Psychiatry Legal Flaw

Parador wrote:I think a psychiatrist would probably do an evaluation based on what 3rd parties said.

Third party talk is another stuff. It works with the police, but it doesn't work the same with shrinks, because self-report is their only option to get into one's mind.
Just consider this situation. Children and adult grandchildren say that grandfather is delusional and that's why he's pretty annoying. He is taken to psychiatrist who asks him whether he has any delusion. The old man keeps silence. He is taken to the interview again and again with the same result. In the end the shrink has to make the decision. He cannot interview the grandfather everyday, he cannot keep him locked in the clinic forever. And the only result is healthy, because he has no direct evidence of delusions!!! Otherwise, listening just to the third party only... I don't know. It may be, but this is real psychiatric fascism, because a patient has no rights at all, even to express himself. This approach seems to be inhumane completely.
Although that imaginary old man may have some delusion and keeps silence because a voice in his head forbidding him talking

perpend wrote: I ask because many years ago a psychologist introduced it to me for those same reasons. I agreed as she had a dual cassette deck that recorded two tapes at the same time. At the end of the session she gave me one of them.

That depend's on your country's legislation. There are some which don't accept audio recordings as evidence.
Moreover, as far as I know police officers even recording interviews, in US they don't like to call them interrogations, but in fact these are interrogations, demand detainees to sign the protocol - the report - of the conversation. And this is a strong move, because it shows that the interviewee confirms everything that has been said, it shows that the conversation was not recorded secretly. The act of signing is also a symbolic act of the detainee's free will to confirm the fact said in the conversation.
On the contrary, I have never heard about shrinks asking future or actual patients to sing their interviews reports. But they ask to sing voluntary treatment approval, which is another thing.
Your story is another evidence of the wicked nature of shrinks in my perspective. I believe they know very well that these recordings worth nothing from the legal point of view and this is just one more trick to fool a patient, to make him trust a psychiatrist.
And the last but not least. One must realise that every word he or she spoke can be used against him. I heard that one clinical psychologist told at her lecture that fishing could be a sigh of schizoptypical personality disorder, because this is the sign of social contacts negation. Fishing is the sign of mental disorder. Sounds ridiculous, but an experienced shrink can prove that this person fishes in 'excessive' manner, three times a week he goes to the nature instead of staying with his partner making sex. Oh, this guy fishes and has no sexual parter at all for more than a year?! It is obviously an abnormal destructive addiction.
This is just one and not meticulously elaborated example. But I repeat psychiatrists have plethora options to substantiate diagnosis, especially some kinds of personality disorders in far more gentle and сonvincing manner. You shouldn't be delusional, you shouldn't have any hallucinations, you should be just a little strange, or like to fish too much.
Silence is the only option to prevent them from labelling in my view. They will lack labelling material dramatically in that case.

Polozker wrote:That depend's on your country's legislation. There are some which don't accept audio recordings as evidence.

You're right, I didn't consider the rules of evidence in other countries.

Polozker wrote:Your story is another evidence of the wicked nature of shrinks in my perspective. I believe they know very well that these recordings worth nothing from the legal point of view and this is just one more trick to fool a patient, to make him trust a psychiatrist.

My story is not "evidence of the wicked nature of shrinks" and I wasn't fooled. I cannot arbitrarily assign reasonable motives to the psychiatrists you wrote about any more than you can assign wicked motives to the psychologist I wrote about. We don't know enough about the people in each other's stories to make that kind of assessment. And I know my own experiences as well as you know yours.

My experience was non-adversarial. I used the tape to listen to myself during the session... what I said, how much sense it made, whether I actually answered a question and what was important to me by the changing tone/inflection in my voice. We discussed interpretations during the next session before moving on to other stuff. I learned a perspective or two about myself I hadn't seen before; some were painful, some not. I consider that a plus.

I agree with you about forced therapy and the abuse, and it *is* disgusting. Have I ever met with the kind of psychiatrists you describe? Yes, briefly, a couple of times. While I think there are too many of their kind, I cannot agree they're all wicked. Given what you wrote, it looks like the circumstances of forced therapy and the courts attracts a much greater percentage of their kind than I'd thought, and why most who're forced into therapy get taken advantage of and abused.

perpend wrote:

Polozker wrote: most who're forced into therapy get taken advantage of and abused.

I'd say thats more of a rule then an exception, sadly

perpend wrote:My story is not "evidence of the wicked nature of shrinks" and I wasn't fooled. I cannot arbitrarily assign reasonable motives to the psychiatrists you wrote about any more than you can assign wicked motives to the psychologist I wrote about. We don't know enough about the people in each other's stories to make that kind of assessment. And I know my own experiences as well as you know yours.

I had the misfortune to contact with shrinks of two allegedly different cultures (although, according to my wandering experience people and especially social institutions are much more alike than we think everywhere in the world), and I saw nothing good from those men and women. They didn't help me at all, they even didn't pretend to help me. The only thing they were worrying about was their records filling, while they were listening to me and asking formal questions with the grim and ungly grimace of complete indifference on their faces.
Analysing their behaviour I come to the conclusion that their ultimate goal was to issue diagnosis according to their regulations and nothing more.
And in both cases which is quite remarkable they didn't make any objective tests, because there are none in psychiatry, relying only on words, which itself is quite ridiculous, because even stupid teenage girls know the zero value of words. And in both cases like in the times of inquisition when a heretic was not informed about the exact charges, I was left unaware of my diagnosis. In both cases I was not asked to sign the records of my interviews, in both cases I was not shown the protocols of shrinks discussions.
In the light of psychiatry and legal system comparison I was found 'guilty', i.e. 'insane', throughout peculiar hearings when a defendant was not able to listen to persecutor's speech, to hire a lawyer, to appeal to the jury.
In other words I was stripped from the basic right of participation into critical decision making.
What evidence do I need more?
Their motivation was perfectly described by T. Szasz in his "Manufacture of Madness". He writes that psychiatrists working for state agencies perform the function of auxiliary police force of society which labels and persecutes people who violate it's unwritten laws.

Polozker wrote:In the light of psychiatry and legal system comparison I was found 'guilty', i.e. 'insane', throughout peculiar hearings when a defendant was not able to listen to persecutor's speech, to hire a lawyer, to appeal to the jury. In other words I was stripped from the basic right of participation into critical decision making.

I can't begin to guess how I'd cope with that. I'm lucky, and grateful, I never met with that kind of scum.