Fascism, Psychiatry & (Hey, That's Enough Right There!)

Norah Vincent, who was obviously a nutter (look at this "Palestinians are scum" screed from over seven yrs. ago; she's really ahead of her time) some yrs. ago when she was at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (NB: They're in favor of "democracies," that is, Europe [sort of], Israel, & the "English speaking world." Not necessarily in favor of the defense of the more abstract "democracy.") finally wised up & decided to check into the Acorn Academy to get her shit together. Or to obtain material for her new book, reviewed here by one of the Nazi pill-pushers who help make psychiatry what it is today: nothing. Vince's conclusion, & the shrink/reviewer's take thereon?

Much ink has been spilled over the question of resistance to change in psychotherapy, and most people are conflicted, whether consciously or unconsciously, about giving up their neuroses. But that is about internal conflict and unconscious motivation, not, as Vincent would have it, "because people — patients — are the way they are, often lazy, stubbornly self-indulgent, passive, and irresponsible." The therapeutic life lesson of her experience at the Sanctum is individual responsibility and self-discipline: "You want to be happy? You want to be well? Then put your boots on."

Not in a fucking society like this one. Not in a world where

Mental illness, it was argued, was not a medical disturbance like physical illness but a social construction that enabled society to control deviant behavior by labeling it as pathology and sequestering it.

No sane person could be anywhere near "happy" (another social construct) in a world w/ people like Norah Vincent in it. Although there is some delusional behavior that we might indeed want to "sequester."

It truly boggled the mind that any people, no matter what their cause or sufferings, could rejoice openly and unashamedly in the deaths of thousands of innocents. It was grotesque, and demonstrative of a people whose common creed is kill or be killed, and whose disrespect for human life not their own was savagely apparent. This was beyond beastly. No animal stoops so low as to fete the death of his foe.

Is she referring to Israelis or Palestinians? Or AmeriKKKans? (Remember body counts?) No other mammal holds its fellow mammals captive in their own land, either.

It is also time for the Bush administration to stop bending over backward to accommodate the Palestinians, and to stop allowing them to perpetuate the image of themselves as equal partners in the peace process. They are not. And they won't be until every member of Hamas is incarcerated for life, not just passed through the revolving prison door for the eyes of Western cameras. The United States has been complicit in the Palestinian fraud, Clinton because he was more interested in his legacy than the realities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Bush because he has tolerated Arafat's Janus-faced mendacity with nauseating goodwill, and has been unwilling even to propose extending the war on terror to the next logical locale: the West Bank. Iraq is tertiary. We must set our sights on the nearer culprits.

Yow. "Culprits" in what, exactly? Celebrating what they saw as a victory? We all remember V-J Day (in 1945, kids, end of WWII) when the nation, in its moment of victory, somberly considered the unfortunate deaths of the brave but mis-guided enemy soldiers, & the deaths of many innocent enemy civilians. What a downer that was! No amount of talking therapy is going to straighten Ms. Vincent out. We do hope she's happy now that the move to incarcerate (or kill) every member of Hamas has finally gotten underway. Too bad about all that wasted time in Iraq though. Now where's that strait-jacket? I'm off my meds again.