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From: radiohogan
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  • R.D. Laing is Scottish, not English.

  • Wow. That was very enlightening.

  • Excellent presentation My Friend. I love Dr Laings work as well. He was brilliant. I truly believe mental illness/schizophrenia is a normal reaction to a very sick world

  • Great video! I live in NJ . I was misdiagnosed and put on those crazy drugs for 2 1/2 years and almost died ... Most people who are put on these drugs are actually genius quality and visionaries who if not suppressed and truly permitted to be who they really are, could accomplish extraordinary things in this lifetime ... I weened myself off and now I am a #1 best selling author and film producer among other things...

  • Actually, there is still a lot of talk therapy that exists. For example, CBT and DBT are really popular forms of cognitive therapy that are used today.

  • Top stuff.  Thanks for that.

  • good video.

  • To be honest the first 5 mins of this video was depressing and boring me, as you went into more detail about society and its leaders It struck a chord with what i've believed for a long time.. drink the same water and you fit in, when in Rome, do as Romans do, otherwise you're fucked. People have fleeting loyalties nowadays, the trouble is too few people believe their system they follow is flawed, hence "they click their thick tongues and offer their suggestions oh so very delicately"

  • wonderful years of a more comfortable life. She has now gone back off her meds and is having a horrible miserable uncomfortable life. My father died because he went off his medication and was so paranoid wouldn't keep an air conditioner and had all his windows closed in 107 degree heat. He died from heat at age 39.

  • before I go on a tangent I need to understand what you are trying to say here. Do you actually have the audacity too believe yourself when you say mental illness does not exist and the medications merely shorten the lives of these people who are just a little different from the norm as you say? Just what a paranoid schizophrenic needs to hear. Both of my parents were paranoid schizophrenics and I can gaurantee you it is a true and very real horrible disease. That medicine gave my mother many

  • Just for the record R.D. Laing was a Scotsman, not an Englishman, and the correct

    pronunciation of "ai" in his name is as in "gain" and not as in "gang"

    Opposition to his views was almost entirely from the psychiatry establishment who

    continue to benefit from financial backing and incentives to vilify his views by the pharmaceutical giants.

  • @golsno147 Those were the inaccuracies I noticed; I thought I'd scan the comments before I posted any corrections. On behalf of Laing, I thank you.

  • You have made a most egregious, and often made, mistake of lumping T. Szasz along with the "anti-psychiatry" crowd. I would suggest you read any of T. Szasz's highly esteemed titles to understand my having to bring up your error. Read "Anti-psychiatry: quackery squared", also by Dr. Szasz.

  • I like your videos a lot --I'm a member of mindfreedom international---I believe our understanding and definition of mental illness is inaccurate also-I watch a lot of John Breeding's videos on the psychetruth youtube channel-check him out if you get the chance!

    thanks!

  • A good video. Regarding reality of mental illness, there is some other angle:

    What would you say about, for example, encephalitis? It can cause delusions, paranoia, hallucinations... Encephalitis exists, and 'mental illness' is, undeniably, it's symptom. Many disorders, if not diagnosed by neurologist, are labelled by psychiatrist as schizophrenia - that's a fact, a young guy died of encephalitis in my city, diagnosed with schizophrenia. The problem with psychiatry is that it is not treatment.

  • @dizekat

    Excellent comment! Thanks / Mike H

  • @dizekat "The problem with psychiatry is that it is not treatment". The greater evil is that many psych treatments continue to rely on measures of coercion, under the aegis of "therapeutic measures". Let's be clear, biologizing (pathologizing) "problems in living" has its unsavory implications, no doubt. However, it is our very culture that is not mindful of the many contradictions and perversions of language that is endemic of psychatry. This is a propagandistic tour de force of psychiatry.

  • Thanks so much for this intelligent, lucid and courageous presentation. Please continue the great work, buddy, your TV should go mainstream. I am right now reading 'Divided Self' again to write a book review about it. Do you know that in the book 'Uncommon Wisdom (1989)' by Fritjof Capra, Laing's personality was featured in a very detailed manner? Capra gave a fantastic overview over Laing's genius. By the way, chemical balance comes about through natural pleasure, not through drugs.

  • This is an EXCELLENT video;) What person with any humanity about them and a true grasp on "mental illness," help someone adjust to our sick society?

    Btw, I've overlooked and underestimated your videos. They're outstanding!

  • Thank you, doctor. Your consultation is appreciated.

  • I think there has to be a distinction between mental illness brought on by psychological, genetic and environmental factors and those who become ill through the abuse of drugs.Including your sixties generation of LSD trippers.I would say that 90 percent of people in hospital these days are there due to illicit drug abuse, from personal experience.

  • It is great to hear so many 60's LSD users survived. The ones I saw on TV were highly intelligent with advanced degrees and completely lucid.

    Personal experiences or anecdotes are not very useful. Social science requires broad studies. I this case, the patient populations of many mental hospitals would need to be interviewed. If 90% say they were LSD trippers then we have science.

    Your 90% figure seems like an exaggeration. At IBM taught never to exaggerate because it destroys credibility.

  • As always the voice from the rock face is ignored...I've spoken to hundreds of patients over the last fifteen years, and the underlying theme is illicit drug use.The wards are full of young men that will confirm it.Like I say it's a common and understated problem.Young men + drugs = very full mental wards, simples.

  • Please search Google for study to support your thesis. Are you limiting the phrase drug use to LSD? MDMA? Amphetamine?, Cocaine?, Marijuana?

  • Actually if you look at studies in Holland, Marijuana is the catalyst for more severe drug abuse and the main cause of hospitalisation  is cocaine which has become the drug of choice in Holland.

  • I lived in Holland for 8 years in the 1990's and never heard of such marijuana studies. Can you find the studies on Google? Then we would have science, rather then hearsay.

    In 8 years, I never met a single person who even mentioned cocaine. I never met a user. I never read an article about cocaine abuse in Holland. Please Google this one, and get back to me.

  • Sorry I'm not going to google it,but I must admit it's somewhat of an annoyance for me that a person with early onset schizophrenia from the age of 10 for example is given the same label as a youth that has abused hard drugs for five years, then wonders why they became ill...goodnight

  • The marijuana-as-gateway drug is a spurious connection. One could as cogently argue that tobacco is a gateway drug to marijuana, and to alcohol. It all depends on the politics informing the science, which, by any real estimation, is junk science.

  • Actually, it is not simply a matter of politics, however, the zeal to segregate certain drug-not including those culturally accepted drugs- use as symptomatic of disease and abuse, is simply a strategy informed by the science of Puritan-Politics.

  • In hospitals for drug abuse? Really? The standard line these days is exactly what you have taken on as an article of faith. I take it you must be a big anti-drug person, no? BTW, is it possible that there might also be drug use, among normal, productive, mentally "healthy" individuals, and that the entire thrust of anti-drug propaganda is based on scientific and medical lies?

  • Psychosis? What of licit drug use? What percentage of those? This contention of your's (culture), that drug use may lead to "psychotic breaks" in many, is couched in the propaganda language of prohibition. In cultures that use drugs ceremonially and ritualistically, one is not confronted with such terms as, "abuse", "overdose", or many other negatively denotative terms. What we have here is an individual, you, who strongly agrees on his culture's take on drugs: the good ones vs. the bad ones.

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  • Please elaborate.

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  • You stated you want to see all folks with psychological problems killed quickly. Please explain why you feel this way.

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  • Accoreding to the new DSM5,

    being a person is being mentally ill,

    ultimatelly if you look at the woild weare crazy inna crazy woild,

    howevwer a shrink is about as useful as a Torah to a Nun,

    Mike Lawson

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  • We disagree.

    R.D.Laing's "The Divide Self" is the best description of schizophrenia I ever read. He wrote it at 28.

  • What did he do, substantively, for ending the coercions of institutional psychiatry; the subversion of the law, through a two-track legal system (competent and incompetency, insanity defense, etc)? Or, for that matter, what about speaking out for the millions committed each year, on nothing more than a spurious notion of "danger to self or others", before the fact? This guy was an inflated ego, a toad!

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  • I failed to articulate the morally prescriptive nature engendered by psych labels. BTW, I am not trying to rattle your chain, Mr. Hogan. Thank you for your efforts to educate and illuminate!

  • R.D. Laing did not do anything to address the injustices of institutional psychiatry, so much as he turned on an institution he wanted to credit himself as reinventing. Again, his showmanship, as a "renegade" psychiatry, if you read, is rife with a man of considerable moral inconsistency and paradox. He chose to glamorize the so-called mentally ill, which, I suppose was consistent with a radicalizing effect of the late 1960s, vis a vis power and those oppressed.

  • (cont) Also, say that someone should actually be cured of their more glaring, abnormal behavior... Wouldn't they eventually relapse, given the inherent, unusual perceptions that brought about their fears in the first place?

  • Hello Quickfade:

    You ask great questions. I don't have answers off the top of my head. Let me have a cup of black tea.

    I will respond soon.

    All the Best / Mike Hogan

  • I. In the case of "medication" folks would probably relapse if they stopped medication.

    II. In the case of "Talk Therapy," if the roots of the neurosis or psychosis are completely understood, there shouldn't be a relapse after the therapy is stopped. This may take years, if not a lifetime.

  • (cont) You mentioned "talk therapy" and it's absence from modern psychiatry... If that is the proper way to treat those who suffer, but society is unwilling to spend the time and effort to use such methods, aren't we still stuck in the same vicious cycle? Whether we understand it to be more effective or not?

  • A. Yes

    B. Yes

    The Defense budget is over 54% of the Federal budget. If we give up the Imperial Empire and eliminate 90% of the Defense budget, everyone in America could receive "Talk Therapy," universal health care, free college education, affordable housing & affordable public education. People would certainly be far more secure & healthy in such a society.

    Unfortunately, the thugs who run the show do not care about the health of the people. We are hamburger meat.

  • I've heard this and similar theories on mental 'illness' before, and I'm inclined to agree with them... But if it's true that people perceived as 'psychotic' or 'mentally ill' are merely reacting and responding out of, at least to them, natural fears, how does society reconcile this? Without medication, how will these individuals reach a calm enough state of mind to find release from said fears?

  • 1. What do you mean by society needing to reconcile aberrant behavior? Our society is insecure and in the midst of a mass malaise (according to psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich). The sociologist Emile Durkheim noted societies that lose their values & customs are suffering from anomie.

    Society addresses its insecurity by constantly narrowing the bounds of acceptable behavior. Thus more folks are labeled as psychotic or mentally ill.

    Educated folks are labeled insane in anti intellectual societies.

  • 2. As to medication, I am not opposed to tranquilizers, anti depressants, marijuana and MDMA. I oppose anti psychotic drugs.

  • There's something about this RadioHogan guy that I like but honestly..."R.D. is one of my favourite psychiatrists?..." What is this - American Idol?

    "R.D Laing's theories/work are one of those I most identify with" would have been much better.

    Nevertheless, keep up the good work RadioHogan.

    I'll be back!

  • I agree, R.D. Laing let celebrity twist his critical thinking self. He was certainly an "anti-psychiatrist", in the form that T. Szasz would have it. BTW, I am an psychiatric abolitionist, again, thanks to having read every published work by T. Szasz, and like-minded "apostates" of the secular religious order of psychiatry.

  • I am English but not so ignorant as to believe ALL Americans are Yankies. Those English/Scot complaints by British viewers here are a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The finger that points the blame is often itself guilty.

    As for the vid. Just his geographical gaff shows him to be a lay person. Total amateur. However, his subject matter is worth posting if only to get people curious enough to open a tab and google "R.D. Laing" to find out more.

    Good post, Szasz links are better.

  • Hello:

    I agree. Thomas Szasz is excellent. The title of my video is taken from the title of a book by Szasz.

    All the Best / Mike Hogan

  • I am fine just hate it when you yanks mix us English up with Scots

  • Do you always go so far over the top?

  • He was a scot you thick fuck

  • Are you alright?

  • part of the problem with thease yankie fuckers is that they can't tell the differance between an englishman and a scot, and they don't care if they offend nations.

    we are all niggers to the yankies.

  • Are you alright?

  • Do you always go so far over the top?

  • What's over the top bruv

  • Please abstain from calling R.D.Laing "English" For your personal records and perusal here is the true information regarding R.D.Laing origins. "He was born in Govanhill, Glasgow (which is in Scotland) as Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 23 August 1989), was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness. He died on the 23 August 1989 (aged 61) from a heart attack. Scottish okay..

  • O.K.

  • Thankyou for acknowledging R.D Laing's origins. I identify with many topics raised. Especially separation/ original "self". This is a classic mind technique imposed on the vulnerable by the many establishments of power using their "lackeys" to administer fear regarding so called "mental deficiencies". They establish mass malaise, convince the hoi polloi they are suffering from x,y or z and the rest is child's play. The purpose is simple! make money on the back of peoples misery and ignorance.

  • I think this is important.

    The word schizo means to be split. Alienation also means to be split and separated from the world, in a sense. Marx focused on this, and it is interessting (no, you don't have to be a "commie" to read about it).

    Autism also implies the same thing. Being split from the world and your self, alienated.

  • So I am to understand that I developed my mental illness because of a corrupt government, and that I should go off my prozac and sink once more into a world of emptiness and despair, because you say the medicines are a fraud? And you're saying the brain scans proving my mind's chemical imbalance is all a myth?

  • Hi WWE:

    Part I:

    Allow me to step through your comment. My video has absolutely nothing to do with , to use your phrase: "corrupt government." The alienating stress produced by societies institutions (family, church, school, military, Workplace, etc.) is what divides folks from (their original selves) themselves (schizophrenia?). The psychiatrist, Wilhelm Reich, called what we experience a "mass malaise." The sociologist Emile Durkheim called it "anomie."

    Please read Part II below. Best / MH

  • Part II:

    These stresses exist during times with good government & "corrupt government." Therefore, mental illness is not affected by the type of government (good or bad, left or right, etc.).

    Please stay on your Prozac, if you believe it makes you feel better or have a better experience in life. I don't want folks to feel my video was critical of modern anti depressants like Prozac. However, the medical establishment has been critical of some anti psychotics, tranquilizers, etc.

    See Pt III.

  • Part III:

    As to whether the sale of some medicines are a fraud, this is a very serious questions inquiring mind: A Socates of Medicine. As an Irishman, I may not be qualified to say. You see the Irish are known to engage in blarney and malarky. Modern medicine peddlers are men without humor or wit.

    They are folks who study psychology in college and re then paid to strike fear in folks. They invent new illnesses every day. At the same time, the psycho peddelers invent a curl for the "illness."

  • Part IV:

    Does such deceptive advertising rise to the level of fraud? On the level of existential philosophy, the psycho peddlers are a fraud? On the moral or religious level, we will need to consult with clergy. On the criminal level, the first prosecutor who sues indites a pharmaceutical company for fraud, will soon be a governor.

    Brain scans have been used to justify whatever notion a doctor may have. Another doctor with a different diagnosis, will interpret the scan differently.

    MH

  • I remember when I as in your cycle. I was depressed since I was a toddler, and I was suicidal for six years. Doctors told me I would have to take antidepressants my entire life, especially after my suicide attempt.

    I believed I had a mental illness, because that's why doctors told me. However, I eventually studied on my own, rejected mental illness as a reality, and took my life into my own hands. There are plenty of ways to getting out of a slum that don't involve drugging yourself.

  • @shounenbat510 ...I agree. I also transcended the "labels" placed on me by the system. Good work 

  • I am confused by what aspects of culture would lead to the things commonly labeled mental illness? In other words what social trigger would bring them about? Do you really believe feeling alienated from peers and society is enough to cause them?

    I would appreciate to hear back on this issue because I don't think I fully understand your position.

  • Alienation is not about being separated from peers and society. Rather, it is about being separated from ones original self. It has to do with the loss of authenticity (i.e. the original self).

    The alienation is caused by the stress of trying to adapt to the requirements of societies institutions: family, school, church, military, business, etc.

    The separation from oneself is called schizophrenia. Please read a very short book entitled "The Divided Self" by R.D. Laing.

    Ask me questions.

  • Very much appreciated. I will look the book up.

  • excellent

  • Hello Cjellwood:

    Thank you.

    Live and Be Well / Mike Hogan

  • Wow. Nice video, I like your other ones too, hope more people see them.

  • Hello CakeTheory:

    Thnak you doctor. I feel better already.

    All the Best / Mike Hogan

  • Very well said! We must all seek that authentic natural self and realise that our social institutions are largely artificial constructs which obscure that authenticity...But it is a tough gig and it is scary realising that we have the freedom and the responsibility to stand outside the system.

  • Hello OxfordClassicJazz:

    Your comment is appreciated.

    All the Best / Mike Hogan

  • Now there's a mental illness reference, Timbuk3!

  • It seems you are narracasting from the future o_O we're only the 27th. Great video nonetheless

  • The future is so bright, we must all wear shades.

  • Comment removed

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