Hoogleraar Thomas S. Szasz weerlegt het bestaan van een fysiologische oorzaak voor psychische problemen:
Psychische Problemen als Hersenziekte: Een korte geschiedenis les door Professor Thomas S. Szasz
Dat de claim dat "psychische problemen een diagnosteerbare stoornis van de hersenen" betreft een leugen is, moet voor eenieder die voor zichzelf denkt duidelijk zijn. In het volgende stuk wil ik u tonen dat de claim dat "onderzoek in de afgelopen decennium [dit] bewijst" tevens een leugen is, een van de velen in de lange lijst met leugens in de geschiedenis van de psychiatrie. De mening dat geestelijke problemen een hersen ziekte is, is even oud als de voorname leugen dat de psychiatrie een tak van geneeskunde en genezing is, terwijl het in werkelijkheid een tak van de wet en sociale controle is. Hannah Arendt had gelijk toen zij opmerkte: "Er zijn geen limieten wat betreft de mogelijkheden om onzin en nukkige begrippen die verbloemd zijn te doen gelden als het laatste woord in de wetenschap.".
The idea that mental illness is a bodily disease dates back to the pre-modern medical conception of disease as a "humoral imbalance," comically prefiguring the modern, supposedly scientific conception of it as "chemical imbalance." In the United States, the idea of mental illness as humoral imbalance was famously espoused by Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), the founding father American psychiatry. Rush did not discover that certain behaviors are diseases; he decreed that they are: "Lying," he declared, "is a corporeal disease." In a letter to his friend, John Adams, he wrote: "The subjects [mental diseases] have hitherto been enveloped in mystery. I have endeavored to bring them down to the level of all other diseases of the human body, and to show that the mind and the body are moved by the same causes and subject to the same laws."
In the nineteenth century, the scientific concept of disease as lesion replaced the Galenic concept of disease as humoral imbalance. Now, physicians postulated that mental diseases are diseases of the brain. From about 1850 until past World War I, German (more precisely, German-speaking) psychiatry ruled the field. The very term psychiatry (Psychiatrie) was a German invention, coined by Johann Christian Reil (1759-1813) in 1808. Reil, not an alienist (psychiatrist), was one of the outstanding medical scientists and physicians of his age. He was a friend and physician of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In addition to coining the term "psychiatry," he also coined the term "non-injurious torture," to describe the methods of frightening mental patients that he considered effective and legitimate "treatments."
It is important to keep in mind that the German asylum system was created, in 1805, by the autocratic Prussian state: specifically, by Karl August von Hardenberg (1759-1822), a Prussian statesman. Hardenberg declared, "The state must concern itself with all institutions for those with damaged minds, both for the betterment of the unfortunates and the advancement of science. In this important and difficult field of medicine only unrelenting efforts will enable us to carve out advances for the good of suffering mankind. Perfection can be achieved only in such institutions."
Writing in 1917, at the height of World War I, Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) -- creator of the first system of psychiatric classification, today widely considered the father of modern "scientific" psychiatry -- offered these revealing remarks about Hardenberg's achievement: "The great war in which we are now engaged has compelled us to recognize the fact that science could forge for us a host of effective weapons for use against a hostile world. Should it be otherwise if we are fighting an internal enemy seeking to destroy the very fabric of our existence?"
Kraepelin's remarks make clear that he regarded psychiatry as an arm of the state, similar to the military forces, whose duty is to protect the fatherland from "an internal enemy" that, like a hostile army, seeks to destroy it. The evil genius of psychiatry lay, and continues to lie, in its ability to convince itself, the legal system, and the public that, in matters defined as psychiatric, there is no conflict between the legitimate interests of the individual and the legitimate interests of the political class in charge of the state. Of course, the German psychiatric pioneers had to answer the question, "What is mental illness?" Answer it, they did. Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-1868), considered one of the founders of German psychiatry -- and also of the famed Zurich insane asylum, the Burghölzli -- declared: "Psychological diseases are diseases of the brain. ... Insanity is merely a symptom complex of various anomalous states of the brain."
Theodor Meynert (1833-1892) -- a German-born Viennese neuropsychiatrist and one of Freud's teachers -- began his textbook, Psychiatry (1884), with this statement: "The reader will find no other definition of 'Psychiatry' in this book but the one given on the title page: Clinical Treatise on Diseases of the Forebrain. The historical term for psychiatry, i.e., 'treatment of the soul,' implies more than we can accomplish, and transcends the bounds of accurate scientific investigation."
In a review of Swedish psychiatry in the nineteenth century, historian of science Roger Qvarsell states: "In the 1860s, the debate among psychiatrists about the real nature of mental disease was over ... Almost all medical scientists and medical authorities were at this time convinced that mental diseases were of the same nature as somatic disorders." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same).
Infringement of Freedom
What inferences did and do doctors draw from their concepts of mental illness as brain disease? First, as Carl Wernicke (1848-1905), a prominent nineteenth-century German neuropsychiatrist observed, "The medical treatment of [mental] patients began with the infringement of their personal freedom." In addition, it began with "benevolent tortures," such as frightening them by throwing them into a pit of snakes, the origin of the term "snake pit" for insane asylum. More specifically, the humoral imbalance theory led Rush to employ "bleeding, purging, low diet, and the tranquilizing chair. "The tranquilizing chair was a chair-like contraption for confining the patient and rotating him until he became dizzy or lost consciousness. This was supposed to rebalance the circulation in the brain. It was but a small step from the nineteenth-century's tranquilizing chair to the twentieth century's tranquilizing drug, supposed to rebalance the chemical imbalance in the patient's brain.
Psychiatric practice today requires that doctors and patients ignore evidence and be ignorant of history. There was no evidence for a humoral imbalance causing illness, but the doctrine prevailed for two thousand years. There is no evidence for a chemical imbalance causing mental illness, but that does not impair the doctrine's scientific standing or popularity. Neither the American Psychiatric Association nor American presidents remind people of the caveat of the great nineteenth-century English neurologist, John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911): "Our concern as medical men is with the body. If there be such a thing as disease of the mind, we can do nothing for it."
Bron:
http://www.psychiatrie.nu/geschiedenis-psychiatrie.html
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