Sunday, March 11, 2012

why anti-authoritarians are diagnosed as mentally ill



madinamerica | In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.

Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that authority—sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes wisely and sometimes not.

Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities.

Why Mental Health Professionals Diagnose Anti-Authoritarians with Mental Illness
Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world—a diagnosable one.

I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.

In graduate school, I discovered that all it took to be labeled as having “issues with authority” was to not kiss up to a director of clinical training whose personality was a combination of Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, and Howard Cosell. When I was told by some faculty that I had “issues with authority,” I had mixed feelings about being so labeled. On the one hand, I found it quite amusing, because among the working-class kids whom I had grown up with, I was considered relatively compliant with authorities. After all, I had done my homework, studied, and received good grades. However, while my new “issues with authority” label made me grin because I was now being seen as a “bad boy,” it also very much concerned me about just what kind of a profession that I had entered. Specifically, if somebody such as myself was being labeled with “issues with authority,” what were they calling the kids I grew up with who paid attention to many things that they cared about but didn’t care enough about school to comply there? Well, the answer soon became clear. Fist tap Dale.

26 comments:

umbrarchist said...

EXACTLY!  People with authoritarian personalities will think what they are told and regard anything else as CRAZY.  So if the majority of people are authoritarian then those who are not are ABNORMAL.

So what does this have to do with 9/11.  Physics does not give a damn about psychology.  Physics does not change because of what the majority of people believe.But if what the authoritarians believe contradicts physics then who is INSANE?

Go look at any skyscraper.  The thing has to hold itself up.  The designers had to figure out how to distribute the steel and concrete.  So how do we get a ten year 9/11 debate about a couple of 110 story skyscrapers when the physics of skyscrapers should have been beneath the notice of physicists before the Moon landing.  The neutron wasn't discovered until after the Empire State Building was constructed.

Temple3 said...

@ umb:

Can you hit this non-physicist mind off with some praise-worthy sites for the physicists perspective on what should not have been a 10-year debate? Thanks. 


@ nulan: 

Feel free to provide. 

CNu said...

 magne shooooot......, umbra out there on his own with that one.

Temple3 said...

LOL. I look before I leap. 

umbrarchist said...

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YRUso7Nf3s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hblla0DYmZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUKLOlIhang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCDpL4Ax7I

http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/how-hot.htm

This is hilarious junk from MIT aired in 2002.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i11Yo3qKZV8

No that video says the south tower came down in 11 seconds.  Dr. Sunder of the NIST said the north tower came down in 11 seconds.

Here is a computer program with 110 masses floating in air and dropping the top 14 on the rest takes 12 seconds even without energy being required to destroy supports that could hold the static load.

http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?mode=unread&p=64306&sid=141700377c0af22c97fb2453452ae590

This demonstrates what kind of information is needed to compute the potential energy of the towers.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3667265&postcount=316

So the problem in no matter what destroyed the towers or who did it the problem cannot be properly analysed without accurate data on the distributions of steel and concrete down the buildings.  The NIST admitted that in three places in the report about analysing the effect of the impacts on suspended ceilings in the towers.  But then they did not do it.

umbrarchist said...

 Oh ye of little faith.

Dale Asberry said...

That is exactly the problem. "Faith".

Uglyblackjohn said...

Awww Dale... Don't tell me that you don't believe in "Faith"?

umbrarchist said...

 Yeah, too many people with Faith in authority and not enough KNOWLEDGE of grade school Newtonian Physics.

Big Don said...

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1503156360001/how-to-demolish-a-power-station?intcmp=features

Dale Asberry said...

Although I'm not a professional physicist, my degree training was in physics. The twin towers going down due to material failure is completely plausible. WTC7, though, is almost blatantly a controlled demolition. But, does it matter? Whether malicious intent or reckless disregard, the whole event is clearly a direct consequence of warsocialism.

But from my perspective you're stuck in a 'ghost not' loop. "I've got proof, dammit!" Doesn't matter anyway, those people wouldn't be able to see that proof - ever. You need to be able to come to your own peace with knowing most people are fundamentally flawed in that way.

CNu said...

 The Ghost Not http://www.buildfreedom.com/content/reciprocality/r2/index.html

Dale Asberry said...

And a quick summarized version (with all the faults that a summary would entail)
http://www.buildfreedom.com/content/reciprocality/r2/keypoint.html 

1. World exists.2. It has consistsent state because it exists.3. Pleople organized external world as maps.4. These maps catch important for these people aspects of world and allow consious operations over world.5. The map is not a territory.6. People with "Ghost Not" think that their set of maps is a territory and deny existance of anything that is not on the map.7. People with "Ghost Not", when they are met with incompatible Map, dismiss any value of that map unless map is supported by some authority.8. People with "Ghost Not", when they are met with incompatible phenomens, try to explain it using their Map or dismiss phenomens.9. People without "Ghost Not", when they are met with incompatible Map, try to build more generic map that describes phenomens that are described by their map and map of other people.10. "Ghost Not" was developed as adaptation mechanism to M0.

umbrarchist said...

 Do you know the distribution of steel and concrete in the towers.  That would be a pretty good trick, I can't find it.  How was there material failure more than 5 stories below where the plane hit the north tower?  Especially if you don't know the mass of steel on each level?

I have never claimed to have proof.  I don't have the data either.

Dale Asberry said...

Absolutely I suffer from Ghost Not. It is a part of the human condition. I must actively work to avoid it.

Also, for this reason 'pschological' crap is at the core of physical models.

However if you carry through on your reasoning, and such issues ARE discovered to be as you say, then what? If everyone does learn accounting, then what? We'll suddenly enter enlightenment?

Nonsense. As humans have shown, they will rail against the wind out of stupid spite. Somewhat like your ranting... you are a broken record and you add nothing valuable to the conversation. [Mute on]

CNu said...

Gurdjieff:  RELIGION IS DOING; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives
his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but
fantasy or philosophy. Whether he likes it or not he shows his attitude
towards religion by his actions and he can show his attitude only by his actions.
Therefore if his actions are opposed to those which are demanded by a
given religion he cannot assert that he belongs to that religion.

Dale Asberry said...

Religion is a packer's paradise, a human cognitive error that interferes with enlightenment and growth by allowing these humans to get stuck in a cognitive hole by self-medicating  through easily accessible dopamine hits.

umbrarchist said...

 At present we are discussing the possibilities of skyscraper collapse not accounting.  So distribution of mass becomes part of that issue.  The purpose of experiment is to eliminate psychological crap.

CNu said...

I thought the purpose of experiment was to prove/disprove theories and models, demonstrate repeatability, and push the envelope of technique. Psychological crap pervades every single aspect of the experimental process.

The WTC collapse precludes experimental recreation and its explanation is thereby reduced to nothing more than an article of faith - ANY way you elect to account for it.

umbrarchist said...

 Here is a gravitational collapse experiment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4BXIpdIdo

It is not a tube-in-tube structure however.  That would be more expensive and difficult to build but it could be done.  It is curious that no engineering school has done it in TEN YEARS.  But they won't even discuss the distributions of steel and concrete. YEARS.

CNu said...

which part of nobody else gives a f*ck and you're not going to do anything about it - are you still struggling with?

Tom said...

Interesting stuff, though his article is weirdly organized and discursive.   I first ran into Alan Carter via CNu's site, assuming that's the same as the Programmer's Stone guy.

I'm not at all sure that Laws of Form was ever meant to be superimposed over actual reality like that.  Mathematicians are always talking about the structure they've defined so far, and that's IT man!   But that doesn't necessarily shoot down ... whatever it is Carter's saying, which I'm not sure what that is, but I kind of like humming along.

CNu said...

One and the same. http://buildfreedom.com/content/reciprocality/thirdage/

Dale Asberry said...

I wasn't aware of The Laws of Form or that it was mentioned by Carter. Is there a reference in particular you can point me to? Interesting ...

Tom said...

Dale, All I have on it is I spent a few hours with it at a friend's house once.  I think it's seen by some as a kind of weird classic dead end in math.  I'm no mathematician though.

I remember Spencer-Brown starts off by saying "Draw a distinction."  And he means it in an incredibly general way: some stuff is distinguished from all the other stuff.http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Form-G-Spencer-Brown/dp/0963989901 Here's something somebody wrote about it; I haven't gone through this though.http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Laws.pdf Carter mentions it a couple of times in the article you cited. 

John Kurman said...

I stumbled upon Laws of Form during one of my visits to the library. Reading through it, I decided pretty quickly that, like Rand's Objectivist "premises", or Dawkin's "memes", nothing of any real substance could be derived from this contrived system of categorization. Wittgenstein, at least, recognized that the Tractatus was all bullshit. Wonder where this guy ended up...

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