The Psychiatriarchy, The Psychiatric Gaze and Mentalism
By Gavin Bushe
MLIS, B.A. (Hons), Cert
Since the philosopher
Aristotle in particular, philosophy has developed a distinct materialist
outlook. This means that the ideas in a
human being’s mind are a reflection of thoughts derived from external, real and
concrete material stimuli. Simply put we
know that a dog is a dog because we reflect in our minds the real entity that
is “a dog”. Otherwise we could not know
what a dog is. Since Karl Marx
materialist philosophy has been described as a summing-up of material
experience. The social order in which
human minds find themselves in Ireland in the 2oth and 21st
Centuries AD is a “capitalist political-economy”. Therefore the ideas in human beings’ minds
are a sum of life realities within Irish Capitalism.
Psychiatry is the
treatment of minds that do not accord to incumbent understandings of the social
order in a society. In Ireland today
that means the Capitalist Social Order.
The Psychiatriarchy is the term I use to refer to the set of socio-political
relations that operate among the social order to reinforce and perpetuate
it. Therefore it is the Irish Capitalist
Psychiatriarchy of the 21st Century in particular. The Psychiatriarchy is simply the congealed,
solidified, crystallised set of thoughts of the incumbent economic beneficiaries of the social
order with the collectivity of socio-political activities that the
beneficiaries undertake in order to enforce and reinforce their benefits.
As a human who dares to
think differently from The Psychiatriarchy you must be prepared to receive its
sanction for social authority does not like to be questioned. The main tool of sanction that The
Psychiatriarchy has to curb, repress, suppress, oppress, cut-off, alienate,
etc. the non-conformist thinkers is the demonization process of the Psychiatric
Gaze with its Mentalisms, or ways-of-looking at “mentally ill” people. These combined are a tool to negate and characteristically
reject any non-conformist thinkers within the social order. I speak in particular of the Psychiatriarchy
of Western Capitalism. Western
Capitalism has constructed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals 1 to 5 (DSM I
– V), in order to alienate and justify the social control of non-conformist thinkers. What it has done is destroy many human beings’
minds so that the economic wealth might be pooled disproportionately in favour
of higher-ranking social order incumbent beneficiaries as against others at a
time when wage-labour is permanently over-supplied to the economy. This it does over and over again. The only reply by the oppressed is the
revolutionary overthrow of the social order and the permanent repudiation of
The Psychiatriarchy. I propose: Liberty, Equality,
Society!
