Is Society Mentally Ill?
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 14, 2015
REFERENCE:
This is an excerpt of “Time Out for Sanity: Blueprint for Dealing With An Anxious Age” (Tate Publishing Co., 2015).
It’s an intriguing question. Three generations ago Sigmund Freud posed the same question:
“May we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilizations – possibly the whole of mankind – have become ‘neurotic’? We may expect that one day someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities.”
Nearly three quarters of a century later, sociologist Ernest Becker speaking of mental illness, wrote:
“The great breakthrough in the contemporary theory of mental illness is that it represents a kind of stupidity, a limitation or obtuseness of perception, a failure to see the world as it is. It is not a disease in the medical sense, but a failure to assign correct priorities to the real world.”
The suggestion, implicit in these remarks, is that society is indeed sick, being simply a matter of definition. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz asserted that mental illness, per se, is a myth that has been gaining momentum since the nineteenth century. He writes about this with reference to psychiatry:
“A person might feel sad or elated, insignificant or grandiose, suicidal or homicidal, and so forth; he is, however, not likely to categorize himself as mentally ill or insane; that he is, is more likely to be suggested by someone else. This, then, is why bodily diseases are characteristically treated with the consent of the patient, while mental diseases are characteristically treated without his consent. In short, while medical diagnoses are the names of genuine diseases, psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels.”
Psychologist Bernie Zilbergeld sees the trend towards “shrinking,” that is, the rush to consult psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists, as a desire to believe therapy is the painless solution to the most pressing problems of modern life with no intention whatsoever to pay a personal price for changing.
When therapy falters, we turn to self-help books, or seek the counsel of gurus; their instant cures. When the guru disappoints, as they invariably do, we retreat into one of an assortment of obsessions or addictions, a shield from the uncomfortable reality we mean to avoid.
If these experts agree on anything consistently, it is that we inhabit an anxious age. Since we cannot retreat from ourselves, and since we clearly have no intention of changing our ways, many of us have embraced a culture of narcissism, of self-absorption, one that Christopher Lasch insists has led to conspicuous consumption as therapy for our anxiety.
Obedience Blind
What, you ask, keeps a person from dealing head on with his own demons? C. B. Chisholm writes:
“It almost always happened that among all the people in the world only our own parents, and perhaps a few people they selected, were right about everything. We could refuse to accept their rightness only at the price of a load of guilt and fear, and peril to our immortal souls. This training has been practically universal in the human race. Variations in content have had almost no importance. The fruit is poisonous no matter how it is prepared or disguised.”
We are taught at an early age not to think, just to obey, to submit to the regimented programming of society. The same message is articulated at home, then reinforced at school, in church and dutifully reinforced by various media.
The incessant barrage of acceptable “points of view” and expected behaviors for every situation smother our natural curiosity. Consequently, the most unlikely person we are inclined to consult, much less trust is ourselves.
Yet, absurdly so, the authority we ought most to heed, the ultimate authority according to Krishnamurti is our own person. He writes:
“There is no intermediary between you and reality; and if there is one, he is a perverter, a mischief maker, it does not matter who he is, whether the highest savior or your latest guru or teacher.”
It may seem an over-simplification, but if society is sick, mentally ill in fact, it must be from the interplay, the conflict actually, between self-demands and role demands. It does not occur to us that the life roles we try to play were designed for another time; a time long past. While various therapists go to great lengths to expose the underlying motives for our behavior and to reveal the root causes of our unhappiness and dysfunction, this effort may be entirely unnecessary. Fortunately, it may be enough simply to examine the life role a person has assumed, and assess how satisfying, how suitable, or esteeming that may or may not be.
People often pursue professions and career paths that their families urge them to follow. It is important, we are told, that we don’t become misfits, thereby embarrassing our family. This striving to please others can result in personal tension, internal conflict, a battle between external role demands and internal self-demands.
On the other hand, if we occupy a role that is energizing, representing norms and goals consistent with our better lights, our actions will be faithfully guided by how we see ourselves, how we see the situation and how we relate to others. Our ego state of the adult, our “real self,” will be evident and the situation will be well defined, in terms of reality, and the role demands of the job at hand. This will guide us, unscathed, against formidable obstacles. In other words, we will be in a healthy state of self-realization and self-expression and thus, self-satisfaction.
However, if the role we try to play is punishing and unsatisfying, then the superego state or the righteous parent of our personality will surface. This draws out our “ideal self,” the self we pretend to be or think we ought to be. The situation becomes sub-optimal, and self-demands take precedence over the job or role-demands. This is a self-defeating, chaotic state, where confusion will lead us to aggressive and disruptive behavior.
Walking the Cat Back
There is a parallel between early twenty-first century America and the decade of the 1970s: young people being forced to participate in an unpopular war; political upheaval in the air, ruthless leaders subverting democracy (President Nixon), political paralysis gripping the country (Watergate Scandal), drugs ruining lives with morality on holiday (Haight-Ashbury culture), new forms of bigotry and hatred arising, an automotive industry in decline.
In the ‘70’s, while American manufacturing entered decline, the “energy crisis” arrived; the OPEC oil embargo rocked our national confidence while a beleaguered president hunkered down and became a law unto himself. Congress, missing their cue, failed to react to provide leadership. They refused to face the uncomfortable facts, leaving our future hanging in the balance.
This pattern of crisis following crisis following crisis, ought to sound familiar. It appears we have come full circle here in the early 21st Century.
Or have we? Consider that today we remain, as we were, stuck in the 1970s, battling the same crises, unable to free ourselves from their unyielding grip. Then maybe society is not mentally ill so much as stuck in the past with protocols that no longer fit; no longer serve us.
“Time out for Sanity” demonstrates that we actually do now live in a continuation of the ‘70’s, not a repeat. We’re stuck, as it were. Becoming unstuck suggests an unavoidable fight for control. The key is to understand that whole societies behave much like individuals.
At the outset, one becomes stuck in intolerable situations because, paradoxically, we resist them. Tragically, the dreaded state we resist ends up controlling us. We feel we cannot let go, cannot trust, because we believe the thing that threatens us will destroy us. Only in crisis, and then only gradually, do we realize that our coping measures themselves, our habits, programmed values and beliefs, our sacrosanct ideals, alas, our control and controlling measures, are themselves inexorably destroying us. Only in desperation do we then let go.
Reaching a state of awareness, a level of maturity, we let go, let flow, only then are we able to discern the shape of the enemy. This vague threat was something that simply had to be faced. There was no other alternative. Little did we know it was ‘change’ that we could face and could survive. As we let go, we see that ‘control’ naturally, reflexively, fills the void.
Individually and collectively, as a society, as a conscious social construct, why do we repeatedly push ourselves to the brink of despair, to a precipice, when our only viable option is to yield, to trust ourselves? To answer this crucial question we need to “Walk the cat back,” to retrace our steps to find that first wrong step that led us towards peril. You may recognize this expression from espionage novels. It fits our purposes here. Time Out for Sanity “walks the cat back,” and demonstrates how we, society, have become trapped in a pit of angst.
The Manufacture of Madness
Time Out for Sanity points out that the more grown-up; the more sophisticated our electronic devices have become the more childishly we behave. We think we have conquered time but time always has the last laugh. We notice the abbreviated attention span of our children and we immediately want to designate these embarrassing states as syndromes or “disorders.”
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), among others, have conveniently transformed our stuckness into acronyms of diseases. Trauma is the new narrative and dominates our discourse.
The influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) is published by the American Psychiatric Association in collaboration with nine other officially sanctioned organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association.
DSM-IV criteria serve as virtual medical gospel for millions of professionals worldwide. It suggests an ADD or ADHD diagnosis for someone who has trouble keeping attention on tasks or play activities, does not follow instructions or complete school work, and so on.
These children reflect ‘stuckness,’ more as “coping habits” than mental disorders. Take away too much sugar in their diet, too much television, too much time playing electronic games, and much more family involvement and, “voila,” these “diseases” disappear.
DSM-IV has elevated a cornucopia of behaviors to disease status, resulting on society being stuck on trauma. Alcoholism, alone, has hundreds of ailments treated as diseases: alcohol-induced anxiety disorder; alcohol-induced persisting amnestic disorder; alcohol-induced mood disorder; alcohol-induced persisting dementia; alcohol-induced psychotic disorder; alcohol-induced sexual dysfunction; or alcohol-induced sleep disorder. Behavior is the culprit with the perpetrator of the behavior the innocent victim. Name a behavior, say gambling or promiscuity, and you have the same litany of disorders. Addiction and dependency have been rescued from self-responsibility for the actions.
Astutely, Thomas Szasz has called this “the manufacture of madness.” It implies a whole industry, of course, one supported by a cast of gurus, professionals and their courtesans, who claim “cures” through occasional conversations, or magically with prescriptions of mind altering chemicals; all industrialized solutions.
What so many doctors and gurus call mental illness, Szasz maintains, are inner human conflicts manifested outwardly in ways society can’t condone, but paradoxically, nonetheless unwittingly fuels. As a consequence, addiction is the fastest growing social psychological construct with the medical and pharmacology industries, and their subsidiaries, exploding in growth.
Intrepid psychiatrist Dr. Szasz maintains that science must stand on the side of the people, of and for whom it studies, rather than being aligned with social engineers, medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies and allied advertisers who have a vested interest in perpetuating what could only be construed as a sick society dependent upon their respective services.
Of course, there are always legions of champions for these manufactured pathologies ranging from professionals in medicine, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, as well as the media and government and corporate agencies. They have vested interests in society stuck in trauma, as mental illness and dysfunctional processes provide the narrative to their legitimacy.
Irish dramatist George Barnard Shaw famously said “every profession is a conspiracy against the public.” Nowhere has this been illustrated more compellingly than the 1970s as a mirror reflection of our current times, themes, and technological swirls.
Yet, the more our society becomes focused on information technology and electronic entertainment, the more it devolves into another swirl of addictive fantasy likely to be elevated to disease status. Media guru Marshall McLuhan envisioned the space between reality and virtual reality vanishing, driving a wedge between people as persons, and into the arms of despair.
Official Maladies, Official Cures
Time Out for Sanity asks the simple question: has the world changed and have we changed with it, and if not, why not?
The book argues that mental illness is only one of several myths into which we have retreated. We have many more choices than we had a short forty years ago, but we still show a propensity for entering and staying in a very narrow comfort zone to avoid dealing with the mounting complexities of the realities of our times.
To put it another way, the chronic problems of forty years ago seem to be remarkably similar while not the same as those we face today.
As a society we continue to repeat the troublesome patterns of the immediate past, ad infinitum. Given this premise, Time Out for Sanity is the equivalent of “walking back the cat” to the 1970s to show how we continue to ride the treadmill for fear of losing control, when our plight indicates it has already happened. We are out of control.
An indication of how life follows art rather than the other way around was the television series The Time Tunnel. The machine was meant for people to go back to the past or leap into the future at will. Some tried it and got stuck in the past and couldn’t get out. The program was very disturbing to viewers and lasted only one season. Unlike the characters of this TV series, figuratively speaking, we willingly book flights into the past, get stuck in that trauma, and then seek professional help for “illnesses” that lift the burden from us by the rationale of manufactured diseases.
Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1973, speaking of psychiatry, though he could have been addressing the claimed infallibility of several other professions, said:
“There are fundamental similarities between persecution of heretics and witches in former days and the persecution of madmen and mental patients in ours. Just as a theological state is characterized by the preoccupation of the people with religion and religious matters, and especially with the religious deviance called heresy, so a therapeutic state is characterized by preoccupation of the people with medicine and medical matters, and especially with the medical deviance called illness.”
The aim of a therapeutic state is not to provide favorable conditions for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, but to repair the defective mental health of the subject-patients.
The officials of such a state parody the roles of physicians and psychotherapists. This arrangement gives meaning to the lives of countless bureaucrats, physicians, and mental health workers by robbing so-called patients of the meaning of their lives.
We thus persecute millions as drug addicts, homosexuals, suicide risks and so forth, all the while congratulating ourselves that we are great healers curing them of mental illness. We have managed to repackage The Inquisition and are selling it as a new scientific cure-all.
Time Out for Sanity attempts to penetrate our cool façade, the trite and ubiquitous rhetoric that masks chronic problems with semantics, refusing to address them directly.
The silent ninety percent of us lingered on the sidelines in the 1970’s, waiting for the ten percent in big science and big government to deliver us. But, people forgot, big science and big government are not immune to the currents of forward, aimless, inertia. In fact, they prefer it as the status quo.
I strongly urge everyone to stop obsessing about the future, to open their minds and find fulfillment and involvement in the present. We all have the key that unlocks that all-important door. We just have to use it. Time Out for Sanity is a book that asks and shows you the way to do just that.
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