PSINKTOBER_DISCHARGE-REPORT-3

Subject: Paradox

This is the final follow-up post to my PSINKTOBER series, though far from the last time I'll write about the psychiatry industry.

The construct of psychology has two sides: the public, the "solutions" of psychiatry, and the private, the "problems" of disorder. As a public system of surveillance and treatment, it leaves behind countless records and testimonials, making it easy enough to analyze historically¹. As an array of private problems, it’s more complicated.

Neurodivergence and disorder are both, by definition, personal experiences, albeit ones with social contexts that psychiatry naturally dismisses. Trying to define the invisible mind through visible behavior and symptoms has given us a DSM full of comorbidities and misdiagnoses and a slew of exploitational case studies. The truth is that the predominance of memoir and confessional in the public consciousness of psychology not only reflects self-absorption and fetishization, but also the individual nature of cognition, normative or not.

Suzanne Scanlon's critique of patriarchal mental illness narratives, Committed, is itself a mental illness narrative. Alison Bechdel's history of psychoanalysis, Are You My Mother?, psychoanalyzes her own dreams in conjunction with discussions of Virginia Woolf and Donald Winnicott. Bo Burnham's popular film Inside deconstructs the digital exhibition of "mental health spirals" by showing Burnham enter a mental health spiral. The means by which patients examine, question, and subvert psychiatry is the same by which they immerse themselves further in psychiatry.

I have heard a lot of disorder and disability confessions, mostly from my peers, but also from family, employers, and strangers. I prefer to stay quiet or comment as an impartial, objective observer, because I am always eventually expected to expose my personal history to justify my positions. When I began my PSINKTOBER series, I included a disclaimer insisting that none of my work should be read as autobiographical or personal in any way.

I knew from the beginning that it was ridiculous to think I could fully separate my critique of psychiatry from my connection to psychiatry. I included that disclaimer, and still respect it, because it keeps the details of my personal life, which do not matter except insofar as they support my arguments, ambiguous and encrypted.

My writing might get surprisingly bitter for an objective reporter.

My stories might seem weirdly specific..

But I refuse to confirm or deny, and you can never know for certain what is mine.

Unless you were there, or unless you are like me.

My one caveat is that I do not want to be assigned a background or history I do not have. This would be both diminishing of people with such histories and dismissive of all my research and work. For disambiguation, here is a declaration of potential assumptions someone might make of me that would be wholly incorrect:

I have never been institutionalized or incarcerated.

I have never taken actual psychiatric medication.

I do not have a severely stigmatized or disabling mental disorder, such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar I or II, or a Cluster B personality disorder. As far as I’m aware, I’ve never experienced psychosis².

And, in a slightly different vein, I’m not visibly disabled or disfigured (this comic notwithstanding).

My favorite sources for these experiences so far include Esmé Weijun Wang’s memoir The Collected Schizophrenias, Andrew Scull’s book Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness, Victor Lavalle’s novel The Devil in Silver, Suzanne Scanlon’s memoir Committed, Nate Stevenson’s occasional comics in I’m Fine I’m Fine Just Understand about Bipolar and psychosis, and Ashley Shew’s book Against Technoabelism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement. I use many more specific sources for specific comics. I’ve also done a lot of research on subjects I can personally speak to, which I’m not listing here.

The best research I’ve done, however, is actually talking to people individually, which I see as different from the superficial exposure and vulnerability I reject, because the relationship is smaller and more controlled. Private sharing is different from public exposing, and I’m not only more comfortable with the former; I learn more valuable knowledge through it.

The PSINK project will resume, hopefully later this month, but certainly in the new year. I can’t promise anything, but I’d like to cover topics including Betterhelp and virtual surveillance therapy, Autism Speaks and modern eugenics (including RFK Jr. and the Trump administrations), and the fascist merging of psychoanalysis and philosophy (Carl Jung, Martin Heidegger, and the Anschluss).

Seriously—I’m not asking just to boost my metrics on this post—if you have any suggestions for topics I should hit, or ideas for further development of the PSINK project, leave a comment.

Thanks for reading.

1. Jean-Martin Charcot did public demonstrations of hypnotism on “hysterical” patients at the Salpêtrière Hospital. Walter Freeman performed lobotomies in front of crowds of onlookers and took extensive photographs and notes of in-progress operations. From the most horrific abuses to the tamest performances, psychiatrists tend to be assiduous reporters, if nothing else.

2. I assume I would know if I had.