What is really the difference between the “eccentric”
and the “mentally ill”? Both are completely original people, but while as the
one is happy with it, the other suffers from it. Is that a fair description,
albeit a bit on the poetic side of things, maybe? But honestly, that seems to
be the only criterion of definition by which “mentally ill” people are just
that, “mentally ill'―and
not merely “eccentric”. Let me make it clear: mental illness is, for the most part, a social construct, and it has
become a euphemism for behaviors condemned by the collective establishment―the
zeitgeist―to be malfunctional, dangerous,
disruptive, immoral, publicly agitating, or something else along those lines.
And speaking on the epistemology of pathology, I would
argue that only that which
is observable through means of the scientific method in the neurology of an
individual can rightfully be deduced, diagnosed, subject to treatment with the
same respect as we do the bodily afflictions and diseases. We should not
entangle these, we should not extrapolate the one with the other, these
concepts of physical and mental-spiritual health. They are of differing caliber
and they tap into very disparate source-waters. They are, for the most part,
not equatable at all. Diseases are malfunctions of the human bodily system: of
the liver or the heart or the skin; of the kidneys, the spleen or the brain. But
no mere behavior can in itself be considered a disease, I figure. Categorized
are they nevertheless in a highly scientific manner, filtered through the technical
nomenclatures of taxonomy… and ever onward with a rigid materialist methodology
answers to their questions are sought.
The process of diagnosis roots in subjective judgements,
yes, and that problematizes its precision. It is also permeated with the
interests of broader society and culture. I maintain: by calling people
diseased as they showcase behaviors that disturb, patterns that unsettle, words
that offend and actions that hurt, the psychiatric establishment imposes and
implements―often above the head of the patient―a kind of hierarchical structure wherein
the patient is stripped of the sense of any moral responsibility, being told
that the prime mover of his or her behavioral patterns are diseases, and are as
such not existentially “legitimate”―they are not to be deemed behaviors of
sober spiritual agency. This is done, consciously or not, in order to better
control and subdue them (this is often not at all the premise of the individual
psychiatrist but rather of psychiatry as a whole, as a generality of society, as
a human social-cultural phenomenon―and it is first and foremost a subconscious mechanism of human nature).
Self-victimization
is encouraged: the patient is thought to be more a piece of cloth in some kind
of sickness-hurricane than he or she is a sovereign agent of spiritual existence,
moving about in life’s chaos, trying to navigate it authentically.
The diagnosis of mental illness, unless measurable in
the brain, will always be subjective to, and, as such, tainted by external
factors: the predispositions of the psychiatrist as a professional; his or her personal
and highly unignorable opinion on the subject; the rhetoric and methodology deployed;
the model of psychology utilized; the conversational and expressive abilities
and spiritual constituencies of the patient, et cetera. State-institutionalized
psychiatric establishments are problematic with regards to the supposition of a
total spiritual autonomy of the individual, because the will and the interest
of the authorities―which is in relation to the people they
govern and to the broader palette of society it itself is painted with―implements standards of behavior, of
living, of morality and value onto the receiver of psychiatric treatment,
conforming him or her in accord with the needs and alignments of the standard.
I have two great examples of this: drapetomania and female hysteria, although the latter has some
significant grounding in the reality of things I think, both as a concept of
psycho-sexual dimorphism theory as well as being an observable trait of the
archetypal feminine... drapetomania, however, is the finest example of this,
and it must be discarded as nothing but heinous scientific racism. Understand
well that I do not aspire in the slightest to equate these two historical
diagnoses of psychiatry―I parallel, though, and relate their
status as pejorative labels of description for behavioral patterns of what can
be considered the “deviant” folk. Lesser valued behavior, disenfranchised
behavior, socially unacceptable behavior is tried to be purged of its uncleanliness,
and it is aspired to boil it down to a broth of “sanity” in the great societal
cauldron of the times. Yes, these
moralistic psychiatric diagnoses are perfectly embedded in the zeitgeist
structure which ennobles them, and they undermine the whole mission of
psychiatry and blots the extremely arbitrary and inconsistent mess hiding often
underneath it.
There is a fine line between “insipid” and “genius”,
between “religious devotee” and “religious nutjob”, between “fool” and “visionary”.
The ascetic, the nun and the monk, the poéte maudit and the extreme artist, the dromomaniac, the schizophrenic and the anti-social, the psychopathic
and the existentially depressed... those afflicted by Schopenhauer's sickness! They
are all in the same boat as far as I am concerned, and it is a boat floating on
waves of individuation… a life-raft capsizing, or, God willing, almost capsizing
against the rugged cliffs of the human condition and its interference with the
cold and careless world!
It is true that some small minority of people seek out
with purpose their madness, and when they so find it, they are compelled to act
upon it by the decree of some inner God; some people do not even let the bounds
of terrorism halt them in their violent campaigns of totalized and uncensorable
freedom! At the behest of the much larger majority, though, these people become
la race toujours maudite par les
puissants de la terre, for they do not belong on the earth they
were vomited into: they are called madmen, but I prefer to call them authentics―that
is what they are to me. All madmen are authentics, but not
all authentics are madmen, and it is with this finishing statement I lay down
my pen, for now, on the subject of the philosophy of modern psychiatry...
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