She needs to be held accountable for the deliberate murder of a 5 year old child.
I think we need to stop worrying about why these people murder other people and just execute them. God knows the reason, we can just deal with the deed.
I like this guy Szasz!
I have to admit that after at least three decades of reading Szasz and all sorts of anti-psychiatric literature (and libertarian literature as well) I still can't put a dent in Szasz' arguments. He will, I believe, be vindicated thoroughly by history. Most of what they call psychiatry nowadays is a clever sham, a new disguise for old witchcraft.
Psychologically, I firmly believe we have advanced hardly at all since the days our ancestors were swinging in trees. Only styles change, and psychiatry is a style.
Tough. Give her the needle.
Great article. Thanks.
I thought they had determined that migraine attacks are associated with distention of blood vessels in the brain, a physical condition. Certainly some of the treatments work by trying to reverse this condition.
I cant help but wonder if the killer had been black and had killed a white child would the same pschychiatrist had said the killer wasnt insane.
I do believe this person's hatred of the black race transcends plain bigotry and goes into the realm of the insane.
However having said that, its still no reason not to execute her. She killed a 5 year old Human Being in cold blood and was proud of it. How different is she than a mad dog. Put it to sleep. Take out the brain examine it for rabies and then burn it.
My kind of headshrinker!
Police, criminals, jails, hospitals, patients, doctors, judges, legislators, all part of the same system, the same bolt of fabric. We need to talk about this "liberty" idea.
Most "insanity" is just plain maliciousness and misplaced priorities.
I think there is real insanity.
But that is manifested in an inability to function, not crime and mayhem.
I would agree with Szasz that something is seriously wrong with the mental health profession, psychiatrists in particular. I wouldn't trust any of their organizations at all. I am also not a fan of mental institutions, having been in one, I found the experience to be totally unhelpful and it was sad seeing the other people there, who seemed more imprisoned than helped.
However, even if there were no psychiatrists at all, there would be people (like myself) whose brains do not function correctly and thus mood, behavior, vision, etc. are all effected. The medications, designed to treat chemical (read: physical) abnormalities in the brain produce tangible results. SOMETHING real and physical is going on.
The brain controls everything about you, including what you see, hear and how you interpret experiences. If there is any malfunction, it can effect what you actually see and hear (hallucinations, voices, etc.), and you really believe that you see and hear these things. I have known schizophrenics (most of whom are not violent). These are not people who would be normal if not for the pesky psychiatrists.
I can accept that there is a lot we don't know about the human brain, unfortunately, Stasz seems to think we know enough to say that people like me are not really as diseased as a person with Parkinson's or diabetes.
Most of the mental illness being treated (depression, anxiety, OCD etc) are the end results of the so called Axis II disorders which are effectively untreatable by psychiatry. The exception are the ever growing number of people who are victims of psychiatric medicine.
I fished with a psychiatrist for the last half of the week at a club whom I didn't know was a psychiatrist until he started talking. Some of the horror stories he had to tell were unbelievable. The worst was a teenage girl who came to him on SEVEN different medicines! A total zombie. When he finished with her she was on a placebo dose of Norpramine and living a normal life. It confirmed most of what I saw from casual observation after 20 years in AA.
ping to self....
Psychiatry/-ology are PSEUDOSCIENCES.
All murderers should be executed, and their "mental state" should be irrelevant.
Everyone is personally responsible for their actions, PERIOD.
"Mental disorder" is a crock and headshrinkers are the enablers of criminal filth and weakling weenies who can't get their own acts together.
"Anyone who'd go to a psychiatrist needs to have their head examined."
-Groucho Marx
(The ONLY Marxist theory I agree with, hehehe.!)
That's just crazy.
"Thomas Szasz (a psychiatrist) says "... smoking, previously considered a habit, had recently been classified as a mental disorder."
If he's correct, maybe we smokers fall under the Americans With Disabiities Act and can therefore light up wherever we want. Hell, maybe we can even sue somebody!
This thread is sad. As these types of threads tend to be.
It's always fun for law and order self-righteous types to proclaim, "Ah Ha, I knew it all along, there is no mental illness, just bad character."
I read lines like, "Everybody knows right from wrong, the "insane" just choose to do the wrong thing!"
An insane person may live in a world where all men with red hair are aliens intent on destroying the earth. To their mind, there is all kinds of evidence to establish this fact. In such a reality, the RIGHT thing to do is save humanity and the earth and KILL the evil aliens. Of course, in the real world, all this person is doing is murdering innocent men with red hair.
No amount of "discipline" and moral hand-wringing is going to convince this person that reality isn't real. It is extremely difficult for someone to prove legal insanity in a court of law and I am not arguing that it should be easier.
I have bipolar disorder. I'm not legally insane. However, my mind frequently creates a world in which I am the worst, most absolutely evil person to ever live. My very existence causes pain and suffering, and such an evil person really needs to be wiped out. There is no hope for such a pathetic person, how can there be? There is no hole to swallow me up. I frequently believe that the best way to save good people (especially my family) from me is for me to die. When I'm in a deep depression, this seems very rational. If this were real, it would make sense. But the way I see the world is not at all how it really is, and it is very, very hard for me to understand this. That I can't trust my own mind.
I've been this way since I was five years old.
Is my character bad? I'm sure there are people who believe that, when they see that I don't work and sometimes just lie awake in bed all night and all day. Anything negative people have to say about me I take on as real. It's just another reason for me to die.
The movie "A Beautiful Mind" contains a lot of scenes trying to demonstrate how for a person with severe mental illness, REALITY isn't REAL. Imagine someone telling you that you never had the job you thought you worked at for years and you didn't have a roommate in college when you can recall a thousand memories of him.
I take comfort in my strong faith that God can see the heart, and he knows just how imperfect we are, and that includes our brains.