Psychiatry

            People close their eyes to great evil.  If you asked the average German during the Nazi Holocaust if he thought it was a good idea to exterminate Jews, he would ask what the hell you were talking about.  Nobody would do anything like that – even though the evidence was all around them.

            The same was true of the Spanish Inquisition.  If you tried to say that the Grand Inquisitors were monsters, that they were committing horrendous crimes in the name of saving men’s souls, they would say that the Inquisitors were basically good men, that heresy was a big problem, that some of the Inquisitors were perhaps overzealous, but all in all they were good men doing what they thought was right.  If you persisted in your complaints, there would be a very good chance that you would find yourself facing an Inquisitor in his professional capacity.

            The same is true of the benevolent field of psychiatry.  These men are murderers.  They commit atrocities every bit as bad as those committed by the Inquisition, if perhaps a bit more antiseptic.  Thousands die every year due to the well-meaning ministrations of psychiatry.  Tens of thousands are subjected to the brutal horrors of electric shock and lobotomy.  Millions have had their lives warped by mind-altering drugs administered by, recommended by, or invented by psychiatrists.  On the basis of sheer numbers, the atrocities committed by (or ultimately caused by) psychiatrists exceed many times those committed by any ogres of the past, religious or political.

            And yet, what is your reaction to my words?  Do you think I’m overstating the case?  Do you think that psychiatrists as a whole are well-meaning men and women?  Do you think that my position is, well, a little bit unorthodox, a little bit – dare I say it –  crazy?

            Look at what these men and women do.  Have you ever witnessed an electric shock operation?  What kind of monster could administer such a treatment, with the patient writhing on the table, and call it beneficial?

            What kind of men and woman would cut up people’s brains with no clear physical evidence that anything is wrong with that brain?

            What kind of raving psychotics would diagnose mental illness in a 6 month old baby and give them drugs that have never been approved for use on children?

            The Grand Inquisitor burned the heretic at the stake or broke his body on the rack or flayed the skin off his body to get him to change his point of view.  The psychiatrist fries the patient’s brain with electric shock or cuts it up with lobotomy or strings it out on drugs to get him to face reality.

            There is no difference.

            Why is it so easy to see the former as brutal, malicious, barbaric, but not the latter?  It is because people cannot face great evil.

            Right here, right now, the Inquisition is raging in our world.  Millions of lives are being maimed by these oh so efficient and oh so caring men.

            And even now, after you have read this, it is entirely possible that you are pondering this thought:  “This guy Wright is a little bit nuts.  He ought to see a psychiatrist.”