IMPORTANT FACTS

1. Psychiatrists have notoriously and falsely �diagnosed� the creative mind as a �mental disorder,� invalidating the artist�s abilities as �neurosis.�

2. While psychiatry purports to be a science, this has been successfully challenged by medical experts and scientists. Dr. Margaret Hagen, Ph.D., a Boston University lecturer and author, calls it �junk science.� �Unhappiness is a problem; it is not a disease,� she states.

3. Psychiatric theories perpetually remain theories; never moving any closer to facts or laws. They speak of �disorders� because they cannot prove the existence of criteria that make a �disease.�

4. Experts also refute psychiatry�s latest theory that a �chemical imbalance� causes mental disorders, with Dr. David Kaiser stating, �This is essentially a pseudo-scientific enterprise.�

CHAPTER TWO Destroying Sanity

For years, psychiatrists and psychologists have labeled the creative mind as a mental �disorder,� mischaracterizing an artist�s �feverish brilliance� as a manic phase of craziness, or melancholic performances as depression. Vision was redefined as hallucination.

Regardless of psychiatry�s total lack of scientific authenticity, the more entrepreneurial and ambitious psychiatrists have discovered a captive market in the entertainment industry. They have courted and seduced creative individuals�and made billions in the process.

Psychiatry purports to be part of the sciences, a claim that is proven false by experts in methodology who point out that they cannot recognize any of the requisite criteria that distinguish a true science. What is the nature of a science? And what is the scientific validity of psychiatry and psychology?

According to Margaret A. Hagen, Ph.D., a Boston University lecturer, these are some of the key criteria for a science: �The findings discovered through observation in one laboratory must be replicable in another laboratory. Data measured and gathered by one instrument must be the same as data gathered by another similar instrument. And thus the objectivity comes not from an individual practitioner but from a system that demands consistent and repeatable results.�

Neither psychiatry nor psychology has ever conclusively proven the mental �illnesses� they claim to address. In fact, they have no means of measuring the mind. They do not have precise and universally agreed-upon definitions of terms and cannot even agree on key labels such as �schizophrenia.� Theories perpetually remain theories; never moving any closer to facts or laws. They speak of �disorders� because they cannot prove the existence of criteria that make a �disease.� Their blunt statements of fact are really never more than opinion, unsupported by objective measurement. Hagen pulls no punches: �Clinical psychology is classic junk science.�

Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, agrees with Dr. Hagen about psychiatry�s lack of scientific veracity: �If an �illness� is to be scientifically meaningful, it must somehow be capable of being approached, measured or tested in a scientific fashion, as through a blood test or an electroencephalograph. If it cannot be so measured�as is the case [with] � �mental ill- ness��then the phrase �illness� is at best a metaphor � and that therefore �treating� these �illnesses� is an � unscientific enterprise.�

The lack of science in the American Psychiatric Association�s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was described by a psychologist attending a DSM hearing: �The low level of intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses were developed by majority vote on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I feel like Chinese, so let�s go to a cafeteria. Then it�s typed into the computer. It may reflect on our naivet�, but it was our belief that there would be an attempt to look at things scientifically.�

Canadian psychologist Tana Dineen tells us, �Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV are terms arrived at through peer consensus��literally a show of hands by APA committee members.

And what are some of these mental �disorders�?

Stuttering, Communication Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Disorder of Written Expression, Mathematics Disorder, Sleepwalking Disorder, Nicotine Withdrawal Disorder, Phase of Life Problem Disorder and Caffeine Intoxication Disorder. DSM-IV lists the latter as occurring as a result of drinking 2�3 cups of coffee and experiencing five or more of 12 listed symptoms, including: restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushed face, increased urination, muscle twitching, heart palpitations and periods of inexhaustibility.

Considering its unsupported, ever-growing numbers of mental �disorders,� it is no wonder that the DSM is under attack. �� [T]he current DSM is a compendium of checklist diagnoses: cursory, superficial menus of symptoms �,� criticized Harvard Medical School�s Joseph Glenmullen. He warned that drugs are now being prescribed for a �burgeoning list of conditions,� including everyday life.

David Kaiser, a medical author who is trained as a psychiatrist, has condemned the DSM criteria: �This is essentially a pseudoscientific enterprise that grew out of modern psychiatry�s desire to emulate modern medical science.�

This doesn�t mean that people do not have problems; mental travail and upsets exist. But as Dr. Hagen points out, �Unhappiness is a problem; it is not a disease. Low self-esteem also is not a disease. Eating too much is not a disease, and neither is eating too little. And, despite a huge lobby to the contrary, drinking too much alcohol is not a disease either � the psychological establishment has defined virtually all less-than-desirable behaviors, from hatred of first grade to serial rape, as psychological diseases, and represents itself as uniquely able to provide the necessary �therapies� for them.�

Psychiatrists and psychologists should no more be let loose to diagnose the problems faced by those working in the arts, than a butcher should be allowed to operate on people. The consequences are staggering and dangerous.

From the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, which named 112 mental disorders, to the latest edition which now includes 374 such disorders, the criteria used for psychiatric diagnoses are a parody of science-based illnesses. Used by psychiatrists to bilk hospitals, governments and insurance, they give medicine a bad name. The billable list includes:
Disorder of Written Expression DSM Page 51
Mathematics Disorder DSM Page 50
Expressive Language Disorder DSM Page 55
Conduct Disorder DSM Page 85
Caffeine-Related Disorder DSM Page 212

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