More misconceptions, some thoughts about delusions, suicide, and about true suicide prevention

The following are two, slightly edited, replies to a discussion at Beyond Meds. - You have to be a member to view the discussion, so, join! - Gianna suggested, I should post here too, and I decided to post both replies.

1. There's this (mis-)conception, that, whenever it just gets "weird" enough, i.e. no longer easy to get, there must be something really really wrong with a person's head, in a biological way. That idea serves as some kind of "explanation" whenever someone's behavior no longer can be understood and explained without effort in relation to the at any time adopted idea of "normal" human behavior as such. It's not an explanation, though. It's explaining away. What we don't understand, we fear. "Beware of the unknown" is a natural reaction/defence and survival mechanism. Especially of prey animals. And humans are both, predators and prey animals. So, we prefer to explain the unknown away, in order to keep it at a safe distance. One of several reasons why the biological model is so attractive to the majority.

The suffering that people in distress experience is caused by a lack of understanding, a lack of self-/consciousness. Partly the suffering is caused by a lack of understanding of themselves, or of what is happening to them, and partly by a lack of understanding from their surroundings. The fact, that people who receive understanding, empathetic, support, that focusses on helping them to understand their experiences while going through a crisis, usually don't suffer to the same extent as those who don't, who only receive drugs to get numbed out on, and maybe even traumatizing, coercive, "treatment" into the bargain, and that the former fare remarkably better in the long run than the latter, proves this.

Somehow, this is where I see a connection to what you say in your post here. Explaining away seems the safest and easiest way out. But it leads inevitably to more and more suffering. In a qualitative as well as in a quantitative sense. We want perfection. We want to be able to (and we are expected to) perfectly fit the mould. And whenever we don't, we panic. And/or those around us do. Something must be profoundly wrong with us. Let's get it fixed, so we can, perfectly, fit the mould again. What we miss in our tireless struggle to be "perfect" - perfect according to the cultural norms and values of our time (!), that is - is that our imperfection is just perfect. In its imperfection. We are not meant to fit a certain mould. We are meant to just be. Real perfection isn't something that can be defined in terms of "different from". Real perfection is the unity of all dualities. Thus, our culture, while desperately chasing what it supposes to be "perfection", actually loses the real perfection more and more out of sight.
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2. Whenever you want to die, if it's that you think the thought, or if it expresses itself as a voice, telling you to kill yourself (hearing voices is nothing but thinking aloud), you don't want to end being as such. You want to end what is, and make something else be. Death is a symbol for transformation. And the language of the unconscious is pure symbol language.

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but the Delphic Oracle from the Greek mythology for instance never answered any question other than in a more or less symbolic way. You got an answer to whatever your question, but you had to figure out the meaning of the answer yourself. Or: you actually gave the answer to your question yourself. Your unconscious, your intuition, did. The Delphic Oracle is the unconscious projected into the world.

Today, we live in a culture that isn't especially conscious of the unconscious. We are not conscious of symbolism in the same way other cultures are/were. What counts is the literal, the hard facts, science, "rational" thought (with "rational thought" being the kind of thought that is easy to get for everyone else, because everyone else thinks in the same, normative, way). Well, and things like traffic signs. But if I were an adviser, let's say of the Danish Prime Minister, he came to ask me my opinion about his campaign for the next election, and I'd say: "Make your own nature, not the advice of others, your guide in life," I'd probably lose my job, and be regarded, at least, a weirdo.

So, the question always is whom or what you really want to die when you contemplate suicide. One thing is for sure: it is not yourself. Your self (it's not a typo) is who/what you really are, and that is being, life. Life can't die. Death is a part of life, not the opposite. And life is transformation: something ends, "dies", something else begins. Every moment. Life is constant arrival and departure. Nothing actually is stable. There can be balance, but not stability. Total stability (like in "mood-stabilizer"), total unchangeableness and predictability, is a myth. And our culture confuses it with "perfection" - and chases it.

Some people want their outer form, i.e. their body, to die. People who suffer from a terminal illness, for instance. What most people in an existential crisis want to die though, is not the outer form either. It's their ego, i.e. who they think they are, and who they think, others think they are. Nevertheless, the ego partly manifests itself in the outer form of someone. That is, the body becomes a symbol for the ego. There you are: instead of letting go of your ego, and become who/what you really are, you interpret a symbol literally and consequently "let go" of your body, and,voilà: suicide. Literally. And since our culture is as unaware of symbolism as it is, chances are, that you won't find much help among this culture's members (in the mh system) to figure it out. Because everybody probably will interpret in the same literal way as your own thoughts do.

I eventually figured it out, because of the "delusion" that the real me wasn't a human being, but, well, something along the lines of a dryade, i.e. a spirit, nameless, ageless, without a history (all that ever had happened in my life, hadn't happened to me but to the body, the true me was caught in), immaterial, although caught in a - material - body. And what the real me wanted, wasn't to die, but to become free - of this body that represented an ego, a self-image, I've never felt less connected to than during crises.

Another aspect of this are "out-of-body-experiences", that usually also just are explained away as meaningless symptom of a brain disease.

Now, it's characteristic for our culture that people identify with their body, their thoughts, their mind, their life-story, their ego. Our culture teaches us to do so. In eastern philosophy though, there's another dimension beyond this formal, material one: the space wherein the formal, material expresses itself. Who/what you really are, your "true self" with Laing, is this space. So, the "delusion" actually wasn't a delusion, but the very truth.

Eventually, I figured, that letting go of the identification with my body, my ego, my thoughts, etc., meant the freedom, I'd thought, I only could gain through letting go of my body itself. A symbolic suicide, not a literal one. Or: an "egocide", not a suicide. That is the end of suffering. - That is not to say, that I don't suffer anymore. Nothing is forever. "Enlightenment" neither. It is extremely tempting to identify with the ego. Especially in a culture that worships the ego as our culture does. I yield to this temptation, time and again, and then I suffer. But existential suffering is human. It's not an illness. On the contrary, the way to "redemption" often goes through an awful lot of suffering. Without suffering, there would be no need to change anything, no need to develop and grow. Thus, existential suffering actually is more like a blessing than the curse, our culture wants to make it be.

As mentioned, usually people don't get any real help. (Since the "helpers" don't have a clue themselves, how could they help anyone to understand, what they haven't even understood themselves?*) The idea, that existential crises would be brain diseases prevents understanding just as the drugs do, whose prescription and administration only and solely is justifiable when what really is a wake-up call is defined a biological illness of the brain.

The trouble is, that the more your true self has been oppressed, the more you've been asked to identify with and as a false self (who/what others want you to be, but who/what you are not), the deeper the split between who/what you really are and this false ego-identification obviously becomes. The deeper the split becomes, the more you will suffer, and the more you suffer, the louder the wake-up calls will be. Whether you get a label of "OCD", "depression", or "schizophrenia" is not a question of suffering from distinctly different conditions. It's a question of the extent to which someone suffers, and the volume of the wake-up calls, they consequently receive. So-called "psychosis" being the loudest possible wake-up call. And they won't cease coming in, the wake-up calls, before you actually listen to them, and do wake up. This is why the drugs have a chronifying effect on crisis. It will inevitably happen again and again, until the day, you understand. And there is no drug strong enough to silence the unconscious. Drugs can't even target the unconscious. All they do is reducing consciousness. The unconscious is almighty and unassailable. You can't fight it and win. All you can do is turning it from being your master into being a tool of yours, by becoming conscious of it.

* It's actually quite funny, that a lack of ability to interpret things in a symbolic way is listed as a "symptom" of "schizophrenia", while the "experts' " ability to recognize a symbol as a symbol when it's staring them right in the face, equals to zero...

Business as usual

Back in the 1980ies I was a member of A.I.D.A. (Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes), an Amnesty affiliate, whose purpose it was to support artists who were kept political prisoners. People like Orhan Taylan, Karl Gaspar and Wei Jingsheng.

In 1986 I translated several texts about and by Wei Jingsheng (from English into German) for the production of Ariane Mnouchkine's The Trial against Wei Jingsheng at Munich. With a short repreive in 1993, Wei spent almost 19 years in prison, from March 1979 to November 1997, five of them in solitary confinement, isolation.

Solitary confinement was his situation in 1986 when I did the translations. I read about a small cell with a window, high above, that allowed Wei to see a square of the sky. There was serious concern, that he would "go mad" under these circumstances.

If anything is "abnormal" about me, it is my ability to identify. With the victims of injustice, assault, betrayal, abuse... you name it. And, by the way, it doesn't make a difference if the victim in question is a human being, an animal, a plant, a thing, whatever. I identify. I become the victim. I suffer. Why? Because I have been the victim myself. I didn't know then. It took many years and several crises to figure out. Crises: fights for freedom, for independence, for justice. Revolutions. Political, yes. Crisis is also always political. What is the difference between a dissident and a mad person? The dissident is conscious about what s/he is opposing.

I walked about, locked up in a small cell, with only a square of the sky to see. I was about to "go mad". I "went mad ", to a certain extent. To the rest of the extent, I was able to channel my revolution into activism.

One thought kept on milling around in my mind: I would have to go to China and free Wei. Now! Free Wei. Free me.

A similar thought crossed my mind tonight, when I got the news about Ray. Sometimes it's not so easy to turn identification into acceptance and compassion.

I wonder, when it will dawn on people in general, that what is called "help" for "the mentally ill" is nothing but additional, and often the ultimate, oppression of people who have been victimized and deprived of a constructive language of their own.

What I've heard about Ray's hearing, reminds me horrifyingly of Wei's trial: A complete farce. The outcome decided in advance. But while the self-appointed "democracies" in this world loudly protest human rights violations in countries like China, they are blind to the human rights violations that take place right in the middle of them, among their own people. Business as usual.

This is for all the dissidents who have been denied a voice of their own, and who are kept political prisoners under the guise of "help":

Peter Gabriel Biko Live 1986



"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire"

Psychdiagnonsense III - jawdropping

I must admit, that my jaw dropped at H.'s (the "believer") comment on my post about psych diagnoses, especially at her reaction to Janie Lee asking: "Do you not think it takes away my dignity, hope, and initiative to do better or be better in life?":

"No I don't think so", H. wrote, "I think, this is a choice of your own, Janie Lee! No matter what excuses and explanations people use to not have initiative, to not try and do better, to not be happy - it's still an individual choice about excuse and explanation. - And actually I don't really care whether the excuse/explanation is a bad childhood, a bad marriage, a psychiatric diagnosis or other. We are all human beings. Equal. Of equal worth. And we choose on our own."

In the following H. expressed that she sees a psych diagnosis as part of one's being as a human individual. Thus, she indicates, the non-acceptance of a psych label equals to the non-acceptance of who someone is.

I replied: "I agree with you as far as it, of course, is an individual choice, whether someone wants to suffer while the stake is on fire beneath them... Alternatively, one can choose to transcend. But that doesn't justify the Inquisition. Far from. Just because we're all of equal worth (in theory). Disregarded belief.

I am not with you in as far as you regard it non-acceptance to reject identification with a label, such as "schizophrenia". It is exactly non-acceptance of who/what a person really is, if such a label is accepted."

In reply, H. contrasts a diagnosis as a negative evil to a diagnosis as just one more detail that makes someone the person s/he is, and continues, that the negative aspect also is strengthened by those who reject diagnoses as such. Since, as she says, the focus then gets directed on the diagnosis, instead of on the person's individual characteristics:

"...persistent proposals about that no - we don't have any diagnosis, and, by the way, my eyes aren't blue, to me is non-acceptance of who someone is. (...)

Concerning people's own accounts, I can find at least just as many, that go the other way round. While they neither disclaim responsibility for themselves nor for their lives. Thousands of people who are happy for the additional understanding they have got for reacting the way they do - without regarding it a pretext for doing nothing about it.

(...)

And no, of course no one should accept a narrow view that a diagnosis is who someone really is. (...) ...a diagnosis is only an addition..."

Now what? Is a diagnosis - part of - someone's identity, or isn't it?? I thought.

I started to write, and I have to warn: as it occasionally has happened before, the words took over, and I decided to let them do it. So, if you at any point in the past have experienced trouble following my occasional "flights of fancy", be prepared! (Well, it gets worse, in part 2.) But I guess, I'm excused, as "loose association", "tangentiality", "clanging" (uhhh, I really love this one! I did restrain myself, though), etc. all just are symptoms... of a brain disease. Not of what you thought. - Here's my rant, first part:

Just found my comment on "Måske jeg bare skulle hænge mig del 2" [a post at H.'s blog], that I think also fits very well here: "People want labels. Without them, they don't understand. - As if the labels were to understand!" 
 


Labels... In theory they're all right, are a precondition for us being able to communicate through words. All words ultimately are "labels" - not the thing itself, but a representative - and thus never satisfactory.

To me, this isn't problematic unless the labels are divided into "good" and "bad" ones, and unless we at the same time identify the thing - everything, people included - with the label.

It is a fact that we in our culture identify things through their names, and take the name for the thing: "That's a tree." instead of: "The name/word for this is 'tree'. " This is which alienates us from the world and from ourselves. Now you may say that it isn't that black and white. But, yes, H., unfortunately, this black and white it is. There's "the right kind", and there's "the wrong/bad kind" in our culture. Even if it is hardly ever stated in a direct way - because that then would be discrimination. Exactly.

I say "in our culture", because in eastern cultures for instance this alienation through language doesn't go just as far. The Chinese language for instance brings out the words' function as representatives, signs, and not as the thing itself, to a far greater extent, both through its structure and written appearance, thus preventing misidentification.

It is also in these cultures that a philosophy is found, that doesn't categorize everything into "good" and "bad/evil": Buddhism. - Though, in its original form Christianity doesn't do this either. The Fall of Man is an addition, that isn't part of the Tanakh. And Jesus was a Jew. - The division into "good" and "bad/evil" is an ego-invention: "I am better/worthier than you." This self-image, this ego-identification, permeates our whole culture, has done so for a long time. It provides the basis for how our western culture functions - not. "Not" because, in the end, it is self-destructive.

To get back to psych diagnoses: all these diagnoses are a result of an ego-wish to be able to categorize human behaviour, human being(s), as "bad/evil" in contrast to which at any given time, and alone on the basis of cultural values, is regarded to be "normal" = "good". So that the "good" can be clearly delimited from the "bad/evil", and recognized as "good" [as western culture, since the Fall of Man, is characterized by dichotomic thinking]. Blue eyes are not a diagnosis, no. But to have dark skin, or being gay, or or or, actually once was.

As mentioned, I'm completely all right with being categorized as "maladjusted" - to a sick world. But I'm definitely not all right with being forced to define myself as "bad/less worthy", which "schizophrenic" is synonymous of. We are all equal, and we all have the right to define ourselves. In theory. Psychiatric reality, our culture's reality in general, is a completely different. Individuals are forced to confess their faith: "I am schizophrenic." Individuals who choose to say: "I am maladjusted to a sick world." are told they lack insight. - Not to mention that our Orwellian culture, psychiatry very much included, regards it a certain sign of "insanity" if someone thinks, it's their environment, not they themselves, that something is wrong with. - A "lack of insight" qualifies an individual to receive even more "treatment", i.e. torture. It justifies torture until the individual goes down and accepts others' definition of himself, thus giving up on himself: Metropolis, or Brave New World.

I don't object to words. But I definitely object to the values, historical, social, cultural, etc., that are attributed to certain words, such as "schizophrenic". In addition, I just as definitely object to that what I call "junk-science" is used to justify these values to be attributed to these words. Just as I regard it a violation of human rights to force a psychiatric label onto anyone.

I certainly don't close my eyes to who I am, to my "weaknesses" and "strengths". I accept them as good as I can. If I didn't do that, I wouldn't sit here today, having this discussion with you. I'd probably sit at Ringbo [a Danish half-way-house-like institution], hardly capable of spelling my own name. Acceptance is the precondition for transformation. The transformation I am in the process of, exactly because I haven't accepted and do not accept the "life sentence".

Psychdiagnonsense II - ...and some more frustration

This is a thing, I'll never get. I just ended up surfing the blogosphere a bit. It happens sometimes. Someone has a link to someone who has a link... etc. I came by some of the V.I.P.s in the mental health blogosphere, too. Especially one of them - no names here - actually breaks my heart, each time I come by there.

Well, nevertheless, I keep on wondering. Most of these people have had no less than horrid experiences with the mental health system. And most of them seem to be rather intelligent people. Still, it doesn't seem to enter their heads, that there might be something essentially wrong with psychiatry in itself. They seem to think, it were just them, and maybe one or two others, who have been unlucky. Or, at most, that there are some few unfavourable tendencies, like the tendency to overmedicate, that would have to get adjusted, and everything would be fine with psychiatry. No, sorry folks. Nothing would be, is, has ever been, or will ever be fine with psychiatry as such!

Never mind, I just sometimes get really desperate about all this blindness, or naiveté, or whatever...

Well, now that I allowed myself to vent a little frustration - I'll move on to vent some more. Although the following frustration already has been vented at my Danish blog, this past weekend. Here's part two of the discussion about psychiatry's status as a medical science and, in particular, about psychiatric diagnoses.

As I wanted to address the question whether psychiatric diagnoses were of any benefit for the diagnozed, but as feelings still were running somewhat high the next afternoon, after I'd posted the first part, I decided to concentrate on quoting others' accounts of how they perceived psychiatric diagnoses, just adding a few remarks of my own.



"Powerful words with much and little meaning. They help to classify, but not understand. They act as excuses, but not answers. They make it easy to describe, but not really explain. They separate us from ourselves and others. So do you fear me or trust me, do you help me or punish me, do you believe me or call me a liar if I am diagnosed with one of these labels? Do you not think it hurts me to be labeled like this? Do you not think it takes away my dignity, hope, and initiative to do better or be better in life? We have to hide now to keep the system from forcing one of these diagnoses on us or using it in such a way that it hurts and stigmatizes us for the rest of our lives." Janie Lee, M.Ed.
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"Psychiatric diagnoses like schizophrenia always risk harming people, always risk becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, always deny people the right to define and understand themselves for themselves, always mislead people about the facts of what is truly known and not known about mental illness, always unfairly promote narrow drug treatments against holistic alternatives, and always impose an interpretation on based on subservience to power. Psychiatric diagnoses perpetuate a long legacy of mistreatment of the mentally ill, who should be embraced as humans deserving of full dignity, not labeled as broken and different.

I believe that our system of helping people in extreme states of consciousness and severe suffering can and should dispense with pseudo-scientific psychiatric diagnoses. I believe we can find ways to care for people without harming them." Will Hall, co-founder of Freedom Center
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"I had an experience in the early 1950's, shortly after I started in private practice, of how psychiatric diagnosis can harm. A young mother was referred to me for aftercare upon her discharge from Hillside Hospital, where I had trained and where I was on the clinic staff. We met, I took a history and I saw no obstacle to our working together psychotherapeutically.

At the end of the meeting, she asked me her diagnosis, and I told her 'schizophrenia' - her hospital diagnosis which, even then, I did not consider irreversible. But that's apparently how she saw it, because she went home and hanged herself.

Since then, I have never used that term with a patient or a family; for those disorganized enough to meet the diagnostic criteria, I merely say they are somewhat disorganized and that our therapeutic task is to help them get their heads together again.

The basic problem with psychiatric diagnosis, as I see it, is its denial of the ease with which people's minds can change. Someone facing a difficult situation can be anxious on Monday, depressed on Tuesday and a bit disorganized – 'schizzy' - on Wednesday. Whichever day he is seen by the psychiatrist will determine his 'diagnosis,' which will in turn magnify his related symptoms and dampen the others.

Even more important is the permanence which "diagnosis," (schizophrenia especially,) is supposed to possess. Although I had a schizophrenic break (my response to drugs during that episode is described in Bob Whitaker's superb book, 'Mad in America'), many of my psychiatric colleagues insisted that the diagnosis had to be wrong because I recovered. This means that whenever these colleagues diagnose someone as having "schizophrenia," they are convinced in their hearts that the patient will never recover. This attitude is hardly helpful for the patients they care for!" Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D.
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A remark in connection with Nathaniel S. Lehrman's account: So-called "schizophrenia" - psychiatry's sacred cow - has always been defined as an incurable illness, a "life sentence", and still today is defined the same by psychiatry - disregarded the large number of people labelled with "schizophrenia", who at any given time throughout history have achieved full recovery, and do achieve full recovery today. Though, as mentioned in other contexts before, it is only people who either manage to completely avoid the system, or who manage to leave the system at some point, who do fully recover. People who stay in contact with and dependent on the system do not recover fully. With the exception of those, who use the system's services to emancipate themselves from it, that is. - Having Gianna at Beyond Meds in mind, yep. - Since only those who stay inside the system do appear in the system's statistics, "schizophrenia" thus is confirmed to be an incurable illness.

Still today, psychiatry doesn't hesitate to tell every person with a diagnosis of "schizophrenia" - or of any other "severe mental illness" - that this diagnosis is irreversible, a "life sentence". While it, at the same time, is tried to explain away the high percentage of especially first-time "psychotics" who commit suicide as a "symptom" of the "illness" - rather than that suicide is acknowledged to be a completely natural and rational - not at all "insane" - reaction to receiving the message of having a life-long, incurable brain disease. Rather than that full recovery is acknowledged to be possible, and rather than that the consequence is taken in regard to the by now well-established fact, that psychiatric "treatment" prevents full recovery. Instead the system stops at virtually nothing in order to legitimate itself as a "medical science"... "Forgive them, for they don't know what they do"?

The above quotations are retrieved from Paula J. Caplan's website, PsychDiagnosis.net. Paula Caplan has been a member of the DSM V writing group, leaving the group when she realized how little real science actually provides the basis for diagnoses to be approved respectively dismissed. Again, I want to outline that psychiatry is the only "medical science" that approves respectively dismisses diagnoses alone on the basis of voting, and not on the basis of any given behaviour to be scientifically provenly a symptom of illness, or of any other scientifically provable diagnostic criteria for "mental illness" to exist. An interview with Paula Caplan can be listened to here.

I want to contrast the above quotations with a quotation from an article at a Danish website, that clearly shows the false ego-identification, that is promoted by psychiatry and its diagnoses, and that in a decisive manner contributes to the diagnozed individual becoming stuck in irreversible crisis, "chronic mental illness":

"Following this [having experienced increasing signs of an extreme state of mind] Jacob is admitted to a psychiatric ward, and, after three months of hospitalization, is told that he has schizophrenia.

'Subsequently, I entered into the OPUS project, and got started with the so-called social skills training together with four other young, mentally ill people.'

He describes his experience with OPUS like this: 'I experienced it as an awakening... it was like finding my identity, an explanation for the feelings and thoughts I had. From feeling odd man out, it was like I'd went to find my right place'."

The example is taken from J.A. Jensen (ed.), Sindets labyrinter. Seks beretninger fra mødet med psykiatrien. (Labyrinths of the mind. Six accounts about the encounter with psychiatry. - And, sure, Jacob's example is meant to illustrate a successful encounter with psychiatry. As if there were such a thing!) Copenhagen, 2002.

Jacob found an identity, yes - as a "schizophrenic". But is this who he really is? And what will happen the moment Jacob realizes, that he has become a victim of a huge self-/deceit, realizing at the same time, that he cannot leave the place he found - as a "schizophrenic"?

Choose your battles carefully II

Because of current issues, here some reflections on victims and martyrs. Instead of some additional thoughts about "schizophrenia" and mutated chromosomes, that I will return to later today.

There are people who are so deeply in love with their existential suffering, they can under no circumstances imagine being without it. Not only do they try everything in their power to maintain their suffering, they even seek out any opportunity to increase it: they are, in a narcissistic, i.e. identifying, way, in love with their role as the victim.

If you engage in an argument with one of these people, they will take whatever you say, and turn it upside down. They will interpret every word you say as a personal insult, a personal attack on them. The worst possible attack on these people, on their ego: you didn't understand them.

Indeed, it makes them feel good. Why? Well, if you are identified with your suffering, any increase in the suffering equals an increase of personality (i.e. ego) on your behalf: you become more, and even more of more, the more you suffer.

So, what these people inevitably will do, is begging others to attack them. Becoming attacked feeds their suffering, and through this their ego-identification. Since the ego actually is a very fragile construct, it needs constant approval, constant feeding, or it starves to death.

I must know. I've been there myself. Not so long time ago. And I still sometimes succumb to the temptation: "Oh, please, let there be a misunderstanding, about a weekend off for instance, so that I can be the victim!" Now, usually, I don't necessarily need to stir up strife with other people continuously. I only need to invite them, once in a while, to ignore my boundaries. I have my voices to take care of the rest, to tell me how worthless I am, so that I can feel miserable. While there's a true drama going on in my head, I suffer in silence on the outside. I am the self-sacrificing victim, the martyr. Perfect.

I learned this from my mother. Only, the little voice in her head wasn't quite sufficient. So, she looked for more drama in relation to me and my father. Stirring up strife: "I never said that", "You misunderstand", "You don't want to understand", "You're wide off the mark", etc. etc. My father withdrew. I couldn't.

I know the name of the game. Ad nauseam. It is extremely destructive. It causes nothing but suffering for everyone who plays it. It was what, in the end, made me "go crazy". It is what I see the mental health system expose its clientele to. With what is going on in the mental health system being a very clear reflection of what is going on in society in general.

So, if you're out there, deeply in love with your suffering, and looking for a playmate to "attack" you: I'm not the one. Read: I won't publish your comments.

And: no, I'm not suffering nearly as much as I did anymore. The mental noise in my head has decreased remarkably. Because I took responsibility for my suffering, and chose to do everything in my power to end it.
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Update, August 2nd 2008: Hi Larry, I rejected your latest comment, yes. The discussion is over from my side - and on my blog. Thought, I'd made that clear with this post. (And why on earth do you feel attacked by this post?? - Just a rhetoric question!) Well, now it should be clear.
I won't take down the comments of yours that I already have published, though. I see no reason to do that: "It is as it is".

Words, Part I

It seems a common phenomenon that individuals with a psychiatric diagnosis refer to themselves as "mentally ill". Psychiatry's illness-terminology is often uncritically adopted, even by people who don't adopt the gene- nor neurotransmitter story, who don't believe in "mental illness" as physiological illness, uncritically.

Obviously it is widely assumed, that words, terms, don't mean a lot. This is wrong. Language is a means of power and identification which can't be underestimated. It is not without reason that rhetoric and semiotics e.g. are sciences of their own.

My words, my choice of words, defines me. My words ARE me. At many discussion forums and websites one can read the well-intentioned advice that you shouldn't identify with your "illness" since you ARE not your illness. Preferably uttered by people who elsewhere at the same forum say: "I AM mentally ill".

I guess, we can agree that when an individual says: "I am a diabetic", that doesn't make him a "sick" personality. It doesn't make his mind, his thoughts, feelings and actions "sick". Unfortunately, it is a horse of a different colour when it comes to "mental illness". Because both, an individual's personality as well as a potential "mental illness", are located in the individual's brain. Consequently, it has to be this individual's personality which is sick. Can you take someone seriously whose mind, whose thoughts, feelings and the resulting actions are sick? Hardly. Nevertheless, this is exactly what the "mentally ill" demand: To be listened to and taken seriously. On equal terms with people who are not "mentally ill". On what basis?

This is in fact the same problem as with the slave who refers to himself as "slave" and at the same time demands to be treated as a free individual. An unreasonable demand. To adopt the "master's", psychiatry's, terminology, makes me which the "master", psychiatry, views me to be: a "slave", a "mental illness", a diagnosis. An unpredictable, "sick", defective and thus worthless thing, which there's no reason to listen to or to take seriously. Not only in the eyes of psychiatry, but also, consciously or unconsciously, in my own. One of several reasons why I chose to do without terms like "mentally ill" or any other terminology relating to a (brain) disease, when it comes to me personally.