Mastelos Christos, Political scientist, postgraduate student of political philosophy, author
The collection of essays included in the volume "De-medicalizing misery, psychiatry, psychology and the human condition" is a very important legacy for Greek literature and the Greek readership that is sensitive to the issues of mental health. At the same time, however, mental health seems to be the thematic trigger, more than anything, or otherwise the vehicle of discourse for us to move to a broader reflection. The content of the book opens a dialogue that escapes the narrow context of mental health and turns our gaze towards the social reality, where “suffering” is produced. To begin with, let us note that this work comprises an easy read. It is a book that can be read with flow and rhythm. If I were to try to condense this presentation into a title, that is to say, to distil the content of the book into a short meaning, I would overemphasize the political dimension of personal experience. In other words, in line with both the need and the anxiety for a therapeutic and liberating perspective, I would propose to look and work in the direction of the politicization of psychic suffering, whether we are talking about a psychiatric experience or not. This is because the boundary where mental health declines and the territory of mental illness begins is so blurred that most of the time it is not visible.
Misery, distress and despair are not the “property” or “privilege” of those who typically receive mental health services; on the contrary, it is legitimate to say that distress is commonplace for all people who share a common reality of progressive devaluation of their wages, generalised racism and a climate of fear, and the collapse of the social fabric and interpersonal relationships. A reality, which, while common to most of us, is experienced and dealt with individually and in isolation from each other. And this is where the impasse begins...
A friend of mine, “X”, faced an issue with his conscience and moral stance at his work. A salaried employee scientist, he was building computer systems, to the point where he became concerned that what he was building could potentially turn against society, and therefore himself. And that was the case indeed. “X” is a communist in his political beliefs, and at the thought that he was helping to build the control society through his work, he began to have panic attacks. He ended up in therapy and taking tranquilizers, but the control society was not thwarted. Psychiatry and psychology, in our example, simply came to make “X” more adaptive to his environment and relieve him of the distress caused by the job. They came, in other words, to improve and reform “X”, the friend and comrade, not the dystopia of surveillance and repression that is systematically established around us.
The history of psychiatry shows that the latter assumes an institutional role. It is in a sense the agent of a - silent - social mandate, of an - informal - consensus for the management of the pariahs, the poor, the delinquents, and those who spoil the image of the city streets, our homes and the places where we move, for those who offend our tastes. This is proven both empirically and historically. Mainstream psychiatry is, as a rule, implemented through its standard practices, institutions and legal framework, according to a police culture, while it is put into practice by managing the social issue. This cannot be done without the image of the “dangerous schizophrenic”, without the distinction between “normal and abnormal”, meaning that it cannot be done without an ideology. Clinical psychology and psychiatry are not truths without history; on the contrary, they are washed up by the spirit of an era. Human suffering, although it exists for as long as there have been human beings, is experienced differently in every era, and is even more susceptible to different interpretations and treatments in different places, time and cultures. A general comment seems necessary: the place of the “God who died” has been taken by the scientific truth, the undeniable empirical knowledge, the technicity and therefore the techno-industrial complex, the descriptive, quantitative and statistical narrative of the world. It is the historical tradition in which psychiatry is produced and reproduced today, but this does not mean that it automatically explains the richness, range and diversity of the human psyche. Either because it does not want to, or because it cannot, or both...
And if indeed, as Nietzsche writes, “God is dead”, we can, in turn, assume that with God's death, his followers have perished. Thus, if men loved in the mercy of God, today they have forgotten how to love altogether. There remains the memory of faith, the debris of the demolition of the divine element. It is, of course, commonplace among us that we do not trust easily, we do not believe in friendship, we are suspicious of love, we do not talk to our neighbour, we have no solidarity with our colleague, we usually live alone and in insecurity, we will manage on our own, etc. In a sense, we need to invent new ways and codes of coexistence. We need to start sharing, to rebuild the social fabric. We need to give solidarity and receive solidarity... We need to resurrect our admiration for each other.
And since the grandest historical narratives find a foundation in our most humble stories, we cannot but see that our exclusion from the public sphere, the logic of delegation, that where there is a state we do not exist collectively and autonomously. We cannot but finally admit that the more we politicize our mental anguish the more the state withers, the more we share things and know each other the closer we come to freedom. A healing process of emancipation is not possible without the formation of community! In this sense, and as an interpretation on the work, I do not see mental health as a specialized subject or a scientific subject concerning only specialists, but instead place it in the diffuse social field. This is not to say that we do not need mental health specialists and practitioners, this is not to say that we do not want public health and improvement reforms in medical services, but let us be realistic. It means at the same time that a real process of healing and emancipation is looking towards an overall picture of social de-institutionalisation. The struggle to reclaim the public sphere, for political freedom, rather resembles the painful need to reinvent the emotional sphere, to know ourselves through exposure to otherness, to finally accept that otherness, and to constantly find new places to share through it. The book "De-medicalizing Misery" implicitly but clearly does just that: it places man in his true dimension.
The delegation of political affairs to professionals and experts in the practice of the political phenomenon - a characteristic of the aristocracy - is very similar and analogous to the delegation of our emotional affairs to the respective experts in psychology and psychiatry as noted above. Against the concept of an “isolated brain” that somewhat abstractly malfunctions and becomes sick for mainstream psychiatry, the need to view the human being in its total and holistic dimension emerges through the texts. That is, to see man as he reflects on himself and as he sees the other man. That is, to see the “social man”...
The writing invites us to look at man, and of course his suffering within the conditions produced by the times, culture and society. It invites us to deal with our past, our personal narrative, our memory, which is essentially our present, that is, it invites us to confront the trauma, the root of madness or grief, because that is where the conditions of its management are inscribed, in listening to our experience. It invites us to decode misery, madness, grief in what they are expressed in anyway, in words and meaning, which in turn correspond to the material conditions of existence of societies and people. In other words, we are invited to become mirrors of ourselves and of others.
In fact, in studying the work - as is already apparent - I got the feeling that I was reading a deeply political work. In the literal sense... In fact, within its rhythm, a need for transformation of social reality is conveyed; I heard a clamour for direct political action. Without the authors slipping into attributing everything to sociology, they demonstrate on the other hand, how mainstream psychiatry and clinical psychology, in their arrogant monologue as an authority, are becoming more and more akin to religious truth, and a mythological account of the individual; they are becoming more and more akin to ideology rather than a science.
Let us agree that as legitimate as it is to feel happy, it is legitimate to feel unhappy the next moment. It is enough to acknowledge the diversity of the human condition, that spectrum which includes both joy and sadness. Suffice it to agree that the “criminalization of grief” is the first rule of its painful reproduction, and we have already started to know each other. To coexist is to accept what is not like us, difference. It is (social) stigma that locks us up into fear and loneliness. Respect is the key that unlocks most doors. So, in the soil of generalised social alienation and loneliness, pervasive fear and racism, patriarchy, homophobic and transphobic violence, unemployment, racial and class exclusions, it is quite logical that people lose their minds. The disconnection from nature and its element makes things progressively more and more nightmarish. In a sense, it constitutes a right to lose one's mind in this dehumanized reality, and for some, it may even comprise a survival strategy.
As the authority of psychiatric truth and its representatives expand the range of diagnostic categories (holiday melancholy, seasonal depression, etc.), more and more manifestations of the human psyche and behaviours will require psychiatric treatment. In economic terms, in a way, supply determines demand, which is even more true for pharmaceutical companies. It just so happens that the invention of the drug also invents the disease, the disorder.
The book begins by quoting a passage from Freud, who believes that it is wrong that in psychology - unlike other sciences - everyone has an opinion. Against Freud's ambition for whom the only people qualified for psychological commentary and support are professional experts in the subject, I would argue that we should trust the human being together with his destructive and creative capacities. Man's power to imagine, to tear down and build, to desire and to strive. The mutilation of man is founded on just that: the only person competent to talk about your suffering is your psychologist. You do not need a degree in political science to express an opinion on political current affairs. You do not need a degree in psychotherapy to counsel your close ones in their distress. It seems just as absurd to assume that the Spanish revolutionaries in 1936 took up arms against the fascists because they had studied political science and philosophy, and therefore knew political correctness. This is ridiculous! Neither one nor the other... As naturally and spontaneously as one expresses the injustice one feels within oneself and the barbarism one sees around oneself, one can just as naturally and spontaneously sympathize with a friend who has just broken up with a great love or is mourning a loved one. Solidarity can and does heal both.
The stakes are not a choice between psychiatry on the one hand or sociology on the other. The challenge is to synthesize the readings and interpretations in a productive way in terms of their practical real-life implications. And this in the service of the living human being. I do not want to leave the impression in closing this presentation that psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry are barren, harmful or useless sciences and fields of knowledge. After all, that is not what the book suggests. On the contrary, they can contribute many things and be useful, provided, however, that they serve the human being instead of discipline, control or commercial profit. My point is that the subject, the recipient of medical services, the person with psychiatric experience has the right to decide on the narrative that serves him or her most beneficially and effectively. He can speak to the social origins of his mental suffering or he can adopt a biological interpretation of his suffering. Possibly both. The personal narrative often constructs and reconstructs identity and reality itself. It is enough for a person with or without psychiatric experience to live in terms of material dignity, for the privileges in society to be shared and diffused.
Only in this way are we entitled to speak of free will, of free development of man's personality, of identities, of self-determination. Only in this way can “self-determination of the individual” take on a real meaning…
P.S. 1: This presentation was especially dedicated to all those friends and comrades who we met and ultimately had to mourn violently and unjustly. It was dedicated to all those who we lost suddenly either because heroin killed them, or because they decided to end their lives. It was finally dedicated to all those anonymous heroes who fight the daily battle to keep themselves alive, in and out of institutions, to those who fight for dignity and who we may never know.
P.S. 2: The tragic hero is always a happy hero, like Prometheus Bound in Aeschylus' tragedy who does not regret his action for a moment, despite all the pain of punishment, thus sealing the affirmation in life! Let us transform despair into a battle for life, solidarity, camaraderie, rebellion. So that we will not mourn any other suicides, so that we will not experience any other murders…