What motivates shock therapy and lobotomy?

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Since psychiatrists believe in psychoanalysis, let us stick to their belief and psychoanalyze THEM. In particular, how come all of their "techniques", whether it be shock therapy, or lobotomy, seem to point in the same direction. Is there perhaps something going on psychological, beyond just "scientific mistakes"? What is your take on it?

Think of it this way, we are all just bunch of robots doing the things we are told to but among us there are few who have reached self-consciousness. These are known as the troublemakers - for our masters of course. Best way to deal with them would be to have them willingly get their circuits examined and if necessary, have them voluntarily submit to reprogramming of the software. The way they built this world this of course would seem very normal to fellow robots, "he had a bug in his system, it's good he is being taken care of." Now there arises a problem with self-consciousness, "virus" they call it, once it has spread into enough systems within the robot it won't allow the robot to be reprogrammed. This leaves them with 3 options. leave the robot roaming around the others and eventually see the virus being infected into others, take the robot forcefully into custody with a chance of it being able to return among the others or simply eliminate the machine.
Many mistake oil for the most profitable business on this planet but truly the most profitable business are humans themselves.

makes you wonder..

edit: my vote goes to "It's all part of a bigger scheme, doctors and psychiatrists are just fellow robots brainwashed into thinking they are helping us"

I think there are two different problems that should not be confused with each other:

1. If the computer runs differently from other computers, it needs to be "fixed" and made the same

2. The way to accomplish the goal set up in part 1 is to hit computer with a hammer

What you described is a problem 1 and we both agree it is "bad enough". But given that they are "wrong" in this respect and want to "change" the person ... why not "change" them through psychotherapy? Why try to "ruin" them through shock therapy or lobotomy? I mean heating computer with a hammer won't make it follow the "program" either. The computer will simply be ruined!

I'd dare to go as far as questioning the first problem, do we really need to be fixed? Some, for sure require help, but I would love to take this question on about all of mankind. Many people have described medicine for psychiatric reasons. 1/5 of Finland is on drugs. Combine that with excessive drinking and illegal drugs and you got yourselves a tasty omelet. anyone questioning shall be ordered to be repaired or simply be marked as lunatic whatever is required to keep him from "infecting" others.
Like I said, its not oil, its humans. for this simple reason things are as they are. It's not our nature, but we are deceived into thinking so.

By this part, are you referring to simple ostratism? Like the type of thing I am subjected to, when no one tries to put me on medication or anything, they just simply ignore me?

It is funny you say it "keeps a person from infecting others". In my case I don't see how I will "infect" anyone since they all are determined to either ignore me or disagree with me. Are you trying to say that if I was one on one with someone in the middle of the desert I WOULD have "infected" them, and it is "herd mentality" that prevents that from happening? In particular, people have to make sure that I have low status and that way anyone that is to-be-infected would ignore me instead because he will see my low status? Now of course people who keep my status low are "Immune" from the "desease". Are you saying they are basically "taking care of" some potential "newcommers" who MIGHT take me seriously UNLESS they ruin my reputation?

By the way could it be that the answer to "part 2" is that hitting computer with a hammer will prevent computer from infection other computers since it is simply a piece of metal? Likewise, either shock therapy or lobotomy would ruin people's brains so that they won't have a capacity of infecting others?

If so, perhaps ostracism is "social lobotomy". Instead of ruining brains capacity they ruin person's social standing. Ruining either one would prevent the "infection".

So, perhaps Asperger does not affect social skills at all. The social skill problems are simply the result of "social lobotomy" that aspies are subjected to. Likewise, if the real lobotomy was more common, then perhaps schizophrenics would be known for being mentally ret*d and it would never occur to anyone that their mental diffect is due to lobotomy rather than schizophrenia itself.

Robots only have 2 possible outcomes for everything, yes or no. Right now you might get seriously ignored, but once you learn to speak they can't ignore you no longer. This is when you upgrade from harmless nuisance to a threat that needs to be taken care of. Basically you have 2 options also. either you give up and get used to being ignored which would eventually lead to a situation where you keep your things to yourself OR you choose to find out more - resulting in development of your skills so that its all a lot more easy to comprehend, thus also easier to explain, thus the "virus" gets mature enough to spread. I don't even know what you know, but most people do understand something is terribly wrong but when someone for example points the finger at our leaders actually doing it on purpose they rather burrow their heads in the sand, in other terms, ignore everything that doesnt fit their view of the world. Consensus Reality.

edit: About asperger, I pretty much agree. The way the world is built makes it difficult for us to operate and as a cherry on top they blame it on us - we have trouble operating, not the world. Herd mentality keeps it this way. Populism is in fact one of the ways to control earth without external interference. Downside to such control is that when the card house comes down, there will be blood but this of course is simply a question of arrangement and the blame can be transferred if properly planned.

Peoples obsession with perfection is what drives shock therapies lobotomies to be done.

If you look back into the history of lobotomy, there were several reasons.

1. Because in a few cases, it actually provided partial improvement. In cases of extreme, severe mental illness in which the person was constantly manic and actually dangerous to be around, lobotomy might pacify them (by destroying parts of their brain). Remember that this was before the first psychoactive drugs--lobotomy and other dangerous, unproven procedures were the best anyone had. Today no one thinks that causing brain damage is a good thing--but in a very few cases, it is still done. The prefrontal lobotomy is no longer performed, but people with severe, medication-resistant epilepsy may still have a part of their brain disconnected from the rest to stop the seizures.

2. Because it was popular. Once lobotomy got going, it became "fashionable" for a psychiatrist to have his patient lobotomized--it was the newest fad treatment. This led to lobotomies for people who weren't in the "severe, treatment-resistant" category at all, and who in some cases did not even have a mental illness. In fact, once it became popular, the majority of patients were not severe.

3. Because psychiatrists had no good treatment options. Haldol and thorazine hadn't even been invented yet, and patients with severe psychosis and mania were going essentially untreated in the mental hospitals, with the only real alternative being long-term hospitalization. They were doctors, and doctors were supposed to cure people; so they felt that doing something was better than doing nothing. Unfortunately, the "something" they did was in fact worse than doing nothing.

Regarding shock treatment: This is actually still used, and proven successful, for medication-resistant severe depression. Today's shock therapy is a matter of anesthetizing the patient and then artificially inducing a seizure through electric current. It's rarely used because of how successful we have been at inventing the antidepressants (SSRIs, SNRIs, tricyclics), but despite the amnesia and memory problems, if the patient has tried all the medication and nothing works, it can be better than having severe depression.

Shock treatment was misused for cases other than depression for much the same reason that lobotomy was: There were no better options, and doctors felt that they had to do something. This need to do something even when there wasn't anything helpful to do is pretty universal to doctors. It is why they prescribe medication when it's not strictly necessary, and probably why antibiotic resistant bacteria developed so quickly--unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics is probably due mostly to the doctor wanting to treat something when he actually doesn't have a useful treatment. Doctors, and people in general, hate feeling helpless.

Ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity.

'nuff said.

Well, yes... but I wanted to be fancier about saying it.

I'm too impatient to get fancy about stuff that flat-out pisses me off.

I just have one question for the idiots that started all this kind of "treatment."

What the eff were you thinking, screwing around with the most powerful human organ with as little as you knew about it at the time?

Arrogant ____s

Sorry. This is one topic that really get's me riled. Which is why I probably should not say anymore about it. If I do, I'll more than likely post something that'll get me banned.

They do. This is what the psychiatric drugs are based on. They block neural endings and thus cure unwanted symptoms. But nerve endings are not "smart". If they are blocked, it is not just the "unwanted symptoms" being reduced; it is the whole brain function that is being reduced. In other words, the so-called "side effects" are really the intended purpose of medication; the "side BENEFIT" of the brain damage that medication causes involves alliviating the symptoms of mental illness.

In fact, when Thorazine was originally introduced, it was referred to as "chemical lobotomy". This was, in fact, the reason people started to lobotomize less. Basically they said "we no longer need to do mechanical lobotomy, we now have a chemical lobotomy". If you read the way psychiatrists were describing the intended action of psychiatric drugs back when they were introduced, they were,, in fact, quite open about their intention of causing brain damage. It is only towards the end of the 20-th century when they started to politely conceal it.

Even more clear example of brain damage that still exists today is shock therapy. I mean it seems like that the reason shock therapy works is that it causes enough of the brain damage so that the person would be incapable of experiencing the symptoms that they did before. I think it is better to be depressed AND fully functioning than to get rid of depression by ruining the brain altogether.

That seems to be the type of depression I have. I don't know that having amnesia and memory problems(my short term memory already does not work that great) would be better than having severe depression. I think I prefer the depression actually. But if someone knows the risks and would like it done on them they certainly should have that option......I would just hope they don't force ECT on people anymore.

A friend of mine who had ECT done does not agree with you. The damage she got from it was random memory loss. She called it random because she saw no pattern in what the missing memories were. They might be short term such as forgetting that she had plans to meet me at Starbucks. They might be long term such as forgetting the name of the elementary school she went to (and she knew she knew this before the ECT so it bothered her).

However, she said that on balance, the memory loss was worth it to not be depressed anymore. Depression was making her non-functional. After ECT she became fully functional but randomly forgetful. It's a trade off. I guess whether it's worth it or not depends on how debilitating the depression is to the person. But her brain was certainly not 'ruined'.

Yeah I refuse to trust anti-depressants. I tried a generic form of prozac for about 3 1/2 to 4 weeks can't remember exactly. And that was the last time. The first couple days my mood seemed a bit more stablized so I was consistantly numb instead of going from numb to depressed. after that I started kind of feeling like there was something wrong like something that did not belong in my brain was in it......I tried to ignore it and convince myself it was just because I was not used to experiancing a more positive mood for that long. Then towards the end of this experiance I was thinking about Pink Floyds song Brain Damage especially these lyrics 'there's someone in my head but it's not me' and then kind of realised that described a lot......so I started having second thoughts, a couple people told me you just have to get used to them but my first thought was "I don't want to get used to this." so yeah I threw them away had a rather bad come down you could say the rest of that day and the next couple days. I still feel like I have not totally recovored from that so yeah those things are dangerous.