Allen Frances

This guy wrote a blog recently named, "When is it justified to force treatment on someone?"

He says that recent mass shootings were "likely" caused by delusions and voices telling these people to do things. How does he know that? Maybe this sentence was caused by the delusion, common amongst this particular species of quack, that he can see into people's minds. I'll continue this in the next post because I am sick to death of this site sabotaging my efforts, telling me I am logged off whenever I write a lengthy post.

He then says that these people hadn't received adequate treatment, even though time and time again it has been shown that violent acts have been committed by people on the drugs referred to in the word treatment. In discussing how best to find a balance between the competing claims of individual liberty and dignity on the one hand and the interests of society on the other, he discusses a dialogue with Miss Eleanor Langdon, whose thinking, despite other disagreements, converges on the point that there are sometimes situations in which the exigencies of the situation necessitate emergency "treatment".

This meretricious reasoning (which is in good company in this article), completely disregards the question of whether or not such the requisite knowledge or tools exist to deal with such problems adequately. The postulate in his reasoning that the "treatments" are adequate is not accommodated by the reality, but Frances, like so many of fellow believers in the psychiatric faith, is only interested in diving deeper into delusions that his arguments require if they are to maintain their pretensions to validity.

He concedes that the allowing of what is essentially a state monopoly on heinous violence against the powerless individual (my words), is a slippery slope, but this turns out to be nothing more than a prelude to justifying psychiatric violence, designed to give off the false impression that Mr Frances is genuinely concerned about the many victims of psychiatric power. He says never applying psychiatric coercion is dangerous, as if its application didn't entail much greater dangers, after all, a dangerous delusion unanimously (or almost unanimously) held is much more dangerous than the delusions of powerless, socially marginal individuals; the delusions upon which forced psychiatry is founded and those delusions which it generates cause far more empirically verifiable harm (as opposed to purely speculative harm) than the delusions of powerless mental patients, for obvious reasons. Hence the reason why so many books have been written and can be written attesting to the simple fact that the majority of violence pertaining to this issue is not committed by the mental patient, but by state psychiatrists at the behest and under the auspices of the community and its leaders, whose interests they prioritize over that of the scapegoated Other.

He says someone has to stand in for the patient who has become seriously dangerous to himself or others. Yes, that is what the police are there for. Even though as I said earlier he concedes the immense potentiality for abuse involved in basically giving psychiatrists a moral monopoly on torture, this is never the real concern of people like he. He says that for the professional not to intervene when catastrophe is clearly imminent (although whether there is any chance of catastrophe is irrelevant, because psychiatrists have shown us that the rule that the patient must be a danger to himself or others is perhaps honored more in the breach than in the observance, as E Fuller Torrey once admitted, in so many words, in "the Insanity Offence") would be irresponsible, but he sees nothing irresponsible in assaulting a defenceless individual with a poison filled needle or electricity where detainment would suffice.

-- Sun Oct 06, 2013 7:48 pm --

Being locked up in a prison, according to Frances, is a barbarity, the tacit assumption being that being locked up in a "psychiatric hospital" isn't. History tells a different story. He also says that coercion is on the decline in psychiatry. No it isn't, and this confusion would be ended if records were being kept about involuntary admissions, but they aren't, and for a good reason, because as the book "Mad science" has shown, coercion is more of a problem than ever.

The truth is, being a state psychiatrist or mental health nurse is a far greater predictor of violence than being a mental patient. We can try to set up distinctions between "good violence" and "bad violence" all we want. The violence of the group is always considered good, because those doing the considering are complicit in that violence, they are a part of the group.

psychiatry is a joke and not based on facts so no sense in trying to make sense of this stuff other than it is clearly about power and control

Allen Frances is alright in my book, example he wrote this:

Dr. Allen Frances: "Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, And The Medicalization Of Ordinary Life"

There are no laboratory tests for psychiatry, no bright lines to say who is sick and who is well. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has come to be regarded as the bible of psychiatric diagnosis. First published in 1952 and revised several times since then, it improved the reliability of subjective diagnoses. But Dr. Allen Frances says it's also had harmful unintended consequences. He was once dubbed "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" by The New York Times. Now he says the DSM has contributed to psychiatric fads, diagnostic inflation and over-medication. He believes the latest version threatens to turn everyday living into psychiatric disease. He joins Diane to discuss his new book, "Saving Normal," and how to rein in psychiatry and drug companies.

Read more http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-05-14/dr-allen-frances-saving-normal-insiders-revolt-against-out-control-psychiatric-diag

Cledwyn Bulbs wrote:This guy wrote a blog recently named, "When is it justified to force treatment on someone?"

Found it, here is a quote/link

"Second, the recent mass murder in Washington D.C. was likely triggered by voices and delusions in someone who had not received adequate treatment."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/when-is-it-justified-to-f_b_4038218.html

"had not received adequate treatment" he did not write "had not received treatment".

It would be nice if he wrote "the treatment he got triggered/aggravated voices and delusions" but he kind of did that in a way.

How we stand in respect to this issue basically defines how we stand in respect to torturing and poisoning. I am not just using these words because they possess an automatic charge of condemnation, to manipulate the moral sentiments of people, but because of the simple fact that, in their effects, psychiatric "treatments", can cause immense suffering and harm, a reality the majoritarian chorus are shielded from (out of experience, out of mind).

People keep on calling it treatment in order to justify to themselves and others what is essentially torture, at least in its effects. If we were to admit it's torture, then justifying it would become a lot harder, so we call it "treatment".

-- Tue Oct 08, 2013 5:41 pm --

Calling it treatment allows us to justify the unjustifiable.