Category Archives: Propaganda

WATCH: Martha’s Vineyard Migrants Get Civil Rights Lawyers; January 6 Prisoners Dumped By GOP

Conservatism, Critique, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Ilana Mercer, Individual Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Populism, Propaganda, Race, Republicans, Terrorism, THE ELITES, The Establishment

Mental Maladies: Tucker And Mainstream Discover What Thomas Szasz Explained In 1960

Argument, Logic, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Science, The Therapuetic State

2 Replies

About the lack of empirical evidence for so-called organic nature of “mental disease,” Tucker Carlson said TODAY, 07.25.22, (well, almost) what this column wrote first in 2002 and countless times since, in titles archived under Psychiatry and The Therapeutic State category:

“Cruise And The Psychiatric Shamans,” (2005) “EVIL, NOT ILL” (4/2007), “Conservatives For Abolishing The Fact Of Evil (2015),” “School Shootings: A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem” (2018).

Tucker discovers what we wrote in “Broken Brains?” (January 16, 2002):

“… Consider also that there is no credible, scientific, peer-reviewed evidence for the organic basis of aberrant behavior, and you grasp the chicanery that surrounds the claim that strange or bad conduct is caused by ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain. …”

The more rigorous and honest clinicians will concede that drawing causal relationships between “mental illness” and “chemical imbalances” is impossible. That prescription medication often helps misbehaved or unhappy individuals is no proof that strange behavior is an organic disease. One can chemically castrate a pedophile. But does this demonstrate that molesting kids is an organic disease? Never. It proves only that chemical castration can at times reduce recidivism in people who have chosen to victimize children.

Clear analytical thinking is at the root of solid science, it precedes empiricism.

Roughly 75 percent of the value of “antidepressant” drugs is due to the placebo effect. And talk therapies—cognitive-behavioral therapy in particular—can have equal or better results. Veracity permits only that we limit our causal conclusions to saying that assorted treatment modalities sometimes help people with behavioral problems, nothing more.

MORE.

My mentor, the great Dr. Thomas Szasz, wrote and proved all this analytically in the Myth of Mental illness, 1961. His books I studied at university, back when thought was taught. Both Tom Szasz and I lauded Tom Cruise when the actor attacked psychiatry so very cogently.

See “Cruise And The Psychiatric Shamans” (2005):

The psychiatric peanut gallery has blasted actor Tom Cruise for insisting correctly that there’s more voodoo to the profession than veracity. Cruise’s instincts are good: “Psychiatrists don’t have a test that can prove that a so-called mental illness is actually organic in origin, I wrote. Rigorous clinician —members of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology come to mind —concede that drawing causal connections between “mental illness” and “chemical imbalances” is impossible. That prescription medication often helps misbehaved or unhappy individuals is no proof that strange behavior is an organic disease —placebos or cognitive-behavioral therapy, for example, are as effective.

Tucker Carlson had summoned some limey, a quick-fix popularizer, to speak to these issues.

The Quality Of Conservative ‘Thinking’: Almost As Childish And Flaccid As Progressive Pablum

America, Conservatism, Critique, Democracy, Propaganda, The Establishment, The State

1 Reply

LinkedIn is an intellectual desert like any other social media platform, where adults, ostensible grown-ups, ooze over the vacuous, rah-rah of silly children, waxing fat over the unfettered freedoms enjoyed in the USA.

Yeah, I like the word flaccid, as my friends keep noting. There is nothing like it to conjure how floppy is conservatism and its ordinary consumers. Thought mediates action. If you cannot conceptualize and think clearly about freedom (or lack thereof)—you can’t fight for it.

My impromptu reply:

What utter drivel, on the facts. Consider: As a dissident writer over 23 yeas, my written speech would be less imperiled in Putin’s Russia than it is in the USA today.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2021/09/centralize-liberty-solution-wicked-woke-tech-part-3/

Have the Panglossians among us heard about financial de-platforming, en masse? Speech restrictions? Has the tom-tom drum passed on the news that some of my colleagues struggle to find a bank with ease?

We have just lived through three years during which the Pharma State has consolidated power as never before. On pain of taking the Covid jab, the state has de facto established license to shutter a subject’s business, deny him freedom of movement, quarantine, fire, and separate him from loved ones. Under Republican and Democrat reign alike.

Arrests of political opponents without due process have become more common in police state America than in Apartheid-era South Africa (which, as chronicled in “Into The Cannibal’s Pot,” was surprisingly legalistic and by-the-book).

The American Administrative, Surveillance and Security State is the most powerful and feared in the world. Ask the greatest libertarian alive, if barely: Julian Assange.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2021/12/extradited-assange-fears-epsteined/

Pulease!