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glider18
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Joined: 8 Nov 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,062
Location: USA

08 Jan 2016, 12:40 pm

I used to post here often, but as of lately, I rarely do. But I ran across an interview today that got me thinking. It was while researching the Athens, Ohio Ridges (formerly Athens Psychiatric Hospital) that had me watching videos about the barbaric ice pick lobotomies performed by Dr. Walter Freeman in the 1940's through the late 1960s. People were often lobotomized for things that many of us just tend to go along with and give little thought to (such as being a little depressed or having some troublesome thoughts, etc.) Even kids who acted unruly were sometimes led to the ice pick.

In these videos I ran across one of Howard Dully who as a child had been led to Dr. Freeman by his mother. After three visits, Howard was scheduled for a lobotomy without him realizing it. Now, as an older adult, he writes about such injustices as he sees them (beyond lobotomies, but to the labeling and prescriptions that plague psychiatry today). Here are his words during an interview I listened to today:

I think the anger (about having the procedure performed on him as well as others) is that they would have the nerve to play with someone's life like that. Psychologically, it definitely damages the person in their own mind because you are always different; you're always strange; you're not normal in your mind...There are people out there that need help. And we tend to react only after they have committed an act that's atrocious, instead of trying to prevent the act...They like to put labels on everybody, or every thing, and I think that is something we should really as a society look at; just things I see going on with the kids in school nowadays with pills and the labeling. It really frightens me. And it's just so easy to label someone and dump pills down their throat. I think we need to quit trying to modify other people, either chemically or with operations. I think we have nerve telling someone they're not appropriate, that they're not valuable.

My thought is:

Is the establishment trying to ideally make everyone more or less the same psychologically? If someone acts or behaves differently than the so-called norm, then he or she may be considered for psychological modification. What is the establishment trying to do?...create a master race where everyone within the society is as close to perfection as humanly possible?


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