Nordentoft's recent research showing "schizophrenics" to do better without drugs won't change a thing about treatment

Well, in short, because the 19% of study participants reported to be "fully recovered" aren't really fully recovered, but rehabilitated.

A follow-up article in the Danish journal Dagens Medicin portrays Mai Pedersen, a 30-year-old with a high school exam (it's the smart ones who do best, remember?), and with some of the most loving and supportive parents imaginable (it's the ones with a truly idyllic family background who do best, remember?), who was labelled "schizophrenic" seven years ago, put into OPUS (Merete Nordentoft's early intervention program) and on drugs, of course, both neuroleptics and "anti-depressants", and who decided to go off the drugs some time ago. The latter actually, and this is the really disturbing part as the article's title, which translates into "Went off medication - and didn't ask for permission before afterwards", indicates, without asking permission from her shrink. Imagine! She didn't ask her shrink before tapering off the drugs!! How incredibly cheeky!*)

Although Mai Pedersen doesn't take any drugs today, she is "symptom-free". So, according to the article, Mai Pedersen is "fully recovered". But is she really? Mai Pedersen has an enemy. The enemy is stress. And it still has that much power over her as to have her weigh everything she does in regard to how the enemy "stress" probably will react to it. Mai Pedersen has, certainly thanks to CBT-rat training (and yes, it may well make training progress come more swiftly and be more lasting if the rat has some brains), and thanks to her wonderfully supportive parents (yes, relatives can play a decisive role when it comes to "insight" and "compliance", the better they manage to hide their own dysfunctionality behind a facade of pure family idyl, the more of a "support" - for biopsychiatric "treatment" - they will be) learned to live as a victim of "schizophrenia", a slave of a chronic brain disease. She has accepted that nothing ever will come as easy to her as it does to her "normal" friends and acquaintances, that she will have to make sacrifices to the "illness" for the rest of her life, that the "illness" dictates what she can and can't do, and that she maybe even will end up in hospital again, and again, and again... - And btw, take a look at the photograph at the top of the article, and note how beautifully it communicates the heavy burden of suffering from "schizophrenia".

Mai Pedersen succeeded in becoming a licensed psychomotrician, and is a member of the OPUS-panel, which "tries to spread information in the community about the many success stories that show also patients with schizophrenia to be able to live rewarding lives." A real success story. Or, as Mai Pedersen puts it herself, "a lousy Danielle Steele novel". Indeed!

Well well, here it is that I ask, how about a panel to try and spread some information in the community about the many real success stories that show labelled people to be able to overcome their crisis, and live a life without "schizophrenia", without constantly having to be on their guard against an enemy called "stress", without massive limitations and sacrifices, and without having the spectre of returning "psychosis" and re-hospitalization hanging over their heads?? How about a panel to try and spread some information in the community about real recovery, real freedom, to be possible??

But alas, such a panel would probably not consist of a bunch of happy and grateful OPUS-patients (and Mai Pedersen is still a patient today, she still sees her shrink on a regular basis, apropos of "fully recovered"...), a bunch of Elyn Sakses, who identify as being "mentally ill", as suffering from a chronic brain disease by the name of "schizophrenia". So, it is rather unlikely that we will see such a panel initiated by the establishment anytime in the foreseeable future. Just as a paradigm shift in the definition and treatment of crisis is unlikely to happen as long as the Mai Pedersens and Elyn Sakses of this world aren't only made slaves of an alleged illness, but also, and even more important, of a system, that (ab-)uses them big time to sell its hopeless messages and harmful "treatment" to the community.

To get back to Merete Nordentoft's research, the rate of 19% "fully recovered" participants is obviously an error, resulting from an erroneous concept of "full recovery". The true figure probably is closer to 0%, as the study apparently was not designed to include participants, who dropped out of "treatment", but seems to exclusively have concentrated on individuals, who stayed in contact with the mh system throughout the entire five years during which they were monitored. If this is the case, and I have a very strong hunch that it is, not least because the article in Dagens Medicin otherwise probably would have portrayed someone else instead of Mai Pedersen, real full recovery of course is excluded in advance from figuring in the results as a possible outcome. I suppose, this is what is called "biased" then.

A high school exam, the ability to think clearly, and a supportive network, family or other, are without doubt useful in the recovery process. But there is one more important thing , maybe the most important of them all, in terms of recovery that isn't mentioned anywhere in context with Merete Nordentoft's research, and that thing is what Al Siebert termed "resilience". The ability to "resile", or resist (without breaking your neck over it), for instance the massive indoctrination labelled people usually face in the mh system. The ability to preserve one's integrity in an environment designed to strip you entirely of it. Mai Pedersen had the high school exam, but unfortunately she didn't have the amount of resilience necessary to achieve real full recovery, and I also wonder if she would have had her family's support in case she had had the necessary amount of resilience, and had chosen to opt for freedom, instead of for slavery.
_______________

*) The title of the article caused some indignation among consumers/survivors, and gave rise to an interesting discussion at a Danish mainstream forum. - Of course I simply had to set the cat among the pigeons... :D - I will write about my thoughts on the matter in a future post here.

Another reply to Will

Here's another reply to Will at WillSpirit:

My way to union with the great consciousness... I'm still on my way, Will. I haven't arrived there yet. Like you, I've had certain experiences, epiphanies, peak experiences... I've even spent longer periods of time in a state of inner peace. But I've not attained that state of mind once and for all. I know, that such a place exists, because I've been there. But if being there was a constant thing, at least my Danish blog would look a lot different from what it does. Probably also this one, although it usually isn't quite as pugnacious as the Danish one.

This is something, I thought I'd write a post on its own about, but I may as well at least mention it here and now. For a long time, I've felt sort of an obligation to frequently comment on news articles and stuff on my Danish blog. There are no other blogs commenting critically on what's going on specifically in the field of psychiatry in Danish. And surprisingly many people have told me, they have difficulty navigating and reading sites in English or American. The mh system in this country hasn't only a monopoly when it comes to treatment, but also in regard to which information gets out, and which doesn't... To a far greater extent than in English -speaking countries. Go figure...

One aspect of this is that I found myself constantly confronted with lies, prejudice, ignorance, cynicism, ... in short: violence, exhibited by the news articles etc. I had to read in order to comment on them. Another is that the same violence regularly tried to make it to my comment field, respectively made it to my mail inbox. It is toxic, and it is extremely contagious. It goes straight for the ego, and if you don't watch out, the ego will take control and start a war. Especially if you've been a victim of violence before. You can observe it all over the mh blogosphere. Egos trying to get at each other, acting out their personal trauma. And repeating it, over and over again. Guess, who gets hurt...

I'm certainly no saint. I've engaged in several wars lately. Increasingly belligerent. Acting out and repeating past trauma. It gives a very short-lived, superficial satisfaction to make someone one's enemy and bash them, with some scathing irony for instance. But when the moment of satisfaction is over, it does nothing but hurt. And then you need another moment of satisfaction. And another one, and another one... I've actually suffered a whole lot, recently. Enough to have me reconsider the future of my blogs, and my engagement in the mh-debate on the internet in general. That's what suffering is good for. To bring about change.

Well, drugs. Drugs certainly can open some doors. Hallucinogens especially. And they don't altogether have the sedating, deadening effect that neuroleptics have. However, they altogether alienate oneself from oneself to a certain extent. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiRvnfrs8UM - BTW a channel I recommend, SFJane.

As for me, I didn't have to clear my brain of pharmaceuticals. I spent my youth moving in what you might call "alternative" circles, where natural drugs like marijuana etc. weren't regarded a big problem, while everybody was highly suspicious of any kind of chemicals. In addition, psychoanalytical theories were the thing. I didn't even know, that psychiatry - or rather: the pharmaceutical industry - had come up with a concept of emotional distress being brain diseases, before I saw myself confronted with the "news" in context with my last crisis in 2004. It had always been a matter of fact to me, that whatever the problem, it certainly was a reaction to one's environment. The massive propaganda everywhere of course had me doubt this matter of fact for a while. It just didn't add up, it made no sense. What made sense, was reading Laing's The Divided Self, and what I remembered from Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which I'd read as a teen.

Well, and then add to that the controlled and oppressed individual's pronounced desire for freedom and self-determination on the one hand, and her just as pronounced suspiciousness towards any authority that tries to take control and oppress on the other. Of course my reaction was: "I alone know what's best for me. No one and nothing messes with my mind but I myself." Luckily, this was respected. So, the only drugs I still will have to clear my brain of are caffeine and nicotine...

I've tried a benzo, once (apart from a suicide attempt that involved valium, but that's a different story). Nasty. Very very nasty. And it would have been even more nasty to experience that amount of loss of control, if it had happened during crisis. That is, during a period of time, where my true self openly rebelled against being controlled and oppressed. - Does psychiatric "treatment" worsen "symptoms"? It certainly does. Maybe not always, but often enough. Involuntary "treatment" by definition.

Last but not least, I was sort of intuitively convinced, that taking anything to numb out the pain would be extremely counterproductive, as I was determined as hell to find out, what the meaning was. And how were I supposed to figure out the meaning, when the pain was gone?


"A major objection to the use of the anti-psychotic drugs in acute crisis situations is that because they are such powerful central nervous system suppressants they may well have the effect of preventing crisis resolution. They are powerful enough to abort a psychological process, which if supported and understood, would resolve itself in the context of a relationship," Loren Mosher says here. 

The "symptoms" I experienced were indeed signposts, that showed me, clearly and unmistakably, whenever I was on the right track, trying to figure out what had caused what was going on. Without having them show me the way, the whole therapeutic process would have been a grope in the dark, unlikely to lead anywhere, since I was the only one who had the answers to all of my questions. In spite of what many people seem to expect, therapists obviously aren't there to know and tell their clients all the answers. Their only task is to suggest different angles from which to look at the questions, so that one of these angles hopefully may reveal the answer.

Numbing "symptoms" with neuroleptics leaves the client dependent on the therapist coming up with the answers, which actually is, what I see happen all over the place. - A Norwegian blog-neighbour of mine once was told by her therapist: "You know, the problem with you is that you resist being formed." Of course, my Norwegian blog-neighbour did the only reasonable thing, and ended the relationship with this "therapist". - Very convenient for society. But it won't do for the client, as it doesn't provide anything but, at best, just another false ego-identification.

So, in fact I embraced my "symptoms", because I knew, they were showing me the way out of my suffering.

I understand, that not everybody at any time has the opportunity to do as I did. The circumstances were without doubt in my favor. I had the space around me, that allowed me to "freak out" whenever I needed to, and I had someone, who supported me (almost) unconditionally. Most people unfortunately don't have that today. But that does far from mean, that they shouldn't have it. If I say, drugs are okay to use, I indirectly approve of the current paradigm of "care". I can't do that.

Basically, what I would like people to realize is that it doesn't matter what kind of label, how "serious" the problem, drugs simply aren't the answer, other than as a very short-term emergency solution, and never against the will of the person in crisis. I'd like to see the very common misconception eradicated, that there would be people, whose suffering is too severe to be met other than by (massive and long-term) drugging. There aren't. Everybody has the potential to recover, and no one should ever be prevented from it. Actually, it is often those, who suffer the most, and who seem to be "lost cases", who make the most remarkable recoveries. Given they get the right support. Because their extreme suffering also means an extreme incentive to change, and extremely clear signposts on the way to change. This is, what I reacted the most to in your initial post. That some people would need to be drugged. They don't. This, and the idea that all someone would be able to achieve, was learning to live with a chronic illness. It is not a chronic illness.

Compared to what is perceived as "normal" - and "normal" does not equal to "natural", "normal", in contrast to "natural", is a cultural construct - I certainly have "issues", still today. I'm still sensitive to noise, "noisy" visual perceptions, I still hear voices, I haven't abandoned but re-interpreted my "delusions". Does that make me an ill person? I don't think so. I think, it actually makes me more natural, so to speak, than I would be if I were perfectly adjusted to our normality. To me it's a strength, not an illness. Although it also is a lot more challenging to live in our "normal" and increasingly alienated from (human) nature world, and be naturally sensitive, than I imagine it to be for someone, who's sufficiently alienated from their own human nature and nature in general to be regarded well-adjusted to society, I wouldn't want to trade off that sensitivity for any amount of well-adjustment. I wouldn't want to trade off my true self, my true nature, for just another false ego-identification, that inevitably would lead to crisis again and again. In the end, if people think, I'm "weird" because I hug a tree, or have conversations with garden spiders, that's their problem, not mine.

I do understand and respect people who choose long-term medication when indeed they don't have a choice. That people aren't given a choice, is what I can't and won't condone.

The Doctor Who Hears Voices, once more, and humanity's eternal quest for perfection

I've wanted to write a review of Leo Regan's The Doctor Who Hears Voices at its IMDb-page ever since I'd seen the film and read the, at that time, only and rather negative - indeed society's prejudice against people who experience or have experienced extreme states of mind confirming - review of it at IMDb.

Eventually, last night I did write it, so, here it is.

It goes a little more into detail than my previous review here on my blog, which actually is more a short announcement than a review, while it, admittedly, still struggles very hard not to become too much of a reply to the mentioned, negative review alone.

Of course, in as far as I identify as one of the people shes_dead in line with society in general obviously holds rather strong prejudice against, I felt offended by his/her review. Why I decided it wouldn't be wise, to try and write a review of my own back in November last year, but wait until I'd hopefully cooled a bit down, managed to distance myself somewhat from the identification as the discriminated against, and the resulting anger. Well, I still didn't manage to be compassionate altogether - that discrimination usually isn't due to viciousness but to ignorance, a lack of ability to see beyond the end of one's nose, becomes evident alone from the fact, that shes_dead confuses Rufus May with a psychiatrist, while the film explicitly points out, that he is a psychologist, a fact, that hardly would have escaped the truly attentive, open-minded, and unprejudiced viewer - and still had to fight some feeling offended, and angry. Which sabotaged my quest to write the perfect review to a certain extent.

So, no, it certainly isn't the perfect review. But well, let the one who wrote the perfect review throw the first stone!

NAMI-pathos - the need to be special

To enjoy some real NAMI-pathos and -defensiveness, go here - to get an idea, what the whole thing is about, check out "Parents Cope With 6-Year-Old With Schizophrenia" at Philip Dawdy's blog - read the post, then read David Oaks' comment, Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 04:34 PM, 9th comment from the top, and then Michael Schofield's reply to David, Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 06:11 PM, 11th comment from the top.

Well, and then tell me, that these parents do anything else than feeling sorry - for themselves. Drowning in self-pity. And they actually thrive on their misery. So much, they forget everything about being polite (or just pathetic...), and indeed become rude and defensive, as soon as someone comes around, and mentions, in the most empathetic, friendly way, the possibility, that to be in the mh system might not be the right thing for their daughter, and that they maybe should have a deeper look at the matter: "Don't you dare to question the necessity of our suffering to continue indefinitely!!! We are special! Our misery is more miserable than anyone else's in the whole wide world! And we will fight for it! (Even if that costs Jani her life.)" Narcissists?...

Rather the Feminism than the Rorschach test!!!

So, me too, I took The Feminism Test I found the link to at Sigrun's blog.

Your result for The Feminism Test...

Revisionist

You scored 83% Gender-Abolitionist, 60% Sexually Liberal, and 80 % Socialist

You are the Revisionist Feminist! You are, by far, the most philosophical, the most sexually-liberated, and the most politically extreme variety of feminist. You are very, very freedom-oriented. You abhor oppression in all forms. For instance, your views on sexual liberation and reproductive control adequately reflect your devotion to personal freedom. Not only that, but you also feel gender needs to be destroyed to maximize equality and freedom, because accepting socially-constructed gender roles binds women into false categories and places upon them an unneeded identity. Gender should not be a part of one's identity, but rather an irrelevant aspect of their physical bodies, such as their hair length or nose shape. Not only that, but Revisionist Feminists are political extremists and feel very strongly that the oppression of class society is a big part of the cause of women's oppression. Basically, a Revisionist feels that cultural ideas of gender, political class, and repressive sexual morality all work together to oppress women, and the only way to truly escape this oppression is to challenge all of these problems directly and extremely. You are a Marxist, a Gender Abolitionist, and a Liberal Feminist all rolled into one.

The other feminist types:

The Housewife

The Marxist

The Liberal

The Liberal Extremist

The Gender Abolitionist

The Radical

The Gender-Liberal

The Revisionist

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