This is where we put the interesting posts that don’t fit under General Comments. We consider a comment to be something that refers to the Malleus Maleficarum itself, or its place in history, or the specifics of this web site. An essay or a rant is something that meanders a bit, offering up, for example, a treatise on spirituality or ruminations on the Catholic church in general. We don’t want to silence the voices of those who feel compelled to make a statement, but we do need to put it in proper context. So those long essays and ruminations that won’t fit under General Comments will most likely be moved here.
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Instead of the Malleus Maleficarum, in the current era we have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, aka the DSM IV, to keep people in line. If you or your loved ones in any way go against the norm you may be labeled as some kind of mental case and forced onto drugs that exacerbate rather than ameliorate your alleged condition.
Conversely, if you are “normal,” if you feel pain or compassion for others, you may be labeled a mental case and forced onto drugs that exacerbate rather than ameliorate your “condition.” You may be told you have some kind of “chemical imbalance.” No test exists that can quantify this allegation; in fact the notion of a “chemical imbalance” rests on an imaginary foundation.
Psychiatry’s links to the witch hunt are more ominous, however. The first 200,000 victims of the Nazi holocaust were psychiatric inmates. This was preceded in N. America by psychiatry’s push for eugenics policies that were aimed at the poor and underclasses, the so-called retarded, the social misfits, et al. These policies continued post-WW2 in the form of tests on prisoners, psychiatric patients and so-called retards in institutions. Now, thanks to psychiatry and the DSM-IV, everyone can be classified as suffering from some kind of “disorder” or “syndrome” and sentenced to a life of forced drugging by the state. Mm-hmm.