US Abuse of Psychiatry for Punishing Criticism and Homosexuality
Previously I made a video debunking a lie that’s used against Soviet psychiatry. Allegedly, there was this diagnosis of schizophrenia without symptoms that was used to persecute people en masse. After hours of research, I was able to determine that no such diagnosis existed. This “sluggish” schizophrenia did have symptoms, despite claims to the contrary. As for the claim that it was used for mass persecution, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of that at all. Allegedly there's a handful of people who have claimed it, but they’re famous defectors who never showed any evidence.
By contrast, there’s sufficient evidence to show how the United States abused psychiatry to persecute anyone who disagreed with the government and the myth of America. They also used this same policy to demonize homosexuals. These homosexuals were alleged to be a part of a communist plot. The US government knowingly used a mind numbingly ridiculous conspiracy theory to persecute homosexuals purely out of their own ignorant prejudice.
A paper by Rober Genter in 2017 showed the roots and most of the ideological motivation for such blatant abuse of psychiatric medicine. I’d disagree with him somewhat on the grounds for motivation, but his work here speaks for itself and is the focus here.
In “Removing the Mask of Sanity: McCarthyism and the Psychiatric–Confessional Foundations of the Cold War National Security State,” he says:
“Framed by a metonymical logic that linked radical political beliefs, deviant sexual behaviors, and other illicit behaviors under the category of psychopathology, the security program sought to guard against the threat posed by potentially dangerous individuals, a form of protection that necessitated the public disclosure by those deemed security risks of all aspects of their personal lives.”
As an example: Alger Hiss, a former US State Department official accused of espionage by ex-communist Whittaker Chambers, was being prosecuted for perjury. To defend their client, the defence called upon psychiatrist Carl Binger to testify Chambers’ accusations could not be trusted. Binger described Chambers as a “psychopathic personality.”
“The traits that led to this diagnosis included Chambers’s history of lying to authorities, his earlier involvement in the Communist movement, and rumors about his homosexuality. Binger argued, in standard psychiatric language, that Chambers suffered from “a disorder of character of which the outstanding features are behavior of what we might call an amoral or an asocial and delinquent nature,” which included “acts of deception and misrepresentation,” “abnormal sexuality,” and an “inability to form stable attachments.” Although this defense tactic did not work due to the copious evidence against their client, Hiss’s attorneys were playing upon the long-standing link in American discourse between political radicalism and psychopathology, one that served as the foundation of the emerging national security state, to impugn Chambers’s character.”
It is ironic here to note the existence of an accusation levied against the Soviet Union: they accused the Soviets of having their psychiatrists diagnos dissidents as being insane because no one could possibly oppose the paradise they’d built. (The Soviets never claimed they were a paradise.) Yet here in broad daylight the US was doing that very thing. This kind of projection has manifested in US political affairs for centuries. From the genocide and land theft of Native Americans to the centuries of imperialist expansion via lies to justify unending wars.
As we can see, this case, among others, demonstrated that the state security apparatus of the US did not see political or policy disagreement with the government as simply an act of a disloyal citizen. They also viewed it as a matter of mental illness. People who criticized the US were, therefore, psychologically disturbed and a threat to the public. They often associated “drinking habits to personal associations, political beliefs, and sexual inclinations” to being un-American. These traits went on to be reasons to remove people from government jobs.
This was part in parcel of the Cold War mentality of the US. They knew very well that there was growing unrest in the country from the working class being brutalized by capitalism for more than a century, they feared communist theory would lead to an overthrow of the wealthy elite in the country. As America was founded with the perceived divine right to rule the world, such a threat was considered unacceptable.
In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower created Executive Order 10450. It altered the national security program regarding federal employees, placing draconian restrictions and controls on them. The plan was to prevent domestic subversion by creating laws to force people to be loyal to the government. Any protest to the contrary was met with dismissal from employment. This started with the Hatch Act of 1939.
Eisenhower had:
“…continued the practice of dismissing employees who belonged, or had belonged, to political organizations deemed subversive or who supported particular political causes. But he added another category, what he referred to as “security risks”; that is, those who were not necessarily disloyal to the United States but who did not possess the proper “character” and therefore were a threat to national security.”
What constituted this “character” is quite interesting indeed.
“…behavior that demonstrated an individual was not trustworthy; any treatment for mental or neurological disorders for which there was no cure; any susceptibility to coercion or pressure; and any criminal, dishonest, or immoral conduct, including alcoholism, drug addiction, and sexual perversion. Most dismissals from government employment after 1953 were for so-called security risks: employees who were believed to drink too much, those who were discovered to be homosexuals, employees who were or had been in extended psychiatric treatment, etc.”
Much of this created by the Republic Party in manufacturing a communist infiltration hysteria during the Truman years. Some historians think that it was a response to the New Deal Democrats, an effort to remove them from positions of power.
“Historians such as Jeff Broadwater and Landon Storrs have argued that Eisenhower’s program represented his capitulation to Republicans who had used the issue of Communist infiltration of the government to discredit the Truman administration and the programs of the New Deal in general.”
There’s ample reason to think this was carried out not just to “secure” the country, but to frighten and intimidate the population into being “the right kind of American.” This went along with a hysteria that communists had infiltrated American life, a spectral image of a “Godless monster” lurking around every corner waiting to jump into the light to tear out the throat of democracy. To prevent this bogeyman from rearing its head, Senator Pat McCarran produced the Internal Security Act of 1950. This, was also known as the Concentration Camp law. (Izumi, 2005) Asians across the country, and the rest of the Anglo world as well, were looked at with suspicion – particularly, Chinese and Koreans (Fisher, 2003; CBCLearning; Little, 1988).
This kind of hysteria around race and communism led many Asian-Americans to be placed into a position where they had to uncritically support everything the US did, but also remain politically silent at the same time (Liu, 2020).
This kind of Cold War paranoid eventually reached a point where the lives of employees were subject to extreme levels of investigation. The Psychiatric community of the US said they needed the full autobiographical information on a person to determine if they were a potential security threat. This meant an employee was forced to admit every single little detail of their lives. The details they demanded were numerous and personal, “politics, education, employment history, family life, religious beliefs, sexual proclivities, financial affairs, personal appearance, or anything else deemed relevant” (Richard, 1995).
Genter goes on to explain that this happened during a time of great transformation. This transformation was difficult for many Americans to accept. Advances in women’s rights and technology fundamentally altered people’s views of life and the world. Liberalism at the time had its own idea: “… [Arthur] Schlesinger[jr.] who argued that the roots of radicalism in the United States rested not in the appeal of Communism itself but in the unstable mental condition of many Americans who sought to escape the burdens of modern life through refuge in totalitarian movements.” Liberals at the time suggested there should be welfare safety net policies to help the American people cope with this change (Genter, 2017).
This, here, I totally reject. I think it would be much more accurate to see this as a duality in political thought towards the public during the Cold War. The liberal Democrat position was to make certain concessions regarding the welfare state in order to stave off the particular demands by the working class that would lead them to rejecting capitalism. Things like social security, unemployment insurance, and education would be enough to pacify the population. By contrast, the Republican position was to retreat into a totalitarian conformist society where nothing would be allowed to change, feeling anxiety over what the country would turn into.
I see little difference between this conservative view and the modern conservative backlash against the so-called “woke” mobs. The world is changing again, human rights are being redefined, and the needs of the public are being re-examined. Old prejudices are being challenged in favour of newer more inclusive social conventions. When women and racial minorities demanded equal rights in the Civil Rights era, those who championed it were accused of being communists (Ryan, 2020). Today we see the same thing from the same kinds of people who refuse to acknowledge that the world is going to change after their generation. Today gender and racial advancement are being labelled as communist plots. (Taranto, 2021) Because of the past invocation of the spectre of communism being behind uncomfortable and often frightening changes in society, it has manifested itself again.
With this philosophy of rooting out any subversive forces in society, and attaching it to so-called deviant behaviours, the field of psychology and psychiatry, suffered greatly. Anything that deviated from the norm was considered under the category of psychopathology. Political or not, they were tied together. Thus, the state security apparatus of the US believed these to be one and the same. As Senator Joseph McCarthy put it, “you will find that practically every active Communist is twisted mentally or physically in some way.” All communists are insane, all insane people are communists.
The irony of this accusation as a product of their own logic is staggering. The Soviet Union was accused of using psychiatry to punish dissidents. A fraudulent accusation of “sluggish” schizophrenia (schizophrenia without symptoms) was being used to describe anyone who opposed the current system. They allege that the Soviet government viewed itself as a paradise so that only a madman could possibly oppose it (Sfera, 2013; Smith & Oleszczuk, 1996). Yet we see here, clearly, the US doing exactly what it accused the Soviet Union of doing. Except in the case of the US, there’s actual proof. (This is described in much more detail much more clearly in Genter's paper.)
I wholly recommend reading his paper in its totality to get the full context. Not only did the US clearly abuse psychiatry to persecute people who disagreed with the government, it influenced all of psychology in the country as well. This while they falsely accused the Soviet Union of doing the very same thing.
Sources:
Fischer, Nick (November 2003). "An Inspiration Misunderstood: Australian Anti-Communists and the Lure of the U.S., 1917-1935". Eras Journal (5). Retrieved 15 September 2023.
GENTER, R. (2017). Removing the Mask of Sanity: McCarthyism and the Psychiatric–Confessional Foundations of the Cold War National Security State. Journal of American Studies, 1–29. doi:10.1017/s0021875817000950 https://sci-hub.se/10.1017/S0021875817000950
Izumi, Masum (May 2005). "Prohibiting "American Concentration Camps"". Pacific Historical Review. 74 (2): 165–166. doi:10.1525/phr.2005.74.2.165.
Little, Douglas (1988). "Red Scare, 1936: Anti-Bolshevism and the Origins of British Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War". Journal of Contemporary History. 23 (2): 291–314. doi:10.1177/002200948802300208. S2CID 153602436.
Liu, Qing (May 2020). "To Be an Apolitical Political Scientist: A Chinese Immigrant Scholar and (Geo)politicized American Higher Education". History of Education Quarterly. 60 (2): 138–141, 144. doi:10.1017/heq.2020.10
Richard, Gid Powers, Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New York: The Free Press, 1995).
Ryan, E. J. (2020, June 30). Women, gender, and red scares in the modern United States. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-579
Sfera, Adonis. Can psychiatry be misused again?. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 9 September 2013;(4):101. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00101. PMID 24058348. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00101/
Smith, T.C., & Oleszczuk, T.A. (1996). No Asylum: State Psychiatric Repression in the Former USSR. Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Taranto, S. (2021). [Review of the book Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism, and Conspiracy in the Heartland, by Erin M. Kempker]. Indiana Magazine of History 117(4), 321-322. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/840592.
"The Red Scare: Canada searches for communists during the height of Cold War tension". CBClearning. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 21 September 2023.