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It was like, “I don’t understand why anti-psych people see psychiatry as evil. You know, in the olden days when they still did lobotomies or electroshock therapy, they weren’t torturing mentally ill people for shits and giggles, right? It was genuinely believed to be best practice for curing mental illness.”

My guy, you are so close to the point. You are so close that you could probably taste it.

The point is that it was still torture. More so than that, the point is that it was believed that torture of the mentally ill was a just means to an end if it would cure them.

I always want to ask people like this, if lobotomies worked would you support them? If it was found to genuinely cure people, would you support them? If shocking people until they eventually stopped screaming would cure depression or schizophrenia or bipolar or whatever the fuck they were trying to cure, would you support doing it? This is also what I wish I could tell queer people who argue against conversion therapy with “conversion therapy doesn’t work”. Okay, but even if it could successfully change sexuality, it wouldn’t be ethical. Right? Right?

I don’t believe all psychiatrists are totally evil. I’m sure there are some anti-psych individuals out there who see all psychiatrists as demons out to destroy every single Mad person and drink their blood or something equally ridiculous. But that’s not me. I believe they want to do good.

But torture of the mentally ill, no matter how benevolent and sweet the intention, is still torture. And it’s not like it ever stopped completely.

And more so than that, if the field views torture of the mentally ill as a necessary evil in pursuit of healing them, we have to question what they mean by healing and whether or not we want their definition of it.

If you can stomach it (I repeat: only if you can stomach it, it’s not a fun read and I’m still not sure why I read the whole thing) read the 100+ page pdf the Judge Rotenberg Center put out as a “rebuttal” after their facility got accused of practicing torture by the literal UN itself. If that pdf doesn’t make you antipsych I genuinely don’t think anything will.

There’s a lot of bullshit arguments in there, but the main bullshit argument they use is that it can’t be torture because it’s being used to treat a condition. I think at one point they say “trying to charge us with torture for the kind of treatments we use would be like trying to charge a surgeon with “assault with a deadly weapon” for performing surgery with a scalpel”. Which a) holy fucking false equivalence, b) surgeons get charged with medical malpractice all the time what are you fucking talking about, and c) that’s the argument, isn’t it? Anything done for the purposes of “healing someone” or “fixing someone” is above criticism. So whatever you define healing as, anything done in the service of that goal, no matter what it is and no matter how many people die and no matter how many people end up horribly traumatized, anything done for “healing” can never be judged.

Prilla! 🌷🌟

guy who only experienced torture: i don't like this because it's too unlike the torture

With that said does anyone want to listen to me ramble about how frequently it likes tacitly endorsing psychiatric abuse?

Or am I the only person on here who likes both occasional antipsychposting and occasional MCUposting?

The association of mental illness with evil. All of these villains are villains because there is something wrong with their brains, which can then be “cured”. Neurotypicals seemingly cannot commit acts of evil, and mentally ill people who do do it because of their illness. Yes, I know this is practically a mainstay of the superhero genre (case in point: like all of Batman’s villains are insane), but still.

Whatever is “wrong with them” is relatively easy to cure. They figure out a perfect cure in, what, a day or two? This is a more minor thing because obviously the universe has more advanced technology and we’ve seen wilder and more implausible things done before. But it still echoes myths of how antidepressants and antipsychotics are perfect and work every time and if you don’t want to take them that’s on you.

Constant endorsement of involuntary treatment. From the beginning, the fact that Peter “wants to cure these guys” overrides any opposition they have or whether they want to be cured. There is no informed consent, at any point. I don’t even think I have to explain this one, it’s so blatant.

”Treatment” that is nonconsensual works anyway and everyone is grateful. It’s the “you’ll thank me later” ideal.

so you get what happened to me, which is how my psychiatric professionals low key AND high key pushed new age spirituality bullshit onto me as a material reality and an indisputable treatment plan. they fully told me if i believe in bad thoughts, they will happen. we made vision boards. i had my anti depressants prescribed in the room opposite the one i was taught to use positive affirmations. that if i use my mind powers hard enough i can make [my abuser] [stop abusing me]. and if that doesnt work, its because i did it wrong.