My Country ‘Tis of Hate
My Country 'Tis of Hate
Coincidence. I read with horror the NY Times exposé by Ron Nixon and Michael D. Shear, “Over 700 Children Taken from Parents at Border” (April 20, 2018) within a few hours of starting to read D. H. Dilbeck ‘s biography “Frederick Douglas, America’s Prophet” (2018 Chapel Hill Press). “The mere whim of a master could separate forever a child from his family,” (p. 13) Douglas is quoted from his autobiography “My Bondage My Freedom.” Six-year-old Frederick was the beloved of his grandmother guardian, also a slave. She was ordered by her master, however, to give him up, and simply disappear from his life. "…granmammy gone! granmammy gone!" “Frederick franticly searched the kitchen. When he realized his grandmother had left, he collapsed in a fit of inconsolable tears. He sobbed himself to sleep that night.” This was the first of many “traumatic terror(s)” inflicted by slavery on Frederick.
We ISEPP members call ourselves a society concerned about “ethical practices” in the mental health field. We are expert in our understanding of the vicissitudes of Attachment and Separation. So, as experts, even putting aside moral and ethical principles, we understand the damage that America’s terrible immigration policies can inflict.
ISEPP members, should we not speak out?
It seems the administration fears that some immigrants commit fraud by using minors, not their own, to bolster their case for admission when seeking asylum from political violence. Alright. I understand desperate people will lie to survive. But our system of justice is based on due process, and as Ben Franklin once said, ”Better that a hundred guilty Persons should escape than one innocent Person should suffer.” This issue, I think, is related to those who criticize psychiatry’s power to commit a person deemed dangerous even if he has committed no crime. I am making a connection here. I am positing that what many members of ISEPP hate about psychiatry is not a psychiatry problem but rather an insidious social/cultural stain directly in contradiction of our avowed ideal that “all men are created equal.” The Eugenics movement of the late 19th century was essentially a continuation of a slave economy justified by the notion that Africans are inferior creatures. An illustration: In 1851 a physician, Samuel A. Cartwright of Louisiana in his book “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” proposed a disease entity, drapetomania, a running away mania, a particular disease entity of Negroes who ran away from their servitude.” The cure was “whipping the devil out of them.” (see Wikipedia, Drapetomania) Of course God is the source, according to Cartwright, of the righteousness of slavery, the white race domination of the black. Please note when our President demeans migrants fleeing for their lives, referring to them as murderers and rapists, he puts us all back into the scientism of the mid-19th century thus justifying their mistreatment.
ISEPP members. Should we not speak out against this madness?
Psychiatry has too often been used for social control and political repression. Many of those who promoted the eugenics movement were psychiatrists. Psychiatrists and psychologists in the eugenics movement were the initial propagandists of Nazism. ECT was invented by Ugo Cerletti, who was working in Fascist Italy when he invented ECT. Most of today's psychiatrists are as obsessed with genetics as the Nazis were. Ernst Rudin, a card-carrying Nazi in Hitler's Germany, invented the pseudoscientific "theory" of the "genetic cause" of "schizophrenia".
Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.... As for "Eugenics", the last forced sterilization of a "mentally disabled" person took place in Vermont in the 1970's. Margaret Sanger was a loud and vocal supporter of eugenics well into the middle 20th century, not only the "late 19th century", as suggested above. And yes, child smugglers bringing kids in for pedophiles happens far more than the media will admit. Use of other people's children to bolster asylum claims happens far more than the media will admit. Recently, with the connivance of psychiatry, my friend was lied about, kidnapped, held in solitary isolation, and force drugged. All in the name of "treatment". Psychiatry itself, and the whole "mental health" system are so egregiously broken, that it's laughable for psychs to worry about some illegal immigrants. You folks would do better to clean your own house, first. Yes, I'm a survivor of the lies of the pseudoscience drug racket and means of social control known as psychiatry. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias much?....
I had not considered the parallel between the actions against slave families and the present diaspora we are inducing. Thanks for writing this, Joe.
Joe, This is hard to read. We need to do more than speak out. We need to elect Democrats. OK, I know there's not that much of a difference. But there is enough of a difference to make a difference.