Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

(Author note: I'm back in the archives and will be in there for a while as the 20th anniversary of Turtle's Voice grows nearer. This article was published in The American Chronicle on 1/16/08 under the title of The War on Thought and Individualism. I've removed the links because there are all dead now, lots of things have disappeared off the Internet in the last couple decades. This article is a little dated as hardly anyone relies on newspapers for information these days, but it's definitely worth sharing again.)  

 

 

 

What is truth?  Is it only what appears on the cable news networks, the national evening news or in the mainstream newspapers?  Does truth only become truth when it is checked and approved and then put before the masses?  What if that approved truth doesn’t answer all the questions or perhaps even raises new ones, is it still the truth?  And what about those people with the lingering doubts over the official story, are they insane or just troublemakers?

 

President Bush, in a speech before the United Nations on November 11^th, 2001, said, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.”  I didn’t hear this speech when it was made and at the time I fully believed what the television had shown me, but had I heard his words I would have sought out information on the conspiracy theories he mentioned because I’m a curious person.  Perhaps being curious isn’t very popular today, perhaps curiosity is a threat. People tend to label and categorize, I suppose it makes us feel secure and a lot of people believe that conspiracy theorists are crazy, ill informed or even potentially dangerous, but what if they just like things to make sense? 

 

I think one of my greatest downfalls in this life is that I expect things to make sense, I like to understand the rhyme and reason of things and to do that, I have to look at all possible explanations, not just one.  And I figure, mixed up in all those ideas and propaganda, the truth can be found.  But I fear that a day will come when curiosity is no longer tolerated, and thinking outside of the approved box will no longer be permitted. 

 

In 2004 issue of Psychology Today, Kathleen McGowan has written an article entitled “Conspiracy Theories Explained” and the subtitle states, “Random events are deeply meaningful to paranoid schizophrenics. Is something happening in their brains?”  The article begins, “Paranoid schizophrenics are prone to delusions, tales in which random events become deeply meaningful. Some believe in complex conspiracies; others think they are Jesus Christ.”  And then it continues to explain the research of Shitij Kapur, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and vice president of research at the Canadian Center for Addiction and Mental Health, in relation to the role of dopamine in addiction and schizophrenia.  The body of the article does not mention conspiracy theories again, but the implication is pretty clear, people who question the official line are paranoid schizophrenics. 

 

The definition of conspiracy is an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act and conspiracies are as old as mankind.  On the lighter side of conspiracy we have practical jokes and high school pranks, on the darker side we have events like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. And in it’s most accepted form we see it in business as one corporation plots to overtake another, but we don’t call that conspiracy, that is considered ‘just business’. 

 

It’s interesting to me how we often hear of the little guy being arrested for suspicion of committing conspiracy, but somehow we believe that when large groups of powerful people unite there can be no conspiracy.  Even presidential candidate and former first lady, Hillary Clinton, claimed the idea of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to defend her husband Bill during the Whitewater scandal, so am I to assume that she is a paranoid schizophrenic? 

 

Am I to assume that anyone who believes that conspiracies exist may be insane?  Would that include Woodrow Wilson, who stated, “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”  Or James Madison, who said, "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance".  Or Winston Churchill, who stated his believe that, “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”  Even the Bible points out that those in power will conspire in Eph. 6:12,  “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].”

 

Conspiracies do exist, but not all conspiracy theories are truth, although many make for quite an entertaining read, true or not.  So what are we left to think when our leaders, both past and present, have spoken of conspiracy as an actual issue in society and government, but the psychiatric community sees it as delusional thinking?  Could it be that the psychiatric community is far more concerned about social control, easily counted bean drawers, and power than it is about mental health and truth?  Could the hand holding between the pharmaceutical companies and the psychiatric communities be a conspiracy to keep Americans compliant, consuming, and easily controlled?  Is the drugging of over 8 million American children with minimally tested psychotropic drugs considered ‘just business’?

 

Many speak of the war against terrorism and the war on drugs, but perhaps the only real battlefield exists here at home, the war waged against thought and individualism and the weapons of choice are psychiatry, propaganda, and pharmaceuticals.  The American Psychiatric Association is busily adding new entries into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), these additions aren’t developed through research or discovery of known pathology, but simply by member vote and some of the newest mental disorders include Social Phobia, Mathematics Disorder, Disorder of Written Expression and Reading Disorder.  At the rate the APA is going, soon no one in America will be considered sane and I am beginning to wonder if one day mental illness treatment will be mandatory, much like the vaccines for childhood illnesses are mandatory today.

 

The simple fact of the matter is that people think and perceive things differently due to a myriad of reasons, including upbringing, culture, and experience, and that used to be the beauty of being an American, but now it seems that the APA, in hand with other organizations, want to weed out those who are different and medicate them.  Is it because those differences imply mental illness?  Or could it be that those differences create money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, a solid customer base for the psychiatric communities, and a compliant citizenship for the rulers of the American government? 

 

 

As always, keep seeking.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dark and Brutal Beginnings of Psychiatry

 

(Author’s note – I’m going through my archives and hope to share what I think are some of my interesting old articles. This one was originally published in The American Chronicle on 1/22/08 under the title of Psychiatry, Tom Cruise and Scientology. I’ll include the old links and hopefully not all are dead, and some are still active.)

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Cruise sure has been in the news a lot of late, between jumping on Oprah’s couch, attacking psychiatry, and Brooke Shields’ use of anti-depressants, and now with the odd leaked Scientology videos, he seems to be generating a lot of attention.  And I’ve noticed in the reporting of each incident we are being led to believe that Tom Cruise is insane or brainwashed or worse.  So I began wondering, why?  The media certainly wants us to see Tom Cruise, he’s everywhere, it’s hard to escape, but they also want us to believe that he has fallen on the wrong side of the crazy wall, why?  Could it be what he’s saying?  Could it be his attack on psychiatry?

 

I’m not a fan of Mr. Cruise and I haven’t been to the theater in years, but when I heard his views on psychiatry, I sensed he was telling the truth.  But the media has created a thinking in our nation that if you are against psychiatry and the accompanying pharmaceuticals, you must be one of those crazy Scientologists.  I don’t care if Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, this is America and we are supposed to be free to believe in whatever belief system we choose. I choose not to align myself with any organized religion, but I do understand there is merit in the idea that psychiatry is a suspect science.

 

The manual used to define mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and each new entry into this manual is done by member vote, versus research and discovery of known pathology.  According to psychiatrist Ron Leifer, “So the DSM is basically an arbitrary classification of thoughts, moods and behavior decided upon by a committee of psychiatrists who are picked by the American Psychiatric Association.” 

 

Psychiatrist Colin Andrew Ross states, “It’s bogus that you can even accurately identify who has the behavior of schizophrenia.  It’s bogus that you can tag it to genes.  It’s bogus that you can detect those genes through any kind of test.  So the whole is basically bogus.”  And clinical psychologist Ty Colbert paints a disturbing picture with his words, “So we can theoretically find a way to drug every set of symptoms that’s different from what we think should be normal.  So we could have hundreds of different situations in the future and which we are attempting to drug.  So you just extrapolate that over a couple generations and it could be the fall of our civilization.”  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8705742804699284911&q=psychiatry&total=1725&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

 

Dr. Jeffrey A Schaler, a psychologist and professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., in a acceptance speech for the Thomas Szasz Award, states,  “What do we know that is true, that the cult of psychiatry keeps telling us is false?  First, the idea that there is a known brain lesion causing mental illness.  The truth is we cannot tell who is mentally ill and who is not by looking at pictures of their brains or analyzing their blood.”  Dr. Schaler goes on to refer to the DSM as a great work of fiction, clarifying that each disorder in the DSM is invented, whereas diseases listed in a pathology textbook are discovered. 

 

Dr. Schaler continues, “Mental illness refers to something a person does, real disease refers to something a person has.  Consider this yet another way – It takes one person to have a disease, it takes two people to have a mental illness.  If you are alone on an island you could develop a real disease like cancer or heart disease, but you cannot develop a mental illness such as hyperactivity or schizophrenia.  This is because mental illness is always diagnosed on some sort of social conflict, when people do something that others find objectionable, they can be diagnosed as mentally ill.  If the person doing the diagnosing is more powerful that the person diagnosed, then there’s trouble.  In this sense, the diagnosis of mental illness is always a weapon.”   http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4857231661511715395&q=dr.+schaler&total=11&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

 

These are powerful statements by educated people in the field of psychology and psychiatry, yet the media has sold us on the idea that if we are depressed it is a chemical imbalance and the medications are simply balancing our deficit.  But the truth is there is no test to prove that anyone suffers from a chemical imbalance. In a video entitled “Psychiatry – No Science, No Cures” Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York, states, “The actual truth about chemical imbalance is that it’s an actual lie.  Nobody has yet measured, demonstrated or created a test to show that somebody has a chemical imbalance in their brain, period.”

 

And psychiatrist Dr. Grace Jackson, states, “There is no rational science behind what they think is the cause of these symptoms.  The medications that are being given to people are, without exception, introducing chemicals that are altering the brain in ways which can be very damaging.  And I’ll go a step further and say that in the absence of proven chemical imbalance, for which the medications are “rebalancing” or fixing, the medications are in fact, toxic.”  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8058160857846500132&q=psychiatry&total=1725&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

 

I recognize that this is a controversial subject, with millions of adults and children on these behavior-altering medications, and I wonder how many understand that these drugs are not curing diseases, they are only altering our behavior and perhaps, even, our brains.  Maybe we are a culture that just likes our drugs or maybe we like to have an excuse of why we don’t perform as well as we perceive others as doing or maybe it’s just easier to numb what is bothering us inside, instead of attempting to fix it.  But the simple truth remains; we are not getting the facts on the medications we are using to fix our behavior. 

 

Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical drug sales rep. and author of the book, “Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher – God’s Call to Loving Arms”, spent fifteen years selling specialty pharmaceuticals to psychiatrists, among others.  She left the field after she felt a moral obligation to inform the public of the policies of selling drugs, which she felt was a danger to the “American people, at large”.   She states that there was “consistent minimization of side effects” and that it became “less and less popular to give full disclosure about our drugs, as time went on in my profession, and we were more responsible for marketing information being given to the doctors, than actual good medical information.” 

 

After seeing how the lack of full disclosure concerning prescription drugs was harming and in some cases, killing patients, Ms. Olsen decided that there was something wrong in the way drugs were being approved and marketed.  “I heard on more than one occasion people refer to ‘our friends’ in the FDA or ‘our people’ in the FDA.”  Ms. Olsen states that while selling psychiatric drugs in mental institutions she began to understand that many of the behavioral manifestations of mentally ill, were actually side effects of the drugs she was selling.  And Ms. Olsen was instructed to discredit people who were not in favor of psychiatric drugs by her district manager, who informed her, “Any time anybody isn’t for psychiatric drugs, if you just label them a Scientologist, that will discredit them, because everybody knows they are crazy.”  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8005785861839485871&q=gwen+olsen&total=23&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

 

The corporate media has sold us the idea that the only people who are against psychiatric drugs are Scientologists and they are, in fact, crazy.  But what of the experts, the scientists, the psychiatrists and psychologists speaking out against psychiatric drugs, are they also crazy?  The television tells us that a chemical imbalance has been proven, but the scientists insist this is not proven, that it is a theory at best, or a lie at worst, and no scientific test has ever been developed to make this chemical imbalance a reality.  Yet, we believe our televisions and we take the drugs and we give the drugs to our children, seemingly unconcerned about the potential effects of those drugs on developing brains. 

 

The history of psychiatry is full of wayward experiments on patients.  The Father of American Psychiatry is Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813); he was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Dr. Rush believed that too much blood in the system caused psychiatric and physiological disorders; this idea was strengthened when he decided that bloodletting cured him of yellow fever.  He also created the Tranquilizing Chair, which was said to address the fact that “madness” was an arterial disease, an inflammation of the brain and through being confined in the chair, which looked much like an electric chair, it controlled the flow of blood to the brain.  He also believed that another way to ease madness was to repeatedly dunk patients in ice-cold water. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/features/brush.html

 

Dr. Henry Cotton (1876-1933), medical director at New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, Trenton, felt that mental illness was caused by hidden infection in various body parts and the way to cure the mental illness was to remove the offending organs.  He began with teeth and tonsils and if no noticeable change occurred in the patient, he would precede to remove the stomach, spleen, cervix or colon.  Needless to say, like Dr. Rush, Dr. Cotton’s patients did not do well.  http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW04-05/14-0511/features1.html

 

Psychologist John B. Watson (1878-1958) believed that psychology should address “the prediction and control of observable behavior.”  He was such a believer in experimental psychology that he performed a series of experiments on his 11-month old son, Albert.  Watson is quoted as having said, “Give me the baby, and I’ll make it climb and use it’s hands in constructing a building of stone or wood… I’ll make it a thief, a gunman or a dope fiend.  The possibilities of shaping in any direction are almost endless.” 

 

Interestingly enough, Watson was best known for his parenting advice in which he stressed the idea of never showing affection to children.  “…Remember when you are tempted to pet your child, that mother’s love is a dangerous instrument.  An instrument that may inflict a never-healing wound, a wound which may make infancy unhappy, adolescence a nightmare, an instrument which may wreck your son or daughter’s vocational future and their chances for marital happiness.”  In 1954 Watson’s son Albert committed suicide, and in 1957 the APA awarded Watson a gold medal for his contributions to psychology.  http://www.mental-health-abuse.org/harmingYouth12.html

 

And a couple of the legitimate psychiatric diagnoses from years gone by include drapetomania, a mental disorder existing in slaves who ran away to freedom.  And hysteria, a very popular diagnosis in the Victorian era as a condition only women suffered, especially those who rebelled against male domination or who tended to “cause trouble.” 

 

Some believe the psychiatric communities are working to end the pursuit of individualism and creativity and site the lives and deaths of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway, Francis Farmer, and Judy Garland.  Others believe it is about social control, eugenics, and racism.  But unfortunately most believe their television and the marketing of the idea that we are all suffering under one banner of mental illness or another and luckily for us, there is a pill for that.  

 

I think all religions hold pieces of truth and perhaps the piece the Scientologists hold is the fact that psychiatry is a destructive, non-scientific practice with invented diseases, more of a tool to control the masses, than cure them.  History shows that torturous experiments were done in the name of psychiatry and ridiculous assumptions were called fact and those practices have not changed.  The only difference now is that the experiments are occurring with millions of people used as lab rats and the encouragement to claim our diagnosis and take the pharmaceuticals can be found throughout print and television media.

 

The fact of the matter is psychiatry has made mistakes before, fatal mistakes.  Sixty years ago there were six or seven mental disorders, now, according to the DSM, there are well over three hundred.  Are we, as a society, growing crazier as each year passes?  Who is in charge of defining what is abnormal or mentally disordered, versus, simply different?  As the long arms of psychiatry invade all facets of our lives, including our schools, social services, military, legislations, and churches, perhaps this is a question we all should be asking.  

 

 

 

As always, keep seeking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speech by Dr. Thomas Szasz

(Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York, Syracuse)

When the school authorities tell a mother that her son is sick and needs to be on drugs, how in the world is she to know that, that is simply a lie? How is she to know that what we now call ADHD is simply not a disease?

Now such a mother is not an expert in the history of psychiatry. She does not know that psychiatrists have, for hundreds of years, used diagnostic terms, so-called diagnostic terms, to stigmatize and control people.

I will give you a few dramatic examples. When black slaves in the South ran away to freedom it wasn’t that they wanted to be free; they suffered from a disease called drapetomania, from drapetes, runaway slave, and mania. I’m not making this up. This was a legitimate diagnosis, just like ADD is.Women, half of the population of mankind, of course, if they were foolish enough to rebel against domination by man, well, then they had a serious disease, called hysteria, which was due to their wandering womb.

Now none of those behaviors was ever a disease and of course, is not a disease. Nor is ADD a disease. No behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That’s not what diseases are. So it doesn’t matter how a child behaves. There is nothing to examine. If he is sick, then there must be some objective science to it, which can be diagnosed by physicians and objective tests. That’s why as soon as you go to a doctor, they take a lot of blood and take x-rays. They don’t want to hear how you behave.

When I went to medical school, sixty years ago, there were only a handful of mental diseases. I think there were no more than six or seven. Now there are more than 300. And new ones are “discovered” every day.

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment. Diseases are a malfunction of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain and so forth.

Typhoid fever is a disease. You all know that, you don’t question that. Spring fever is not a disease.

The task we set ourselves, to combat psychiatric coercion, is important. I think it’s important, you all think it’s important. Not enough people think it’s important. It’s a noble task in the pursuit of which we must, regardless of obstacles, persevere. Our conscience commands that we do no less.

Keep Seeking

Who's Crazy?

Who is the real judge of sanity? And should our government and pharmaceutical companies be making those decisions? Frankly, after many of the mental health professionals I have met, I wouldn’t trust them to make those kinds of decisions in my life. I always figured people pursue degrees in psychology because they are attempting to understand what is wrong in their own life and I’ve known many admit that that was indeed the reason they were interested in the subject.

You may ask how I’ve come in contact with so many mental health professionals and although I was taken to counseling after molestation as a teenager, most of my experiences with psychologists were personal relationships and friendships as an adult. And I have to say that most I have known are as unstable as they profess the rest of the world of being. I even went so far as to marry one once… a man who ran around naked in front of the kids, hung the head of our dead dog on a tree and wanted to shingle our house with tin cans, was also the same man who put on a suit every day and made determinations about other people’s state of mental health.

So when I see the American Psychological Association adding new diagnoses to their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) I grow uneasy. These new categories are not created through study or any real new mental disorders, these new diagnoses are decided by member vote. Mental health disorders such as Reading Disorder, Mathematics Disorder, Disorder of Written Expression, Social Phobia and Nicotine Dependence are now worthy of mental health treatment, you know, behavior modifying drugs. News With Views

So who really should judge who is sane and not sane? The way the APA is heading everyone will be declared as having one disorder or another and with the addition of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health it seems the goal is to have all Americans evaluated, starting in pre-school.

As a young child I had imaginary friends that I talked to and played with, I guess nowadays to the APA that might infer schizophrenia and a need for medication. As a teenager, I failed Algebra, Math Disorder, I’m definitely a nut job now. Is it not enough that hundreds of thousands of kids are now zombied out on Ritalin? Whereas kids used to be able to run, play, jump and explore for hours a day, we’ve convinced parents that having excess energy is a disorder, instead of changing the system, we are attempting to change people and what makes a person an individual.

What we are seeing is one more infringement of our rights, as the pharmaceutical companies seek more ways to sell their products. In an article out of Ireland, psychiatrists are beginning to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies, claiming that "the influence of the pharmaceutical industry is unhealthy". The Drugs Don’t Work

And what is the goal of all this intrusion? Well, to make us more productive workers, tax payers and consumers, of course. That is, after all, the most important thing, right? We are supposed to change our way of being, of thinking and of feeling, to fit in an easily counted bean drawer. People are different, Thank God, and we are supposed to different, we are not all supposed to be same, because then, what the hell would be the point? Although we may all have a different ideas of why we are here, I think most will agree, we’re not here simply to please our employers, authority figures or peers.

In a battery of medical tests, including a psychological evaluation of my son to determine the amount of brain damage caused by developing hydrocephalus at 9 years old, it was determined that I was an over-protective parent and he was depressed and a hyperchrondriac. I was seeking help because I knew something was wrong, I beat my head against a brick wall that would not move- the rules and diagnoses created by experts. Finally, with his body emaciated, experiencing daily fevers and then seizures, they decided to take a second look and found he had been suffering from a fungal infection of the central nervous system for months, if not years. My instincts had been right, the symtoms he complained of were real and after innumerable surgeries, months of recovery and two years of home school, he was ready to go back to school, but not one expert apologized. And I’m sure the records were never changed, to them I’m still over-protective and he’s a depressed hyperchrondriac.

If I had of listened to the experts, I would have ignored my instincts and most assuredly lived to regret it, but by standing up and challenging them, I gained a label of mental instability. So I learned that what many in the world consider normal and sane, ie., listening to the experts over our own feelings and instincts, I consider insane. So it would only make sense that some things I consider normal, the experts would probably call a mental imbalance, so who’s right? And who decides? The government? Pharmaceutical companies? The APA? Or the individual?

Yes, I recognize that there are folks out there that are actually mentally imbalanced, but do we have to screen the whole nation? Especially considering how creative the APA is in naming disorders, we will all fall in one category or another. From mood disorders to male erectile disorder to religious or spiritual problems to relational disorders to pain disorders to anxiety, stuttering and sleeping problems, we can all find a home in the DSM. And a drug to go along with it.