Posted on 05/09/2016 4:08:09 PM PDT by mainestategop
In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.
(Excerpt) Read more at madinamerica.com ...
SNIP
Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world—a diagnosable one.
SNIP
Many anti-authoritarians who earlier in their lives were diagnosed with mental illness tell me that once they were labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis, they got caught in a dilemma. Authoritarians, by definition, demand unquestioning obedience, and so any resistance to their diagnosis and treatment created enormous anxiety for authoritarian mental health professionals; and professionals, feeling out of control, labeled them “noncompliant with treatment,” increased the severity of their diagnosis, and jacked up their medications. This was enraging for these anti-authoritarians, sometimes so much so that they reacted in ways that made them appear even more frightening to their families.
“...Authoritarians, by definition, demand unquestioning obedience...”
Well... THAT ain’t gonna happen, for sure...
Well, the mentally ill won’t walk silently to the showers this time.
ADHD = loud, Autism Spectrum = quiet.
Both disobedient.
State must medicate!
Damn straight. There will be a serious price paid for taking us out of the herd.
I like the gummint, and you don’t SO YOU ARE SICK..!
And you shall soon be taken away.
Sort of like that GE liberal arts class you had to take in college, with the insanely liberal prof, and you got downgraded if it seemed you didn’t have the same assumptions.
If an authoritarian with bad political arguments and a questionable ideological foundation can transform a political disagreement into a medical one, then (s)he can avoid the troublesome and frightening task of engaging in a logic-centered argument.
There is a place where this was a leading strategy —the Soviet Union.
And we are FAST headed there.
Didn’t agree with the Nomenklatura..? Kay, well then the Zampolit sent you to Doctors, who then carted you off to a Sanitorium for “treatment”.
Do you really think this is describing conservatives, or liberals? Because front-line libs are definitely considered “anti-authority”. At least until they get the power for themselves.
The virtue of independence is one's acceptance of the responsibility of forming one's own judgments and of acting in accordance with the conclusions of one's own mind. The mind is an attribute of the individual and no person can think for another. But to be oppositional and reject authority for no objectively good reason, just because the other person is an authority and they feel like it is subjectivistic egoism and is actually a form dependence on others.
Liberals control the establishment, language, legal system, and the dialog. Therefore this weapon will primarily be brandished against conservatives who disagree with them. Gun ownership will then be very difficult.
What an excellent point..! Yet I still have to disagree. Thirty or more years ago I think some libs were genuinely anti-authority, yet more and more when I cite to liberal others around me stories from Drudge or non-annointed journalists, something interesting happens:
I'm made to feel like I'm indulging in something I shouldn't --that I should wait until I hear what I should think by the gummint. THAT, they say, is proper. It's what a resonsible person does, they say.
They are, in a word, PLIANT.
The word comes from the French PLIER, "to FOLD".
I have steered clear of any involvement with ‘Mental Health’ professionals when I learned that;
MD Psychiatrists, the highest level of such, have to undergo psychoanalysis themselves.
The highest order of brainwashing is required before you can certify that somebody else is sufficiently brainwashed.
Sorry, but I and my savior will be responsible for my soul (psyche).
See Thomas Szasz MD’s work, The Myth of Mental Illness. The late Szasz was originally from Russia, and saw dissidents diagnosed as “mentally ill” for criticizing the central government.
Today’s “mental health” counsellors may be well intentioned, but they do love to check boxes for any personality differences. These will be deemed a mild “disorder.” And justify their continued jobs.
This “mental illness explosion” in turn gives Obamacare officials an avenue to confiscate Americans’ guns.
Steer clear of well meaning psychologists who must ‘diagnose’ you to justify their salaries, read Szasz, he’s brilliant.
One of the most interesting threads I have read on FR - well done!
The comments posted were excellent also...
I generally agree and laugh when libs complain about somehow being under the thumb of some ficticious conservative NAZI government, when clearly gov is indeed more fascist for THEIR side.
But still, look at the bratty whiny VIOLENT spoiled rotten “protestors” - they are libs. Still, after all these years from hippie-dom. THEY are the ones who compulsively “protest” in the most vile ways.
Same mentality of all libtards everywhere.
I am tolerant of everyone except those I decide are intolerant. That is today’s liberal.
You have to be made to celebrate and encourage the very things you disagree with. And I will get govt to force you to,
That is todays liberalism.
Yes, they are, and they do. Yet, MEH..! Are they admonishing The System for more freedom of speech?
Not really, and when they do, they mean something new and special: What they really mean is when they shout you down and they are chastized for it (per UM Amhersts's Trigglypoof), then THAT is limitation on THEIR free-speech, and THAT IS VERY BAD:
They are very deeply unconcerned with the free-speech of others, or perhaps ANY of the rights of others. They view rights as a zero-sum game, much like wealth. "Your getting less free speech means me getting more, and more is good.." That's a short step from "Trump getting taxed more means me getting more stuff.."
They sometimes seem a little surprised by your need for free speech, it's a bit esoteric, like The Nature of the Soul, maybe, or The Sound of One Hand Clapping, or more simply maybe like the Loch Ness Monster.
More and more what they REALLY want is to terrorize people unlike them (restrooms), and more commonly, GET STUFF (Black Lives Matter).
How rebellious is it, really, to simply want more STUFF...?
That's deeeeeeply unremarkable and not rebel-like.
How true..!
Yes, I'll extravagantly tolerate different outward appearances, just AS LONG AS EVERYONE THINKS *EXACTLY* LIKE ME..!
Then I'll get really mad and violent.
The liberal is deeply comfortable with bureaucracy, and in order to hands-on manage a huge system, dealing with individuals is complex. Even people married for 30 years know the enormity of that task just with a single person, so what of managing 330 MILLION of them..?
They ONLY have time to deal with appearances, which are more granular.
So they need to agglomerate them into ethnic groups --they're familiar with that.
From 330 million you can get down to 10 or just 5, and then the bureaucrat building a Perfect World feels he can handle that and FINALLY make socialism work..!!
Whew..!
And that's when, clickety-clack, you're stacked into a cattle-car headed to the countryside "to meet your loving, waiting relatives".
I understand the confusion on this issue. I have given it much thought, and have a different perspective:
Studies are usually done by such academics (pro-authoritarian, as long as it is centralized, coercive authority); overwhelmingly, those academics are liberal. More than one supposedly unbiased study has been touted in recent years purportedly proving that conservatives are more fearful and less educated than the vaunted liberals. They, of course, define which fears are applicable, and equate the holding of degrees with education (they are not the same thing); and who controls the institutions of degree dissemination? Liberals. It is a self-reinforcing system.
Such things are thus done with an inherent leftist bias going in. If the right wing is so compulsively afraid and anti-authoritarian, then why is the military so overwhelmingly more conservative than the general populace (which is proven by the Democrat/Federal attempts to disenfranchise their vote)? Does not such service require both courage in response to fear, and obedience to authority? The real question then is: What does each side fear, and what does each side obey.
Leftists are, ultimately, always totalitarianists at heart; thus they love centralized, absolute authority, especially when they are in power. They are anti-authoritarian only when they perceive that authority to be fostering individual freedom, because that means people can disagree with them, and that people (meaning themselves) can be held accountable for their own behavior without excuse.
Conservatives, historically, are law-and-order types, and become anti-authoritarian only when they perceive authority to be violating individual freedom. Individual freedom requires individual responsibility, not governmental coercion.
Leftists lack self control (i.e., they are libertines); they hate and fear self control. They want mass control, with them calling the shots. They hate personal accountability, which is why they hate capital punishment. They love external control.
Rightists choose self control; they hate and fear governmental coercion. They want individual control, with themselves calling the shots, within the bounds of the law. They love internal control (i.e., self mastery: ask any Special Forces expert).
A perfect example is welfare versus charity: Leftists want the government to confiscate money and redistribute it. Rightists want the government to leave them alone so that they can freely choose to donate to the charities of their choice. (Charities historically work very well; that’s why the federal government hates them and seeks to replace them).
When studies, despite the inbuilt bias, show results that leftists hate, they twist the results to fit their narrative. An example of this is the one that showed that conservatives actually know more hard science than so-called liberals (read: communists). I read leftists trying to twist that into saying that conservatives just know static facts, but liberals know the dynamic meaning behind the science: pure propaganda.
Leftists are far more afraid generally than conservatives; all one has consider is the issue of gun control: Many leftists are literally afraid to be in the same room as a gun - as though (like an SUV, I guess) it will spontaneously jump up and shoot them.
Compare Bowe Bergdahl, cowardly anti-authoritarian leftist deserter (and thus a military outlier) with sniper Chris Kyle, the courageous sniper who used deadly effect to save American soldiers and Iraqi civilians (and, at times, risked his own life in the process).
Everyone should obey those in authority, especially the police. You’d have to be crazy not to.
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