QueerCommie

The difference is that New Thought is a reaction to (and “treatment” of?) Calvinism, encouraging compulsive suppression of negative feelings instead of positive ones. In the 1850s there was an epidemic of “nuerasthenia” which Phineas Quimby, the eclectic founder of New Thought, determined was a result of the negative thinking of Calvinism. Thus, it could be solved by his good vibes and positive thinking. Apparently, William James, the founder of American psychology was like “it’s popular so it probably works. I love being an American.”

It seems that, whereas Calvinism served the early development of capitalism (as Weber famously claimed), positive thinking serves well as superstructure for the atomized neoliberal [proletarian] “consumer.” The locus of each problem is in the negative thoughts of the victim.

Positive thinking was especially popular in the 00’s, encouraging average people to build risky debt and mortgage houses, and leading to irrationalism among business people: keep being optimistic and the growth will never stop. If you bring down the vibe with skepticism, you’re fired. Ehrenreich also finds this played a role in the dot com bubble and invasion of Iraq.

Obviously it was a crisis of capitalism—such things can never be staved off perpetually—but it is interesting to examine the role of the capitalist superstructure.

Barbara Ehrenreich, whose book Bright-sided is the source for the latter three, got breast cancer and hated endless vibemongering toxic positivity and phony science backing the idea that constant work to think positively is necessary to survive cancer. Quite an interesting read. I hate bourgeois ideology more with each book.

The history of the psy-professions’ pathologisation and abuse of women for being women is deeply disturbing and should shame even the most ardent supporters of the mental health experts. In the name of science and progress, the mental health system has sought to con- trol almost all aspects of women’s experiences, emotions, and behaviour through physical and moral interventions. Chesler ( 2005 : 218) notes, for example, that many women were incarcerated in asylums for mak- ing claims of sexual abuse against their family, mothering “illegitimate” children, or for “suspected lesbianism.” Further, Masson ( 1986 ) com- piled a collection of highly authoritative psychiatric articles on women from the nineteenth century to vividly demonstrate that acts of physical constraint,removed, torture, and female castration by the profession were all justifi ed as appropriate (if not mandatory) treatment for women who questioned or defi ed their place in Victorian society. Th e discussion in this chapter, however, is concerned specifi cally with explaining the central reasons for previous female oppression by the psy-professions as well as the continuation and expansion in neoliberal society of what Ehrenreich and English ( 2011 ) have called the “sexist ideology” of medical profes- sionals. As none of the mental disorders in the DSM with which women have been labelled have validity (Chap. 1 ), psychiatric interventions can- not be argued to be concerned with the care and treatment of any real distress that women may experience. Instead, we need to understand such institutional interventions within the broader context of structural gender inequalities in capitalist society. As Penfold and Walker ( 1983 : vi) have summated, “[p]sychiatry is an institution in a society in which women are oppressed [and it] plays a specifi c role in that oppression.” A critical understanding of psychiatry’s focus on women, gender roles, and deviance can only be fully understood through a thorough assessment of the structural determinants of the division of labour in capitalist society which has devalued female roles and confi ned women to the status of second-class citizens. Th is analysis necessitates an investigation of patri- archal forms of domination and the intersectionality with the relations of production—something that has concerned a host of critical feminist scholars since the advent of second wave feminism in the late 1960s. My argument here is that while an examination of the psychiatric profession clearly demonstrates that it continues to be an institution of patriarchal power, the distinctive form that structures this oppression is determined by the needs of capital (such as the requirement for paid and unpaid labour, the reproduction of the labour force, the necessity to suppress working-class resistance, and the normalisation of gender roles in indus- trial society as “natural,” equitable, and common sense). Th us, the critical analysis outlined here follows in the spirit of Donna Haraway ( 1978 : 25) who has succinctly argued that “[t]he biosocial sciences have not simply been sexist mirrors of our own social world. Th ey have also been tools in the reproduction of that world, both in supplying legitimating ideologies and in enhancing material power.”

The section that follows discusses how the traditional family struc- ture of agrarian society was fundamentally disrupted by industrialisation and eventuated in the gendered division of labour that demarcated the “private” and “public” spheres of life which, in a slightly adapted form, remain today. Psychiatrists become increasingly important throughout the industrial period as initially incarcerators of deviant working-class women and then as moral enforcers of gender roles, “respectable feminin- ity,” and the sanctity of the family. In this way, the institution of psychia- try takes over the moral role previously performed by religion in feudal society. This socio-historical analysis is followed by specific case studies on the diagnoses of hysteria and borderline personality disorder (BPD) to illustrate in detail how psychiatric hegemony serves to regulate prescribed gender roles in capitalist society.

See chapter six of Cohen’s Psychiatric Hegemony.

Henry Maudsley, founder of British psychiatry:"[t]he sooner [the masturbator] sinks to his degraded rest, the better for the world which is well rid of him."

From the earliest experimentations with ECT, it appears that psychiatry was quite aware that electroshock resulted in brain trauma, generally feeling that this was no bad thing. ECT-inflicted patients were observed as experiencing amnesia, being disorientated, lethargic, and apathetic; some noted that their whole intellect was lowered by the "treatment" (Whitaker 2010b: 98). This was all seen as helpful for the patient, for as one physician (cited in Whitaker 2010b: 99) noted, "the greater the damage [to the brain], the more likely the remission of psychotic symptoms."

[…]

Freeman eventually became frustrated with the amount of time the Moniz-designed brain-drilling operations took and his reliance on an assistant to anesthetise the patient. Instead he devised a simpler, cheaper and less time-consuming operation which he boasted could be done in 20 minutes (Whitaker 2010b : 133). Th e procedure required no anaes- thetic—instead he used three successive shocks of ECT to pacify the patient—and could be administered by any psychiatrist after only a few hours of training. Freeman’s infamous “transorbital lobotomy” innova- tion has been described by Whitaker ( 2010b : 133) as follows:

“Freeman attacked the frontal lobes through the eye sockets. He would use an ice pick to poke a hole in the bony orbit above each eye and then insert it seven centimeters deep into the brain. At that point, he would move behind the patient’s head and pull up on the ice pick to destroy the frontal- lobe nerve fibers.”

Freeman (cited in Whitaker 2010b : 133) even felt it unnecessary to ster- ilise the ice pick and thereby “waste time with that ‘germ crap.’” Consequently, Burstow ( 2015 : 53) notes that Freeman’s innovation further increased medical interest in the procedure, due to its ability to maximise “doctor’s profi ts, [reduce] hospital expenses, and dramatically [increase] the number ‘served.’” Th anks to the claims of high “curability” attributed to the transorbital lobotomy by the media and medical jour- nals at the time, over 20,000 social deviants in America alone were lobot- omised in the 1950s (Whitaker 2010b : 132). Research articles followed the lobotomists’ claims in suggesting that the procedure was a painless, minor, low-risk operation which brought about signifi cant improvement in the patient’s behaviour. Over time, however, it became clear that what this implied was that the lobotomy made the inmate more manageable for hospital staff .

[…]

Contrary to psychiatric mythology, the introduction of chlorpromazine to the mental health system happened by accident rather than design, the term “antipsychotic” being later added by pharmaceutical companies to more eff ectively market the drug to institutional psychiatry and state authorities. Hypothesised as a benefi cial anaesthetic for major operations, the drug was originally used by Henri Laborit, a French naval surgeon, for its antihistaminic properties in 1949. Th e surgeon (cited in Whitaker 2010a : 48) noted that the results of the drug appeared positive in that the patient “felt no pain, no anxiety, and often did not remember his opera- tion.” Th us, Laborit felt chlorpromazine off ered a potential improvement on barbiturates and morphine, popularly used as pre-operation anaes- thetics at the time. At a medical conference in 1951, he further stated that the drug appeared to produce “a veritable medicinal lobotomy,” and for this reason might also be of use to psychiatry (Laborit, cited in Whitaker 2010a : 49). Th e following year, Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker, two prominent French psychiatrists, put the drug to the test on patients they had labelled as “psychotic” at St. Anne’s Hospital in Paris (Whitaker 2010a : 49–50). Th e fi rst patient to be given the drug was a 57-year-old male labourer who had been admitted for “making improvised political speeches in cafes, becoming involved in fi ghts with strangers, and for … walking around the street with a pot of fl owers on his head preaching his love of liberty” (Delay, cited in Shorter 1997 : 250). After three weeks of chlorpromazine the psychiatrists discharged the patient, observing a new calmness within him. Th e authorities were impressed with the results of the drug on the asylum population; while still conscious and responsive to the ward staff , the inmates were much more subdued and quiet. As with ECT and pre-frontal lobotomy, the drug produced a more manageable and compliant patient. Th e psychiatrists wrote triumphantly of the chlor- promazine-drugged patient in 1952 that “he rarely takes the initiative of asking a question” and, further, “does not express his preoccupations, desires, or preference” (Delay and Deniker, cited in Whitaker 2010a : 50).

As a quick and cheap substitute for lobotomy, the drug quickly became popular across asylums in Europe. Hans Lehmann, the physician who is often cited as responsible for the introduction of chlorpromazine to North America, admitted he was intrigued by the claim of the research papers and drugs marketing literature that the drug acted “like a chemical lobotomy” (Shorter 1997 : 252). After the implementation of the drug regimen at his Verdun Hospital in Montreal, Lehmann felt chlorproma- zine achieved roughly the same results as insulin treatment and ECT but was an improvement on psychosurgery (of which he was an avid supporter) (Moncrieff 2009 : 45). Th e drug, announced Lehmann, was most useful in managing the psychiatric patient in that it produced an “emotional indifference” in the inmate (cited in Breggin 1991 : 55). As Breggin ( 1991 : 55) notes, chlorpromazine was not conceptualised by the profession and business promoters as a cure for mental illness or even an alleviator of symptoms, but rather a pacifi er of one’s character. “We have to remember,” stated the psychiatrist E. H. Parsons (cited in Whitaker 2010a : 50–51) in 1955, “that we are not treating diseases with this drug … We are using a neuropharmacologic agent to produce a specific effect.

— the book of the post title, Psychiatric hegemony by Bruce MZ Cohen