DSM-IV used in war on innovators and dissenters

[alrick888]

The New Malleus Maleficarum: The DSM Reconsidered
- by Paul and Phillip Collins ©, May 27th, 2005

In 1486, the dominant ecclesiastical authority published The Malleus
Maleficarum (translated: The Witch Hammer). Written by two Dominican
Priests, this infamous text claimed to be an authoritative guidebook that
could be used to identify practitioners of witchcraft. However, the book had
more to do with snuffing out the Church's competition than it did with
recognizing witches. At the time, herbal healers had more success curing
people with alternative methods than did the priests with highly stylized
rituals. Under the pretext of delivering the world from evil, innovation and
eccentricity were criminalized. The Malleus Maleficarum played no small role
in the process.
Likewise, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic Statistical
Manual (DSM) has served a similar function in the marginalizing and, on
occasion, incarceration of potential innovators. Now printed in four
editions, the DSM is "the billing bible for mental disorders which
commingles neurological diseases with psychiatric diagnoses" (O Meara, no
pagination). While The Malleus Maleficarum stigmatized certain modes of
thought and behavior as "witchcraft," the DSM stigmatizes them as
"disorders." In an interview with OMNI magazine, R.D. Laing expands on the
role of the DSM in marginalizing divergent paradigms:

In the later sixties it became apparent to the elite with the
responsibilities for "control of the population" that the old idea of
putting people in the proverbial bin and keeping them there for life -
warehousing people - wasn't cost-effective. The Reagan administration in
California was one of the first to realize this. So they had to rethink just
what is said to the general public and what is practiced by the executive in
control of mental health. The same problem prevails across Europe and the
Third World.

To see what is happening, look at the textbook or manual called DSM-III:
The Diagnostic Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders. Translated into
economic and political terms, mental disorder means undesired mental states
and behavior. The criteria for mental disorder in DSM-III include any
unusual perceptual experience, magical thinking, clairvoyance, telepathy,
sixth sense, sense of a person not actually present. You're allowed to sense
the presence of a dead relative for three weeks after their death. After
that it becomes a criterion of mental disorder to have those feelings.

. . . these are not exceptional examples out of DSM-III. The overall drift
is what contemporary modern psychiatry, epitomized by this DSM manual
translated into eighteen languages, is imposing all over the world - a
mandate to strip anyone of their civil liberties, of habeas corpus; and to
apply involuntary incarceration, chemicalisation of a person, electric
shocks, and non-injurious torture; to homogenize people who are out of line.
Presented as a medical operation, it is an undercover. (Liversidge 60-61)

Under the pretext of promoting mental health, the DSM has been instrumental
in the stifling of cognitive dissent. Not only is the DSM analogous to The
Malleus Maleficarum, but the respective historical periods of the two texts
are analogous as well. Just as the dominant ecclesiastical establishment
that promulgated The Malleus Maleficarum was premised on a form of
mysticism, namely spiritualism, so is the contemporary religio-cultural
milieu that adheres to the DSM. The new mysticism, however, is materialism.
Daniel Pouzzner explains how materialism qualifies as a form of mysticism:

“The materialist is the mystic who believes in existence without
consciousness, and preaches subordination to a vague and unaccountable
'Society' variously called 'public interest,' 'the people,' 'world opinion,'
'the common good,' etc. (Pouzzner, no pagination)”

This form of mysticism was introduced to the field of psychology by Wilhelm
Maximilian Wundt. When examined closer, the imposition of this metaphysical
doctrine upon psychology is most paradoxical. Psychology is derived from the
word psyche, which meant "soul" in the original Greek. Ironically, however,
Wundt would expunge the soul from the halls of psychological research and
enshrine the primacy of matter. Appropriately, this metaphysical doctrine
would underpin both communism and fascism. It also underpins the emergent
police state of today.

Understood from this vantage point, the DSM can be seen as merely the modern
incarnation of The Malleus Maleficarum. Just as the theocracy of 1486
employed The Malleus Maleficarum against religious "heretics" of the middle
ages, the DSM is employed by the dominant theocracy of materialism against
cognitive dissenters today.

The War on Innovators
Who are the new "heretics" against whom the DSM is employed? In The
Architecture of Modern Political Power, researcher Daniel Pouzzner presents
an interesting assertion. Pouzzner contends that one of the power elite's
greatest fears is chaos, more specifically the sort of chaos generated by
innovation:

Fear of chaos is not unique to the power brokers. It is much more common
than that. It is, in short, an important example of fear of the unknown - in
practical terms, it is fear of the unknowable. This fear is a classic
characteristic of small minds and of those of meager confidence. It is often
observed that investors tend to hate uncertainty: today, roughly half of the
value of US stock markets is held by individual investors, and 45 percent of
American households own stock directly or indirectly. Chaos of the type
introduced by innovators produces very serious uncertainty for these
investors, and they hate it. Thus, because of fear and short-term interest,
the bulk of mainstream first-worlders, being small-minded, tacitly supports
the neutralization, or even extermination, of uncooperative innovators. In
fact, the ordinary feel offended and disgraced by these innovators, and for
that the innovators are resented like no other group. The small-minded must
become larger-minded if they are to realize that they, too, are slated for
enslavement and capricious extermination - except that they have, as a rule,
already resigned themselves to obedient slavery in exchange for survival.
The power brokers are the total enemies of the innovators and the masses
alike, but the masses cower and bow, signalling their surrender. (Pouzzner,
no pagination)

Because innovation abruptly reconfigures the socioeconomic playing field,
the inventive personality is one of the greatest threats to the power of the
ruling class. Innovators can potentially destabilize the elite's inequitable
system of control and re-establish meritocracy. Innovators can introduce
genuine competition to the marketplace, thus exposing the oligarchs'
illusion of counterfeit capitalism and facilitating the emergence of a truly
free enterprise system. As practitioners of usury, the parasitic ruling
class cannot allow this to happen. The abatement of just such a shift in the
power balance is precisely the function for which the DSM was designed.
Pouzzner explains:

The cultural prejudice against chaos is evident in contemporary language
itself. Diseases of the mind are routinely referred to as ``disorders,''
whether or not they present themselves as, or are caused by, an imbalanced
abundance of randomness. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), historically
known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), is not a disorder at all, but
is in fact an additional level of ordered mental arrangement. In fact, most
DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association standard) mental illness involves
minds and brains that are more ordered than healthy minds and brains. Chaos
is healthy, and empowers consciousness. Order is morbid. An unusually
regular and orderly electrocardiogram (EKG) is an indication of nascent
illness; certain elements of chaos in heart rhythms are indications of good
health. Another term that propels the prejudice is ``unstable,'' often used
as a synonym for ``insane.'' This use of that term must be condemned with
equal haste. As Ilya Prigogine (Nobel laureate and Clubber of Rome)
observes, "over time, non-equilibrium processes generate complex structures
that cannot be achieved in an equilibrium situation." (Pouzzner, no
pagination)

The DSM is integral to civil commitment, one of the elite's legal
instruments for the criminalizing of potential innovators. Pouzzner
elaborates:

A more established institution in the same vein is civil commitment, which
operates like civil forfeiture, with a reduced burden of proof, only the
object seized by the state is an actual living human individual. Civil
commitment is an extraconstitutional mechanism by which private citizens
licensed by a committee of executive appointees cause the forcible
imprisonment of individuals charged with no crime, with subsequent judicial
review based principally on standards promulgated by the private American
Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (the "DSM"). (Pouzzner, no pagination)

In short, all those who deviate from the Establishment's arbitrary criteria
for mental health are incarcerated and assigned one of the APA's various
stigmas… "unstable," "disturbed," or just plain "criminally insane."
Typically, the recipients of such stigmas are the innovators who threaten
the oligarchs' dominance. Worse still, the elasticity of such stigmas is
increasing. According to Larry Akey, spokesman for the Health Insurance
Association of America, "New mental illnesses are being included in DSM 4
all the time" (Porteus, no pagination). For every potential innovator, there
is now a potential mental illness.

Observing the growing elasticity of qualifiers for mental illness, Kelly
Patricia O Meara states:

A child who doesn't like doing math homework may be diagnosed with the
mental illness developmental-arithmetic disorder (No.315.4). A child who
argues with her parents may be diagnosed as having a mental illness called
oppositional-defiant disorder (No.313.8). And people critical of the
legislation now snaking through Congress that purports to "end
discrimination against patients seeking treatment for mental illness" may
find themselves labeled as being in denial and diagnosed with the mental
illness called noncompliance-with-treatment disorder (No.15.81)

The psychiatric diagnoses suggested above are no joke. They represent a
few of the more than 350 "mental disorders" listed in the American
Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV), the billing bible for mental disorders which commingles
neurological diseases with psychiatric diagnoses. (O Meara, no pagination)

The list of so-called "mental disorders" continues to grow. Of course, if a
divergent mode of thought or behavior does not find a corresponding "mental
disorder" in the current DSM, the social engineers are always willing to
invent a new one. Such is the case with the purported "mental disorder" of
Attention Deficit Disorder. Already, this chimerical illness is drawing some
healthy skeptical criticism. Kelly Patricia O Meara elaborates:

Fred Baughman, a San Diego neurologist and leading critic of the alleged
mental illness called attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
tells Insight the question that must be answered before a mental illness can
qualify as a disease is this: "Where is the macroscopic, microscopic or
chemical abnormality in any living patient or at death/autopsy?" (O Meara,
no pagination)

Does ADHD even exist? The absence of any "macroscopic, microscopic or
chemical abnormality in any patient" certainly drives one more nail into the
coffin of this alleged "mental disorder." Yet, the imaginary illness remains
part of the litany of stigmas and more await invention. Worse still, the
standards for establishing mental illness have plunged into ambiguity.
Baughman reiterates:

"No one is justified in saying anyone is medically abnormal/diseased until
such time as they can adduce some such abnormality. This, by the way, would
apply to a person suspected of having diabetes or cancer." The fact is,
Baughman adds, "There is no psychiatric diagnosis for which any part of this
question can be answered in the affirmative. In other words: no abnormality;
no disease. There is no confirmation of abnormality in the brain in life or
at autopsy for any of the psychiatric diagnoses. And they [in the
psychiatric community] don't say this because it's part of the propaganda
campaign to make patients out of normal people. The findings at autopsy
would be very specific and would reveal whether it is a diseased brain and,
if so, which disease it is. There is no proof in life or at autopsy of any
of the alleged psychiatric mental illnesses, including schizophrenia,
psychosis, depression, OCD or ADHD." (O Meara, no pagination)