Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Resistance: Pathologising Dissent

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Psychiatric Hegemony

Abstract

Cohen draws on Marxist theory to demonstrate how psychiatry, as a supporting institution of capitalism, is responsible for neutralising threats to the authority of the marketplace using the pathologising language of “mental illness.” Through profiling the psy-professions’ involvement in justifying colonisation and slavery, their central roles in the Holocaust and in pathologising the civil rights movement, as well as their recent involvement in torturing prisoners of the “war on terror,” this chapter shows the historical continuance of the mental health system as an institution of social and ideological control. This is a journey into the dark heart of psy-technologies and the reasons for their continuing success despite the dubious nature of their “science.”

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • American Psychiatric Association. (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birley, J. L. T. (2000) ‘Political Abuse of Psychiatry’, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 101(399): 13–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonnie, R. J. (2002) ‘Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30(1): 136–144.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breggin, P. R. (1993) ‘Psychiatry’s Role in the Holocaust’, International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, 4(2): 133–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breggin, P. R., and Breggin, G. R. (1998) The War Against Children of Color: Psychiatry Targets Inner City Youth. Monroe: Common Courage Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burleigh, M. (1994) ‘Psychiatry, German Society, and the Nazi “Euthanasia” Programme’, Social History of Medicine, 7(2): 213–228.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burstow, B. (2015) Psychiatry and the Business of Madness: An Ethical and Epistemological Accounting. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, B. M. Z. (2014a) ‘Emil Kraepelin’, in Scull, A. (Ed.), Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness: An A-to-Z Guide (pp. 440–442). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, B. M. Z. (2014b) ‘Passive-Aggressive: Māori Resistance and the Continuance of Colonial Psychiatry in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Disability and the Global South, 1(2): 319–339.

    Google Scholar 

  • Du Bois, W. E. B. (1901) ‘The Freedmen’s Bureau’, Atlantic Monthly, 87(519): 354–365.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, F. (1965) The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernando, S. (2010) Mental Health, Race and Culture (3rd ed.). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1988b) Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984. Routledge: New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabbidon, S. L. (2015) Criminological Perspectives on Race and Crime (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galton, F. (1892) Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gambino, M. (2008) ‘“These Strangers within Our Gates”: Race, Psychiatry and Mental Illness among Black Americans at St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC, 1900–40’, History of Psychiatry, 19(4): 387–408.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, G. (2013) The Book of Woe: The DSM and The Unmaking of Psychiatry. New York: Blue Rider Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hassenfeld, I. N. (2002) ‘Doctor-Patient Relations in Nazi Germany and the Fate of Psychiatric Patients’, Psychiatric Quarterly, 73(3): 183–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Healey, D. (2014) ‘Russian and Soviet Forensic Psychiatry: Troubled and Troubling’, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 37(1): 71–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hickling, F. W. (2002) ‘The Political Misuse of Psychiatry: An African-Caribbean Perspective’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30(1): 112–119.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, D. H., Carter, D. J., Viglucci Lopez, C. R., Benzmiller, H. L., Guo, A. X., Yasir Latifi, S., and Craig, D. C. (2015) Report to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association: Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Interrogations, and Torture. Chicago: Sidley Austin LLP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keller, R. C. (2007) Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, R. (1973) ‘Mental Illness in the Māori Population of Aotearoa New Zealand’, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 49(6): 722–734.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keukens, R., and van Voren, R. (2007) ‘Coercion in Psychiatry: Still an Instrument of Political Misuse?’, BMC Psychiatry, 7(1): S4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kutchins, H., and Kirk, S. A. (1997) Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, S., and Kleinman, A. (2002) ‘Psychiatry in its Political and Professional Contexts: A Response to Robin Munro’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30(1): 120–125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman, J. A. (2015) Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lifton, R. J. (2000) The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lombroso, C., Gibson, M., and Rafter, N. H. (2006) Criminal Man. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayer, J. (2009) ‘The Secret History: Can Leon Panetta Move the C.I.A. Forward Without Confronting its Past?’, The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/06/22/the-secret-history (retrieved on 19 April 2016).

  • McCallum, D. (2001) Personality and Dangerousness: Genealogies of Antisocial Personality Disorder. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGovern, D., and Cope, R. (1987) ‘The Compulsory Detention of Males of Different Ethnic Groups, with Special Reference to Offender Patients’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 150(4): 505–512.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metzl, J. (2009) The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, J-E. (1988) ‘The Fate of the Mentally Ill in Germany During the Third Reich’, Psychological Medicine, 18(3): 575–581.

    Google Scholar 

  • MindFreedom. (2012) ‘MLK on IAACM: Martin Luther King on the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment’, MFI, http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental-health-global/iaacm/MLK-on-IAACM (retrieved on 18 April 2016).

  • Munro, R. J. (2002) ‘Political Psychiatry in Post-Mao China and its Origins in the Cultural Revolution’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30(1): 97–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, Y. S., Park, S. M., Jun, J. Y., and Kim, S. J. (2014) ‘Psychiatry in Former Socialist Countries: Implications for North Korean Psychiatry’, Psychiatry Investigation, 11(4): 363–370.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker, I. (2007) Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reevy, G. M. (2014) ‘Eugenics’, in Scull, A. (Ed.), Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness: An A-to-Z Guide (pp. 294–296). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Risen, J. (2014) Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roman, L. G., Brown, S., Noble, S., Wainer, R., and Young, A. E. (2009) ‘No Time for Nostalgia!: Asylum-Making, Medicalized Colonialism in British Columbia (1859–97) and Artistic Praxis for Social Transformation’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(1): 17–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scull, A. (1984) Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View (2nd ed.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seeman, M. V. (2005) ‘Psychiatry in the Nazi Era’, Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 50(4): 218–225.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shorter, E. (1997) A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, A. A. (2002) ‘Psychiatrists on the Side of the Angels: The Falun Gong and Soviet Jewry’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30(1): 107–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strous, R. D. (2006) ‘Nazi Euthanasia of the Mentally Ill at Hadamar’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 163(1): 27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strous, R. D. (2007) ‘Psychiatry During the Nazi Era: Ethical Lessons for the Modern Professional’, Annals of General Psychiatry, 6(1), doi:10.1186/1744-859X-6-8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szasz, T. S. (1988) Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tseris, E. (2013) ‘Trauma Theory Without Feminism? Evaluating Contemporary Understandings of Traumatized Women’, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 28(2): 153–164.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Voren, R. (2002) ‘Comparing Soviet and Chinese Political Psychiatry’, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 30(1): 131–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Voren, R. (2010) ‘Political Abuse of Psychiatry-An Historical Overview’, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 36(1): 33–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan, M. (2007) ‘Introduction’, in S. Mahone, and M. Vaughan (Eds.), Psychiatry and Empire (pp. 1–16). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Cranach, M. (2010) ‘Ethics in Psychiatry: The Lessons We Learn from Nazi Psychiatry’, European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 260(2): S152–S156.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R. (1990) Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou Struggle Without End. Auckland: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Welch, M. (2010) ‘Illusions in Truth Seeking: The Perils of Interrogation and Torture in the War on Terror’, Social Justice, 37(2/3): 123–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimbardo, P. G. (2002) ‘Psychology in the Public Service’, American Psychologist, 57(6/7): 431–433.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Bruce M. Z. Cohen

Authors
  1. Bruce M. Z. Cohen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Cohen, B.M.Z. (2016). Resistance: Pathologising Dissent. In: Psychiatric Hegemony. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46051-6_7

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation