Current music:	We Will Never Die
Entry tags:	anti-psychology

Psychology has ruined everybody
It is one of my fundamental ideas about life that the psychological industry has ruined my generation. At one point in history, psychology was just an excuse for naughty suffragettes to make penis jokes in polite company, but it's no longer very funny. It's a profit driven industry, it's everywhere, and it's screwing things up.

Asperger's syndrome a term now applied to people who never bothered to develop social skills. Somehow 21st century nerds think humanity has conspired to deprive them of their social skills; that everyone else was born with the ability to be as devious as a courtier in the house of the Medicis, and they missed out on the genetic sweepstakes. The reality is, people with this, um, 'disorder,' are people who never bothered learning how to be nice to others. The fact that many people ended up being weird in the same way doesn't make it a genetic disease; it makes it a character flaw which is encouraged by society. Where were all these Asperger victims 100 years ago? 1000 years ago? They didn't exist, because humanity didn't have the leisure to create such tittering popinjays. Aspergers people at least seem to have the decency to know there is nothing wrong with them, though, being creatures of our times, they express this the way every other group of non-conformists has since Stonewall: by forming pressure groups declaring that normal people have to accept them as they are. They've even come up with a dismissive term for people who don't have their little affliction, "neurotypicals." Doubtless, it is only a matter of time before dorky people in highwaters get their own pride parade. I am looking forward to the day when, "people who sleep late," get their own syndrome and civil rights movement, and I can sue when I get grief for showing up late. Also, if your kid is "profoundly autistic" -time to grow up and face facts: he's mentally retarded.



According to the World Health Organization, depression is an illness as a more terrible affliction than, get this: "downs syndrome, deafness, below-the-knee amputation, and angina." So, according to no less an authority than the United Nations, the drooping lilly who whines to me about how he is sad in a gothic nightclub has bigger problems than a mental retard, a gimp, Helen Keller or someone who is about to have a heart attack. There probably is a serious disorder called depression. I'm sorry; you don't have it. Depression in the modern age is a combination of people getting themselves into stupid situations, poor mental hygiene, and unrealistic expectations of happiness. One of the few actual cures we know for depression is electroshock therapy. If you were really depressed, you'd sign up to have electrodes wired to your head. Instead, you take fashionable little pills which further scramble your brain. What boggles my mind is people who smoke hippy lettuce, drink heavily and pop alphabet soups of brain-frying designers ... and are surprised that they feel like shit, and their brain functioning is suboptimal. Why not quit doing that to yourself before you further destroy your frontal lobes with pharmaceutical fruit salad?


"A bigger problem than retardation, blindness, losing a leg, or a heart attack: being a goth chick"


Shyness syndrome is what triggered this particular tirade. While Fred Crews blames the sinister gigantor "Big Pharma," and their Svengali public relations firms, I don't see people as passive participants in all this, any more than I see junkies as victims of 'pushers.' Nobody sticks the needle in their arm. The fact of the matter is, people want the magic cure. They don't want to work at being not-shy; undoing years of self-indulgant introversion. They want to take the magic pill which makes them into charming, outgoing extroverts. What they get is a pill that makes them more comfortable with the shitty way they live their lives. Having a 'disease' is also a source for pride. Attention deficit disorder: a 'disease' which roughly translates to, "a kid who is not taking amphetamines." I can't blame the victims here, but I can blame the parents.



The american psychological association (a group which refuses to accept the veracity of statistical reasoning applied to their own treatments), has no effective treatments for any of the 'diseases' they have invented, yet they somehow claim primacy over these 'ailments.' Hell, at this point, "normal people who have their shit together," are in danger of being classified as abnormal and in need of treatment in the name of "diversity." People who believe in the healing power of character are, of course, closet fascists who are in need of diversity training. People who use religion to deal with their spiritual problems? Well, they are delusional, aren't they? Better to have them on prozac, right? The nation creaks and groans with quack therapists, 'grief counsellors,' life coaches and dispensers of brain nostrums. Even if you believe they have a place in life, it is obvious they create more problems than they solve. Would the GDP increase or decrease if we sent them all to Africa (cranks, therapists, brain-pills and everything) to minister to the mentally ill in that troubled continent? Psycho-quacks run a profit oriented industry; they're everywhere, and if you're the type of person who worries about companies that sell cigarettes and cheeseburgers, you should really be worried about psycho-quacks. Cheeseburgers and cigarettes only kill people at the end of their lives. Psycho-quacks steal people's souls and make them miserable in the prime of their lives.


"Dr. Guertin's nerve syrup: prozac for the American Civil War era; probably more fun to take, and at least the bottle is pretty"