 WWW,
2005 (archived) - In 1486, the
dominant ecclesiastical authority published The
Malleus Maleficarum (translated: The
Witch Hammer). Written by two Dominican
Priests, this infamous text claimed to be an
authoritative guidebook that could be used
to identify practitioners of witchcraft.
However, the book had more to do with
snuffing out the Church's competition than
it did with recognizing witches. At the
time, herbal healers had more success curing
people with alternative methods than did the
priests with highly stylized rituals. Under
the pretext of delivering the world from
evil, innovation and eccentricity were
criminalized. The Malleus Maleficarum
played no small role in the process.
Likewise, the American Psychiatric
Association's Diagnostic Statistical Manual
(DSM) has served a similar function in the
marginalizing and, on occasion,
incarceration of potential innovators. Now
printed in four editions, the DSM is
"the billing bible for mental disorders
which commingles neurological diseases with
psychiatric diagnoses" (O Meara, no
pagination). While The Malleus
Maleficarum stigmatized certain modes
of thought and behavior as
"witchcraft," the DSM stigmatizes
them as "disorders." In an
interview with OMNI magazine, R.D.
Laing expands on the role of the DSM in
marginalizing divergent paradigms:
In the later sixties it became apparent
to the elite with the responsibilities for
"control of the population" that
the old idea of putting people in the
proverbial bin and keeping them there for
life - warehousing people - wasn't
cost-effective. The Reagan administration
in California was one of the first to
realize this. So they had to rethink just
what is said to the general public and
what is practiced by the executive in
control of mental health. The same problem
prevails across Europe and the Third
World.
To see what is happening, look at the
textbook or manual called DSM-III: The
Diagnostic Statistical Manual on Mental
Disorders. Translated into economic and
political terms, mental disorder means
undesired mental states and behavior. The
criteria for mental disorder in DSM-III
include any unusual perceptual experience,
magical thinking, clairvoyance, telepathy,
sixth sense, sense of a person not
actually present. You're allowed to sense
the presence of a dead relative for three
weeks after their death. After that it
becomes a criterion of mental disorder to
have those feelings.
. . . these are not exceptional
examples out of DSM-III. The overall drift
is what contemporary modern psychiatry,
epitomized by this DSM manual translated
into eighteen languages, is imposing all
over the world - a mandate to strip anyone
of their civil liberties, of habeas
corpus; and to apply involuntary
incarceration, chemicalisation of a
person, electric shocks, and non-injurious
torture; to homogenize people who are out
of line. Presented as a medical operation,
it is an undercover. (Liversidge 60-61)
Under the pretext of promoting mental
health, the DSM has been instrumental in the
stifling of cognitive dissent. Not only is
the DSM analogous to The Malleus
Maleficarum, but the respective
historical periods of the two texts are
analogous as well. Just as the dominant
ecclesiastical establishment that
promulgated The Malleus Maleficarum
was premised on a form of mysticism, namely
spiritualism, so is the contemporary
religio-cultural milieu that adheres to the
DSM. The new mysticism, however, is
materialism. Daniel Pouzzner explains how
materialism qualifies as a form of
mysticism:
“The materialist is the mystic who
believes in existence without
consciousness, and preaches subordination
to a vague and unaccountable 'Society'
variously called 'public interest,' 'the
people,' 'world opinion,' 'the common
good,' etc. (Pouzzner, no pagination)”
This form of mysticism was introduced to
the field of psychology by Wilhelm
Maximilian Wundt. When examined closer, the
imposition of this metaphysical doctrine
upon psychology is most paradoxical.
Psychology is derived from the word psyche,
which meant "soul" in the original
Greek. Ironically, however, Wundt would
expunge the soul from the halls of
psychological research and enshrine the
primacy of matter. Appropriately, this
metaphysical doctrine would underpin both
communism and fascism. It also underpins the
emergent police state of today.
Understood from this vantage point, the
DSM can be seen as merely the modern
incarnation of The Malleus Maleficarum.
Just as the theocracy of 1486 employed The
Malleus Maleficarum against religious
"heretics" of the middle ages, the
DSM is employed by the dominant theocracy of
materialism against cognitive dissenters
today.
The War on Innovators
Who are the new "heretics"
against whom the DSM is employed? In The
Architecture of Modern Political Power,
researcher Daniel Pouzzner presents an
interesting assertion. Pouzzner contends
that one of the power elite's greatest fears
is chaos, more specifically the sort of
chaos generated by innovation:
Fear of chaos is not unique to the
power brokers. It is much more common than
that. It is, in short, an important
example of fear of the unknown - in
practical terms, it is fear of the
unknowable. This fear is a classic
characteristic of small minds and of those
of meager confidence. It is often observed
that investors tend to hate uncertainty:
today, roughly half of the value of US
stock markets is held by individual
investors, and 45 percent of American
households own stock directly or
indirectly. Chaos of the type introduced
by innovators produces very serious
uncertainty for these investors, and they
hate it. Thus, because of fear and
short-term interest, the bulk of
mainstream first-worlders, being
small-minded, tacitly supports the
neutralization, or even extermination, of
uncooperative innovators. In fact, the
ordinary feel offended and disgraced by
these innovators, and for that the
innovators are resented like no other
group. The small-minded must become
larger-minded if they are to realize that
they, too, are slated for enslavement and
capricious extermination - except that
they have, as a rule, already resigned
themselves to obedient slavery in exchange
for survival. The power brokers are the
total enemies of the innovators and the
masses alike, but the masses cower and
bow, signalling their surrender.
(Pouzzner, no pagination)
Because innovation abruptly reconfigures
the socioeconomic playing field, the
inventive personality is one of the greatest
threats to the power of the ruling class.
Innovators can potentially destabilize the
elite's inequitable system of control and
re-establish meritocracy. Innovators can
introduce genuine competition to the
marketplace, thus exposing the oligarchs'
illusion of counterfeit capitalism and
facilitating the emergence of a truly free
enterprise system. As practitioners of
usury, the parasitic ruling class cannot
allow this to happen. The abatement of just
such a shift in the power balance is
precisely the function for which the DSM was
designed. Pouzzner explains:
The cultural prejudice against chaos is
evident in contemporary language itself.
Diseases of the mind are routinely
referred to as ``disorders,'' whether or
not they present themselves as, or are
caused by, an imbalanced abundance of
randomness. Dissociative Identity Disorder
(DID), historically known as Multiple
Personality Disorder (MPD), is not a
disorder at all, but is in fact an
additional level of ordered mental
arrangement. In fact, most DSM-IV
(American Psychiatric Association
standard) mental illness involves minds
and brains that are more ordered than
healthy minds and brains. Chaos is
healthy, and empowers consciousness. Order
is morbid. An unusually regular and
orderly electrocardiogram (EKG) is an
indication of nascent illness; certain
elements of chaos in heart rhythms are
indications of good health. Another term
that propels the prejudice is
``unstable,'' often used as a synonym for
``insane.'' This use of that term must be
condemned with equal haste. As Ilya
Prigogine (Nobel laureate and Clubber of
Rome) observes, "over time,
non-equilibrium processes generate complex
structures that cannot be achieved in an
equilibrium situation." (Pouzzner, no
pagination)
The DSM is integral to civil commitment,
one of the elite's legal instruments for the
criminalizing of potential innovators.
Pouzzner elaborates:
A more established institution in the
same vein is civil commitment, which
operates like civil forfeiture, with a
reduced burden of proof, only the object
seized by the state is an actual living
human individual. Civil commitment is an
extraconstitutional mechanism by which
private citizens licensed by a committee
of executive appointees cause the forcible
imprisonment of individuals charged with
no crime, with subsequent judicial review
based principally on standards promulgated
by the private American Psychiatric
Association in its Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(the "DSM"). (Pouzzner, no
pagination)
In short, all those who deviate from the
Establishment's arbitrary criteria for
mental health are incarcerated and assigned
one of the APA's various stigmas…
"unstable," "disturbed,"
or just plain "criminally insane."
Typically, the recipients of such stigmas
are the innovators who threaten the
oligarchs' dominance. Worse still, the
elasticity of such stigmas is increasing.
According to Larry Akey, spokesman for the
Health Insurance Association of America,
"New mental illnesses are being
included in DSM 4 all the time"
(Porteus, no pagination). For every
potential innovator, there is now a
potential mental illness.
Observing the growing elasticity of
qualifiers for mental illness, Kelly
Patricia O Meara states:
A child who doesn't like doing math
homework may be diagnosed with the mental
illness developmental-arithmetic disorder
(No.315.4). A child who argues with her
parents may be diagnosed as having a
mental illness called oppositional-defiant
disorder (No.313.8). And people critical
of the legislation now snaking through
Congress that purports to "end
discrimination against patients seeking
treatment for mental illness" may
find themselves labeled as being in denial
and diagnosed with the mental illness
called noncompliance-with-treatment
disorder (No.15.81)
The psychiatric diagnoses suggested
above are no joke. They represent a few of
the more than 350 "mental
disorders" listed in the American
Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-IV), the billing bible for mental
disorders which commingles neurological
diseases with psychiatric diagnoses. (O
Meara, no pagination)
The list of so-called "mental
disorders" continues to grow. Of
course, if a divergent mode of thought or
behavior does not find a corresponding
"mental disorder" in the current
DSM, the social engineers are always willing
to invent a new one. Such is the case with
the purported "mental disorder" of
Attention Deficit Disorder. Already, this
chimerical illness is drawing some healthy
skeptical criticism. Kelly Patricia O Meara
elaborates:
Fred Baughman, a San Diego neurologist
and leading critic of the alleged mental
illness called attention-deficit/
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), tells
Insight the question that must be answered
before a mental illness can qualify as a
disease is this: "Where is the
macroscopic, microscopic or chemical
abnormality in any living patient or at
death/autopsy?" (O Meara, no
pagination)
Does ADHD even exist? The absence of any
"macroscopic, microscopic or chemical
abnormality in any patient" certainly
drives one more nail into the coffin of this
alleged "mental disorder." Yet,
the imaginary illness remains part of the
litany of stigmas and more await invention.
Worse still, the standards for establishing
mental illness have plunged into ambiguity.
Baughman reiterates:
"No one is justified in saying
anyone is medically abnormal/diseased
until such time as they can adduce some
such abnormality. This, by the way, would
apply to a person suspected of having
diabetes or cancer." The fact is,
Baughman adds, "There is no
psychiatric diagnosis for which any part
of this question can be answered in the
affirmative. In other words: no
abnormality; no disease. There is no
confirmation of abnormality in the brain
in life or at autopsy for any of the
psychiatric diagnoses. And they [in the
psychiatric community] don't say this
because it's part of the propaganda
campaign to make patients out of normal
people. The findings at autopsy would be
very specific and would reveal whether it
is a diseased brain and, if so, which
disease it is. There is no proof in life
or at autopsy of any of the alleged
psychiatric mental illnesses, including
schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, OCD
or ADHD." (O Meara, no pagination)
For every independent thinker, there is a
corresponding "mental disorder."
If one does not currently exist, social
engineers of the Establishment can always
concoct one. Daniel Pouzzner provides an
eloquent summation:
The power brokers work to eradicate
chaos both because of their own fear of
it, and because they seek to eradicate the
innovation it leads to (and the chaos
which leads from innovation), insofar as
that innovation and chaos directly
threatens their hegemony. (Pouzzner, no
pagination)
Beware, innovators. In the eyes of the
Establishment, you are the agents of chaos
and war has been declared on you.
Disorder Out of Chaos
To be sure, the oligarchs have employed
chaos themselves. However, as Pouzzner makes
clear, their brand of chaos is
"treated" (Pouzzner, 2001). It is
not the healthy chaos arising from
innovation, but destructive chaos resulting
from the instigation of conflict. This brand
of chaos is evident in the Hegelian
dialectic, Huntington's Clash
of Civilizations thesis, the geostrategy
presented by Brzezinski in The
Grand Chessboard, and the Masonic
dictum: Ordo Ab Chao. The
counterfeit form of chaos generated by these
theoretical methodologies is intended to
stifle the inventive proclivities of
humanity and maintain the elite's desired
order. Paradoxically, the maintenance of
such an order is self-immolating. Pouzzner
explains:
The establishment instinctually seeks
to bring about a circumstance in which all
movement in the structure of societies,
economies, sciences, technologies, and
arts, is arrested. This, however, is
nothing but Thanatos expanded to the whole
of the world. It is the establishment's
instinctual desire for death - for
extinction. (Pouzzner, no pagination)
Indeed, the Establishment itself is
clinically suicidal. Its members seem to be
experiencing a collective nervous breakdown,
the culmination of which could be a violent
death by their own hands. A microcosm of
this collective nervous breakdown can be
found in President George W. Bush. In an
article entitled "Is Bush Nuts?,"
William Thomas writes:
"Is The 'President' Nuts?"
asks Carol Wolman, M.D. "Many people,
inside and especially outside this
country, believe that the American
president is nuts, and is taking the world
on a suicidal path." A
board-certified psychiatrist in practice
for 30 years, Dr. Wolman feels compelled
to understand the
"psychopathology" of man
"under tremendous pressure from both
his family/junta, and from the world at
large." (Thomas, no pagination)
Ironically, Bush Junior's stability is
called into question by the very same
criteria presented in the mental health
establishment's own DSM:
Dr. Wolman wonders if GW is suffering
from Antisocial Personality Disorder, as
described in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual Fourth Edition:
"There is a pervasive pattern of
disregard for and violation of the rights
of others: 1) failure to conform to social
norms with respect to lawful behaviors as
indicated by repeatedly performing acts
that are grounds for arrest; 2)
deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated
lying, use of aliases, or conning others
for personal profit or pleasure; 5)
reckless disregard for safety of self or
others; 7) lack of remorse by being
indifferent to or rationalizing having
hurt, mistreated or stolen from
others." (Thomas, no pagination)
Dr. Carolyn Williams, a registered
Republican and psychoanalyst specializing in
paranoid personalities, provides the
following assessment of the President:
"President Bush grew up dealing
with an absent but demanding father, a
tough mother and an overachieving brother.
All left indelible impressions on him
along with a desire to prove himself at
all cost because he feels surrounded by
disapproval. His behavior suggests a
classic paranoid personality.
Additionally, his stated belief that
certain actions are 'God's Will' are
symptomatic of delusional behavior."
(Hampton, no pagination)
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has also
expressed concerns about Bush Junior's
mental and emotional condition:
O'Neill says Bush was moody in cabinet
meetings and would wander off on tangents,
mostly about Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
Bush, O'Neill says, seemed more focused on
Iraq than on finding Osama bin Laden and
would lash out at anyone who disagreed
with him. (Hampton, no pagination)
As is the case with Bush Junior, several
individuals within the Bush Administration
also qualify as "mentally ill"
according to the DSM itself. The President
has developed a dangerous dependency upon
this sect of mutually unstable individuals.
Thus, the patients are now running the
asylum. William explains:
According to the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual, a person suffering
from Narcissistic Personality Disorder,
"Has a grandiose sense of
self-importance-exaggerates achievements
and talents, expects to be recognized as
superior without commensurate
achievements."
Sound familiar?
This personality is preoccupied with
fantasies of power and being loved. Such a
person requires "automatic
compliance". He or she is
"exploitative" of others,
"lacks empathy, is unwilling to
recognize or identify with the feelings
and needs of others." And also
"shows arrogant, haughty behavior or
attitudes."
"This set of
characteristics," says Dr. Wolman,
not too reassuringly, "may describe
Rumsfeld and Cheney better than
Dubya."
For those who, like Nobel Prize winner
Joseph Stieglitz, warn that Bush "has
been captured by a small group of
ideologues,” Dependent Personality
Disorder describes someone who "has
difficulty making everyday decisions
without an excessive amount of advice and
reassurance from others." (Thomas, no
pagination)
This collection of mentally ill people is
guiding an equally unstable President down a
course towards self-immolation. Fettered to
the policies of this insane Administration,
the nation is being forcibly pulled along
with the madmen into an abyss. Indeed, the
Establishment is clinically suicidal. At
their nadir, the elite's policies constitute
"Thanatos expanded to the whole of the
world."
Some researchers have proposed that the
witch hunts of the Middle Ages, the
guidelines of which were established in The
Malleus Maleficarum, was actually a
smoke screen designed to draw attention away
from genuine cases of witchcraft within the
church and aristocracy. Likewise, the contemporary
witch hunts for "mental
disorders," which finds its
guidelines within the Diagnostic Statistical
Manual, could be a smoke screen designed to
draw attention away from genuine cases of
mental illness in the Establishment.
Sources Cited
- Hampton, Teresa, "
New Information Suggests Bush
Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional,"
June 17, 2004.
- Liversidge, Anthony, "Interview
with R.D. Laing," OMNI
Magazine, 1988.
- O Meara, Kelly Patricia, "Money
and Madness," Insight on
the News, June 3, 2002.
- Porteus, Liza, "Status
of Mental Health Rises in Senate,"
Fox News, November 14, 2002.
- Pouzzner, Daniel, The
Architecture of Modern Political Power,
2001.
- Thomas, William, "Is
Bush Nuts?," 2004.
About the Authors
Paul D. Collins has
studied suppressed history and the shadowy
undercurrents of world political dynamics
for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he
completed his Associate of Arts and Science
degree. He is working to complete his
Bachelor's degree, with a major in
Communications and a minor in Political
Science. Paul has authored another book
entitled The Hidden Face of Terrorism:
The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From
Antiquity to September 11. Published
in November 2002, the book is available
online from amazon.com.
It can be purchased as an e-book (ISBN
1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback format (ISBN
1-4033-6799-X).
Phillip D. Collins acted
as the editor for The Hidden Face of
Terrorism. He has also written
articles for Paranoia Magazine, MKzine, News
With Views, B.I.P.E.D.: The Official Website
of Darwinian Dissent and Conspiracy Archive.
He has an Associate of Arts and Science.
Currently, he is studying for a bachelor's
degree in Communications at Wright State
University. During the course of his
seven-year college career, Phillip has
studied philosophy, religion, and classic
literature. He also co-authored the book, The
Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship:
An Examination of Epistemic Autocracy, From
the 19th to the 21st Century, which
is available online from amazon.com.
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