THE DEGRESSION FROM spiritual knowledge to materialist ideology appears to follow a graduated path from one into the other. We can chart this process beginning at the top with how an accurate spiritual perspective might define spiritual and physical realities, and proceed down to how a materialist perspective would define them: Physical Reality Material realities are entirely the product of spiritual processes, and those realities can ultimately be created, changed, or vanished through spiritual processes. Full knowledge of all material and spiritual processes is possible. Spiritual Reality Everyone is a spiritual being. Spiritual existence is ultimately independent of all material processes. Spiritual processes are senior to and effective upon the material universe. There is no known limit to the potential ability of any spiritual being. Spiritual Reality Everyone is a spiritual being, but different classes of spiritual beings exist which cannot be changed. Everyone is a spiritual being, but there are senior spiritual beings to whom all other spiritual beings are inferior. Everyone has a spiritual side to them, but there is only one purely spiritual being, usually a "one-only" God. Spiritual reality exists, but it is dependent upon and arises out of the material universe. If there is a Supreme Being, it is probably either a material being or a scientific law. Spiritual reality does not exist at all. Everything can be explained as products of material processes. "Life" does not exist. All motion is the product of life- less physical processes which cause the illusion of "life" and "thought." . Physical Reality Spiritual beings are subject to some "inevitable" or "unchangeable" laws governing the workings of the physical universe. Material processes are primarily the result of the activities of "senior" spiritual beings to whom all other beings are inferior. The material universe was created by a "one-only" God. There exist many "inevitable" laws of the universe that people can never hope to understand. Material processes alone account for any spiritual phenomena. Spiritual abilities, such as "ESP," "clairvoyance," etc., if they exist, are solely the result of as-of-yet undiscovered principles of the material universe. There is no reality other than the physical universe. Spiritual abilities, such as "ESP," etc., do not exist. trend towards the bottom is a practice known as "scientific psychiatry." There are many fine people working in psychiatry, but the field as a whole has become increasingly politicized due to its use by governments in a variety of settings, and it has come to promote a strict materialist view. Modern psychiatry has sadly obliterated the last vestige of spiritual reality acknowledged even by Marx. To understand this development, let us briefly survey the history of scientific psychiatry. Efforts to cure people of mental affliction are as old as history. It is to the ancient Greeks and Romans that modern psychiatry traces many of its origins. More than two thousand years ago, the Greek physician, Hippocrates (ca. 400 B.C.), had classified various forms of mental illness and rejected the popular notion that mental ills were caused by angry gods or demonic possession. In later Rome, physician Galen (2nd century A.D.) was one of the first to theorize a connection between the brain and mental functioning. After Galen, Western psychology reverted back to a belief in demons and witches for many centuries. Perhaps the most important breakthrough in psychiatry occurred in Austria. Between 1880 and 1882, Viennese physician Josef Breuer discovered that he was able to cure a girl of severe hysteria by having her remember and relive under hypnosis a traumatic incident from her past. Her symptoms disappeared for good. Dr. Breuer had discovered that a person could actually be cured of mental ills simply through the act of remembering and confronting past incidents which may remain hidden from conscious memory without the assistance of a therapist. In some way, mind-aberrating pain is relieved through this process. Dr. Breuer had stumbled onto something extraordinarily significant, yet his discovery, though utilized to some extent in the psychoanalysis developed by Sigmund Freud, was never fully explored in psychiatry. Even Freud's psychoanalysis failed to take the next step, which was to develop precision methods for helping people accurately pinpoint aberrational incidents from the past and discharge the mental, physical and emotional pain contained in those incidents. Freud strayed off into his sloppy "free-association" methods which made the remembering of Modern Western culture appears to be situated somewhere around the lower middle of the above chart. Leading the bering process less precise. He also over-emphasized sexual incidents. Breuer's vital breakthrough was dealt an even mightier blow by what was happening in neighboring Germany during his day. "Scientific psychiatry" was emerging. One of the earliest centers of "scientific psychiatry" was Leipzig, Germany. There a man named Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) established the world's first psychological laboratory in 1879. Until that time, universities usually placed the study of psychology in their philosophy departments because of a lingering belief that there exists a spiritual side to man. It was Wundt's contention, however, that psychology belonged in a biological laboratory. To Wundt, human beings were only biological organisms to which there were no spiritual realities attached. He therefore considered his approach "scientific" rather than philosophical. Wundt's theory about the mind was that human thought is caused by external stimulation bringing about bodily identification with other stimuli which the body had received and recorded in the past. When this identification occurs, the body, or brain, mechanically creates an act of "will" which responds to the new stimulus. There is no such thing as self-created thought or free will. To Wundt and his followers, man was but a sophisticated robot-type organism.
Wundt's ideas were based upon experiments conducted in his laboratories and elsewhere. Some of those experiments revealed that one could produce the physiological manifestations of different emotions by applying electronic stimulation to different parts of the brain. Experimenters erroneously concluded that the brain must therefore be the source of personality because it triggers the physical manifestations of emotion and thought. The fallacy in this reasoning is obvious. The person conducting the experiment is applying external stimulation. In other words, the brain centers are not self-triggering except in a very limited sense. The experiments proved that it takes something else, something external, to trigger those brain centers. What, then, triggers those centers when the experimenter is no longer applying his electrodes? There must be another external source—a missing element. That missing element appears to be the spiritual entity which produces its own energy output. Although Wundt and others used the experiments to 'prove" a pure biological basis to human thought, the results were, in fact, subtly pointing in the opposite direction. Erroneous or not, the stimulus-response model of behavior developed at Leipzig quickly became the "new wave" in psychiatry and received considerable support from the German government. Wundt himself remained the most influential figure in scientific psychiatry for 40 years. The Leipzig labs attracted many students from around the world, many of whom later became prominent names in psychiatry. For example, one Leipzig student from Russia was Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), who gained fame for his experiments with bells and salivating dogs. Duane P. Schultz, writing in his book, A History of Modern Psychology, sums it up well: Through these students, the Leipzig Laboratory exercised an immense influence on the development of psychology. It served as the model for the many new laboratories that were developing in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The many students who flocked to Leipzig, united as they were in point of view and common purpose, constituted a school of thought in psychology.
1 By redefining the nature of thought and behavior, scientific psychiatry also redefined the nature of mental abnormality and its cure. Methods to bypass human free will and intellect (behavior modification) were explored and developed. Because human beings were viewed as strictly biological chemical-electrical organisms, all mental illnesses were said to be the result of physiological processes somehow going "out of kilter." Experimenters theorized that mental illness could be cured by strictly physiological means, such as with drugs, shock treatment, or brain surgery. It was believed that such treatments could remedy the chemical or electrical "imbalances" and thereby cure the mental illness itself. Out of these theories arose amultibillion dollar drug industry which pours out huge quantities of mood-altering drugs every year. These drugs are designed to relieve every mental ill from "can't get to sleep at night" to violent psychosis. In addition, many psychiatrists use special machines to send electrical shocks through a person's brain. Some may even resort to brain surgery. Now that we have had almost half a century to observe these cures in action, we can ask: have they benefited mankind? Is the world a saner place today than it was 50 years ago? To answer these questions, we might do well to analyze the cure most often prescribed by psychiatrists: psychotropic ("mind-affecting") drugs. Psychotropic drugs are a mammoth industry. They comprise a large portion of the total prescription drug trade which in 1978 amounted to an estimated $16.7 billion wholesale value in global sales by U.S. manufacturers alone. This figure does not even include sales by Swiss and other European manufacturers. An excellent book, The Tranquilizing of America, revealed that the most frequently prescribed psychotropic drug, Valium (Roche Laboratories), was prescribed over 57 million times in 1977, refills included. According to an advertisement published by Roche in 1981, almost eight million people, or about five percent of the adult U.S. population, would use Valium in that year! Add to that enormous figure the tens of millions of prescriptions for other psychotropic medications and we discover that an enormous quantity of mind and mood altering drugs are being consumed every year. In 1977, for example, the total number of U.S. prescriptions for twenty major psychotropic drugs amounted to over 150 million. That amounted to approximately 8.35 billion pills! These medications are being prescribed in similar quantities today.
This epidemic drug use is not an accident. Powerful psychotropic medications are energetically promoted to the medical community in glossy Madison Avenue advertisements in such publications as the American Journal of Psychiatry and through workshops and seminars sponsored by the drug companies. Justified criticism has been leveled against drug-oriented psychiatry because of the number of patients who actually deteriorate as a result of their psychiatric treatment. For example, a surprisingly large number of people who commit apparently senseless acts of violence, such as shooting sprees and other grisly headline-grabbing acts, are people who were previously treated with psychotropic drugs. John Hinckley, Jr., for example, was under the influence of Valium when he attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Such coincidences are usually explained as an indication that those people were already mentally deranged before the violent episodes and, at worst, the drugs were simply not able to help them. On the other hand, critics point out that such individuals were often not violent before their treatment, but became violent only afterwards. Did psychiatric treatments actually worsen their mental states to the point of their going completely psychotic? One of the great feathers in the cap of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is its requirement that all drug manufacturers must list the side effects, or "adverse reactions," that their drugs have been known to cause. This mandatory disclosure warns physicians of possible dangers and guides them in knowing when to take a patient off a drug. Unfortunately, by the time an adverse reaction is visible to the doctor, the damage may already be done. Most adverse reactions do vanish when the medication is discontinued, but some side effects can be permanent and cause lasting complications. This is especially worrisome when we discover that many adverse reactions are psychological. A person opening a copy of the American Journal of Psychiatry and seeing the drug ads for the first time may react with shock at not only the slick sales pitches, but also at the small print. Every advertised psychotropic medication has a long list of potential physical and psychological adverse reactions. Most of the listed side effects are in medical terms incomprehensible to the layman; however, many of them are quite understandable. Here is a sampling of some listed potential adverse reactions to popular psychotropic medications that have been advertised and prescribed in the 1980's: The drug Surmontil (Ives Laboratories), which is promoted as a drug for helping a person overcome symptoms of depression, lists among its possible side effects: Confusional states (especially in the elderly) with hallucinations, disorientation, delusions, anxiety, restlessness, agitation, insomnia and nightmares, hypomania [abnormal excitement]; exacerbation [intensification] of psychosis.
2 Haldol (McNeil Pharmaceutical) is advertised as a way of handling an acutely agitated patient. It can cause: Insomnia, restlessness, anxiety, euphoria, agitation, drowsiness, depression, lethargy, headache, confusion, vertigo, grand mal seizures, and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms including hallucinations, and catatonic-like behavioral states . . .
3 Thorazine, which is promoted as a medication for handling psychotic adults and children, belongs to a class of drug which has been known to cause the following: .. . psychotic symptoms, catatonic-like states, cerebraledema [excess brain fluid], convulsive seizures, abnormality of the cerebrospinal fluid proteins. . . . NOTE: Sudden death in patients taking phenothiazines [the drug classification to which Thorazine belongs] (apparently due to cardiac arrest or asphyxia due to failure of cough reflex) has been reported but no causal relationship has been established.
4 The last sentence in the above quote is a remarkable bit of doublespeak. It states that giving someone this class of drug has coincided with their suddenly dying, but the manufacturer denies that there is any evidence that the drugs were responsible for the deaths! No doubt it was just an extraordinary coincidence that some people have had cardiac arrests or cough reflex failures at the time of taking the drug. Fate must indeed work in mysterious ways.
Stelazine, another Smith Kline drug, lists many of the same adverse reactions as Thorazine, and adds "hypotension (sometimes fatal); cardiac arrest"5 to its long list of medical adverse reactions. The drug is advertised as "A Classic Antipsychotic." Norpramin (Merrel Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) lists the same adverse reactions quoted earlier for the drug Surmontil, but adds "heart block, myocardial infraction, stroke."
6 Even the relatively "mild" drug, Valium, so widely prescribed today, warns: Paradoxical reactions, such as acute hyperexcited states, anxiety, hallucinations, increased muscle spasticity, insomnia, rage, sleep disturbances and stimulation have been reported; should these occur, discon- tinue drug.
7 The above drugs are only a sample. Nearly every medication advertised in the American Journal of Psychiatry has a long list containing identical or similar potential adverse reactions. The implications of this are significant. These drugs have been known to sometimes seriously worsen a person's mental state or cause mental problems far more severe than those the patient began with! As noted, physicians prescribe these drugs because the severe adverse reactions reportedly occur only in a minority of cases, and many side effects are reversible by discontinuing the drug. However, the road back from many adverse reactions can be a long one. A person suffering a psychotic break, whether from emotional stress or a drug, may take a long time to recover. In the meantime, he may do considerable damage to himself or to others. When we consider the enormous scale on which these drugs are prescribed, even a small percentage of patients suffering a severe psychological reaction will amount to a large number of individuals. This immediately explains the puzzle of why some mental patients seem to truly "go off the deep end" after treatment. Regrettably, few people will blame the drug even in cases where the drug may be the cause, but will instead blame the patient ("he was always teetering near the edge anyway") or society ("look at what society has done to this poor crazed individual"). The great tragedy is that some children may be affected by this. Many schools and treatment centers are quick to give powerful psychotropics to problem children and adolescents. It is argued that the number of people who are helped by the drugs far exceed those who are worsened. Advocates cite statistics showing that drugs enable many patients to leave psychiatric institutions sooner and return to the community. Psychotropic drugs seem to enable some people to keep their psychological symptoms under control enough for them to lead useful lives in society. The question is: at what cost are these apparent benefits being obtained? As many psychiatrists acknowledge, psychotropic drugs rarely cure mental illness. They simply suppress the symptoms. In this respect psychotropics are like cold medicines which can make a person feel better and appear healthier, but they rarely cure the underlying illness itself. When a person is removed from the medication, the symptoms usually recur. The patient functions no better than he or she did before, and may even be worse off from having suffered side effects from the drug. Many psychiatrists therefore do not speak of "cure," but of "maintenance." Psychiatry boasts a low "cure" rate, but a high "maintenance" rate. As long as factories churn out pills, drug "maintenance" can continue. Is this fair to the patient? In the long run, is society really being helped? The danger with maintenance-oriented psychiatry is that mental illness is in a sense "contagious." This fact is most obvious in the phenomenon of "mob psychology," as well as in other circumstances. If people are not actually being cured of mental ills but are only having their symptoms masked, and meanwhile mental aberration spreads from other causes, it follows that mental illness will probably increase in any society relying upon drug therapy. If psychotropics are also slamming thousands of people every year into a deeper psychological morass because of dangerous side effects, we can see that drug-oriented psychiatry risks pushing a society to ruin; yet psychotropics constitute the main form of therapy in most psychiatric institutions today. The dangers of heavy psychotropic drugs are increased by another factor. A large problem facing today's psychiatric community is the abnormally high suicide rate of its practitioners. Psychiatrists in the United States have a suicide rate about six times that of the general population. The highest percentage of those self-inflicted deaths occur among practitioners working in mental hospitals. This high suicide rate is often viewed as an occupational hazard caused by frustration and by a psychiatrist's continuous contact with mental illness. Whatever the cause of it may be, this suicide statistic is a reason to be concerned for the welfare of mental patients. Suicides are usually preceded by a period of declining mental health. One rarely finds a genuinely stable and well-adjusted person committing suicide. One of the major duties of a psychiatrist is accurate diagnosis and proper treatment, yet one of the most common manifestations of mental illness is the visualization of one's own problems in other people. A psychiatrist in a pre-suicidal state therefore risks being the source of grievous misdiagnosis because he may diagnose a patient as having what the doctor is actually suffering from. Because wrong diagnosis and mistreatment can ruin a person's life, especially in a hospital setting where strong psychotropics, shock therapy and psychosurgery are used, it is vital that the treating psychiatrists and technicians be genuinely sane, social, and well-adjusted. Sadly, a statistically large minority of them are not. The epidemic use of psychotropic drugs creates yet another significant problem. Drug abuse is considered one of today's major social ills. Law enforcement agencies spend an enormous amount of time and money to combat it. The fight against drug abuse is based on the philosophy that people should not take illegal drugs to alter their moods or mental states. Modern psychiatry defeats this campaign. Drug-oriented psychiatry tells us: Feeling depressed? Take a drug. Feeling too happy (manic)? Take a drug. Feeling unable to cope? Take a drug. Feeling too able to cope (megalomaniacal)? Take a drug. Feeling confused and uncertain? Take a drug. Feeling too certain (delusional)? Take a drug. Can't sleep? Take a drug. Too sleepy? Take a drug. Seeing things that aren't there (hallucinations)? Take a drug. Not seeing things that are there? Take a drug. Maintenance-oriented psychiatry promotes the very attitude upon which the illegal drug trade flourishes: want to feel better mentally and emotionally? Take a drug. The great irony is that some of the very same "conservative law-and-order" judges and lawmakers who demand stiffer penalties against illegal drug pushers are among those who are quickest to set up the legal machinery for committing people involuntarily to mental institutions where drugs as powerful as anything on the illegal market are routinely and openly used. The purpose of this discussion is not to impugn the general mental therapy field. As I mentioned earlier, there are many fine psychiatrists in practice today. It should also be noted that many therapists and counselors who specialize in communication-oriented ("talk") therapy without drugs achieve excellent results and do much to help their clients. To understand the specific problems of scientific psychia- try, it is perhaps wise to remember that psychiatrists (but not most psychologists) are people with medical degrees. Doctors are trained in medical schools to cure physical problems by physical means: bombard an infection with antibiotics or fix a broken leg with a cast. Where many doctors stray is in their belief that a mental problem is the same as a broken leg or viral infection, and so they bombard the "mental illness" with a drug, or they shock it with electricity. Such an approach misses the mark because a "broken mind" must be healed under an entirely different set of rules. This is well recognized by the fact that most nations permit people to become therapists and counselors without a medical degree. Have philosophies of strict materialism brought about a flourishing psychiatric profession which is bringing about greater sanity to patients, practitioners, and the world as a whole? Sadly, the answer seems to be no. Psychiatry started on the right track when it discovered that the mind could be cured of its inorganic ills by confronting past hidden traumas, but it failed to develop that discovery beyond the crude and haphazard techniques used today in psychotherapy. Psychiatry was derailed when it began to mask mental problems with chemicals, and when it developed bizarre methods for bypassing individual free will in favor of stimulus-response manipulation (behavior modification). It is perhaps time to move away from the strict materialist perspective, to get off the drugs, and to begin restoring a sense of respect for the free will and intellect of human beings. We may then be able to truly start back on the road to genuine mental, social, and spiritual recovery for the human race.
No comments:
Post a Comment