The trap

I haven't blogged here for ages. I got a bit confused as to what the point was, as I have no particular expertise, so all I can offer are observations. I'm over that now, though. So, here is another observation.

Adam Curtis is an awesome documentary maker. His last series, "The Power of Nightmares" explored the links between the Neocons and Islamic fundamentalism, going a lot further than the obvious CIA FUNDED BIN LADEN IN AFGHANISTAN!!!!! stuff. His previous series , "The Century of the Self" traced how Freud's ideas have been used in the public sphere, via PR (itself an invention of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew), to cold war propoganda and finally focus groups, giving a hefty and deserved kicking to hippies en route.

His new series kicked off at the weekend. Again it's looking at the "self", and, if I understood this correctly, how we've been taught to recognise a particular kind of self -individualistic, but also paranoid, uncooperative and self-serving. This makes us unhappy, unsurprisingly, and hopefully at some stage he'll tell us that there is another way! and another world is possible! and so on. That would be great.

Anyhow, this stuff was interesting, and will be commented on at greater length after epsiode 2, but there was a facsinating bit about mental ill health and its treatment. David Rosenhan was a psychiatrist inspired by the unorthodox ideas of RD Laing , the leader of the "anti psychiatry" movement. He believed the psychiatric establishment to be wholly unscientific, based on a social construct of what was normal. He conducted an experiment, whereby he and 7 others committed themselves to mental institutions saying they heard voices in their heads (all saying no more than "thump"). Beyond this, they were all to act normally. All were committed, and some stayed in the institutions for months, diagnosed with a range of conditions they did not have. In order to get out, they had to pretend they actually were ill, but getting better. The report of this experiment shocked the mental health establishment, and obviously caused real embarrassment to the instituions invlolved.

So much so, that, accusing Rosenhan of underhand tactics, the institutions requested he send more, anonymous fakes, and this time the would definitely spot them. He agreed, and, over the next few weeks, they proudly reported that they had spotted over 40 imposters, with a similar number of probables. Rosenhan had sent no imposters.

The obvious upshot of this is that extant methods for diagnosing the sane and the insane were exposed as, at the very least, incredibly error ridden, both in terms of sensitivity (spotting those who were mentally ill) and sensitivity (spotting those who weren't). The next bit of the documentary was, in a sense, even more interesting. Curtis explains the response of the psychiatric profession was essentially to redefine their role. Rather than looking at causes - bipolar disorder, schizophrenia etc - they moved to sypmtoms and behaviours. Taking the latter approach means that by ticking certain boxes a person can be called, for example, "Obsessive Compulsive" by definition.

And this is interesting to me because, as Curts points out, the result is that certain behaviours are normal, and desirable, and others, well, others are obsessive compulsive and weird. So checking your e-mail too often is weird, as it washing your hands too much, or constantly looking toward the door to see if anyone you know has just entered. Less flippantly, the permitted set of behaviors it is OK to exhibit is restricted by these definitions.

All of which makes me wonder - does this extend to depression as well? Curtis talked more of OCD and ADHD, with depression being better classed wiith schizophrenia as one of the illnesses old style psychiatry couldn't cure so no longer bothered with. But a common thread among the friends of mine who've beeen depressed, or anxious, was that they felt that this behaviour was not normal. Might it actually be OK to be anxious, or sad, at times? And would knowing that it was OK make it easier to take?