Note: This started as a response to a question on Formspring. If it's more incoherent than usual, that might be why.
I've been told many times that I have mental problems, and I should see a doctor.
First, the doctors... I've seen doctors. A lot of doctors. None of them have helped my life, and some have made things worse. Some said that my "mental problems" come from the fact that I won't follow people who can't lead, and tried to convince me to be led off a cliff; some said that they come from having too much free time, and tried to convince me to constantly distract myself with meaningless timewasters; and some said that they come because I think too much, and tried to get me on medication to make me stop thinking, or even caring about my life.
Hell, I was in special ed for seven years. That was supposed to help. It did, but not in the way they intended; instead of teaching me that I should keep my head down, accept whatever is handed to me, and never try for anything better, it taught me that authority doesn't always know best, and that the worst kind of authority is the kind that thinks it does. An important lesson in philosophy, but a horrible lesson in the real world... and I think it says a lot that the two are so opposed.
Now on to the mental disorders. What mental disorders do I exhibit signs of? First, what is a mental disorder? The National Library of Medicine defines the term as "psychiatric illness or diseases manifested by breakdowns in the adaptational process expressed primarily as abnormalities of thought, feeling, and behavior producing either distress or impairment of function." Or, to put it more simply: you have one if you're not acting on consensus reality or consensus values.
Consider this thought experiment: A baby is born in a rather barbaric country. The most obvious sign of its barbarism is its practice of ritually applying a chemical that causes temporary blindness to the eyes of its citizens, beginning in early childhood. But, somehow (genetic resistance, whatever), this particular baby escapes the effects of the chemical. He (English is an Indo-European language; therefore, the default gender is masculine. Deal with it. If you don't like this explanation, assume I'm borrowing it from Latin, just like the grammarians who constructed most of the rules of modern written English did to get their rules.) doesn't realize at first that he is any different from everyone else, but as time passes, he starts noticing problems that he considers obvious, but when he points them out to others, they ridicule him, and call him insane. He is sent to the town shaman, who tries to explain that his "sight" is an illusion and should be ignored for the good of himself and others; no matter how many times he explains to the shaman how much better off people would be if they could see, or at least listen to the people who can, the shaman refuses to even consider his ideas. He is then sent to another shaman, who forces him to perform tasks designed to help people with a bad sense of touch, or no skill with a cane, and beats his head against a wall, hoping that he can beat this "sight" out of him, or at least shut him up. When this fails, he is sent to a third shaman, who assumes that this sight of his must be causing him pain, and offers him medicine to make his eyes deteriorate, but he refuses, saying that the only thing that has caused him pain is others' inability to recognize that his 'condition' is not harmful, and that he prefers his sight, even with the abuse that he takes for it, to no abuse and no sight. This shaman throws up his hands, announces that he is a hopeless case, and sends him on to a fourth shaman, who pronounces him unfit for society. He then attempts to get an education, but his teachers and fellow students expect him to accept premises that he can see are false. They do not even recognize these as premises; they see them as irrefutable truths, refuse to even accept the possibility that they may not be right, and assume that anyone who does is an enemy of the school, the students, and even the state itself. He attempts to explain that, if they would allow themselves to see, they could see these things for themselves, but they consider the concept of sight to be so evil that he is silenced and, eventually, driven out.
Who is insane: the man, or the society he lives in? By the NLM's definition, the man is insane, because he doesn't act on the consensus reality and values of his society; however, it is clear that the consensus reality is incomplete (no sight) the consensus values are defective (any deviation is evil, even if it patches some of the holes in the consensus reality), and these problems cause distress to (they fall into holes that they can't see), and impaired function in (their philosophy and society rest on illogical and false assumptions) the members of society.
Has this previously great society collapsed to the point where "thinking a lot" constitutes a mental problem? If so, then yes, I'll admit that I have one. But I'll take that over willful ignorance, just like the seeing man chose to keep his sight.
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It certainly has collapsed to that level, an example being the reaction Randall got from the TSA blog after his airport sec comic. Pretty much, they've decided to make this respectable by creating studies that show that there is a strong correlation between intelligence and so called mental disorders...
ReplyDeleteThe eyesight is a wonderful metaphor. May I possibly use it?
ReplyDeleteThat's an excellent metaphor.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the first comment: well, it is true that there is a correlation between intelligence and actual mental disorders (or at least behaviors associated with such disorders) that do not come from seeing something other than "approved reality" (inability to concentrate [ADHD], pathological fixation on irrelevant physical matters for illogical reasons [OCD], etc.) However, I think it still depends on where you look. Certainly, in a lot of places, "Why?" and "How?" are the ultimate evils. But I don't think everywhere.
ReplyDeleteanon1: That's my point. Intelligence is seen as a bad thing, and its effects are seen as mental disorders. It's not that they're fudging data (as far as I know; they could be doing that too); they're fudging definitions. Any deviation from the norm is a disorder, whether or not it's actually negative. And this average-as-ideal thing is even contained in the definition of "mental disorder".
ReplyDeleteI guess we haven't progressed much from the level of the Greeks who killed Socrates. We don't kill them these days, at least; we just fuck them up and fuck them over.
anon2: Go ahead. I think I stole it from somewhere, but damned if I know where.
Sam: Wasn't there a study that showed the symptoms of ADHD are worse when people with it are forced to concentrate on something they don't like doing than when they're doing something that they're actually interested in?
yes to that last part, and I have gotten yelled at by everyone I know for that
ReplyDeleteALL MUSICIANS ARE CHARITY CASES!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of intelligent people who aren't made to put up with all this crap, though.
ReplyDeleteTHEY VOTE TORY!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteSo are you saying all mental disorders are just people being a little different? Because I can tell you for certain there are many people, and many disorders that are truth.
ReplyDelete"None of them have helped my life, and some have made things worse."
ReplyDeleteYou know, some of the best doctors are the kinds that actually recommend against prescribing meds to people who don't need them.
I speak as someone who has also seen a lot of doctors, and whose father eventually became a psychotherapist (thankfully one of the better ones I will mention below).
ReplyDeleteWhat you have said, especially with the terrifically eloquent vision-story, is an excellent analogy for psychiatric medicine and psychotherapy executed wrongly (which, to be fair, is almost always how they are executed).
In defense of these fields, however, I have encountered a number of people (some of whom are allowed to prescribe drugs, others not) who use a functioning definition of "mental disorder" that is fundamentally different from the NLM definition and differs significantly from the DSM definition (which is more relevant here).
For these people, a mental disorder can only be said to be present when it is causing the "patient" distress, or not allowing them to function /as they would themselves like to/.
A vestige of this definition can be found in the NLM one, as "...producing either distress or impairment of function".
Under this paradigm, if a patient ("client" is preferred) comes in to a therapist and says "I see giant spiders with human faces all over the walls, but they don't bother me; what bothers me is my mother's disregard for my independence as a person" or whatever, then the therapist doesn't bother diagnosing the client with some sort of delusion-related mental illness because there is no need to, because the client is fine with it. They'll probably end up talking about how the client can talk to the mother and work on their relationship.
Under the shaman analogy, I suppose these psych(otherapists/iatrists/ologists) would be a shaman that says to the Seeing Man "Gee, it sucks that everyone refuses to even listen to you, that must be tough; let's see if we can figure out an easier way for you to talk to them about this stuff."
I realize that these people are all too rare, but I am fairly sure that gestalt therapy like this is becoming more popular every year.
Apologies for the rambling post.
Right, I have no problem with that sort of thing. But, as you said, that's almost never how it's done. I think people like the quack I saw who claimed that Socrates was severely mentally retarded are far more common, unfortunately. Although I think (or at least hope) that he was worse than most of them.
ReplyDelete