Allen Frances

Frances also basically said that Thomas Szasz conceded in a casual discussion that if his son were dangerously psychotic he would have sought psychiatric help of the coercive variety. It's easy to say such things when the person you are referring to is dead. Maybe Thomas Szasz did say "I am a father first and a protector of human rights second", but I feel quite sure that the import of the words Szasz imparted to his interlocutor in that conversation has been lost on Frances. Given what Szasz knew, I find it highly unlikely he would allow his son to be assaulted.

Yeah I read that article where apparently szaz says hes a father first human rights campaigner second.
I don't really trust allen frances, the way he speaks, as if, he knows everything about szaz and him and elenor longden are 'sorting everything out' that differs between survivors and pro forced treatment. What he said abouot forced treatment was so nicely packaged, there were so many things not addressed. They seemed to agree in the end that sometimes forced treatment was warranted. But what type of forced treatment? Neuroleptics? I don't believe that!
And how do they decide who gets it and who dosnt? I was force treated on the word of a sociopathic abusive parent, I wasn't even ill yet I've been force treated 3 times and locked up 5-6 times against my will. How will ppl like me be protected from forced treatment? He didn't go into detail and there are so many problems with basically the fact that they cant prove someone is dangerous so in fact they can force treat them, or if they are in extreme states, whos to say they cant make a decision about what 'treatment' they want? Like its easy to say I don't want to be locked up or drugged against my will'...He seems to think hes handled everything and we're all on good terms now.
And who knows, he could just be saying that szaz said that thing for variety of reasons. we don't know if he was a 'close' friend of his, or a work collegue who disagreed with him and n ow has the vantage point.

[quote="Devilock"]Yeah I read that article where apparently szaz says hes a father first human rights campaigner second.
I don't really trust allen frances, the way he speaks, as if, he knows everything about szaz and him and elenor longden are 'sorting everything out' that differs between survivors and pro forced treatment. What he said abouot forced treatment was so nicely packaged, there were so many things not addressed. They seemed to agree in the end that sometimes forced treatment was warranted. But what type of forced treatment? Neuroleptics? I don't believe that!
And how do they decide who gets it and who dosnt? I was force treated on the word of a sociopathic abusive parent, I wasn't even ill yet I've been force treated 3 times and locked up 5-6 times against my will. How will ppl like me be protected from forced treatment? He didn't go into detail and there are so many problems with basically the fact that they cant prove someone is dangerous so in fact they can force treat them, or if they are in extreme states, whos to say they cant make a decision about what 'treatment' they want? Like its easy to say I don't want to be locked up or drugged against my will'...He seems to think hes handled everything and we're all on good terms now.
And who knows, he could just be saying that szaz said that thing for variety of reasons. we don't know if he was a 'close' friend of his, or a work collegue who disagreed with him and n ow has the vantage point.[/quote)

Exactly, hence why I described his reasoning as meretricious. People are all too easily swayed by the packaging. Frances speaks with the calming verbal resonances of a man of reason, when really he is just plain ignorant on this issue, lacking the requisite experience to formulate an accurate assessment of the moral validity of forced drugging, instead relying on the dubious testimony of patients.

I think it was Nixon (though it supposedly originated with John Wayne) who once said that once you have people by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. I don't know what meaning is traditionally attached to that phrase, but it clearly is susceptible of a number of a different interpretations, and I think that the retrospectively grateful testimony of patients, given to their much more powerful oppressors, bears out these words admirably. Coercive psychiatrists have got their patients by the balls, and their hearts and minds have followed!

What you say about your detention being decided on the word of an abuse parent reminds me of stories you hear about the witch hunts. Mutatis mutandis, psychiatrists have performed and still perform a similar function to witch-hunters, in that they "convict" people based on the perjured testimony of others. Frances ignores all these and similar issues in his "blog" (for that read "tendentious political tract").

He ignores these issues because his allegiance his firmly on the side of the oppressors.

He's probably telling a big fat lie, either because it's a bad habit for him, or because he is so convinced of the nobility of his cause, he sees no problem in telling a porky to advance it. He knows that perhaps the majority of locus classici pertaining to the many issues surrounding coercive psychiatry are to be found in the work of Szasz because he is perhaps the pre-eminent intellectual authority to have spoken out against this sacred monstrosity, so maybe he couldn't resist the temptation, now that Szasz is dead (after all, he could have said this a long time ago, why wait till now?), to make an expedient of his death, and to stick one over on his opponents by saying that even their idol asserted his criticisms of forced psychiatry in bad faith or without conviction. Or maybe he is telling the truth. Either which way, even if Szasz did entertain doubts, nothing will shake my conviction that forced psychiatry is an evil worthy of inclusion in the class of recognized institutional evils, although I certainly am not predisposed to believe an ex DSM committee member, who are part of a group of individuals (the psychiatric faithful) who are amongst the most distinguished liars in human history, whose every word, if the human race were to learn from its history, would occasion hilarity and disbelief. Sadly we reserve this for the words of their victims!

He also concludes his blog saying we should stop the silly bickering, which is code language for "come round to our way of seeing things, the right of way of seeing things"!

Yes I agree, he chooses to quote szaz is interesting since he is the probably number one legend /idol in survivor circles, and yes only after his death he chooses to say that he said this.
He does not go into detail at all, and what u just we should stop the bickering, wtf, he hasn't even addressed the half a million points that all need to be discussed.
Re. Me being force treated on the word of an abusive parent. These things *do* happen, ive met others in the hospital who it has happened to, they were mainly ppls husbands, and there was nothing wrong with these women, I mean honestly they were shaken up, but not mentally ill. Anyone in a position of power, who is sadistic and cruel and a perpetrator can use psychiatry as a means of 'punishment', especially scary for children. as we see in the current foster system in the us (and Australia) im sure there are *heaps* of abusive carers out there wanting to drug the kids up. Abuse is not rare. It is usually someone the person knows well, a family member, and it happens just as much in wealthy familys as in lower socio economic families, which is primarily one of the reasons my parents got away with it, as I said in a previous post, it took them *months* to be able to get me into the facility to lock me up and only then on the word of family friends who were lawyers and judges complaining. And once I was in the system, everyone believed her, I told my side and I was told I had delusions because of a psychotic illness. This is NOT acceptable and ppl who this has happned to must tell their stories so it can stop. THis is not rare, it has happened since the dawn of psychiatry, husbands locking away their unwanted wifes, ppl getting rid of unwanted relatives.
Does anyone know of any web pages dealing with this issue?

When I was a teenager, I was one of those Bipolar kids that saw no future for himself. He wanted to give up his life after taking those who wronged him with him. The only reason that didn't occur, was a sarcastic comment by me, and a frustrated interjection by a school counselor. In other words, this dialogue stopped the homocide of a few people:

"What's the point in bothering? It's not like I can go back to regular school and eventually live a normal life anyway?"

their response, "you can if you stop flipping out."

*That flipping out was because they'd hold me after school for being suicidal. Then I'd try to leave the school and end up in a restraint carried out by the police, all because I was terrified of going home with my abusive narcissistic mother who tried at least twice I remember to murder me.

I started to journal instead in my own language, so that teachers couldn't find it and read it. It vastly improved my mental state to have stolen back my freedom of speech, and from there even took myself off pills (albeit risking getting caught), and my grade skyrocketed to a point where I ended up with a 3.2 or something like that GPA. It would've been higher if I wasn't on drugs from pharma in early high school.

I don't particularly like talking about that. I'm sure it was in one of my journals written in a script that looked chinese to them.

thanx for sharing some of your story minatoauros.
I don't like talking about it either but I want my story to get out there. I want the public to know that these things do go on. yes very much like witch hunts, the statement 'if you don't believe your ill, that just proves you are ill'
is very much like what the witch hunters would validate what they did. I didn't used to like using terms like withch hunts, concentrations camps, comparisons to Nazis, but it really is true, the same sort of thing is going on, its just more covered up, and hidden. I don't understand why its happening and its very disappointing, cause I did grow up beleiveing I lived in a good country. I no longer think that. Its very sad.
Also, if my kid was 'psychotic' I wouldn't drug them!! I'd find out what kind of way they wanted to deal with this, and yes if they said thye didn't want to deal with it id encourage them to talk about it, or do acupuncture, maybe go stay by the beach or somewhere beautiful, thousands of alterenatives that come up, if there was soteria id suggest that etc.
yes, I wonder if he really said that when there are so many alternatives to neuroleptic drugs.
Mabye if they were suicidal I might act differently, its a whole big discussion, many things need to be thought about. I doxnt think that locking someone in a psych ward would help them cheer up and not be suicidal prob just traumatise them more.

Devilock wrote:thanx for sharing some of your story minatoauros.
I don't like talking about it either but I want my story to get out there. I want the public to know that these things do go on. yes very much like witch hunts, the statement 'if you don't believe your ill, that just proves you are ill'
is very much like what the witch hunters would validate what they did. I didn't used to like using terms like withch hunts, concentrations camps, comparisons to Nazis, but it really is true, the same sort of thing is going on, its just more covered up, and hidden. I don't understand why its happening and its very disappointing, cause I did grow up beleiveing I lived in a good country. I no longer think that. Its very sad.
Also, if my kid was 'psychotic' I wouldn't drug them!! I'd find out what kind of way they wanted to deal with this, and yes if they said thye didn't want to deal with it id encourage them to talk about it, or do acupuncture, maybe go stay by the beach or somewhere beautiful, thousands of alterenatives that come up, if there was soteria id suggest that etc.
yes, I wonder if he really said that when there are so many alternatives to neuroleptic drugs.
Mabye if they were suicidal I might act differently, its a whole big discussion, many things need to be thought about. I doxnt think that locking someone in a psych ward would help them cheer up and not be suicidal prob just traumatise them more.

Agreed, Devilock. People feel awkward about comparing their own plight to those you listed because we are all under extreme collective pressure to disregard our suffering (that is, the suffering occasioned by the treatment we have undergone at the hands psychiatry), yet throughout the history of psychiatry many patients could make just as forceful a claim on one's sympathy as people who had suffered the worst of the horrors you refer to. For example, in communist Russia (as I imagine you are aware), people who had run the whole gamut of torture mechanisms used by the state at the time claimed that being forced to take neuroleptics was the worse, because, as anyone with experience knows, the intense akathisia, the dystonic reactions, and the rest of the torturous effects, are of an incomparable unpleasantness.

Psychiatrists have mutilated the brains of patients, diseased this most vital, sensitive organ, killed patients, made them the subjects of programs of grisly human experimentation, removed vital organs, and availed themselves of the fashionable torture mechanisms of the age in "treating" their patients, yet the majority of people don't give a damn, seeing it all through the distorting lens of the oppressors, who could seemingly line up their patients and fill them with lead and this would only succeed in setting the wheels of rationalization in motion in the popular psyche.