Week 6

Question 1

USSR

Answer 1

• utopian, communist
• locus of power (political monopoly)
• Repression
• Authoritarian, totalitarianism (hard to speak out)
• Wanted to bring to other parts of the world

Question 2

Accusations of psychiatric abuse

Answer 2

• Competition played out in psychiatry

Question 3

Cold War

Answer 3

• global war for ideological supremacy
• Emergence of 3 blocs
• Fought beyond military domains

Question 4

Psychiatric Abuse USSR

Answer 4

• Special hospitals
• Punitive treatments
• Soviets denied, sad attempt to “politicize” mental illness to score political points

Question 5

Snezhnevsky

Answer 5

• Forensic psychiatrist
• Coined sluggish schizophrenia

Question 6

Sluggish Schizophrenia

Answer 6

• schizophrenia that was hard to detect

Question 7

Soviet Practices

Answer 7

• Snezhnevsky
• Diagnosing people who weren’t normal as a punishment
• Psychiatrists that did not accept lost jobs
• used to clean up inconvenience across europe
• 1000s impacted

Question 8

Pushback

Answer 8

Late 70s: accusations, RCP and NGO pushed for investigations
- Important due to new human rights movement
1983: WPA said psychiatry needed a code of ethics
- Cemented treatment transparency, consent, confidentiality, etc.
- If patient/ 3rd party demands actions against code, psychiatry must refuse
- Therefore the soviet delegation quit

Question 9

Why psychiatry?

Answer 9

• Attractive for punishment of political dissonance
• Medicine: not seen as oppressive as often (vs. cops, army, etc.) seen as help
• Not somatic/ physically seen: same realm as mental health/ illness
• Objective view of science obscures/ reframes political/ speaking out as psychiatric
• Hides human rights abuse

Question 10

Other examples

Answer 10

• China: 1960s cultural revolution, 70% patients admitted to hospital (for “political reasons”)
• Munro
• Argentina and Chile

Question 11

Munro / 3 forms of political abuse of psychiatry

Answer 11

3 forms of political abuse of psychiatry
1. Overdiagnosis = when political non-conformity and “absence of instinct for self-preservation” acts as grounds for diagnosis
2. Underdiagnosis = when really mentally ill people are held accountable for political crimes (never diagnosed)
3. Withdrawn from services = some people despite being very ill were withdrawn from hospitals and set to prison/ death

Question 12

Argentina and Chile

Answer 12

not necessarily about types of politics, more about authoritarianism

Question 13

Is this about profession or political context?

Answer 13

Van Voren: utopian, authoritarian societies vulnerable
- Expectations of conformity, buy in for collectivist project
- “If you’re unhappy here, you must be mad” (narrow idea)
Bonnie: authoritarian societies promote psychiatric abuse as prone to corruption, as they are not bound by law, state gets its way with intimidation

Question 14

Issue is endemic to psychiatry itself?

Answer 14

Isn’t diagnostic criteria rooted in societal context?
Innocent application of criteria?

Question 15

Beyond Authoritarianism

Answer 15

• “Political misuse” not limited to authoritarian contexts
• Adorno: “Authoritarian Personality” what made people fall for authoritarianism?
• Goldwater: surveyed by psychiatrists, deemed unfit/ insane (trump tested this rule)

Question 16

Psychiatry and war on terror

Answer 16

attempts to demonstrate “psychopathy of terrorists” as narcissistic, psychotic, paranoid
- Largely plagued by methodological issues
- Eg. conclusions reached with secondary research, conducted under distress (eg. torture)

Question 17

Silke: P and war on terror

Answer 17

Calling them mentally ill is comforting and unchallenging
- Violence becomes only possible response
Military psychiatry refused to acknowledge PTSD of prisoners
Psychologization makes “radicalization knowable and therefore subject to governance” while not necessarily effective, it provides the illusion of control

Question 18

Hebel: P and war on terror

Answer 18

• Western tendency to psychopathologize rival foreign leaders

Question 19

Agarwal: P and war on terror

Answer 19

psy-discipline is integral to torture programs in War on Terror
- Post 9/11: mental torture redefined along medicalized lines (had to last for months/ years)
- Psychiatry as torture consultants: instructed on how to be damaging without meeting the definition of torture

Question 20

Solaz: War on terror

Answer 20

helped develop and cover the torture of the government

Question 21

Younis: war on terror

Answer 21

war of terror drawn heavily upon psy-knowledge and ideas to pursue “pre-crime”
- Relies upon identification of individual “at psychiatric risk of radical”
- PREVENTS needs public bodies to train staff to detect “terrorist mindset”

Question 22

Further compliances and conclusions

Answer 22

Mental illness often present in “political ways”
View of “monolithic” science vs plural “sciences”
Inherently political nature of the psy-disciplines means that apoliticality is not possible, but what safeguards can (and should) be applied to prevent misuse of expertise?