Being a graduate from 3 years of studying psych and with an active experience of mental illness, I can say that no amount of studying theory and doing therapy+ taking meds for years helped me realize the root of my problems and my worth as a human. more than Marxist analysis. I live to be a part of the revolution, and as long as psychotherapy reinforces the client to believe in themselves and to accept the realities of it is what it is, it will never achieve its job of liberating the person. There is a need for psychology to gain a Marxist perspective, more so from modern day leftists in the mental health field.
I still don’t think Amicese was that far offbase; just VERY prone-to-hostility-- which I’d be a hypocrite to condemn them for given I’m in a place where all my prior traumas have very much been materially-sourced, so I empathized hard as a motherfucker with some of the stuff they said.
True, but they were going to a dangerous degree.
No ethical, moral, or good willed person would EVER tell a schizophrenic, bipolar, ADHD, psychotic, or PTSD suffering person to go off of their meds and to avoid psychiatry.
That is a great way to raise the chance of suicide through the roof, or leading the person to ruin their life senselessly.
Amicese said a few decent things and accurately tackled how capitalism permeates medicine. But their advice was downright dangerous and intolerable.
I think it more comes from how a lot of supposed mental disorders, are more of a conflict of that individual and the society they live in. If society was structured in a way for ADHD people to be able to contribute that is structured around how their brain works, there wouldn’t be a disability in the first place. Not all, of course, but many. How we shouldn’t be positing these people as ‘broken’ because their brains work slightly different, but because our society isn’t structured in a way to allow them to contribute in a way that works best for them.