The Illness of I

I’ve been thinking about the last few times I’ve written for this blog. I mean, the entries where I worried about how the psychiatric profession might be anti-individualist—and, indeed, might even define the self as madness.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more uncomfortable I’ve become with that thesis. I wonder if it isn’t kind of a straw man argument. I mean, I don’t know that many psychotherapists to start with, and of these I’ve only known a few …alright, three…who could be really called fans of mass conformity. There was “Dr. Churl,” who I mentioned before. Then, there was a therapist I had (very briefly) who feared that maybe my interest in writing and video were misplaced. Though, honestly, I don’t know whether that was so much a comment on my individuality as a comment on my talent, or complete lack there-of.

And there was a fellow I met at a party some years ago. He was a psychiatrist, an M.D., and not merely (as he was quick to assure you) a psychologist or therapist. Anyway, he found out I was writing about the UNIX operating system for various magazines (this was the 1990s), and then he became really quite abusive. I was, he said, clearly an advocate “for some bizarre, non-standard equipment,” meaning, not Microsoft. Though, of course, this was back in the bad old days of the operating system wars, and you could expect that sort of thing on a regular basis from all sorts of people.

(Oh, and by the way, that was one of my rare triumphs. I gave as good as I got in that particular argument. Indeed, I told him exactly where to get off, and what he could do at the toll booth when he got there. The fact that I was also right, and that UNIX and UNIX-like systems are still going strong after all these years, also adds a certain pleasure to the memory.)

But, well, other than that, and maybe a couple more here and there, that’s about it. Psychotherapists and their kin don’t seem to be any more anti-individualist than any other professionals, and certainly a good deal less than some.

So, why my insistence on writing about the issue? I suppose there are three reasons. First, I genuinely am concerned about the power of the psychological sciences if they are employed in the wrong way—as they were in the Soviet mental “hospitals” in the bad old days of the Cold War. And, frankly, I’m not sure that something like that couldn’t happen again, particularly as it seems Liberal Democracy gets a little more shaky every day, and mind control gets a little more possible by the hour.

And, second, I suppose Dr. Churl left a real welt on me. I’m still working him out. Maybe these entries are a way of doing that—a sort of self-analysis to deal with the analyst.

And, third and finally, maybe I was just looking for a topic that would let me use one word in particular.  To be precise, Drapetomania.

What is that? Well, before the Civil War in this country, when slavery was legal, slave owners looked for ways to justify their exploitation of others’ sweat and toil. One way of doing that was to define slaves as being intellectually ill-suited for freedom…indeed, to be naturally inclined to servility. And so, ergo, obviously, if an [Insert N-word Here] longed for freedom, well, then, that [Insert N-word] here must be insane.

So, one prominent physician, Samuel A. Cartwright, obligingly provided a diagnosis and a word for the disease of liberty, “Drapetomania,” from the Greek drapétēs, meaning “runaway,” and manía, of obvious meaning. He even offered a treatment or two. They involved the whip, the chain, the strategic mutilation…toes, for instance.

And so, my friends, hence my fears…for as I look out upon the world as it is today, where the power imbalance between the great and the potent and the rest of us grows ever more uneven, and vast corporations demand more and more of their employees in return for less and less…

I fear…

How easy it would be for some future Dr. Cartwright or TED-talking Management Guru or obscenely powerful CEO to decide…

That our freedom, our liberty, our individuality …was quite simply, quite literally …

Insane.