Here's more info about another nonexistent disease manufactured by the
psychs:
SCHIZOPHRENIA
A Nonexistent Disease
by Lawrence Stevens, J.D.
The word "schizophrenia" has a scientific sound that seems to give it
inherent credibility and a charisma that seems to dazzle people. In
his book Molecules of the Mind - The Brave New Science of Molecular
Psychology, University of Maryland journalism professor Jon Franklin
calls schizophrenia and depression "the two classic forms of mental
illness" (Dell Publishing Co., 1987, p. 119). According to the cover
article in the July 6, 1992 Time magazine, schizophrenia is the "most
devilish of mental illnesses" (p. 53). This Time magazine article says
"fully a quarter of the nation's hospital beds are occupied by
schizophrenia patients" (p. 55). Books and articles like these and the
facts to which they refer (such as a quarter of hospital beds being
occupied by so-called schizophrenics) delude most people into believing
there really is a disease called schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is one
of the great myths of our time.
In his book Schizophrenia - The Sacred Symbol of
Psychiatry, psychiatry professor Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., says "There is,
in short, no such thing as schizophrenia" (Syracuse University Press,
1988, p. 191). In the Epilogue of their book Schizophrenia - Medical
Diagnosis or Moral Verdict?, Theodore R. Sarbin, Ph.D., a psychology
professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who spent three
years working in mental hospitals, and James C. Mancuso, Ph.D., a
psychology professor at the State University of New York at Albany,
say: "We have come to the end of our journey. Among other things, we
have tried to establish that the schizophrenia model of unwanted
conduct lacks credibility. The analysis directs us ineluctably to the
conclusion that schizophrenia is a myth" (Pergamon Press, 1980, p.
221). In his book Against Therapy, published in 1988, Jeffrey Masson,
Ph.D., a psychoanalyst, says "There is a heightened awareness of the
dangers inherent in labeling somebody with a disease category like
schizophrenia, and many people are beginning to realize that there is
no such entity" (Atheneum, p. 2). Rather than being a bona-fide
disease, so-called schizophrenia is a nonspecific category which
includes almost everything a human being can do, think, or feel that is
greatly disliked by other people or by the so-called schizophrenics
themselves. There are few so-called mental illnesses that have not at
one time or another been called schizophrenia. Because schizophrenia
is a term that covers just about everything a person can think or do
which people greatly dislike, it is hard to define objectively.
Typically, definitions of schizophrenia are vague or inconsistent with
each other. For example, when I asked a physician who was the
Assistant Superintendent of a state mental hospital to define the term
schizophrenia for me, he with all seriousness replied "split
personality - that's the most popular definition." In contrast, a
pamphlet published by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill titled
"What Is Schizophrenia?" says "Schizophrenia is not a split
personality". In her book Schiz-o-phre-nia: Straight Talk for Family
and Friends, published in 1985, Maryellen Walsh says "Schizophrenia is
one of the most misunderstood diseases on the planet. Most people
think that it means having a split personality. Most people are wrong.
Schizophrenia is not a splitting of the personality into multiple
parts" (Warner Books, p. 41). The American Psychiatric Association's
(APA's) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second
Edition), also known as DSM-II, published in 1968, defined
schizophrenia as "characteristic disturbances of thinking, mood, or
behavior" (p. 33). A difficulty with such a definition is it is so
broad just about anything people dislike or consider abnormal, i.e.,
any so-called mental illness, can fit within it. In the Foreword to
DSM-II, Ernest M. Gruenberg, M.D., D.P.H., Chairman of the American
Psychiatric Association's Committee on Nomenclature, said: "Consider,
for example, the mental disorder labeled in the Manual as
'schizophrenia,' ... Even if it had tried, the Committee could not
establish agreement about what this disorder is" (p. ix). The third
edition of the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, published in 1980, commonly called DSM-III, was also quite
candid about the vagueness of the term. It said: "The limits of the
concept of Schizophrenia are unclear" (p. 181). The revision published
in 1987, DSM-III-R, contains a similar statement: "It should be noted
that no single feature is invariably present or seen only in
Schizophrenia" (p. 188). DSM-III-R also says this about a related
diagnosis, Schizoaffective Disorder: "The term Schizoaffective Disorder
has been used in many different ways since it was first introduced as a
subtype of Schizophrenia, and represents one of the most confusing and
controversial concepts in psychiatric nosology" (p. 208).
Particularly noteworthy in today's prevailing intellectual
climate in which mental illness is considered to have biological or
chemical causes is what DSM-III-R, says about such physical causes of
this catch-all concept of schizophrenia: It says a diagnosis of
schizophrenia "is made only when it cannot be established that an
organic factor initiated and maintained the disturbance" (p. 187).
Underscoring this definition of "schizophrenia" as non-biological is
the 1987 edition of The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, which
says a (so-called) diagnosis of schizophrenia is made only when the
behavior in question is "not due to organic mental disorder" (p. 1532).
Contrast this with a statement by psychiatrist E. Fuller
Torrey, M.D., in his book Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual,
published in 1988. He says "Schizophrenia is a brain disease, now
definitely known to be such" (Harper & Row, p. 5). Of course, if
schizophrenia is a brain disease, then it is organic. However, the
official definition of schizophrenia maintained and published by the
American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders for many years specifically excluded
organically caused conditions from the definition of schizophrenia.
Not until the publication of DSM-IV in 1994 was the exclusion for
biologically caused conditions removed from the definition of
schizophrenia. In Surviving Schizophrenia, Dr. Torrey acknowledges
"the prevailing psychoanalytic and family interaction theories of
schizophrenia which were prevalent in American psychiatry" (p. 149)
which would seem to account for this.
In the November 10, 1988 issue of Nature, genetic
researcher Eric S. Lander of Harvard University and M.I.T. summarized
the situation this way: "The late US Supreme Court Justice Potter
Stewart declared in a celebrated obscenity case that, although he could
not rigorously define pornography, `I know it when I see it'.
Psychiatrists are in much the same position concerning the diagnosis of
schizophrenia. Some 80 years after the term was coined to describe a
devastating condition involving a mental split among the functions of
thought, emotion and behaviour, there remains no universally accepted
definition of schizophrenia" (p. 105).
According to Dr. Torrey in his book Surviving
Schizophrenia, so-called schizophrenia includes several widely
divergent personality types. Included among them are paranoid
schizophrenics, who have "delusions and/or hallucinations" that are
either "persecutory" or "grandiose"; hebephrenic schizophrenics, in
whom "well-developed delusions are usually absent"; catatonic
schizophrenics who tend to be characterized by "posturing, rigidity,
stupor, and often mutism" or, in other words, sitting around in a
motionless, nonreactive state (in contrast to paranoid schizophrenics
who tend to be suspicious and jumpy); and simple schizophrenics, who
exhibit a "loss of interest and initiative" like the catatonic
schizophrenics (though not as severe) and unlike the paranoid
schizophrenics have an "absence of delusions or hallucinations" (p.
77). The 1968 edition of the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-II,
indicates a person who is very happy (experiences "pronounced elation")
may be defined as schizophrenic for this reason ("Schizophrenia,
schizo-affective type, excited") or very unhappy ("Schizophrenia,
schizo-affective type, depressed")(p. 35), and the 1987 edition,
DSM-III-R, indicates a person can be "diagnosed" as schizophrenic
because he displays neither happiness nor sadness ("no signs of
affective expression")(p. 189), which Dr. Torrey in his book calls
simple schizophrenia ("blunting of emotions")(p. 77). According to
psychiatry professor Jonas Robitscher, J.D., M.D., in his book The
Powers of Psychiatry, people who cycle back and forth between happiness
and sadness, the so-called manic-depressives or suffers of "bipolar
mood disorder", may also be called schizophrenic: "Many cases that are
diagnosed as schizophrenia in the United States would be diagnosed as
manic-depressive illness in England or Western Europe" (Houghton
Mifflin, 1980, p. 165.) So the supposed "symptoms" or defining
characteristics of "schizophrenia" are broad indeed, defining people as
having some kind of schizophrenia because they have delusions or do
not, hallucinate or do not, are jumpy or catatonic, are happy, sad, or
neither happy nor sad, or cycling back and forth between happiness and
sadness. Since no physical causes of "schizophrenia" have been found,
as we'll soon see, this "disease" can be defined only in terms of its
"symptoms", which as you can see are what might be called ubiquitous.
As attorney Bruce Ennis says in his book Prisoners of Psychiatry:
"schizophrenia is such an all-inclusive term and covers such a large
range of behavior that there are few people who could not, at one time
or another, be considered schizophrenic" (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc., 1972, p. 22). People who are obsessed with certain thoughts or
who feel compelled to perform certain behaviors, such as washing their
hands repeatedly, are usually considered to be suffering from a
separate psychiatric disease called "obsessive-compulsive disorder".
However, people with obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors have
also been called schizophrenic (e.g., by Dr. Torrey in his book
Surviving Schizophrenia, pp. 115-116).
In Surviving Schizophrenia, Dr. Torrey quite candidly
concedes the impossibility of defining what "schizophrenia" is. He
says: "The definitions of most diseases of mankind has been
accomplished. ... In almost all diseases there is something which can
be seen or measured, and this can be used to define the disease and
separate it from nondisease states. Not so with schizophrenia! To
date we have no single thing which can be measured and from which we
can then say: Yes, that is schizophrenia. Because of this, the
definition of the disease is a source of great confusion and debate"
(p. 73). What puzzles me is how to reconcile this statement of Dr.
Torrey's with another he makes in the same book, which I quoted above
and which appears more fully as follows: "Schizophrenia is a brain
disease, now definitely known to be such. It is a real scientific and
biological entity, as clearly as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and
cancer are scientific and biological entities" (p. 5). How can it be
known schizophrenia is a brain disease when we do not know what
schizophrenia is?
The truth is that the label schizophrenia, like the
labels pornography or mental illness, indicates disapproval of that to
which the label is applied and nothing more. Like "mental illness" or
pornography, "schizophrenia" does not exist in the sense that cancer
and heart disease exist but exists only in the sense that good and bad
exist. As with all other so-called mental illnesses, a diagnosis of
"schizophrenia" is a reflection of the speaker's or "diagnostician's"
values or ideas about how a person "should" be, often coupled with the
false (or at least unproven) assumption that the disapproved thinking,
emotions, or behavior results from a biological abnormality.
Considering the many ways it has been used, it's clear "schizophrenia"
has no particular meaning other than "I dislike it." Because of this,
I lose some of my respect for mental health professionals when I hear
them use the word schizophrenia in a way that indicates they think it
is a real disease. I do this for the same reason I would lose respect
for someone's perceptiveness or intellectual integrity after hearing
him or her admire the emperor's new clothes. While the layman
definition of schizophrenia, internally inconsistent, may make some
sense, using the term "schizophrenia" in a way that indicates the
speaker thinks it is a real disease is tantamount to admitting he
doesn't know what he is talking about.
Many mental health "professionals" and other "scientific"
researchers do however persist in believing "schizophrenia" is a real
disease. They are like the crowds of people observing the emperor's
new clothes, unable or unwilling to see the truth because so many
others before them have said it is real. A glance through the articles
listed under "Schizophrenia" in Index Medicus, an index of medical
periodicals, reveals how widespread the schizophrenia myth has become.
And because these "scientists" believe "schizophrenia" is a real
disease, they try to find physical causes for it. As psychiatrist
William Glasser, M.D., says in his book Positive Addiction, published
in 1976: "Schizophrenia sounds so much like a disease that prominent
scientists delude themselves into searching for its cure" (Harper &
Row, p. 1
. This is a silly endeavor, because these supposedly
prominent scientists can't define "schizophrenia" and accordingly don't
know what they are looking for.
According to three Stanford University psychiatry
professors, "two hypotheses have dominated the search for a biological
substrate of schizophrenia." They say these two theories are the
transmethylation hypothesis of schizophrenia and the dopamine
hypothesis of schizophrenia. (Jack D. Barchas, M.D., et al., "Biogenic
Amine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia", appearing in Psychopharmacology:
From Theory to Practice, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 100.) The
transmethylation hypothesis was based on the idea that "schizophrenia"
might be caused by "aberrant formation of methylated amines" similar to
the hallucinogenic pleasure drug mescaline in the metabolism of
so-called schizophrenics. After reviewing various attempts to verify
this theory, they conclude: "More than two decades after the
introduction of the transmethylation hypothesis, no conclusions can be
drawn about its relevance to or involvement in schizophrenia" (p. 107).
Columbia University psychiatry professor Jerrold S.
Maxmen, M.D., succinctly describes the second major biological theory
of so-called schizophrenia, the dopamine hypothesis, in his book The
New Psychiatry, published in 1985: "...many psychiatrists believe that
schizophrenia involves excessive activity in the dopamine-receptor
system...the schizophrenic's symptoms result partially from receptors
being overwhelmed by dopamine" (Mentor, pp. 142 & 154). But in the
article by three Stanford University psychiatry professors I referred
to above they say "direct confirmation that dopamine is involved in
schizophrenia continues to elude investigators" (p. 112). In 1987 in
his book Molecules of the Mind Professor Jon Franklin says "The
dopamine hypothesis, in short, was wrong" (p. 114).
In that same book, Professor Franklin aptly describes
efforts to find other biological causes of so-called schizophrenia: "As
always, schizophrenia was the index disease. During the 1940s and
1950s, hundreds of scientists occupied themselves at one time and
another with testing samples of schizophrenics' bodily reactions and
fluids. They tested skin conductivity, cultured skin cells, analyzed
blood, saliva, and sweat, and stared reflectively into test tubes of
schizophrenic urine. The result of all this was a continuing series of
announcements that this or that difference had been found. One early
researcher, for instance, claimed to have isolated a substance from the
urine of schizophrenics that made spiders weave cockeyed webs. Another
group thought that the blood of schizophrenics contained a faulty
metabolite of adrenaline that caused hallucinations. Still another
proposed that the disease was caused by a vitamin deficiency. Such
developments made great newspaper stories, which generally hinted, or
predicted outright, that the enigma of schizophrenia had finally been
solved. Unfortunately, in light of close scrutiny none of the
discoveries held water" (p. 172).
Other efforts to prove a biological basis for so-called
schizophrenia have involved brain-scans of pairs of identical twins
when only one is a supposed schizophrenic. They do indeed show the
so-called schizophrenic has brain damage his identical twin lacks. The
flaw in these studies is the so-called schizophrenic has inevitably
been given brain-damaging drugs called neuroleptics as a so-called
treatment for his so-called schizophrenia. It is these brain-damaging
drugs, not so-called schizophrenia, that have caused the brain damage.
Anyone "treated" with these drugs will have such brain damage.
Damaging the brains of people eccentric, obnoxious, imaginative, or
mentally disabled enough to be called schizophrenic with drugs
(erroneously) believed to have antischizophrenic properties is one of
the saddest and most indefensible consequences of today's widespread
belief in the myth of schizophrenia.
In The New Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, published in
1988, Seymour S. Kety, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience in
Psychiatry, and Steven Matthysse, Ph.D., Associate Professor of
Psychobiology, both of Harvard Medical School, say "an impartial
reading of the recent literature does not provide the hoped-for
clarification of the catecholamine hypotheses, nor does compelling
evidence emerge for other biological differences that may characterize
the brains of patients with mental disease" (Harvard University Press,
p. 148).
Belief in biological causes of so-called mental illness,
including schizophrenia, comes not from science but from wishful
thinking or from desire to avoid coming to terms with the
experiential/environmental causes of people's misbehavior or distress.
The repeated failure of efforts to find biological causes of so-called
schizophrenia suggests "schizophrenia" belongs only in the category of
socially/culturally unacceptable thinking or behavior rather than in
the category of biology or "disease" where many people place it.
THE AUTHOR, Lawrence Stevens, is a lawyer whose practice has included
representing psychiatric "patients". His pamphlets are not
copyrighted. Feel free to make copies.
-Squeaky
