In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people
previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant
disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and
other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those
diagnosed are essentially
anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.
Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one
before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of
authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know
what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who
are respecting their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an
authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that
authority—sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively,
sometimes wisely and sometimes not.
Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be
in the United States. One reason could be that many natural
anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they
achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive
authorities.
Why Mental Health Professionals Diagnose Anti-Authoritarians with Mental Illness
Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and
achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means
jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and
attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that
one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health
professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having
steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know
that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those
with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one
routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and
PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and
behavioral compliance appear to be from another world—a diagnosable one.
I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental
health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with
authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it
also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their
patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their
anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.
In graduate school, I discovered that all it took to be labeled as
having “issues with authority” was to not kiss up to a director of
clinical training whose personality was a combination of Donald Trump,
Newt Gingrich, and Howard Cosell. When I was told by some faculty that I
had “issues with authority,” I had mixed feelings about being so
labeled. On the one hand, I found it quite amusing, because among the
working-class kids whom I had grown up with, I was considered relatively
compliant with authorities. After all, I had done my homework, studied,
and received good grades. However, while my new “issues with authority”
label made me grin because I was now being seen as a “bad boy,” it also
very much concerned me about just what kind of a profession that I had
entered. Specifically, if somebody such as myself was being labeled with
“issues with authority,” what were they calling the kids I grew up with
who paid attention to many things that they cared about but didn’t care
enough about school to comply there? Well, the answer soon became
clear.
Mental Illness Diagnoses for Anti-Authoritarians
A 2009
Psychiatric Times article titled “
ADHD & ODD: Confronting the Challenges of Disruptive Behavior”
reports that “disruptive disorders,” which include attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and opposition defiant disorder (ODD), are
the most common mental health problem of children and teenagers. ADHD
is defined by poor attention and distractibility, poor self-control and
impulsivity, and hyperactivity. ODD is defined as a “a pattern of
negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior without the more serious
violations of the basic rights of others that are seen in conduct
disorder”; and ODD symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to
comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”
Psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s
leading authorities on ADHD, says that those afflicted with ADHD have
deficits in what he calls “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less
responsive to rules of established authorities and less sensitive to
positive or negative consequences. ODD young people, according to
mainstream mental health authorities, also have these so-called deficits
in rule-governed behavior, and so it is extremely common for young
people to have a “duel diagnosis” of AHDH and ODD.
Do we really want to diagnose and medicate everyone with “deficits in rule-governed behavior”?
Albert Einstein, as a youth, would have likely received an ADHD
diagnosis, and maybe an ODD one as well. Albert didn’t pay attention to
his teachers, failed his college entrance examinations twice, and had
difficulty holding jobs. However, Einstein biographer Ronald Clark (
Einstein: The Life and Times)
asserts that Albert’s problems did not stem from attention deficits but
rather from his hatred of authoritarian, Prussian discipline in his
schools. Einstein said, “The teachers in the elementary school appeared
to me like sergeants and in the Gymnasium the teachers were like
lieutenants.” At age 13, Einstein read Kant’s difficult
Critique of Pure Reason—because Albert was interested in it
.
Clark also tells us Einstein refused to prepare himself for his college
admissions as a rebellion against his father’s “unbearable” path of a
“practical profession.” After he did enter college, one professor told
Einstein, “You have one fault; one can’t tell you anything.” The very
characteristics of Einstein that upset authorities so much were exactly
the ones that allowed him to excel.
By today’s standards, Saul Alinsky, the legendary organizer and author of
Reveille for Radicals and
Rules for Radicals,
would have certainly been diagnosed with one or more disruptive
disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, “I never thought of
walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass.’
Then I would stomp all over it.” Alinsky also recalls a time when he was
ten or eleven and his rabbi was tutoring him in Hebrew:
One particular day I read three pages in a row without
any errors in pronunciation, and suddenly a penny fell onto the Bible . .
. Then the next day the rabbi turned up and he told me to start
reading. And I wouldn’t; I just sat there in silence, refusing to read.
He asked me why I was so quiet, and I said, “This time it’s a nickel or
nothing.” He threw back his arm and slammed me across the room.
Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also
anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their
anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate
authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized;
but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will
cause them existential death.
I have also spent a great deal of time with people who had at one
time in their lives had thoughts and behavior that were so bizarre that
they were extremely frightening for their families and even themselves;
they were diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses, but have
fully recovered and have been, for many years, leading productive lives.
Among this population, I have not met one person whom I would not
consider a major anti-authoritarian. Once recovered, they have learned
to channel their anti-authoritarianism into more constructive political
ends, including reforming mental health treatment.
Many anti-authoritarians who earlier in their lives were diagnosed
with mental illness tell me that once they were labeled with a
psychiatric diagnosis, they got caught in a dilemma. Authoritarians, by
definition, demand unquestioning obedience, and so any resistance to
their diagnosis and treatment created enormous anxiety for authoritarian
mental health professionals; and professionals, feeling out of control,
labeled them “noncompliant with treatment,” increased the severity of
their diagnosis, and jacked up their medications. This was enraging for
these anti-authoritarians, sometimes so much so that they reacted in
ways that made them appear even more frightening to their families.
There are anti-authoritarians who use psychiatric drugs to help them
function, but they often reject psychiatric authorities’ explanations
for why they have difficulty functioning. So, for example, they may take
Adderall (an amphetamine prescribed for ADHD), but they know that their
attentional problem is not a result of a biochemical brain imbalance
but rather caused by a boring job. And similarly, many
anti-authoritarians in highly stressful environments will occasionally
take prescribed benzodiazepines such as Xanax even though they believe
it would be safer to occasionally use marijuana but can’t because of
drug testing on their job
It has been my experience that many anti-authoritarians labeled with psychiatric diagnoses usually don’t reject
all
authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones,
which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities.
Maintaining the Societal Status Quo
Americans have been increasingly socialized to equate inattention,
anger, anxiety, and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and
to seek medical treatment rather than political remedies. What better
way to maintain the status quo than to view inattention, anger, anxiety,
and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill
rather than normal reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society.
The reality is that depression is highly associated with societal and
financial pains. One is much more likely to be depressed if one is
unemployed, underemployed, on public assistance, or in debt (for
documentation, see “
400% Rise in Anti-Depressant Pill Use”).
And ADHD labeled kids do pay attention when they are getting paid, or
when an activity is novel, interests them, or is chosen by them
(documented in my book
Commonsense Rebellion).
In an earlier dark age, authoritarian monarchies partnered with
authoritarian religious institutions. When the world exited from this
dark age and entered the Enlightenment, there was a burst of energy.
Much of this revitalization had to do with risking skepticism about
authoritarian and corrupt institutions and regaining confidence in one’s
own mind. We are now in another dark age, only the institutions have
changed. Americans desperately need anti-authoritarians to question,
challenge, and resist new illegitimate authorities and regain confidence
in their own common sense.
In every generation there will be authoritarians and
anti-authoritarians. While it is unusual in American history for
anti-authoritarians to take the kind of effective action that inspires
others to successfully revolt, every once in a while a Tom Paine, Crazy
Horse, or Malcolm X come along. So authoritarians financially
marginalize those who buck the system, they criminalize
anti-authoritarianism, they psychopathologize anti-authoritarians, and
they market drugs for their “cure.”
Related Items:
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The Vermont Longitudinal Study & Correction of Seven Myths
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Bruce Levine
Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?
How Technology Worship Keeps Americans Ignorant about Depression Treatment
How the “Brain Defect” Theory of Depression Stigmatizes Depression Sufferers
Marginalization and the Mental Health Industry Racket (video)
Michael Cornwall
Are Some Psychiatrists Addicted to Deference?
I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?
Corinna West
Why Can’t They Hear Our Truth? We Have a Cure
10 Reasons Survivors Might Know More Medicine Than Psychiatrists
