Mechanisms of the Apparatus of Psychiatric Social Control Through Law, State, and Society.

by

Mr. Gavin Bushe

MLIS, B.A. (Hons), Cert.

Psychiatric Survivor.

The Psychiatric Gaze.


The power to understand a person within a situation requires for its completion a given type of lens.  There is, for example, the common aphorism “to look through rose-tinted glasses” which is to say that we regard a situation with a most positive and romantic filter.  Similarly, men who attend drinking emporiums have cause to say that “he saw her through beer-goggles”, which is to say that a man saw in an average-looking woman great beauty while he was drunk in her company through alcohol.


In our examination and regard of psychiatric people we find a similar phenomenon.  It is that we adopt in our psychologies the attitude that the person before us is mad in some way.  This is the psychiatric gaze.  It is the presumption before another human being that he or she is “mentally ill” in some way.  This is not necessarily the case.  Outside of the psychiatric viewing structure which is socially constructed through stigma, a man or woman can be regarded quite highly or even honoured by those around him or her.

This psychiatric gaze takes on its highest and most rigorous form at the level of clinical psychiatry.  Indeed there are the five volumes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals which is the psychiatric profession’s reference library for assessing people before its prescription desk.  It is through these methodological gazes that psychiatrists assess and then diagnose their patients.  There are many of these diagnoses available to a psychiatrist, e.g., bi-polar disorder, depression, pschizo-effective disorder, pschizo-effective disorder with bi-polar tendencies, schizophrenia, etc.  These are all various ways of naming a man or a woman so that they may be treated effectively according to psychiatry.  It is worth mentioning that these diagnoses or names are useful in controlling so-called symptoms while they really control the person before the psychiatric authority.  Additionally the diagnostic procedure is the means through which social stigma is made to come to bear upon the patients.  At the assessment and diagnostic review the person comes to understand himself or herself as unwell in some way.  This is only true if the person internalises the diagnoses and identifies with it as his or her own psychological reality.  Great effort is made to convince the patients to accept the diagnoses and come to terms with themselves as mentally ill.


Upon doing do the diagnoses takes root in the patient’s mind as though a thorn that they struggle against and seek to resist because it is a false statement about their inner mental life.  Social relations reinforce the narrative to the psychiatric citizens because people who are not psychiatrised support the psychiatric system because it awards them a default superior social and legal status over their peers who are psychiatrised before them.  Later this approach becomes a utility in the hands of political actors across institutions within the country.  Psychiatry is a useful trump card in many political games for it is hard to deny the power of the psychiatric state for those who opt to control others by it.

In summary the psychiatric gaze means to say that the context of the understanding is being provided by the attitudinal filter, the gaze, or “how is he mad?”  This results in some form of mad assessment being made about the psychiatric patient.  The psychiatric gaze is a powerful tool in the hands of the beholder. Literally speaking, madness is in the eye of the beholder.  The psychiatric gaze shapes how we view other people whom we suspect of the tautological offence of madness.  Away from this attitude and approach we may well find that we treat the person differently.  Without such a lens, we do not see a psychiatric condition.  It is only via reference to the framework of the gaze that we are able to assess another person as mentally ill in some way.  This is not to say that human beings do not have mental health problems, they may well do.  It is only to say that outside of the specific form of gazing and regarding and looking that is created by psychiatry, that person has only a life or mental health problem, and not a psychiatric problem, for that is the creation of the psychiatric gaze itself.  The gaze creates the understanding in the way a pair of spectacles shapes an image on the wearer’s retina, by shaping the thoughts of the observer as one or other categories of mental illness when he examines or considers the psychiatric subject before him or her.



The psychiatric gaze is the way society looks at people who it deems is in need of control.




The Psychiatric Law.


The Psychiatric Law is the authority that runs throughout social life that governs how some citizens come to award themselves political power over their psychiatrised others.  Within a political state such as a modern republic like Ireland, the consequence of this authority is that it creates first-class and second-class people.  These are the superior and inferior citizenry: the normal and the mad ones.  The superior citizenry rules over the inferior or psychiatric citizenry through the apparatus of the police state.




The Social Collusion on the Treatment of Psychiatric Citizens.


Civic duty is a code of organisation upon people in a republic.  There is also the general agreement that a mentally ill citizen is to be controlled for his or her own good.  Therefore the people see it as an act of duty to cooperate to ensure that a mentally-ill psychiatric citizen is put in his or her appropriate place.

Effectively this means that people automatically relate in a cooperative way to enforce the psychiatric law on the psychiatric citizens when they are perceived as being problematic.




The Fear Charade and its Utility to Political Actors Throughout Society.


There is across our mass media a common understanding that psychiatric citizens are dangerous to themselves or others.  For certain there is some truth in this.  However the fear factor can be ramped-up in order to create a political effect.  In that way some people understand that the control mechanism of the state is only a phone-call away.  The psychiatric profession understands how to foster a relationship of social control with the significant people around any psychiatric citizen.  Indeed it cultivates the relationship of social control over the psychiatric citizens.  I must say that a psychiatrist stands within the state system in relation to a psychiatric citizen in much the same way as a spider stands on its web in relation to a fly.  The psychiatric system of social control is vulnerable to being manipulated by safety concerns.  That is its fear charade.  It is the horror of knowing that out in society are people who are capable of inflicting damage on good people.  The horror of the psychiatric reality is promoted in popular culture, famously the great Alfred Hitchcock film classic, “Psycho” which is a leader in the private drama while news reports of violent acts by psychiatric citizens conveys the truth that in certain circumstances and conditions psychiatric citizens are dangerous to themselves or others.  With the knowledge of the reality that it is right and proper to contain psychiatric citizens, the superior citizens operate around the fear concern to such an extent to leverage political advantage over their neighbours that it adopts the aspect of a charade.  The superior citizens know that they are operating a rational actor game and this becomes useful to them when some of them abuse the psychiatric law for power and domination.  It is highly useful to many of the superior citizens to utilise the psychiatric law for their social power.  Indeed it can even become undeniably useful to those who are adept in the wielding of legal technicalities when reporting to the police.  This gives rise to political psychiatry.  That is the general rule of superior citizens over psychiatric citizens.  It is a rule that can never be undone except by the repeal of the psychiatric law as a political fact.




The Institutional Nexus of Social Control.


The whole of our society is a collective of institutions.  They are the family, the school, the church, the college, etc.  Over all of these institutions is the knowledge by the superior citizenry that they can and do in fact have the right and ability to leverage social control over their psychiatric citizen neighbours.  This means that wherever any psychiatric citizen ends up in the nexus, he or she is subjectionable to the authority of the psychiatric law.  It is all-encompassing as a nexus of social control.




The Axe of the Superior Citizens over the Psychiatric Citizens Through the Mental Health Act 2001.


Psychiatric power came to dominate the life of the psychiatric citizens first within the madhouses.  Later in the era of progressive reform this power was extended in the popular mind by the Mental Health Acts, most recently the Mental Health Act 2001 which was signed into law by Fíanna Fáil Minister for State and Children, Micheal Martin TD.  Since then in particular the Mental Health Act has become a weapon of choice for those of the superior citizenry who wish to command their psychiatric citizen neighbours into internal exile within the archipelago of approved detention centres across the Republic of Ireland.  When will this axe be taken out of the hands of the superior citizens?




The Performance of the Police as Enforcers of the Mental Health Law.


Generally speaking the Police are the armed bodies of men and women who can be relied upon to enforce political power for the superior citizens over the psychiatric citizens with little doubt as to outcome.  The behaviour of the Police is to identify the suspected psychiatric citizen as quickly as possible in the service of the peace of the superior citizens and arrest that citizen.  Then the Police will take the psychiatric citizen to the police station to place him or her under the review of the Police Psychiatrist.




The Psychiatric Review and its Inanity.


The procedure through which the alleged risk to society by the psychiatric citizen of the psychiatric authority is to be determined, is via a review methodology.  This is a very simple list of standardised questions that psychiatrists ask their patients under review.  For example, the psychiatric patient might be asked, “How is your sleep?” or “How well are you eating?”.  Other such common questions are, “Have you had any thoughts of harming anyone?” The answers to these questions will be written down on a document by the reviewing psychiatrist in order to construct a diagnosis and medical prescription.  For every diagnosis there is a range of suitable medications within the medical model of bio-psychiatry.  To the psychiatric patient this appears at first innocuous and then later inane as it slowly become clear to him that he is being set-up for a treatment.
  



The Prescriptive Dictates of the Psychiatrists.


Eventually it will become clear to the patient that he is to be given an unrefusable treatment.  This is unethical as it violates the principle of consent.  Nevertheless whether outside an approved detention centre or within one, the authority of psychiatry is completely irresistible.  Whenever a psychiatric citizen admits to refusing to take the medication as prescribed he will be assaulted by psychiatric nurses with the assistance of security and compelled to do so by forced injections.  There are other cruel and inhumane treatments that are prescribed by the psychiatrists within a locked-ward setting.  Most notably these are electro-convulsive therapy (Electro-shock) and lobotomy.  All these procedures are a violation of the human rights of the psychiatric citizens by the psychiatric state as laid out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Indeed the suspension of citizens’ liberty by the State is supremely clear as a human rights denial.  While in approved detention the psychiatric citizens whittle away their life’s purposes all the while seeking within and around themselves for some clarity as to why they are there.  They are responded to with continuous reinforcement of the psychiatric narrative that are there to “get well” for the psychiatric problems that never existed except in relation to the psychiatric mechanism of control which created it as a compound layer over their mental and moral problems.




The Collaboration of the GPs and the Pharmacists.


Once outside of the approved detention centres where they are confined until such time as they can reasonably be said by psychiatric methodology to be dependent on the psychiatric medications for the foreseeable future, they are released back into the wider society with only their few belongings that they possessed when they arrived.  Now out in the “community setting” they find that they are drugged for life without any real option but to self-administer the medical poison of the pharmaceutical industry.  It must be noted in passing that the psychiatric citizenry form a definite and distinct social strata from the rest of Irish society.  We are a second-class people within Ireland comparable to the Traveller Community in many ways of oppression.  We associate in our own social networks with tentative relationships to the normal population and by and large we are understood by the insider groups with the social economy as being unworthy of socio-economic inclusion.  Such is the social effect of the Psychiatric System upon those unfortunate ones who are chosen by the well-placed personnel of the institutional nexus of social control for elimination from the company of the favoured sons and daughters of Ireland.  The path dependency of the apparatus of social control for the psychiatric citizens is a  mockery of justice and reason as it follows the psychiatric citizens throughout our lives from that point onwards as a form of negative discrimination in access to jobs, relationships, social mobility and the lives of felicity which the people deemed normal enjoy on a scale of progress that ensures their success within Ireland.  Outcomes for psychiatric citizens are tremendously poor by comparison to our superior citizen peers.

Throughout the socially controlled existences of the psychiatric citizens the two pillars of the community who are the GPs and the Pharmacists play a very strong role in overseeing our life-long subordination to the psychiatric mechanism by playing their roles as medicine dispensers within the nexus.  Between they and the Psychiatric Profession we are controlled by men and women of usually higher learning and systemic understanding.  They collaborate within the psychiatric mechanism because it is highly profitable and since it is the law they feel absolutely justified in watching us receive the enervating poisons continually.  As qualified medical practitioners they must surely understand as we do that we are being slowly murdered by the psychiatric mechanism…

The Power of Social Persuasion to Conform to Treatments.


Now among the people there is the awareness that the psychiatric citizens must be made to take their treatments.  Therefore conversation about the negative impact of psychiatry is only recently being opened up to the personal stories of patients.  All the while the public representatives of the Psychiatric Profession promote the false theories of their school of medicine as widely and loudly as possible.  In this environment of accusation and innocence the survivors of psychiatry work to change the system.  It is a slow process as the power of the medical model psychiatric narrative is still being used constantly to persuade by force of culture the conformity of patients to prescribed treatments.  Hopefully in time psychiatric citizens will learn how to counter this culture of social persuasion?




The Lifelong Reviewing Process and its Agents of the Health Services Executive.


The argument of the Psychiatric Profession is that their patients are suffering from a range of clinical mental illnesses which are bio-chemical in their nature and life-long.  Thus it is argued that we must be kept under life-long review and maintained on our regular doses of psychiatric medication which is slowly killing our nervous systems.  This is because they allege that our so-called mental illnesses are being held at bay by sedatives.  Really we are suffering from complex life and mental health problems which have nothing to do with any chemical imbalance and the medications in particular serve only to induce drowsiness, fog the mind, sicken the soul with saccarine feelings that the moral soul detests with a fury.  Any attempt to reduce or come off completely from psychiatric medication  is resisted by the Psychiatrists and their Health Service Executive personnel who range around the community at the behest of the Psychiatrists in an effort to drive home the purpose of the Psychiatric Mechanism: safety control of the population.




The Regulation of the Drug Control Mechanisms by Testing.


Many of the drugs that are administered to the psychiatric citizens by Industrial State Psychiatry require regular bloods-testing for their effectiveness.  Since the medications are dangerous they must be regulated in order to ensure effectiveness without doing harm to the patients.  Routinely Psychiatrists will send their patients for such blood-tests.  This is yet another layer of the apparatus and another imposition of the systematic will of the Psychiatric State with Society in order to ensure the alienating control perpetuates itself.  The Mechanisms of the Apparatus of Social Control  are felt most acutely at the blood investigation level.





The Ongoing Threat of Psychiatric  Coercion by the Superior Citizenry Over the Psychiatric Citizenry, and the Ambiguous Role of Culture in its Perpetuation.


Moreover the everyday lives of the Psychiatric Citizenry is weighted down by knowledge that our next review is up-and-coming and that we cannot refuse it except that we will be reminded of it via letters and SMS messages, and home visitations by HSE staff.  For those of us who have understood the problem at a theoretical level we are aware of the threat of the Mental Health Act 2001 and its various sections.  The Superior Citizens too can see that they will be able to utilise the law to an effect should it be required.  This makes for an uneasy life.  The culture of the society is such that it is ambiguous about sectionings and the need for safety and protection against our alleged dangerousness.  Due to the increasingly widespread growth of the psychiatric population as a portion of the citizen body many people feel that it is wrong for the psychiatric system to continue as it has done while some appreciate the security provided by the Psychiatric State Sector.  Therefore there is hope that over time the culture can be informed about the realities of the psychiatric experience for the people within it.




The Perversion of the Superior Citizenry over the Psychiatric Citizenry and their Unrelinquishable Satisfaction in Social Power and Dominion.  Its Corrupting Effects on the Moral Sense of the Superior Citizenry.  The  Need to Restore the Social Status of the Psychiatric Citizenry through Restorative Justice.


As with all systems of social power they affect the people within them differently and unfortunately predictably.  The superior citizenry who belong increasingly to the upper classes of Ireland regards the psychiatric citizenry as inferior and deserving of our outcomes within capitalism.  The combination of socio-economic status with an absolute dominion is akin to fascism within the Republic.  Thus the superior citizens cannot but gaze with supremacy at us and receive back our defiance and manners of civic-social defence.  They are unable to relinquish their control without a concerted fight.  This dynamic is understandably corruptive of their attitudes to the problem of social-control.  The way forward is to educate the psychiatric citizenry is their relations to everyone else and the Psychiatric State.  Also it is greatly needed to elevate the psychiatric citizens to the level of consciousness where we can begin to act concertedly together to advance our life interests and political aims.  The road ahead will be fraught with tests as we engage with the superior citizenry in propaganda and activism.  However the general goal is nothing less than complete restorative justice for our caste of the population.

The Psychiatric Mechanism safeguards the socio-economic interests of the superior citizenry body in Ireland.  Within that context any challenge to its structures of law and civility will be resisted or ignored.  In the end this is a just fight of an oppressed class of the Irish Republic whose only option is to struggle or perish within the Psychiatric Mechanism as it operates itself like a hoover over the people.  Only by working together in love and common humanity can we find the strength to arise from the margins and take our rightful place at the heart of Irish life as Irishmen and Irishwomen in equality.

Citizens of Ireland Unite to End the Psychiatric Authority Over the People.

Our Day Will Come!