“I resigned from those committees [DSM IV] after two years because I was appalled by the way I saw that good scientific research was often being ignored, distorted, or lied about and the way that junk science was being used as though it were of high quality, if that suited the aims of those in charge. I also resigned because I was increasingly learning that giving someone a psychiatric label was extremely unlikely to reduce their suffering but carried serious risks of harm, and when I had reported these concerns and examples of harm to those at the top, they had ignored or even publicly misrepresented the facts.”

Dr. Paula Caplan. The late Dr Caplan was a former professor of psychology, assistant professor in psychiatry and director of the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of Toronto.

https://perlanterna.com/dsm

Regarding Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V:

"Steven E. Hyman, the former director of NIMH condemned the whole enterprise. It was, he pronounced, ‘totally wrong in a way [its authors] couldn’t have imagined. So in fact what they produced was an absolute scientific nightmare. Many people who get one diagnosis get five diagnoses, but they don’t have five diseases – they have one underlying condition."

S E Hyman. Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) 1996 – 2001. From A Scull. Mad Science: The Treatment of Mental Illness Fails to Progress [Excerpt] Scientific American. 2015.

https://perlanterna.com/dsm

To support psychiatry's push for psychotropic drugs, the world is being subjected to the largest-ever attempt to classify populations into ever-expanding categories of “disorders” or undesirable states.

This is being done through the similarly ever-expanding categories of disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since DSM III. (Published 1980 and III is the basis for all later versions.)

This activity which has subjected millions of people to these questionably effective drugs with often appalling side-effects should undoubtedly be based on science. But is it?

“[As] psychiatry is unable to depend on biological markers* to justify including disorders in the DSM, we looked for other things – behavioral, psychological – we had other procedures…. Our general principle was that if a large enough number of clinicians felt that a diagnostic concept was important in their work then we were likely to add it as a new category. That was essentially it. It became a question of how much consensus there was to recognise and include a particular disorder.” Robert Spitzer. DSM III Task Force Chair.

“There was very little systematic research, and much of the research that existed was really a hodgepodge—scattered, inconsistent, and ambiguous. I think the majority of us recognised that the amount of good, solid science upon which we were making our decisions was pretty modest.” Theodore Millon. DSM III Task Force.

(*biological markers are any objectively observed biological sign that indicates a medical condition, where that indicator can be measured accurately and reproduced. As DSM III was said to bring about the return to 'biological psychiatry', that there were no biological markers should have been seen as the first sign that something was very wrong.)

https://perlanterna.com/undesirables

Have you ever had an unusual response while taking benzos? If so, I would appreciate you taking the time to (anonymously) participate in my short survey! Thank you! https://maastrichtuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bpaEdPhEbemvXsW

The late Dr Loren Mosher resigned from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1998 in protest over the collusion between the association and the pharmaceutical industry and the resultant misuse of psychotropic drugs.

Dr Mosher was the head of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the US National Institute of Mental Health from 1969 to 1980.

"This is not a group for me. At this point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies. The APA could not continue without the pharmaceutical company support of meetings, symposia, workshops, journal advertising, grand rounds luncheons, unrestricted educational grants etc. etc. Psychiatrists have become the minions of drug company promotions. APA, of course, maintains that its independence and autonomy are not compromised in this enmeshed situation. Anyone with the least bit of common sense attending the annual meeting would observe how the drug company exhibits and “industry sponsored symposia” draw crowds with their various enticements, while the serious scientific sessions are barely attended. Psychiatric training reflects their influence as well: the most important part of a resident’s curriculum is the art and quasi-science of dealing drugs, i.e., prescription writing...

"Is psychiatry a hoax — as practiced today? Unfortunately, the answer is mostly yes."

The resignation letter by Dr Mosher remains a most concise and accurate statement of the corruption of mental health by psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry then and now.

The full text of the letter can be found here: https://perlanterna.com/mosher

Psychiatry's crisis of legitimacy in the 60s and 70s was a demand for accountability. Where was the science? The results?

"The Medical Director of the APA at the time, Melvin Sabshin, recalls that private insurance companies and the federal government began to view psychiatry as a "'bottomless pit-a voracious consumer-of resources and insurance dollars-because its methods of assessment and treatment were too fluid and unstandardized." Mitchell Wilson MD. 1990 DSM III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A History.

Its reputation in tatters, from 1965 to 1972 National Institute of Mental Health funding for psychiatric research decreased at a rate of 5% per year.

There were voices that had warned against this helter-skelter thrusting of psychiatry onto an international stage:

The subject's greatest benefactor, the Rockefeller Foundation, knew very well that neither biological nor dynamic psychiatry had any actual scientific foundation and were astonished at what was going on. https://perlanterna.com/social-racket

Others in the profession described what was occurring. From an article from psychiatrist Roy R Grinker in 1965: "There is a ferment to displace attention from the individual to larger groups and even to the world to prevent war and to facilitate social and cultural change. Unfortunately, extension of an activity is not a substitute for research or knowledge." Mitchell Wilson MD. 1990 DSM III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A History.

Despite these and other warning voices, no one listened. Psychiatry was on a fast train to nowhere. What would save it?

What did, had nothing to do with psychiatric 'knowledge'. In 1950 a tranquilizer of peculiar properties was found by chance to hide the symptoms of what psychiatry said to be 'mental illness'. Its use within psychiatry was driven by pharmaceutical company marketing over decades until it eclipsed most other psychiatric clinical applications, making the manufacturers previously unheard-of fortunes in profits. The pharmaceutical industry now determined psychiatric 'treatment'. The pharmaceutical industry domination of psychiatry had begun.

https://perlanterna.com/psychiatry-saved

The dramatic push after the war to insert social psychiatry into the West, and the many theories and forms of dynamic psychiatry and psychotherapy that traveled with it (to treat both those said to be mentally ill as well as those who were 'normal') made gains for a short time.

By the late 1960's, however, psychiatry was under attack from within and without.

Many within psychiatry disliked what was occurring and were demanding a return to biological psychiatry (although that subject had never gotten beyond speculation at best).

Psychiatry's monopoly on mental health had been broken and serious questions were being asked regarding the value of the profession. Psychiatry had entered what has been called a "crisis of legitimacy."

"In the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1977, Thomas Hackett, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, pointed out that the number of medical students going into psychiatry had shown a marked and substantial drop throughout the country and that it reflected, in his opinion, a growing skepticism about psychiatry’s useful future as it is seen from the outside. “Apart from their training in medicine,” he claimed, “psychiatrists have nothing unique to offer that cannot be provided by psychologists, the clergy, or lay psychotherapists” Mayes and Horwitz, 2005. DSM-III and the revolution in the classification of mental illness.

By 1976, the President of the American Psychiatric Association, Alan Stone said of social and dynamic psychiatry: "...carrying psychiatrists on a mission to change the world, had brought the profession to the edge of extinction." Mitchell Wilson MD. 1990. DSM III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A History.

https://perlanterna.com/crisis-of-legitimacy

Brock Chisholm, with J R Rees and other like-minded psychiatrists, launched their campaign to make the 'people of the world' World Citizens in 1948. Chisholm became the first Director General of the new World Health Organization with its mental health division. The International Committee for Mental Hygiene which had been spreading eugenics throughout the world simply changed its name to the World Federation of Mental Health with J R Rees as its President.

The definition of mental health was changed to draw psychiatrists out of the asylums and hospitals with new responsibilities, not just for the mentally ill but to take charge of the lives of those who were not, their social interactions, raising their children, and even their business success, etc.

"... post-war scientific thinking reflected an extraordinary broadening of psychiatric boundaries and a rejection of the traditional distinction between mental health and mental abnormality. To move from a concern with mental illness institutional populations to the incidence in general population represented an extraordinary intellectual leap." Mitchell Wilson MD. 1990. DSM III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A History.

The same change was reflected in the World Health Organization then, and now:

*‘*Mental health is an integral and essential component of health. 'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’ An important implication of this definition is that mental health is more than just the absence of mental disorders or disabilities.” "Health and Well-Being", World Health Organization website.

"This change in the intellectual landscape of psychiatric thought reflected a change in its institutional geography. Asylum psychiatry and the Kraepelin model on which it was based, fell into relative decline. The field became dominated by private practitioners and hospital and community psychiatrists who applied a broadly conceived psychosocial model ..." Mitchell Wilson MD. 1990. DSM III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A History.

The practical result was a resurgence in psychotherapy and with it a new concept; 'dynamic psychiatry' - based on the source of mental illness being social, political, and legal rather than medical. A psychological motivation for human behavior.

For a very short time, it would seem that psychotherapy had won.

https://perlanterna.com/social-psychiatry

Planning was underway, even before World War II ended, for a new social psychiatry that was supposed to save the world.

"With the other human sciences, psychiatry must now decide what is to be the immediate future of the human race. No one else can. And this is the prime responsibility of psychiatry.”

Psychiatrist Brock Chisholm lectures. 1945. The psychiatry of enduring peace and social progress. (In 1948 Chisholm was appointed the Director-General of the World Health Organization)

Support for eugenics and NAZI biological psychiatry had evaporated. The new idea was that the 'people of the world' were so immature that they could not live together without bringing about war. They were all to be made 'World Citizens' through psychiatric treatment to address their neuroses.

This new psychiatry was announced at the 1948 International Congress 'Mental Health and World Citizenship'

There were two major problems:

1. The 'people of the world' weren't the ones who started the wars and psychiatry was carefully avoiding handling the few lunatics who were responsible.

2. Psychiatry had no technology worth a damn to bring about such as result (and still doesn't).

"the current leaders of ... psychiatry are throwing their weight around in a way quite unjustified by the minute amount of really tested knowledge on which their procedures are based.“ Robert S Morison head of the Medical Sciences division, Rockefeller Foundation. August 1948.

https://perlanterna.com/more-plans

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So it is strange to me cause the only real reason they can give is a threat to yourself or others. And even then that's ambiguous. We don't punish people because they go to a pastor to heal cancer but we can however punish people for holding very devout religious views. Personally, with my own experience with religious persecution through the psychiatric hold system I wonder why aren't we going after people who claim to be faith healers or go after people who seek faith healers? They may have more to complain about and I would rather psychiatric hospitals be banned and in the past. Why don't people get put in for this?

You know with what little they care about in terms of catering to someone's religious needs a bidet should probably be a top-level thing along with not putting pork with other food. But I've realized this as well. My mosque puts bidets in their toilets but guarantee they most likely won't have a bathroom that has a bidet. I get it there don't care what your religion is as when I was put there on the basis of religious discrimination they still provided me with pork even knowing I was Muslim and when I saw their cafeteria they didn't separate pork from the other foods. Most of all I'm also angry at the fact that they don't provide people with bidets given this would and should fall as religious accommodation. I would say we petition and force all psychiatric hospitals to get bidets. Given I don't poop in other toilets the time I was there I am able to just have it there without it bothering me till I get home. But yeah to me bidets do fall under religious use.

In 1948 the President of the Rockefeller Foundation had commented that he feared the 15-year campaign to insert psychiatry into academia and medicine as a valid scientific subject had involved the foundation in a 'social racket'. Robert S Morison, head of the Medical Sciences division provided this answer to his boss:

“In other words, the campaign of psychiatrists for recognition has succeeded beyond expectations. Since this improvement in status has been won with little reference to scientific evidence, it is natural that psychiatrists under-rate the necessity of providing such evidence in the future. It is here that I think they are making their greatest mistake for I believe they underrate the tentativeness with which acceptance has been extended. My guess is that most medical men who have accepted psychiatry have essentially said to themselves, “These people seem to have something that is worth listening to; let’s give them a break.” They are still waiting, however, for evidence of the sort which has validated, for instance, the use of antibiotics. If this is not forthcoming within the next ten or fifteen years they may react rather violently, partly out of embarrassment for having extended a welcoming hand to a group which finally failed to produce.” …

“There have been several times recently when I have felt that the leaders of American psychiatry are trying to establish truth on the basis of majority vote. This is, of course, quite contrary to the usual scientific procedure of submitting evidence which can stand on its own merits in a candid world.”

Robert S Morison, head of the Medical Sciences division, Rockefeller Foundation. 1948

https://perlanterna.com/social-racket

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After WW II Rockefeller Foundation's enthusiasm for psychiatry had considerably cooled. The exclusive concentration on psychiatry was ended and the Medical Sciences Division was told to look into other fields.

It wasn't just the fact that the Foundation had funded many of the organizations and individuals in Germany responsible for NAZI psychiatric atrocities. https://perlanterna.com/descent-into-hell

The Foundation was concerned that psychiatry refused to provide evidence of a scientific foundation for the subject. Despite millions spent and a 15-year campaign to insert psychiatry into academia and medicine as a valid scientific subject, the Foundation was worried they had been taking part in and promoting a 'social racket.'

"Doesn’t a continued and general refusal to permit or attempt validation of psychotherapeutic methods put everyone concerned, including ourselves, in a position of promoting or carrying on a social racket? How can the charlatans be dealt with if the good men will give no validation but their own individual say sos?”

Chester I Barnard, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. 1948

[Barnard is using 'psychotherapeutic methods' to mean all psychiatric methods rather than only psychotherapy.]

https://perlanterna.com/social-racket

By 1937, the Rockefeller Foundation was coming to realize that their efforts to stage-manage biological psychiatry into an even vaguely scientific activity would entail a great deal of work:

"As a new science, it has not yet developed a body of knowledge or trained personnel comparable to that achieved by the other disciplines. Frequently isolated from the rest of medicine, psychiatry has sometimes run to strange cults and theories."

"Part of the cleavage between psychiatry and medicine, oddly enough, has been due to the scientific development of medicine. Medical science has enriched our knowledge of the entity of disease; the entity of the human being has been neglected. Scientific techniques, so fruitful in the study of diseases of the heart, or bacterial invasions, brought negative results when applied to the study of many mental diseases. Those few mental diseases, like general paresis [the effect of untreated syphilis on the nervous system], in which changes in brain structure were demonstrable, were amenable to the methods of general medicine. Those mental diseases which yielded nothing to the new pathological or bacteriological approach were left on the doorstep of the psychiatrist. As a result psychiatry has to a certain extent been shoved off in to a corner of speculation and terminologies—a stepchild, acknowledged but not understood and not really wanted."

Raymond Fosdick, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Foundation Annual Report 1937.

perlanterna.com/strange-cults

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The men of the Rockefeller Foundation were interested in using psychiatry as part of their plans for worldwide 'mental hygiene' (eugenics and biological psychiatry). They set up a committee to study the state of psychiatry and its often pretentious claims and theories. The head of the committee, David L. Edsall, Dean of Harvard Medical School reported back in 1930:

*“*In most places psychiatry now is dominated by elusive and inexact methods of study and by speculative thought. Any efforts to employ the more precise methods that are available have been slight and sporadic. Often they have not been used at all. It is, of course, more difficult to use them in psychiatry than in the more definitely physical aspects of medicine, but there has been little employment of the methods that are open to use, in psychiatry itself, and there has been little change in real knowledge.“

"...the medical man was contented with finding small fragments of knowledge, but the psychiatrist insisted upon making such a comprehensive attack that he accomplished nothing.”

Nonetheless, in 1932 the Rockefeller Foundation embarked on a campaign costing millions across 23 countries, through research, the recruitment and training of psychiatrists, and establishing psychiatric departments in Universities - the birth of what you now see as international biological psychiatry.

To be continued...

https://perlanterna.com/edsall

Most of what you see in 'modern' biological psychiatry is called the 'neo-Kraepelin revolution' and is based on the opinions of psychiatrist and eugenicist Emil Kraepelin. The only problem is that at the end of his career, Kraepelin confirmed it was indeed only his opinions and nothing more than speculation:

“The magnitude of the efforts to be expended on our task, the impenetrable darkness that hides the innermost workings of the brain and their relation to psychic manifestations, and finally the inadequacy of our instruments for dealing with extremely complicated issues, must cause even the most confident investigator to doubt whether it is possible to make any appreciable progress toward psychiatric knowledge and understanding; indeed, it has not been very long since some of our best researchers turned to related disciplines in search of rewards not afforded by psychotherapy.”

Emil Kraepelin. 1917. One Hundred Years Of Psychiatry.

More than 100 years later and using the most sophisticated equipment available it has NEVER been proven as being anything more than his opinions.

https://perlanterna.com/kraepelin

At the peak of psychiatric eugenics, psychiatry's infiltration of Western democracies was very different from fascist regimes, such as NAZI Germany. An example of this was given in the annual meeting of the British National Council for Mental Hygiene on June 18th, 1940 by Colonel John R Rees (by 1948 Rees was the president of the World Federation of Mental Health directing psychiatry throughout the world, operating directly under the United Nations):

Excerpts. "We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life: primary, secondary, university and technical education are all concerned with varying stages in the development of the child and the adolescent. Those who provide the education, the principles upon which they work, and the people upon whom they work, must all be objects of our interest...

"Especially since the last world war we have done much to infiltrate the various social organizations throughout the country...Similarly we have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine.

"If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!

"It really wouldn’t matter if no one ever heard of this Council again provided that the work was done. Let us all, therefore, very secretly be “fifth columnists”.

(A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation.)

This strategy is still being used now.

https://perlanterna.com/real-story-of-psychiatry-cat/no-psychiatry-you-cant-take-over-the-world/

The following quote - from a man who was there in Germany when all this was being disclosed - explains how Aktion T4 was the beginning of an international psychiatry/NAZI genocide program intended for areas conquered by the NAZIs.

"According to the records, 275,000 people were put to death in these killing centers. [Aktion T4] Ghastly as this seems, it should be realized that this program was merely the entering wedge for exterminations of far greater scope in the political program for genocide of conquered nations and the racially unwanted. The methods used and personnel trained in the killing centers for the chronically sick became the nucleus of the much larger centers in the East, where the plan was to kill all Jews and Poles and to cut down the Russian population by 30,000,000.”

“The original program developed by Nazi hot-heads included also the genocide of the English, with the provision that the English males were to be used as laborers in the vacated territories in the East, there to be worked to death, whereas the English females were to be brought into Germany to improve the qualities of the German race. (This was indeed a peculiar admission on the part of the German eugenists.)”

Doctor Leo Alexander. Medical advisor during the Allied trials of crimes against humanity by NAZI doctors and a contributor to the ‘Nuremberg Code’ covering human experimentation which was written after the trials. From ‘Medical Science Under Dictatorship’ July 1949

https://perlanterna.com/real-story-of-psychiatry-cat/no-psychiatry-you-cant-take-over-the-world/