RoR: Forum

S. Fisher, how dare you utter your dirty little ad hominem conjectures about Dr. Hospers "mental condition!" I have known him for more than forty years, and I will tell you that on your best day you do not begin to approach his level of intelligence and insight. Get a degree in psychiatry, or keep to yourself your speculations about a man whose life has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and who can out-think anyone here. Your insufferably condescending manner and suggestion that he, whose life has been one of unmatched integrity, would put his name on someone else's work, disgraces you, not him.

"Face it. You sold out. Shame on you."

Barbara Branden

Post 21

Wednesday, October 27, 2004 - 9:43pm

Miss Branden,

I have never seen this side of you!

Bravo!

George

Post 22

Wednesday, October 27, 2004 - 10:16pm

It bothers me that there are speculations on Dr. Hosper's mental condition in regards to his political views (or anyone's views). It seems cheap at best, and at worst, makes me think of Thomas Szasz's writings on mental illness and social control. Don't like someone's ideas? Call 'em crazy. I don't agree with the contents of the open letter myself, but they did challenge me to rethink my own thoughts on the election...Why can't you just say you don't agree instead of questioning his mental faculties?

Post 23

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 1:51am

I agree with Joe on this one...

It's not really ethical to start impugning people's character or judgment, via the "mental health" route.

The mainstream mental health industry is a pseudo-scientific thug industry, heavily funded by government and pseudo-capitalist corporations as a tool for coercing silence out of nonconformist thinkers. As a former graduate student and investigator of the core philosophy of the mainstream mental health industry, I can tell you with no uncertainty whatsoever that all the mainstream mental health industry is about, is strategically manipulating their numbers, to create the false illusion of "majority behavior", and then proclaiming that that "majority behavior" is what being "mentally healthy" is really all about, rather than analytical objectivity.

You would think that logic and observation would be the "holy standards" of the mental health industry, but they are not (unless you count Dr. Aaron Beck of the University of Pennsylvania, who is the father of cognitive therapy, a decidedly objectivist technique).

With that mass brainwashing in place, they then have no trouble whatsoever procuring a mandate to drug and coerce the masses to their heart's content... and their hearts, most frequently being driven by a secret sado-masochism, tend to always beat in the direction of quite a lot of drugging and coercion; far more than you or I would advocate.

What I'm basically going out on a limb and saying, is that it's closet sadomasochists who are largely attracted to -- and the most successful in -- the Attila-witch doctoral field that is the mainstream mental health industry. Those who do not embrace this addiction, either leave the field or get railroaded out somehow, leaving behind only the silently warped to rule the roost.

Ms. Branden,

I understand your outrage and I support it; however, I firmly believe that saying that one has to be a psychiatrist to place a valid stamp on mental health, is a dangerous notion. I simply can't promote this cause enough... Psychiatrists and the mainstream mental health industry have as much to do with objectivity as did Joseph Stalin, for the reasons I've stated above.

(Edited by Orion Reasoner on 10/28, 2:51am)

Post 24

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 2:39am

Barbara,

Bravo indeed! Whether one disagrees with Dr Hospers or not, ad hominems of the kind posted by S.Fisher have no place in a civilised debate.

MH

Post 25

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 6:24am

S. Fisher. Argue Dr Hospers ideas. Critique the style and the content of his article. Disagree with, and dispute everything he says in this open letter if you must.

But if you want your own ideas to be taken seriously, don't write close to 2,000 words of ad hominem character assassination, and speculation, on the mans mental health.

John

Post 26

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 11:19am

Msr. Reasoner-

I very much concur in your denunciations of the psychiatric establishment. Although I would not personally credit cognitive psychology myself as offering much of a better alternative*, I enthusiastically agree that the institutes of empirical psychology, bypassing the philosophic questions as to the nature of the good and the actual experiences of the unusual, enshrines all that is common and 'successful' within an irrational society, stigmatizing deviations from the norm without bothering to investigate the case for their value, and easily reaching for the state to consign them to darkness in fire and slaughter.

I believe that reason, instead, asks for us to judge excellence not by respectability and statistics but by the beauty and strength a way of life makes possible, and that such a life can be found only after we shake loose the sleep of convention. Things are not bad because they are abnormal or different or make small men uncomfortable, but because they prevent joy in life and the integrity, rationality, self-confidence and liberality which infuse that joy.

I look forward to the day when such standards of sunlight are applied to all ideas, cultures, passions, and ways of life.

my regards,

Jeanine Ring, or
Charmed Mistress Shiris ))(*)((
stand forth!

* I consider Reichian, humanistic, existential, and Objectivist 'biocentric' psychology superior to the cognitive variants.

Post 27

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 11:26am

Medicalization is all too often a form of control and superstition rather than any sort of objective or even remotely objective science. it is about a tyranny of normatives, not facts. This shouldnt even be controversial: Foucault, Szasz, Orion, and several others have all, in varying degrees, exposed the concept of "insane" as the control myth it is.

Post 28

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 8:51am

Why would I want to vote to continue the US foreign policy of the last 50+ years that brought us the bombing of the WTC in ‘93, the African embassies in ’98, the Cole in ’00 and 9/11?

Not to mention why would I want to vote to continue the economic policy of the last 70+ years that has brought us the $7 trillion debt, $450 billion current federal deficit, 90% erosion in the value of the dollar, massive interference in medical care…

And not to mention, why would I want to vote to continue the social policy of the last 70+ years that has terminal patients dying for want of relief they could get with medical marijuana, hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders in prison, government censorship of the electronic spectrum…

which I would be endorsing with a vote for Bush?

Post 29

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 2:24pm

Msr. Bisno-

Provided 'objective' is meant in the dialectical Randian rather than the positivist or Platonist sense, I greatly agree: insanity is a myth, whole cloth.

And I appreciate seeing Foucault's name noted kindly; I've learned a great deal from his writings myself.

regards,

Jeanine Ring ))(*)((

Post 30

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 3:19pm

I'm quite the fan of his. I'm partial to Nietzsche and Stirner also.

Post 31

Friday, October 29, 2004 - 9:58am