Article about a Relative of Mine and his very Recent but his Now Ex-therapist Counsellor

Dear Steve and your Wife and Family,

My understanding from what you have told me about Steve's two therapy sessions so far, is that firstly and her first therapy session with Steve the therapist said she was going to touch upon Steve's sore points, which first of all sounds a very radical approach to me, and some radical approaches are very good, but also anything radical can also often be beyond the pale or beyond the norm. The fact that Steve's therapist said she was going to touch upon Steve's sore points, and not explore and/or heal them, doesn't sound quite right or truly radical to me at all, as it sounds a bit like rubbing salt into the sore points or wounds, and quite frankly a bit sadistic.

The other thing about Steve's therapist which strikes me straight away about her, is that she asked him to talk about his painful or hurt feelings and his childhood and so on, and then told him at the end of this first therapy session that she can't help him, which is very transparent to me, and tells me that her approach is to create the interpretations or explanations of Steve's depression, and then expect Steve to come up with the all of solutions. This is all topsy-turvy, because any good or decent therapist knows, that it should always be the other way round, that the therapist asks or encourages the client to come up with their explanations and interpretations of why they think they are depressed and so on, and then the therapist either agrees with those client interpretations or offers different interpretations of her own as a choice or alternative, and then the therapist provides solutions to the clients interpretations. However, more humanistic therapy, looks at both the therapists explanations or interpretations and the clients solutions, and also the therapist's interpretations and solutions, so then both the therapist and client can engage in some mutual learning and learn from each other.

Either way, it is not right at all for the therapist to create all of the explanations, and then demand that the client provide no explanations or interpretations him or herself but just all of the solutions, because what's more, it is a double-bind and a no-win situation (you are damned if you do and damned if you don't), as no matter what solutions the client ever did want to either invent or truly find for him or herself in therapeutic and client individual or shared exploration, it is always going to be at odds and in contradiction with the therapist's explanations and interpretations - when she doesn't actually have any solutions at all - but she is trying to trick or confuse Steve that her interpretations and explanations are actually solutions, which is just not at all true or reality, and which I think can actually over-time send a person mad.

The fact that this therapist asked Steve about his hurt feelings and childhood, and then told him that he feels guilty and abandoned because he never had a father (which is a very outdated Freudian view and theory anyway), by her saying this, what is totally irrational and contradictory about this, is that this therapist is just increasing Steve's feelings or guilt and abandonment, by then saying at the end of her so-called therapy session, that she can't or won't help Steve because he can't come up with any solutions for himself or agree and adapt to her authoritarian approach very submissively - and more ludicrously by sadistically rubbing more salt into his sore points and wounds and by also saying that she is going to completely abandon him and make him feel guilty for all of this.

As for this therapist's view that Steve is very depressed, stressed-out, and suffering, because he never had or knew his father and feels guilty and abandoned by his father - and which she wanted to actually abandon him for and make him feel even more guilty and far worse - I don't believe that is at all true for one moment, and I'll tell you why. It may be the case that there is a sliver of truth in her theory, in that Steve's and your belief-systems do not believe that single-parent families are of any kind of equal love, care, value, and worth in comparison to two-parent families, and in that way his childhood parental family may not of met up to Steve's nor your social and personal family ideal, ideas, and expectations. However, I have met Steve's mother many times in the past, and I know that she was a very good, loving, and a great mother to him.

What's more, all the scientific evidence and objective data, tells myself and others, that if it was true, reality, and at all the case that Steve's fatherless childhood was any substantial and real factor in his present suffering, anxiety, and depression, then this would have negatively influenced and affected him very badly and made him a very bad father to his own and your children. Steve may not of been a perfect father to his and your children, but I do know that he was in no real way a bad father to his own and your children - certainly no better or worse than many other parents and family - who also try their very best for their children and are considered as fairly loving and normal.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

My Thoughts, Feelings, and Responses to the Film Lenny, about the 1950'S American Libertarian and Radical Stand-up Comedian Performer Lenny Bruce

My Thoughts, Feelings, and Responses to the Film Lenny, about the 1950'S American Libertarian and Radical Stand-up Comedian Performer Lenny Bruce, Played by Dustin Hoffman

I just watched this film about Lenny Bruce again, called Lenny, and these are my full and complete thoughts and feelings about it all.

I think we have got to have some kind of law and order, but the law is also very cruel, very barbaric, very extreme, very unjust, and very irrational and paranoiac, and the law has a lot of arbitrary power and authority, but absolutely no democratic, thorough, or overall rules for itself.

What's more, as the libertarian writer and critic of psychiatry Thomas Szasz says, that the law and psychiatry has no purpose and place coercing, threatening, terrorising, harassing, and punishing and suppressing non-violent, non-coercive, and non-discriminatory political, religious, and sexual and erotic deviations, because the law is supposed to be there to prevent and punish violence and crime, but it doesn't do this very effectively, although for sure we may all be in a very bad society and state without it in any shape or form. Also, and as Thomas Szasz says again, non-violent, non-coercive, non-discriminatory deviation is all of our basic fundamental human rights as citizens and human beings.

What about all of the religious dissenters in our society and world?, and most people who have different or radical political views?, such as born-again or fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, and even Buddhists and others? Are they regarded as deviants? They may be regarded as mad or deluded, or regarded by some people as out of touch with reality, and political dissenters may be regarded as radical and/or subversive, but no one calls them deviants.

I'm not in any way being cynical or pessimistic, but I don't think that all these things about the law can be in any way moderated, although we can in some ways make the law less extreme, but not simply by moderating it. The ways we can all make the law more effective and less extreme, are in three ways.

Firstly, we can improve the judicial and legal system, via and by radical and liberal institutional reform and change, and by individuals and people who work within the legal system simply reforming and changing themselves, and which is to do with conscience, passion, desire, and lots of other things too. This self-reform and change, is what the Nichiren Daishonin Buddhists call 'human revolution'. In order to make the law less cruel, barbaric, unjust, and extreme, we also need to as realistically and as best we can, promote and encourage democratic and free speech, and also promote and encourage individual, human, social, and civil rights in society.

For example, not all judges are very hard, very psychotic and twisted, very perverted and sadistic senile old gits, as we have some damned good individuals and people working within the judicial and legal system, such as some judges and others, who do very much think very freely as individuals, and who sometimes speak out, and whistle blow.

I don't think that Lenny Bruce himself was at all extreme, but he was pushed to some extremes, and which made him sort of self-destructive and so-called anti-social. Lenny Bruce was persecuted, oppressed and repressed, terrorised and harassed by the Police and the law, because he exposed the political, social, and sexual hypocrisy of American society and the world, but the main reason he was mistreated and abused in these ways, was because he was, or was seen as radical, and if there's one thing the Americans and British don't like, it's any kind of radicalism.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

The Cure of Souls in the Therapeutic State Written by Thomas Szasz

Before I write my much, much, better and much more balanced and moderate article very soon, about progressing and enlightening psychotherapy much much more for the better in my article loosely about and around so-called defences, just read this article about R. D. Laing and psychotherapy to get another side of the picture, because there are always two sides to every story, and we must all admit and be somewhat humble and honest about the reality and the fact that there still needs to be a lot more improvement, enlightenment, creative and practical scientific skills, and much much more knowledge and wisdom for psychotherapy, and that is what I will very much do in my soon to be written forthcoming article on defences, and which be much more positive, progressive, constructionist, and beneficial to all concerned than Thomas Szasz's otherwise great article pasted and posted here.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011
***

The Cure of Souls in the Therapeutic State

Written by Thomas Szasz

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is psychoanalysis? Who speaks for psychoanalysis? We are familiar with Freud’s many contradictory teachings and the diverse practices he engaged in, calling them all "psychoanalysis." We know that the term is used to refer to a method of diagnosing and treating mental illnesses, detecting mental illness in famous dead persons and in characters invented by poets and writers, explaining and influencing human behavior, and interpreting the "meaning" of works of art. Here are two current examples of what persons officially authorized to speak for psychoanalysis say about it. Richard Fox (2001), president of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 2001, declares: "Psychoanalysis today is a far cry from what it was thirty to forty years ago ...We lobby in Washington ... We work with other groups such as the ACLU to further our goals" (p. 27). These activities are not specific for psychoanalysis, nor is it self-evident, as Fox implies, that they are praiseworthy. During World War II, the ACLU supported and justified the incarceration of innocent Americans diagnosed as "Japanese-Americans." Today, it supports and justifies the incarceration of innocent Americans diagnosed as "mentally ill and dangerous"(Markmann, 1965; Szasz, 1974, 1984).

Fox further reports that the American Psychoanalytic Association no longer bars psychologists from membership: "We have extended our membership ... We have shed our medical orthodoxy and have become more egalitarian." This is not good enough. For its past policies, the American Psychoanalytic Association owes a collective apology not only to psychologists but to homosexuals as well. It would be a mistake to conclude that psychoanalysts have acknowledged that problems in living are not diseases and that listening-and-talking is not a form of medical treatment. On the contrary, they expand the concepts of disease and treatment, assert that "psychotherapy changes the brain," and use that foolish claim to legitimize that psychoanalysis is a treatment for brain diseases. Glenn Gabbard, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Baylor Psychiatry Clinic and editor of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, declares: "[B]ehavior therapy and drug therapy [are] affecting the same brain areas and in the same manner. ... Psychotherapy seems capable of favorably influencing the minds and bodies of persons with bodily diseases and perhaps is even capable of countering those diseases.... [It is important] to get scientific results that lend credibility to psychotherapy as a real treatment" (cited in Arehart-Treichel, 2001, p. 33, emphasis added).

I stopped identifying myself as a psychoanalyst many years ago. Why? Because I felt strongly that psychoanalysts -- beginning, sadly, with Freud himself -- have betrayed psychoanalysis (Szasz, 1965, 1977). I wanted to be faithful to my belief, which I have held ever since I knew anything about psychoanalysis, that psychoanalysis is a moral dialog, not a medical treatment. Psychoanalysis has nothing whatsoever to do with illness or health, medicine or treatment, or any other idea that places "professional" listening and talking within the purview of the state’s licensing authority as "treatment." If the practice of psychoanalysis is not a form of treatment, what is it? It is a modern reincarnation of the age-old cure of souls as secular-existential dialogue (Szasz, 1978/1988).

Verbal intercourse, especially the psychoanalytic dialogue, entails existential intimacy, often more intense than sexual intimacy. Medicalized psychoanalysis (psychotherapy) denies the quintessential intimacy of its own distinctive "method," illustrated by the obtuse conception that it is something the therapist gives or does to the patient, as if it were like a surgical operation. In surgery, all things being equal, doctor and patient are fungible. In psychotherapy, as in marriage or friendship, each person is a unique, irreplaceable individual.

Few, if any, contemporary psychoanalysts share these views. Most analysts equate psychoanalysis with psychotherapy, consider psychotherapy to be a part of psychiatry, regard problems in living as diseases and verbal and nonverbal communications as treatments. Psychoanalysts cling stubbornly to the fatal deceit that they are real doctors, treating real diseases. In a 2002 Practice Bulletin, the American Psychoanalytic Association reaffirmed its claim that "Psychoanalysis is established as a unitary therapeutic procedure that continues from start to finish and is composed of many psychoanalytic sessions, much as one views a surgical operation a single intervention." The American Psychoanalytic Association took the surgical analogy literally and seriously: "[T]he Executive Council of this organization recommended a procedure by which a patient for whom psychoanalysis (CPT 90845) is prescribed ‘will see a consultant for a second opinion examination similar to that for elective surgery before treatment is funded’" (ibid., emphasis added). In short, psychoanalysis is an "operation," funded by a third party, that the analyst performs on the patient. "As you sow, so you shall reap." Psychoanalysts are now paying for their opportunistic imposture. Newell Fischer, president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, laments: "Our image in the eyes of the public and non-analytic mental health professionals is dismal" (Fischer, 2002). My aim here, then, is to restate my faith in psychoanalysis as a secular-moral "cure of souls." Psychoanalysis possesses a valuable moral core that has never been properly identified and is now virtually unrecognized: it is, or ought to be, a wholly voluntary and reliably confidential human service, initiated and largely controlled by the client who pays for it. Freud himself compared the psychoanalytic relationship with the Catholic confessional. If psychoanalysis is to have a future -- which, in our pharmacratic culture seems doubtful -- it lies in adopting that model to the needs of modern secular man, increasingly isolated from his fellow man and community, and betrayed by the therapeutic state in which he mistakenly seeks protection from the vicissitudes of life (Szasz, 2001/2003).

II
It is possible to know algebra without knowing anything about its history, but it is impossible to understand psychoanalysis without knowing a good deal about its history. At the end of nineteenth century, Vienna was the crown jewel of Austria-Hungary, a flourishing, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious empire, with glittering sister capitals in Budapest and Prague. Although the country had a sizeable, intellectually vibrant middle class and its politics was increasingly liberal (in the classical sense), it was nevertheless still a highly traditional, Roman Catholic country, with German as its official language. Much as was the United States prior to World War II, it was also a country that was simultaneously anti-Semitic and hospitable toward Jews, especially if they were assimilated and patriotic. Freud’s career as a "Nervenarzt" must be situated in this context.

Freud had many intellectual interests and was not keen about becoming a practicing physician. However, medicine was one of the (then) so-called "free professions," open to Jews, and Freud decided to go medical school. He completed his medical studies but did not want to become a general (family) physician, like his later friend Josef Breuer. Accordingly, Freud studied neuropathology, spent a few months in Paris studying the work of Jean-Martin Charcot, and then started a private medical practice as a "Nervenarzt" (literally, "nerve doctor"), specializing in "nervous diseases." It is important to keep in mind that these were nebulous terms used to identify a medical specialty that was neither neurology nor psychiatry. Why do I say this is important? Because it is here that the misrepresentation of problems of living as diseases and of interpersonal dialogue as treatment originates. The roots of this misconception -- similar to the view that consecrated wine is, literally, blood -- go very Deep.

I use this Catholic metaphor here to re-emphasize the crucial importance of confidentiality in psychoanalysis, and its predecessor, catharsis. Actually, it was Josef Breuer who first used the confessional to explain the workings of his method of "mental treatment." He wrote: "We meet the same urge [to verbally reveal secrets] as one of the basic factors of a major historical institution -- the Roman Catholic confessional" (Breuer and Freud, 1893-1895/1953-1974, vol. 2, p. 211). In a similar vein, Freud uses the model of the confessional in The Question of Lay Analysis (1926). He writes: ... our Impartial Person [says]. "You assume that every neurotic has something oppressing him, some secret. And by getting him to tell you about it you relieve his oppression and do him good. That, of course, is the principle of Confession, which the Catholic Church has used from time immemorial in order to make secure its dominance over people’s minds." We must reply: "Yes and no!" ... In Confession the sinner tells what he knows; in analysis the neurotic has to tell more. Nor have we heard that Confession has ever developed enough power to get rid of actual pathological symptoms" (vol. 20, p. 189, emphasis added). Revealingly, Freud condemns the confessional in Catholic hands as a tool of religious domination, and praises it in psychoanalytic hands as a medical method of psychical liberation. Why medical? Because it frees the "patient" of pathological symptoms. To top it off, Freud advances the absurd claim that whereas the penitent in the confessional tells only what he knows, the client in analysis also tells what he does not know. The rest, as the saying goes, is history: the analyst knows the client better than the client knows himself. This is not the place to expand on the consequences of this pernicious idea. Despite the historical record, many people -- mental health professionals, writers, book reviewers -- often erroneously identify Freud as a psychiatrist (Who was Sigmund Freud? 2002). Freud was not, and could not have been, a psychiatrist. Why not? Because he was a Jew. Psychiatry" is a nineteenth-century term. What did it mean to be a psychiatrist in those days? It meant being an employee of the state in a state mental hospital: the psychiatrist oversaw the operation of a state insane asylum or worked as an asylum physician, assumed that mental diseases are brain diseases, and studied the brains of deceased mad persons. His patients were, de facto, prisoners (Szasz, 2002). In 1925, William A. White, the famed director of St. izabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. -- founded in 1855 as the Government hospital for the Insane -- stated: "The state hospital, as it stands today, is the very foundation of psychiatry" (cited in Arieti, 1974, vol. 2, p. 686). Many young and not so young psychiatrists are no longer aware that, from its birth in the eighteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, psychiatry (originally mad-doctoring) was synonymous with practice in the insane asylum and the state mental hospital; all patients were committed patients; all psychiatry was actually or potentially adversarial psychiatry. To be sure, it was not seen or defined that way. How was that possible? By not questioning the transformation of the cooperative-contractual doctor-patient relationship typical of medical practice into the coercive-paternalistic guardian-ward relationship typical of psychiatric practice. De jure, the guardian represents the ward’s best interests. Similarly, by definition, the coercive-paternalistic psychiatrist represents the involuntary mental patient’s best interests. Theodor Meynert (1833-1892), one of the founders of modern neuropsychiatry, began his textbook, Psychiatry (1884), with this statement: "The reader will find no other definition of 'Psychiatry' in this book but the one given on the title page: Clinical Treatise on Diseases of the Forebrain. The historical term for psychiatry, i.e., 'treatment of the soul,' implies more than we can accomplish, and transcends the bounds of accurate scientific investigation" (Meynert, 1985, p. V).

Since being a psychiatrist meant being an employee of a state hospital, in Austria-Hungary Jewish doctors could not become psychiatrists. However, they could become "nerve doctors," listen and talk to their clients, call what they do "psychoanalysis" (or "psychotherapy"), and sell their services to fee-paying customers. The psychoanalytic client, like the customer of any service supplied by entrepreneurs in the free market, sought out the analyst, went to his office, received a service, and paid a fee for it. The client was on top, the therapist on tap. This was a radical departure from the tradition of psychiatry. For centuries, the only patients of maddoctors, alienists, and psychiatrists were persons who did not want to be patients. Court-ordered mental hospitalization and treatment and the threat of such sanctions still form the core of the practice of psychiatry and the mental health professions generally (Szasz, 2002).

It is instructive to compare the differences between the roles of the psychiatrist and the psychoanalyst in Freud’s Vienna with the differences, in medieval Christendom, between the roles of a priest and a rabbi. The priest and psychiatrist had power: the priest could burn the heretic at the stake, the psychiatrist could imprison and torture the psychotic. In contrast, the rabbi and the psychoanalyst lacked power: the rabbi could engage only in voluntary relations with his fellow Jews, the psychoanalyst could "treat" only person who sought his services.

The psychoanalyst, unlike the psychiatrist, lacks power over his client: either because he is economically, socially, and politically weaker than the client, or because he voluntarily renounces the use of force, even if the state offers it to him. Thus, a weak and noncoercive psychoanalysis is antagonistic to and incompatible with a powerful and coercive psychiatry, just as peaceful Diaspora Judaism is antagonistic to and incompatible with militant Zionism (or as pacific Christianity or Islam are incompatible with their militant versions). I maintain that the single most fundamental characteristic of the psychoanalyst is his principled rejection of coercing his client, or indeed engaging in any action for or against him outside the boundaries of their meetings.

Sadly, this posture did not issue from Freud’s moral outlook on human relations but was forced on him by his social circumstances. Freud did not reject medical power. He loved it. He never questioned the psychiatrist’s paradigmatic practices, involuntary mental hospitalization and the insanity defense. Like psychiatrists, Freud made medical diagnoses of his clients and maintained that they suffered from mental illnesses that were, at bottom, brain diseases. As a result, psychoanalysis became absorbed into psychiatry and medicine, especially in the United States after World War II.

Although the seeds of the practice of psychoanalysis were sown and germinated in the soil of the free market and depended on it for their survival, neither Freud nor the early analysts understood the market or supported its values. They only took advantage of it. As soon as Freud got on his feet, economically and professionally, he embraced the style of the conquering hero, to which he always aspired. In 1900, he wrote: "I am not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador" (Freud, 1985, p. 398). To Jung he announced that psychoanalysis must "conquer the whole field of mythology" (cited in Clark, 1980, p. 339). Freud's self-image as a "conquistador" meshed with his ambition to conquer psychiatry for psychoanalysis. The result was exactly the opposite: psychoanalysis became corrupted by psychiatry.

III
Like the core element of the classic concept of liberty, the core element of psychoanalysis is best stated as a negative, that is, as the absence of factors antagonistic to its aims and values. Political liberty is the absence of the coercions characteristic of the traditional relations between rulers and ruled. Similarly, psychoanalysis is the absence of the coercions characteristic of traditional relations between psychiatrists and mental patients. Consider the contrasts: the psychiatrist controls and coerces, the psychoanalyst contracts and cooperates. Again, I speak here of the practice of psychoanalysis as I conceive of it, which excludes such aberrations as the "psychoanalysis" of persons imprisoned in mental hospitals, training analysis, and child analysis. Ironically, when I speak of my ideal model of psychoanalysis, I am simply taking seriously what Freud once said about it.

I refer to Freud’s description of the relationship between analyst and client as similar to the relationship between the vendor of an expensive personal service -- say, a portrait painter -- and a financially independent adult purchaser of his services. Neither party has power over the other; each is responsible for his side of an agreement. Freud (1915-1917) framed this as following the rule "of not taking on a patient for treatment unless he was sui juris, not dependent on anyone else in the essential relations of his life" (vol. 16, p. 460, emphasis added). Thanks to the untiring efforts of enthusiasts for pharmacratic regulations -- giving us Medicare, Medicaid, SSSI, HMOs, the DEA and drug regulations, the wars on depression and suicide, the duty to protect patients from themselves and others from the patients, and malpractice litigation -- analysts and clients alike are effectively deprived of the very possibility of being sui juris. The therapeutic state compels everyone, without exception, to be dependent on the state in the essential medical and pharmacological aspects of his life (Szasz, 2001).

Political liberty is contingent on the state's respect for private property and non-interference with acts between consenting adults. Psychoanalysis is contingent on the therapist's respect for the client's autonomy and non-interference with the client's life. This means that the therapist must limit his interaction with his client to listening and talking to him in the therapist's office and must abstain from meddling into the client's affairs and life. Thus conceived, the psychoanalytic relationship was a new development in the history of mad-doctoring: it introduced into psychiatry and society a new form of "therapy for mental illness," one in which the expert eschewed coercing deviants and housing dependents and confined himself to conducting a particular kind of confidential dialogue. In the psychoanalytic situation, there is, in the medical and psychiatric sense, neither patient nor doctor, neither disease nor treatment. The dialogue between analyst and client is therapeutic in a metaphorical sense only. Purged of jargon, the psychoanalytic "procedure" consists only of listening and talking. So conceived, psychoanalysis undermines psychiatry as a medical specialty and system of social control. Psychiatry did not acquire, and could not have acquired, any of the real substance of psychoanalysis. The two enterprises rested on different premises and entailed mutually incompatible practices. The marriage between the psychiatrist and the psychoanalyst was a misalliance from the start, each party disdaining and exploiting its partner. Psychiatry acquired the worst features of psychoanalysis -- a preoccupation with sex and the past, an elastic vocabulary of stigmatizations, and a readiness for fabricating pseudo-explanations. Psychoanalysis acquired the worst features of psychiatry -- coercion, mental hospitalization, and disloyalty to the client. Bereft of professional integrity, post-war American psychoanalysts enjoyed a brief period of irrational professional exuberance, followed by moral bankruptcy.

IV
What do I mean when I say that psychoanalysts, qua psychoanalysts, have become morally bankrupt? I mean that psychoanalysts do not mind their own business and instead mind the client’s business. The analyst’s business is to earn the client’s confidence and trust by entering into a clear contract with him and by conscientiously abiding its terms. The Bill of Rights limits the powers of the state vis-a-vis the citizen, not the citizen’s vis-a-vis the state. Similarly, the analytic contract limits the powers of the therapist vis-a-vis the client, not vice versa. The analyst’s overriding obligation to the client is to protect his confidences. This obligation permits no exceptions. If the analyst morally abhors what his client tells him, he has the option, like a defense attorney, of discontinuing the relationship. Under no circumstances does the psychoanalyst have the option to betray his client’s confidence and use the information he has acquired, especially against what the client considers his own interest. We often speak of empowering this or that politically weak or disfranchised individual or group. But people cannot be empowered directly. They can be empowered only indirectly, by taking power away from, or not giving power to, individuals or institutions that have actual or potential control over them. This is a lesson every parent must learn if he wants his child to become an independent adult. It is a lesson that all forms of psychiatrized psychotherapy violate, indeed indignantly reject -- by assuming responsibility for the client’s health, safety, and general well-being.

Suicide is an ubiquitous occurrence in all societies, ancient and modern. In Freud’s day, it did not occur to people -- least of all to lawyers or psychiatrists -- that it was the analyst’s duty to protect his client from killing himself. Nor would it have occurred to people that it was the analyst’s duty to protect so-called third parties or the community from the potential violence of the client. Today, protecting the "mental patient" from himself -- the anorexic from starving to death, the depressed from killing himself, the manic from spending his money -- is regarded as one of the foremost duties of anyone categorized as a mental health professional, psychoanalysts included. For half a century, I have argued and showed that a person professing to help a fellow human being in distress cannot be a double agent: he must choose between serving the interests of the client, as the client defines them; or serving the interests of the client’s family or employer or insurance company, or the interests of his profession, religion, community, or the state, as they define them. As a rule, this view is either ignored or dismissed with the claim that a so-called mental patient’s "true (mentally healthy) interests" cannot conflict with the interests of his "loved ones" or those of the community. If they do, it is because of his mental illness. The denial that the therapist deals with persons in conflict with others and that the process called "therapy" cannot -- except accidentally or derivatively -- help persons whose interests oppose or thwart those of the client characterizes virtually all modern therapies. For example, Constance T. Fischer, professor of psychology at Dusquesne University, introduces the 2002 special double issue of The Humanistic Psychologist with this sentence: "In this collection of articles, psychologists’ approaches to assessment are compassionate, caring, deeply respectful of the humanity of the clients, and courageous in efforts to be genuinely helpful to all parties" (Fischer, 2002, p. 1, emphasis in the original). This is self-congratulation concealing personal and professional self-aggrandizement. People whose lives are full of harmonious cooperation with others do not seek and are not subjected to mental health services.

"Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead," observed Benjamin Franklin. This witticism is painfully true, especially today. Virtually everyone, in and out of the therapy business, now believes that when the chips are down, the therapist must betray his client’s confidences, in his "own best interest." Hence, in the present American legal and political context, there can be no secular cure of souls. For such a cure to be possible, it is necessary not only for the therapist to disarm himself of the power he possesses over the client, but also for custom and law to permit him to do so, much as the priest in the confessional disarms himself and is permitted to do so. It is not the priest’s duty to protect the penitent from himself or the community from the penitent. He is not expected to protect the would-be suicide from killing himself, or the community from the acts of a would-be murderer, by denouncing them to the health or law enforcement authorities of the state. Indeed, the priest is expressly forbidden to betray the person whose confession he hears. Regrettably, psychoanalysts have shown no interest in what, some forty years ago, I called "the ethics of psychoanalysis," by which, inter alia, I meant the analyst’s moral obligation to protect the client’s confidences unhindered by conflicting obligations (Szasz, 1965/1988). Nor were they in a position to do so as long as they categorized their activity as a type of health care and treatment. Had they been willing to acknowledge that all they do is listen and talk to the persons who seek their services, they might, like librarians, have been able to secure legal recognition and protection of their role. Librarians and booksellers do not pretend that they help their patrons improve their minds, their mental health, or their morals, or that they protect the public by preventing patrons from reading certain books. They recognize, and everyone recognizes, that their function is to manage libraries and sell book. Our right to freedom of the press and speech includes the right to privacy about what we read (American Library Association).

Is the privacy of librarians and booksellers more deserving of legal protection than the privacy of psychoanalysts? Or is it that the former have valued and fought for these liberties, and the latter have neither valued nor fought for Them?

V
Sad to say, there has never existed an institutionalized system of psychoanalytic practice truly respectful of the client’s autonomy and privacy. A few analysts may have aspired to such an ethic, but, as a group, psychoanalysts rejected it. The image of the analyst, a man sitting in a chair listening sympathetically to a woman lying on a couch, the analyst recoiling from the very idea of harming her, let alone imprisoning her, has no basis in reality. Many celebrated psychoanalysts -- Harry Stack Sullivan, Erik Erikson, Karl Menninger, Frieda Fromm-Reichman, Thomas Freeman -- "analyzed" involuntarily hospitalized "Patients." Because psychoanalysis is a moral enterprise, we must acknowledge that the analyst’s personal conduct is relevant to our understanding and judgment of his persona and professional activities. Actions speak louder than words, says the proverb. I would go further: when actions and words conflict, we must view the actions as the truth, and the words as lies. To dramatize the frequent disjunction between deeds and words in psychoanalysis, I cite the practices of two famous psychoanalysts. Here, first, is a vignette of Jacques Lacan in Action. In 1945, when Picasso rejected his long-time mistress and model Dora Maar in favor of Francoise Gilot, Maar became depressed and annoyed Picasso. In a review in the Times Literary Supplement (2000, April 25), Marilyn McCully, writes: "A terrified Picasso, who abhorred illness, especially in women ... contacted Jacques Lacan, who had her admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Doujoune Ortiz [the Spanish author of a biography of Maar] goes into details about Lacan’s machinations in looking after Maar and the horrific shock treatments that were prescribed as part of her therapy. She also makes the perceptive observation that Picasso’s paintings of Maar as the weeping woman eerily anticipate the terrors she must have suffered in the moments before the shock treatments were administered" (p. 28).

The Scottish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ronald D. Laing’s name is often bracketed with mine. Erroneously, Laing is often credited with opposing involuntary mental hospitalization and coercive psychiatric treatment. In The Divided Self, Laing (1960) wrote: "When I certify someone insane, I am not equivocating when I write that he is of unsound mind, may be dangerous to himself and others, and requires care and attention in a mental hospital" (p. 27, emphasis added). Contemptuously and explicitly, Laing dismissed my critique of the medical metaphor and my call for the abolition of psychiatric slavery. Even if all that I propose came to pass, he declared, "it would all be much the same" (Laing, 1979). British psychoanalyst Anthony Stadlen (1979) did not let Laing’s review stand uncorrected. He wrote: Dr. Laing’s new role as the "perfectly decent" defender of psychiatry against Szasz’s "insulting and abusive fuss" calls for comment. Laing is saying unequivocally that "it would all be much the same" to him whether involuntary psychiatry be retained or abolished. He is saying "it would all be much the same" whether voluntary interventions, including his own, are intended as medical treatments for illness or as interpersonal counseling, ethical exploration, existential analysis. He implies quite clearly that he is one of "the rest of us" who do use the medical metaphor. Although Laing co-invented the stupidly self-stigmatizing label, "antipsychiatry," he claimed he was not an antipsychiatrist. David Cooper, in the Introduction to his book, The Dialectics of Liberation, wrote: "The organizing group [of the "Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation," held in London in 1967] consisted of four psychiatrists who ... counter-label[ed] their discipline as anti-psychiatry. The four were Dr. R. D. Laing and myself, also Dr. Joseph Berke and Dr. Leon Redler" (Cooper, 1968, p. 7). Adrian Laing (1994) -- in a sympathetic biography of his father -- comments: "Ronnie made two mistakes with David’s introduction. First, he did not insist on reading it prior to publication. Ronnie did not consider himself an ‘anti-psychiatrist’ ...The damage, however, had been done. David managed to label Ronnie an anti-psychiatrist. Ronnie was furious at this move, but made a more serious mistake in not taking immediate and effective action to rectify his position" (p. 138).

Were these inactions "mistakes"? Or did they represent Laing’s typical way of having his cake and eating it too, as Adrian aptly puts it? The evidence supports the latter interpretation. Laing’s response to his oldest daughter Fiona’s existential crisis is emblematic of his rejection of parental responsibility and lack of moral and intellectual integrity. In 1976, Fiona, then twenty-four years old, is rejected by her boyfriend: "She had ‘cracked up,’ and had been found weeping outside a church" near the family home. Committed to a local mental hospital, she is given ECT. Laing biographer John Clay (1981) writes: He [Adrian] rang his father up and asked him "in despair and anger" what he was going to do about it. Laing reassured him that he would visit Fiona and "do everything in his power" to ensure that she was not given ECT, but when it came to the crunch, as Adrian Laing relates, all he could say was "Well, Ruskin Place [the family home] or Gartnavel [the mental hospital] -- what’s the difference?" Such a scathing and deprecatory remark showed once again an avoidance of responsibility for his first family, indefensible since his line had been that the breakdown of children could be attributed to parents and families. Instead, Laing went into denial. When he gave an interview shortly afterwards in New Society he declared, "I enjoy living in a family. I think the family is still the best thing that exists biologically as a natural thing" (p. 181). There is worse. According to Adrian, Laing pitied himself, was a petty despot, and, when drunk, which was often, he was prone to violence. In one such episode, No sooner had he got through the door ... than he attacked Karen [his daughter], then aged seventeen, and started to beat her unmercifully, until Paul and I intervened and restrained him. It was very frightening for all concerned" (Laing, A.C., p. 176). An honest man is said to be as good as his word. By that measure, Laing was a very dishonest man indeed.

VI
I have endeavored to re-articulate what I regard as the moral and political-economic core of, and the social conditions for, the psychoanalytic situation. They are: the inviolable privacy of the professional-client relationship; the client’s willingness to assume responsibility for his behavior and pay for the service he receives; the analyst’s willingness to eschew coercion justified by the legal-psychiatric principle of the "duty to protect" (the client from himself and the community from the client); the legal system’s willingness to exempt the analyst from this principle (at present an integral part of the mental health professional’s legal and social mandate); and the public’s willingness to accept that a secure guarantee of privacy and confidentiality, similar to that granted the priest, as an indispensable condition for the proper conduct of psychoanalysis as a secular "cure of souls." These conditions are absent in the therapeutic state. The result is a tragic loss of liberty for client, "therapist," and society (Szasz, 2001). Psychoanalysis was conceived, raised, and over-indulged by medicine. As a result, it failed to grow up and fulfill its potential, that is, adopt an explicitly anti-paternalist, libertarian stance as the proper posture towards adults who seek and are willing to pay for a private, confidential, secular, and trustworthy setting for looking into their hearts and souls and, perhaps, making themselves better persons.

The psychoanalyst’s job is to help his client live his life as honestly and as responsibly, and hence as freely, as he can or wants to. This task has nothing to do with illness and treatment in the sense in which these terms are used in medicine and psychiatry. However, it has a great deal to do with custom, law, economics, politics, and especially with religion as ethics. The term "psychoanalytic treatment" refers to, or ought to refer to, a particular kind of strictly confidential, private human relationship, similar to the Catholic confessional: it is a type of secular "cure of souls." The analyst’s duty is to listen, speak, and fulfill his contract with the client, for example, by keeping the client’s communications inviolably confidential and punctually collecting the fees due for his services.

The Christian believes that God does not hear the sinner. To be heard, the person must first cleanse his heart. That is a powerful metaphor. The wisdom it expresses is timeless. Where does this leave the atheist, the man who does not believe and hence does not fear God? It leaves him fearing himself and having to cleanse his own heart, and do so even more conscientiously. The God-fearing man can more easily persuade himself that God is listening to his prayers than the godless man can persuade himself that he is listening to himself. For the former, cleansing the heart can easily become an empty ritual. For the latter, it cannot. It is easier for a man to hide from God than from Himself.

References

American Library Association (n.d.). Patron Statement. See Note 2.

American Psychoanalytic Association. (2002). Interacting with third parties. The

American Psychoanalyst, 36, Number 4, special supplement.

Arehart-Treichel, J. (2001). Evidence is in: Psychotherapy changes the brain.

Psychiatric News, 36: 33 (July 6).

Arieti, S. (1974). American Handbook of Psychiatry. 2nd edition. New York: Basic

Books.

Breuer, J. and Freud, S. (1893-1895/1953-1974). Studies on Hysteria. In, The

Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud . London:

Hogarth Press. Cited as SE.

Clark, R. W. (1980). Freud: The Man and the Cause (London: Jonathan Cape and

Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Clay, J. (1996). R D Laing: A Divided Self. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Cooper, D. (1968). The Dialectics of Liberation. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Fischer, C. T. (2002). Introduction. The Humanistic Psychologist, 30: 1-9.

Fischer, N. (2002). Numbers tell the story. The American Psychoanalyst, 36: 3.

Fox, R. (2001). Will the real psychoanalyst please stand up? The American

Psychoanalyst, 35: 27.

Freud, S. (1915-1916/1953-1957). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. SE,

vol. 16.

Freud, S. (1926/1953-1957). The Question of Lay Analysis: Conversation with an

Impartial Person. SE, vol. 20.

Freud, S. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gilot, F. and Lake, C. (1964/1981). A Life with Picasso: The Love Story of a

Decade. New York: Discus Book.

Laing, A.C. (1994). R. D. Laing: A Biography. London: Peter Owen.

Laing, R. D. (1960). The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and

Madness. London: Tavistock Publications.

Laing, R. D. (1979). Round the bend. New Statesman, 20 July, pp. 96-97.

Markmann, C. L. (1965). The Noblest Cry: A History of the American Civil

Liberties Union. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

McCully, M. (2002). The surreal life of Dora Maar. TLS, April 25.

Meynert, T. (1885). Psychiatry: Clinical Treatise on Diseases of the Forebrain.

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Sigal, C. (1976/1978). Zone of the Interior. New York: Popular Library.

Stadlen, A. (1979). Dropping the medical metaphor. New Statesman, 17 August, pp. 16-17.

Szasz, T. (1965/1988). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T. (1974). The ACLU’s mental illness cop-out," Reason, January 1974, pp. 4-9.

Szasz, T. (1977/1990) Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry (original title, Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T. (1978/1988). The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T.(1984). The Therapeutic State: Psychiatry in the Mirror of Current Events. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.

Szasz, T. (1987/1997). Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T. (2001/2003). Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T. (2002). Liberation By Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Tattered Cover victorious in battle against search warrant (2002).

http://www.freeexpression.org/newswire/0408_2002.htm

Thomas, K. (1971). Religion and the Decline of Magic. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Who was Sigmund Freud? Freud was a Psychiatrist and Psychologist. (2002).

http://www.toppsychology.com/0050Sigmund%20Frued/frued.htm

http://www.who2.com/sigmundfreud.html; see also

http://www.breakpoint.org/Breakpoint/ChannelRoot/FeaturesGroup/BreakPointCommentaries/Grow+Up+or+Wake+Up.htm

Notes

1. Psychoanalysis is a particular kind of dialog, one person providing a service, and another person receiving and paying for it. Accordingly, wherever possible, I refer to the recipient of the service as a client, not patient. I continue to use the word "therapist" because we lack an appropriate term to identify his role and function as secular, moral counselor.

2. "The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution support barrier-free access to information on all points of view and the freedom to read in order to become informed citizens. Librarians are ethically responsible to protect this freedom through maintaining confidentiality of all library user records" (http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif /issues.html; http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/ethics.html; "Tattered Cover victorious in battle against search warrant," http://www. freeexpression. org/newswire/0408_2002.htm).

3. For another, similar version of this story, see Gilot and Lake (1964/1981). They write: "He [Picasso] wanted to call Doctor Lacan, the psychoanalyst he used for most of his medical problems, but didn’t want to telephone in front of Dora, so he sent Sabartes [his chauffeur and all-purpose lackey] out to call, ... Lacan came at once. ... Professor Lacan kept Dora at the clinic for three weeks. At the end of that period he let her go home. He continued to treat her and she underwent analysis with him" ( pp. 83-85, emphasis added).

4. Clancy Sigal’s Zone of the Interior (1976/1978 ) provides a vivid account of the moral squalor of Laing’s life style and psychoanalytic practice. * Based on the Hans Loewald Award Address, The International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 25-27, 2002.

Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility:

Copyright © 1998-2006 by the author of each page, except where noted. All rights reserved.

This page was last modified on 02/02/2011 22:01:27 GMT

20 Fascinating TED Talks All About the Brain

Absolute Conclusive Objective Proof that Innocent Immigrant Domestic Women and Children are being Enslaved, Abused, Tortured, and sometimes Murdered i

Absolute Conclusive Objective Proof that Innocent Immigrant Domestic Women and Children are being Enslaved, Abused, Tortured, and sometimes Murdered in this Society and Country

Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vWazRB5uHM

This youtube.com video-clip pasted above of a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, proves absolutely, conclusively, and objectively that innocent immigrant domestic women and children are being enslaved, abused, tortured, and sometimes murdered in this society and county. I don't care if people think I'm being a traitor to the British Labour party, but the British Labour party will never make a single comment, a single police prevention, nor any kind of moral objection and opposition to all of this, and so I will NEVER EVER vote for them again, nor for any other politician who are absolutely no better. How can we expect the British public and others to have any morality, when all of our politicians and those who rule them, have absolutely no morality themselves, and absolutely no moral social and political priorities?

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

My Final Conclusions about the British Labour Party

The way I'm feeling about the Labour Party at the moment, is that I would rather boil my testicles in vinegar and stick my head into a bucket full of vipers, than vote for them or anyone else is who are no better, because they will never make a single comment, policy prevention, nor any kind of open moral opposition about those enslaved, sexually abused, tortured, and sometimes murdered immigrant domestic women and children in our society and country, and they also never make a single comment about the homeless people in our society. The Labour party say they are a socialist party, but I just don't believe them, as they don't do anything for the worse people off in our society and country, and they have absolutely no knowledge, acceptance, and awareness that socialism is first and foremost about priorities.

As for their leader Ed Miliband, his brother David Miliband should have won that leadership election for the Labour party, as at least he does have a somewhat genuine International perspective, and he genuinely cares and has always been a great speaker on the oppression of the Palestinian people in Israel. Just because his brother Ed is a liberal and is more charismatic with a kinder-looking face, his brother got a lot more popular support in the Labour party leadership election, and I also have absolutely no respect for Diane Abbott either, as she is another stinking hypocrite who calls herself a Lefty socialist, but who sends her children to very elite private schools.

Again, there are people who are far worse off than the unemployed in our society, and the Labour party just will not prioritise nor make a single comment, moral opposition, or policy in order to help any of them, and I don't believe all their sob stories about the unemployed, because when they say these things they are actually talking about their own job security as government politicians.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

My Views on the 2010 British Labour Party Conference Speeches

My Views on the 2010 British Labour Party Conference Speeches, None of Which Make a Word of a Mention about Racism and the Slavery, Torture, Sexual abuse, and even Murder of Innocent Immigrant Domestic Women and Children in this Society and Country

The reason that the Labour Party may win the next election, or the one after that, isn't because they are so good, it is that the Conservative Party and Liberal-democrats of the present government coalition are so bad.

On the issue of the Labour Parties absolute and total unwillingness to make any kind of single comment, policy prevention, or any kind of moral objection and opposition to the slavery, torture, sexual abuse, and even sometimes the murder of innocent immigrant domestic women and child workers in this society and country, it is just not true that blatant denial, default and omission towards evil and immoral deceit will lose them votes from racists and other people.

I admit and accept this all of this slavery and abuse in this country, is somewhat problematic and hard to solve in some ways, but there are many, many workable policies and things that Labour and other politicians could do to both lessen and prevent it, but they just will not make a single comment, policy prevention, nor any kind of moral objection and opposition on the issue. If they ever did make any kind of comment and policy prevention on this issue, then I may change my mind and consider voting for them, but that would be a miracle if they ever did that, and I don't believe in miracles.

One policy that the Labour politicians and/or others could speak up for and create, is to strengthen and make the Law enforceable, on preventing both other immigrant and white British bosses, from with-holding the passports and wages of their employees in order to trap and further enslave and abuse their employees, or rather their actual and literal human slaves. Another policy all or any of our politicians could create, is to provide and create more special work and protection-rights lawyers and solicitors for these immigrant domestic women and children, and create actual special free-phone telephone help-lines for them. Some people may say these last two things already exist, but there isn't enough of them, and we should all create much more of these human and technological support systems for these women and children to protect and help them. Another policy all or any of our politicians could create, is to change the immigration system, in a very positive and enhancing way, so the jobs and work rights and wages of these immigrant domestic women and children and protection in the first place, as any kind of prevention is much better than cure.

When Labour politicians talk about the evils of unemployment, they are actually talking about their own jobs as government politicians and not really anyone else's. Of course the Labour party have some good policies, and we should indeed help the unemployed and others and oppose the present Conservative and Liberal-democrat government's benefits and services cuts, but the unemployed and others they defend are not enslaved, beaten, tortured, sexually abused and murdered, and the Labour party and all the other politicians have just got absolutely morality nor any kind of policies, no moral objections and oppositions, and what's more they have absolutely no kind of priorities on any of this.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

EMAIL MESSAGE SENT TODAY TO NICK NOWLES OF HOPE NOT HATE

Yes Nick, I agree with what you all say here and it is very good the criticisms and points you all make, if very simple and basic, but will you please tell me why it is the actual fact and reality of the case, that on none of the Hope Not Hate and Searchlight websites, is there a single comment, article, mention, nor any kind of moral opposition to the slavery, torture, sexual abuse, and murder of the innocent immigrant domestic women and children that I keep on writing and telling everyone about? You all say that you are anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations and groups, but I wonder whether if this the case then if this is just out of your own self-preservation, because until I see the reality of something or anything mentioned about all of this slavery and abuse of immigrant domestic workers in this society and country and elsewhere, then I am just not convinced.

What's more Nick, it is very clear to me and everyone else, that due to all of your total unwillingness to even give any kind of single mention to all of this slavery and abuse of innocent immigrant domestic women and children in this society and country and elsewhere, that you are all just the same as everybody else. As for your very simple-minded nonsense about the causes of fascism and racism, none of you would know about the real causes of fascism and racism from Betty Davis, and you are all as much use to me and these enslaved and abused immigrant domestic workers in this society and country and elsewhere, as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking competition. You must all think that I was born yesterday, and I've got about as much chance of marrying the Pope than any of you ever giving a word of a mention about all of this slavery and abuse of innocent immigrant domestic women and children.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

My Conclusion about the Slavery, Torture, Sexual Abuse, and Murder of Innocent Migrant Domestic Workers in this Society and Country and the Western Wo

My Conclusion about the Slavery, Torture, Sexual Abuse, and Murder of Innocent Migrant Domestic Workers in this Society and Country and the Western World

As for the British Labour party, I have absolutely no respect for them, as if they will not say a single word nor have a single policy or moral opposition to the slavery, torture, and rape of innocent domestic immigrant children and women in this society and country, then neither they nor the European Union is worth the paper it is written on. All the British Labour party are interested in, is attracting the likes of BNP and other racist people for votes and money for themselves, and I won't vote for any other political party who are absolutely no better either, but this kind of slavery and abuse has been going on for centuries, it has only been abolished in pure abstract imaginary theory, but in reality and practise it is all very much still happening in our country, society, and world.

I honestly don't think that any of our politicians and certainly those in the rest of Europe and elsewhere have got any kind of morality, and I don't like the Conservative party at all, but the only politician who has ever mentioned anything about it, was the Tory MP Ken Clark a while ago, and he only paid very brief lip-service to the issue in one or two short sentences. I don't think that any of this slavery and abuse will ever, ever change, certainly not by any politicians, and whilst there are some people like the trade union members of Unite, who try to prevent it, they have no real power and their numbers are very few.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

My Views on the European Union

I've just done some very long, hard, and some very thorough research on the European Union, and at first, I thought that Roz who is a very intelligent and lovely lady and my friend Luke's mother, UKIP, and the conservative party in all being anti-European, were simply being little-Englanders, very nationalistic, and very fascistic, but now I know the full truth and reality of it all, I can now see why Roz, UKIP, and the conservative party are very anti and against the European Union.

However, Roz, UKIP, and the conservative party, do still object to and oppose the European Union on nationalistic grounds - on the surface of it all at least - whereas my objection to the European Union as a libertarian-socialist - and because now I know the full truth and reality of it all - is that in actual fact, it would make nationalism and nationalisms a lot more insular, extreme, and a lot worse, not least because the European Union create lies, mythologisations, and justifications in their blind loyalty and ignorance to other nations and cultures, and which could encourage, be instrumental to, and which could very easily lead to fascism, much more so than British nationalism could ever do.

What's more, there are loads of immigrant women and children as domestic workers in this country, being enslaved, beaten, tortured, raped, and even sometimes murdered in this country by both other immigrant and white British bosses, and the European Union - like the British politicians and all three main political parties - have absolutely no comment, policy prevention, nor any moral opposition to this and other related matters, and in actual fact the European Union in their extreme plural nationalistic and culturalistic romanticism and idealism, don't seem to have any moral, social, or cultural objection to any nation and culture in any cultural or social way whatsoever at all, other than in the purely political. People tend to think that slavery has been abolished in the Western world and in this British society and country, but it has not.

Whilst we still and always will have our political differences, and whilst I am still in many ways opposed to and critical of British culture and British nationalism, now I understand and can see right through it all, and now I understand why Roz, UKIP, and the conservative party are anti-European Union.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

The London Student University Tuition Fees Protests

I very recently watched the student University Fees London protests on many youtube.com video-clips. Many of the students, the Labour party and others said that these protests were hijacked by idiots and extremists as they described them like the anarchists, and the media also described the anarchists behaviours of smashing windows as violence.

Firstly, I don't agree with the students and the media and others that smashing windows is violence, because violence is an act of physical harm against another or other human beings, and whilst smashing windows may be yobbish, it is undoubtedly very good therapy and much better than counselling and psychotherapy, and what's more it is much better than actually hurting other people and human beings, and it is damage or vandalism to inanimate material property, but not violence.

Also, it is very clear from watching those youtube video-clips, that there is much evidence and in fact very clear empirical proof that the Police could have very easily of prevented the anarchists from smashing those windows, but they let them do it and then came down on the like a ton of bricks, and I initially and at first thought to myself "What the hell is going on here!?". Then it occurred to me why the Police actually let the anarchists smash those windows and then came down on them like a ton of bricks.

Firstly, it is very obvious that the Police do not like anarchism at all and in fact they hate it, but it is a fact that both the Police who are very politically conservative and the anarchists, in actual fact both politically disliked the fact that these protests were being taken over by an oppressive Trotskyite and liberal and socialist majority, and both the Police and the anarchists who hijacked the protests and pissed all over the agenda of it, that none of them couldn't care less about universities and don't really believe in them, and neither do they care much about the excessive university tuition fees, as they are all much more interested in other or wider political, social, and economic issues as they all see it in very different ways.

I am no anarchist, but this tells you that in and with their opposition to the political totalitarian nature of the rest of the mob of students, proves to us that it just plain stupid to refer to all of those anarchists as idiots and extremists as the student protesters the Labour party and the media and others did, but that in some ways and on some levels, both the anarchists and the very politically conservative people like the Police, are both very, very similar.

The other much more pernicious reason, why the Police actually allowed the anarchists to smash those windows, is because like in Communist China and the old Soviet Union, the Police always let the anarchists do these things, so they can then come down on the anarchists and other protesters like a ton of bricks in order to morally superiorise, justify, and reinforce the status-quo and the Police state. Thus, on this issue, point, and explanation, it is here that I think that both the anarchists, the Police, the other student protesters, the Labour Party and the media and everybody else, didn't really know, couldn't see, and in no way understood, or explained and revealed what was actually happening, but this is the full and complete reality of the matter in this article on this, and it is the whole truth and nothing but.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

My Kind of Smiles, Wry Laughter, Thoughts, Feelings, and Responses to Ben Elton's 1980's Comedy Series Blackadder

I know Ben Elton and his ways of thinking very well, and I don't think that he is talking about medieval society in this country at all in the comedy series Blackadder, because all of his stand-up comedy routines very heavily suggest and state that he is very much talking about present-day British culture and society in his poking fun at people in religious, monarchy, and political and social authority, their infantile, regressive, psychotic hatred and jealousy of others, and their idiotic and most ignorant tantrums too epitomised in his portrayal of queen Elizabeth in Blackadder.

Ben Elton writes that sort of stuff in Blackadder for both very dull, ignorant, stupid coarse people, and for very intelligent people too, but I think that you have to be very intelligent to really understand it. Ben Elton is Jewish, and he uses a lot of irony in his humour like the Irish do, although the trouble with comedy series like Blackadder, is that very dull, stupid, coarse, ignorant people, tend to laugh at it because they think "Isn't this all good about British society and culture!", when they should be laughing and saying to themselves "Isn't this funny because it is all so terrible and very bad!", and so they completely fail to see the Jewish and especially the political critique and irony in Ben Elton's humour.

To quote the Socialist Proudhon: "To be ruled by beings without honour, dignity, loyalty, love, and without morality. That is government, that is authority!".

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

The Language of Cruelty, Coarseness, Ignorance, and Disrespect

When others irrationally or very unreasonably hate others, this actually stems from self-hatred and self-loathing. What's more, being immoral against another or a third party in all of these ways with cruelty, coarseness, ignorance, and disrespect, is very often done in order to raise the other's or third parties self-esteem and make this other victimised person morally or in some other way superior to them, and indeed this can sometimes be the result or consequence of all of this. Thus, the person in the dominant or nasty and verbally aggressive role, secretly wants to be submissive.

Irrational and very unreasonable hatred of another person, and the language of cruelty, coarseness, ignorance, and disrespect, can also often be resentment and bitterness of other family members and more richer and powerful people in society, and which then becomes repressed and displaced in order to project these very resentful and bitter character traits of themselves onto others, and in order to stigmatise and scapegoat people for the evils of the economic system and/or the past and present culture and society.

In actual fact and reality, there is also a huge suspension of critical faculties involved in all of this, as people who use the language of cruelty, coarseness, ignorance, and disrespect, are very aggressively, crudely, hypocritically, and ignorantly critical of others, and sometimes of themselves a bit, but they have no kind of political, cultural, and social criticisms or critique, nor any kind of awareness, knowledge, and what's more they have absolutely no understanding of how all of these things influences and affects their own psychological behaviours and others, and of people in general.

Jealousy is a very human thing and sometimes justified, but it's when it becomes irrational and out-of-context without any real kind of justification in reality, then it is somewhat psychotic or pathological and mentally unwell, or as some people would say it becomes a bit dangerous and evil. Also, hatred aimed at a third party, is very often hatred aimed at a second party for their love, concern, care, or sensitivity towards the third person or party, which again becomes displaced and projected onto the third person or party.

The issue of forgiveness in all of this, due to a deeper understanding of the nasty and cruel person's bad learnt behaviours, the fact that they have been or are in some ways stigmatised and scapegoated themselves in some ways, and a deeper understanding of the mental unwellness and pathology of irrational, psychotic, and very unreasonable hatred and jealousy, should not involve permission or collusion with all or any of those things.

Whilst everyone deserves a second chance to change or reform their cruel, disrespectful, coarse, and ignorant behaviours and language towards others, it's not appropriate or right to repeatedly allow them to keep on doing this, although one can indeed continuously learn from it and increase one's own self-esteem, but this might be taken by the other as permission and encouragement of their bad behaviours and their language of cruelty, coarseness, ignorance, and disrespect if they continue to do all of these things.

Peter H. Donnelly
2011

Anti-Porn Is The Theory, Repression is the Practise

THE ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY MOVEMENT NEGLECTS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF WOMEN'S OPPRESSION, ARGUES Nina Lopez-Jones FROM THE ENGLISH COLLECTIVE OF PROSTITUTES

With rare exceptions, feminists have concentrated on attacking attitudes, not power relations of which attitudes are a part. The view of 'Women Against Violence Against Women' (WAVAW), 'Porn is Violence Against Women' (PIVAW) and every other anti-porn group which was accepted as the voice of feminism during the Reagan/Thatcher decade, is that pornography is the "central and binding issue for feminism".
In 1980 the United Nations said that women do 2/3 of the world's work for 10% of the income - the International Labour Organisation says 5%-and 1% of the assets. This was the first international quantification of our exploitation, the basic violence against women from which flows all other violence against us by both institutions and individuals.
By studiously ignoring this violence, the anti-porn/pro-censorship lobby avoids a confrontation with the economic, political and physical violence against women perpetuated or endorsed by the State. Feminists who concentrate on condemning sexist images of women in the name of condemning women's exploitation, and the politicians who back them, turn their backs while the issue of our economic and social power is pushed down the political agenda. Not money, not housing, not even non-sexist, non-racist, non-violent policing, but an end to "dirty pictures" becomes the key to our welfare.
Not unconnected, divisions of race, class, nationality, income, age, disability and occupation have been purposefully censored by feminist advocates of censorship. Anti-porn feminists ask us to do what men have always asked us to do: set aside the divisions among us and submit to their priorities. "We must reunite throughout the nation [sic] on this one basic issue [pornography] . . . Disagreements on other issues can be dealt with when fewer of us are being murdered, beaten, tortured and raped." And therefore, the struggles and priorities of Black and other working class women who are at the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy get watered down or mislaid somewhere along the way to many feminist agendas. A rape survey conducted by two feminists in Leeds chose to investigate streets which "had a mixed population of white single and married people" because "..it was important to focus on the problem of the dominant cultural group in order to avoid our results being used in a racist way." To "avoid racism" by excluding Black women is a strategy that a politician like Enoch Powell might wholeheartedly support.
Like any other movement for change, the women's movement has to choose whether or not to focus on breaking down these divisions. In our experience, this cannot be done without challenging "all the economic power relations in the working class from the bottom up, beginning with those of us who have the lease power . . . Black women who are the poorest of the poor . . ." To ignore the priorities of women who are Black, immigrant, Third World, prostitute, single mothers, housewives, lesbian, who have disabilities, or who are any combination of these, is to choose to focus instead on the priorities of the most powerful sectors - careerists in metropolitan countries. The choice of images (naked or not) must also begin from the bottom up; otherwise the image of the "successful" (usually white) careerist passes as a picture of every woman's reality, or at least the reality to which we can all achieve. This image embodies the predominantly (mainly white) Establishment perspective of Feminism.
Many feminists have refused to deal with the fact that increasing the power of the State to decide what is "acceptable sex and sexuality" can only lead to greater power in the hands of the police and more State violence against women, starting with those of us who are labelled "ignorant" or "immoral" because we are poor and working class. One clear example of this refusal is the way in which the anti-porn lobby has consistently discussed and proposed legislation promoting censorship without discussing the ways such legislation is likely to be enforced. Those of us at the bottom who go on the game, shoplift, commit Social Security "fraud" or other crimes of poverty in order to support ourselves and our children, can't afford the luxury of treating legislation as an abstraction rather than a power shaping our lives. For us the political is personal. It is women at the bottom, and our sons, brothers, husbands and friends, who are at the receiving end of police brutality, illegality and racism. We don't have the right style, accent, background, colour, passport, connections and or careers to protect us from the law, the police and the courts.
Increasing the power of the State to control sexual expression is of a piece with more generalised economic and political oppression. By trying to control which relationships and forms of contact are to be promoted and which discouraged and even criminalized, the State tries to claw back our victories, particularly those won by the women's and gay movements and the movement for welfare, which have concentrated on establishing our right to do what we want with our own bodies, and our right to economic, legal and social independence from the family. The anti-porn lobby has consistently said that "pornography is the theory, rape is the practice." On the contrary: anti-porn is the theory; economic, political and sexual repression - and that can only mean universal rape - is the practice.
All images, no matter how partial or distorted, are reflections of the real power relations among us. We are dependent on images to find out about other people and the world we live in. Information we get in this way may help or hinder us in our pursuit of a better understanding of ourselves and our possibilities: what we can/want to do with our lives as opposed to what we are supposed to do: to mould ourselves on stereotypes. We therefore want images to inform us about what we need to know and to express clearly the reality we experience; as well as to be stimulating, exiting and beautiful; and we want to replace images which are not working for us in these ways. Images are often the lies through which people with more power impose on those who have less power their version of events, and indicate what we should desire and what they will approve. Anti-porn feminists only skim the surface. They attack the images instead of attacking the reality - the power relations - which the images reflect. Rather than acknowledging the images as an integral part of reality, images are blamed for the violence of reality; visual violence against women is disconnected from the violence of poverty and economic dependence which are mirrored in pornography, violent or not. Anti-pornographers may agree that women are exploited but they refuse to attack that exploitation.
Even their attack on the images is partial. What is most degrading about images of women is that our struggle to refuse all forms of violence and degradation is almost always absent: women are portrayed not only doing the jobs that we do, whether with our clothes on or off, but as consenting, even happy, slaves. If the models are dressed, anti-porn lobbyists seem oblivious of the ways in which this distorted image of us attacks us.
"Lukewarm" sex - lesbian women who are into S&M call it "vanilla sex" . . . whatever sex each of us may like, if it is consensual we have a right to it, and to see reflections of it in pornographic or other images. The stereotypical sex-images anti-porn feminists want to impose on others could not express the variety of the sexual reality and would instead deny the experiences of the millions of women and men who are not only, or at all, into "vanilla sex". So-called "perverted sex" is a form of escapism not that different from Gothic novels or horror films: fantasies in which the power relations are transformed and the subtleties of reality with its demands of decision temporarily forgotten (or are being worked out on another level). The effect of anti-porn is to push sexual choices back to a dark corner and isolate sexual feelings and activity from the rest of life. Any sex, from "vanilla" to S&M, can be a vehicle for violence when it is cut off from compassion (which itself is repressed and splintered into various segregated parts). Sex then becomes an area of darkness in which to give vent to our most secret fears and emotions. (A great attraction of David Lynch's films is that they are based on how people relate when all the characters, not only the hero/Heroine, emerge from that dark corner.)
Anti-pornographers seem to understand the attractions of S&M better than anyone. Some even seem to revel in gory descriptions and interpretations of porn. Why would anyone spend so much time watching and commenting on something they found so repulsive unless the rewards - financial, sexual or both - made it worth while? Opposing porn provides a socially acceptable and even profitable opportunity to indulge one's sexual pleasure while blaming others for one's own taste. (Not surprisingly, Andrea Dworkin's novels Ice and Fire and Mercy have been accused of being pornographic.)
But unlike sado-masochists who confine themselves to consenting sexual acts, anti-pornographers get their satisfaction from forcing themselves - and the State - on everyone - denying, banning, censoring, admonishing, punishing. Punishing - a strong urge which seems to provide sexual pleasure for many, from anti-pornographers to judges.
The anti-porn lobby fails to distinguish between the workers, the bosses and the products. The porn industry is exploitative like any other industry. Should commercial food, clothes, cars, TVs, etc., be banned because their respective industries exploit the workers who produce these goods, or should we support workers' demands for better working conditions? The coal industry is polluting, and working conditions are horrendous. Should we not have supported the 1984-5 strike of mining communities against the closure of pits on which their livelihood depended? In campaigning for prostitutes we underline the distinction between sex workers and the work they do. We know from experience that campaigning for the abolition of the prostitution laws which criminalize women for refusing poverty and financial dependence on men, is inseparable from campaigning for economic alternatives to prostitution: higher benefits, grants and wages so that no woman is forced by poverty into sex with anyone, for money or for "free". Campaigning for abolition is for us inseparable from campaigning to get all women's work - including sex work waged and unwaged, recognised and counted as work so that we can get back the wealth we have helped produce: the resources we need to refuse all exploitation, all prostitution... including what Virginia Woolf called "intellectual harlotry".

The Very Major Differences and Distinctions and the very Slight and Very Partial Similarity Between Self-harm and Masochism

The biggest mistake and set of very inaccurate and very false misconceptions about masochism by and within both psychotherapy, psychiatry, and psychiatric mental health, is that the psychological and social causes of both these very separate things, are seen and misunderstood by psychotherapy, psychiatry, and psychiatric mental health as being exactly the same, although there is one very slight but very partial similarity between the two.

Whilst all forms of sexuality and sexual-orientations have elements of both attraction, attractiveness, repulsion and disgust, masochism can only really be understood by realising and understanding the ways that attraction and repulsion and disgust are linked and related within and by masochists, the ways that the two things alternate, differentiate, separate, change into each other and then re-differentiate - how this all operates and applies in very different ways both within and between masochists, switches (people who are both sexually dominant, submissive, sadistic, and masochistic) and sadists - and how all of these different factors and different sexual-orientations and people connect, interrelate, relate and interact, work together and find a consensus and a common ground, agree to differ, and then part ways.

However, to reveal and explain about all of this about masochists, switches, and sadists, is not the purpose of this article, as it is to explain the major differences, distinctions, and the slight and very partial similarity between self-harm and masochism, although again, even these slight similarities are very different in their details, very basic elements, and in their entireties.

Also, whilst masochism and self-harm are very, very different things, revealing, realising, and understanding about all of this in great details and entirety about masochism, switches, and sadism - by using and applying a most highly ingenious contrast and a pluralistic contextual and detailed association and set of both contrasted and related associations - all sheds light in a totally new and greater understanding of and about self-harm and self-harmers, but this is also not the purpose of this article, as I will only refer to and mention in this article the very limited, partial, pre-existing and very incomplete social and psychological explanations of self-harm and self-harmers.

Self-harm by self-harmers, is basically about emotional numbness, mental and emotional distress and pain, anxiety, and/or depression, and it is about how self-harmers harm themselves physically in order to override these things and their experiences of and with them, and because they either do this because they are dissociating from the mental and emotional distress and pain, anxiety, or depression, or because they are trying to diminish and counteract the dissociation and/or depersonalisation they feel by self-harming, in order to wake up and feel more real.

Many self-harmers also self-harm, because many of them have been abused and traumatised in their pasts, and they are wanting to make different associations with mental and emotional pain and distress, and sometimes they trick themselves into believing that the physical pain of their self-harm, is actually the emotional pain and distress, because their feelings of mental and emotional pain and distress have been suppressed and repressed by more unjust punishment and abuse in their pasts, and this is their way of feeling and believing that they now have some control over the mental and emotional pain and distress by hurting themselves physically by self-harming.

All of these social and psychological causes and factors of and about self-harm, have absolutely no connection or relation, to or with the very partial social and psychological causes of masochism, except the fact that both self-harmers and masochists both seek to make and do actually make some different associations between mental and emotional pain and distress, and physical pain, but the ways that each do this, are very, very different.

Another very major difference and distinction, is that the types of associations that masochists use and make, are very different from the types of associations that self-harmers use and make, and what's more these associations that masochists use and make, unlike self-harmers, have absolutely nothing to do with any kind of dissociation or depersonalisation in any ways whatsoever.

What's more, self-harmers do not get pleasure from either emotional and mental pain or distress, and neither do they get pleasure from physical pain, whilst many aspects of masochism have absolutely nothing to do with either emotional and mental or physical pain, as the humiliation by the opposite sex that masochists enjoy is neither emotional nor physical pain (although being humiliated can cause of lead to emotional pain) but being humiliated is actually psychological discomfort and both a reduction, a moderation, and an expansion of personal and social identity and self-esteme.

What's more, the sexual and affection submissiveness that masochists love and enjoy towards the opposite sex, is neither mental and emotional nor physical pain, nor is it any kind of psychological or identity changing or discomfort, as submissive love and desire is to do with feelings and desires of fondness, pleasantness, happiness, positive emotions and desires, and attraction.

Peter H. Donnelly
2010

Biological, Psychological, and Social and Historical Sexuality in Relation and Connection to Morality, and the Liberal Extreme Over-simplifications an

Biological, Psychological, and Social and Historical Sexuality in Relation and Connection to Morality, and the Liberal Extreme Over-simplifications and Misconceptions of Intimacy in all Sexual Relationships, Sexual Role-playing, Lust, Sexual-love and Desires

"Intellectual elitism is the hubris of fascism"

Thomas Szasz

I recently received an email, from a university department of human sexuality studies, and so I read everything on their website (including a download PDF file of their courses), and not only does all of this information on the Internet appear to mention absolutely nothing about their courses, but they mention the rights and teaching (not actually study at all) about all sexual individuals and groups, except for BDSM (masochist, sadist, switch, and sadomasochist people) - as if BDSM people merely have so-called sexual problems - and are absolutely nothing to do with heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, and transgender people, who they claim to defend the rights, knowledge, and sexual and social health of, and as if we are not also sexually, psychologically, and socially human.

I say all their information on the Internet about them, appears not to reveal anything about their courses and teachings, and whilst their is no mention about all of this about empowering individuals and groups at a grass-roots level as equal and autonomous, all they are concerned about is encouraging elitism and educating political leaders and professionals like counsellors and psychologists, which is the surface level of all their professional thought-disorders, and which is all more like liberal-fascism than radical or liberal libertarian-socialism.

I have actually studied all of this information on the Internet about them, by studying the content, the order, the phrasing, and the structural tones, pattern, association and non-association, and overall grammar of all the words, then I jumbled all of these words up in a certain and special way, and then applied my same highly ingenious so-called autistic deconstruction and analysis of all of this, and which reveals absolutely everything about the entire content of most of their courses and teachings.

For now, I won't critique what they describe as human sexuality, but what I will say is that there is absolutely no analysis, nor any understanding or teaching about the ways that so-called class influences, affects, limits, or changes sexuality, and like everybody else they all know absolutely nothing about any of this.

I will write about this class element and factor - both intrinsically of sexuality, and as an external material, social, political, and historical influence affect, limitation, or expansive potentiality - in another article, but for now I will just mention the two main central themes of their ideology, views, and teachings on human sexuality, and which are pretty obvious to an ordinary or very non-extraordinary person unlike myself, who reads all of their extremely condensed, coded, and more or less very euphemistic information about them, via their website and the download of all their courses on it.

These two main themes, and the extremely ignorant and wildly inaccurate descriptions of all their understanding and teaching on it all, are morality in connection and relation to human sexuality and how this relates to a social and historical context or contexts, and what they very multiplicitly mergingly, and again very ignorantly and wildly inaccurately refer to as intimacy - as if these two themes have absolutely no connection and relation to or with each other (in their very cold sexual, academic, intellectual and emotional very detached and defensive splits and fragmentations), in any kind of meaningful, or intimate way as they put it - and which again they have absolutely no understanding or knowledge of the real contents, structures, mechanisms, and different types and forms of intimacy, and the highly complex components and real nature of it.

Peter H. Donnelly
2010

About the Radio 4 Programme Broadcast Last Night about Appropriate, Careful, Sensitive, Rational, Logical, and Creative Communication Between Children

About the Radio 4 Programme Broadcast Last Night about Appropriate, Careful, Sensitive, Rational, Logical, and Creative Communication Between Children and Adults Regarding Bereavement and Knowledge of other very Realistic, Harsh, Life-events

When my five year-old niece Jasmine, came into the room some months ago, and asked me very euphemistically about the absence and loss of her granny (my mum), who committed suicide and died last year, I might have confused her a little bit with my communication, but overall I think I communicated with her in a very sane, logical, rational, careful, sensitive, and creative way.

I'm more or less against the very Liberal view of communication between children and adults, that communicates with and treats children all exactly like adults, because whilst in some ways that is a good and a healthy thing, because children are all equal human beings to and with adults, with more or less equal rights as human beings, they are still children, and this kind of very Liberal approach is quite frankly very inappropriate and embarrassing.

I therefore agree a bit more, with the more Conservative view and approach, of protecting children's innocent minds, and freely communicating with them, with respect, realisations, and regard that they still or just children, although as the other extreme, this can also be a bit embarrassing and patronising towards and with children at times, if used and taken too far.

Regarding the Radio 4 programme broadcast last night, that I mention here in the title of this article, the experts and professionals, all more or less agreed that children's innocent minds need to protected from the harsh realities of life-events, whilst they also said that often children already know about the realities of things like the death of a family relative, much more than we admit to or realise about them as adults, but that as children they don't let on or reveal about this to and with adults, because they are trying to protect the adults in the adults view and relatedness towards them as children, and which is how they more or less want to be related to, communicated with, and treated by and with adults.

However, there was also a consensus and agreement in this Radio 4 programme, that if children do choose to communicate, very directly and openly about what they can really know about things like bereavement and other harsh realities and life-events, as they sometimes do, then we mustn't deny this or ignore them about this, but we must openly and honestly communicate and support them about this emotionally and mentally.

Taking all of these things and matters into full realisation and full consideration, in a very sensitive, rational, logical, rational, creative, and multi-approached way, the conclusion and crux of the matter in this Radio 4 programme, is that we need to intellectually support children, and give them intellectual support, in whatever way they choose to communicate with us about things like bereavement and other harsh realities and life-events, and I think this is overall how I related towards and communicated with my five year-old niece Jasmine, with her euphemistic and metaphorical questions to me some months ago about the death and loss of her granny.

Article about Mental Health Service Booklets

I have read the booklets and leaflets you gave me, and the other booklets you allowed me to take from you. I don't want to be overly-critical nor bother you with my views on all of this, and I won't go into most of it all, but some of it relates to my late and beloved mum and her mis-diagnosis, mis-psychiatric-drug-treatment and refusal by the doctor, and basically these booklets only describe the symptoms of mental health problems, and not the real overall syndromes, nor the objective social and material reality and the causes and effects of all of this.

What's more they are labels of symptoms, which might be useful in a complete and accurate context and understanding, but they are also very simple, very abstract, text-book descriptions of mere symptoms and quite partial descriptions of both symptoms and syndromes, which do not correspond to objective social and material reality, internal psychological reality, nor the interaction and synthesis of the subjective psychological and objective reality of the two (as if there is no actual activity and interaction between all these things but total connectedness, merging, and absorption without any individuality as well).

Again, I won't annoy or bore you about all of this, but to give you just one very quick example, your booklets only describe psychosis in psychological and social terms as being delusional and losing touch with reality. Psychosis, actually has four aspects to it in reality, which are the personal, the social and volitional, the interpersonal, and the internal or psychological.

Firstly, there is much, much, more to psychosis than delusional losing touch with reality, as there can be depressive psychosis, and psychosis is also about an internal mental and emotional conflict, juxtaposition, and dis-order, between and where the unconscious mind (for want of a better word), negatively takes over and controls or dominates the conscious mind or thoughts, whilst the conscious mind alternately becomes unconscious in a way, as the unconscious becomes more unconscious.

Regarding and concerning the first of the four aspects of psychosis that I mentioned, personally and socially, it is to do with how these two aspects or things about psychosis interact, and part of the solutions perhaps along with some psychiatric medication, is to slot the personal thought-patterns and processes, into the person's actions, routine, pre-responses before their actions and their post-responses afterwards, and changing their situations and relatedness or relationships with others, all in certain ways, where there is a better connectedness and connection with the social, interpersonal, and where they are more in touch with social and objective material reality.

In isolation, as a separate thing, interpersonally, the term psychotic in the sense of so-called being out-of-touch with material and social reality, can simply mean and be the case, that the person has a different opinion, argument, view, vision, or much better grasp or different understanding of material and social reality than another person, a partner, or a so-called authority figure on all of this, who says they are mad or psychotic simply because they have a different or much better view, argument, opinion, and because they simply disagree with the other partner, so-called authority figure, or other person.

In terms of actual depressive psychosis, it is not the case really much at all that the person suffering from grief, sadness, and/or very negative or more realistic thoughts usually along with feelings of so-called depersonalisation, is at all out-of touch with reality - as was the case with my mum who committed suicide last year - but the reality of all of this on this issue and matter, is that in actual fact and reality, no one can really or appropriately and skilfully, care about, love, nor has real compassion for them, nor understands nor can relate to their mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual suffering in any real caring or altruistic way. Therefore, it is actually the case that society, the mental health services and some others, are often in actual fact and reality out-of-touch with them and their suffering and conditions psychologically, mentally and emotionally, socially, spiritually, and materially.

On a final point, a person can be out-of-touch socially and/or interpersonally with others, as in so-called personality disorders with inappropriate relatedness or relationship responses and behaviours - as others can also be these things in-turn toward them for social and cultural reasons of differences, or lack or equality, fairness, and integration - whilst this not usually necessarily mean, that the person being one-sidedly discriminated against and labelled in these ways, are out-of-touch socially with reality in an overall objective, social, and material sense, nor in terms of life-events, and to suggest otherwise, is again to very much to over-simplify, blur and merge categories, things, issues, personal, interpersonal, and social and material reality matters.