Psychiatry? Mental Illness? Just a convenient taxonomy?
The mental health industrial complex is not what it purports to be.
All that you read about “mental health” in the mainstream and fake truther movement (e.g., trauma, Adverse childhood experiences, the endless lists of diagnoses, the encouragement of victimhood, the psychologization of everyday experience) is a ploy (a psy-op if you like) by the mental health industrial complex to trap you into a mindset devoid of your choice, your freedom, and denuded (if one is so inclined) of God. The psycho-bio-security state stands for fascism and control; the left champions it, the woke worship it, the right stoke its fire, and the rest quietly submit as they have been told nothing different.
Jacques Lacan
Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, was skeptical of psychiatry’s tendency to reduce human subjectivity to biological or diagnostic categories, emphasizing the symbolic and linguistic dimensions of the psyche.
On the limits of psychiatric categorization:
"The notion of mental illness is a myth… What is called mental illness is nothing but a certain way of speaking, a certain way of living one’s relation to the Other."
(Seminar III: The Psychoses, 1955–56)
Lacan critiques the psychiatric tendency to label and pathologize without understanding the subject’s unique symbolic structure, arguing that "mental illness" often reflects a disruption in the subject’s relation to language and the social Other.
On the dehumanizing effects of institutional psychiatry:
"The asylum is a place where the subject is reduced to an object… The psychiatrist’s discourse often serves to silence the patient’s speech."
(Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953–54)
Lacan criticizes psychiatric institutions for objectifying patients, stripping them of their subjective voice, and prioritizing control over understanding.
Gérard Haddad
Haddad, a psychoanalyst and student of Lacan, has written critically about psychiatry’s overreliance on medication and its neglect of the patient’s narrative and cultural context.
On psychiatry’s reductionism:
"Psychiatry, in its haste to biologize everything, forgets that the human being is a speaking being, and that suffering cannot be reduced to a chemical imbalance."
(Le Jour où Lacan m’a adopté, 2002)
Haddad argues that psychiatry’s focus on neurobiology ignores the symbolic and relational aspects of mental suffering, which psychoanalysis better addresses.
On the loss of meaning in psychiatric treatment:
"When psychiatry replaces listening with prescriptions, it amputates the patient’s capacity to make sense of their own history."
(Manger le livre, 1989)
Haddad critiques the shift from psychoanalytic listening to a medical model that prioritizes symptom suppression over exploring the patient’s subjective experience.
Emmanuel Levinas
Levinas, a philosopher focused on ethics and the Other, did not directly address psychiatry but critiqued dehumanizing systems that reduce individuals to objects, which aligns with anti-psychiatry themes.
On the violence of reducing the Other:
"To approach the Other in discourse is to welcome his expression… To reduce him to a case or a category is to commit violence against his face."
(Totality and Infinity, 1961)
Levinas’s emphasis on the ethical encounter with the Other critiques psychiatric practices that label or objectify patients, ignoring their unique subjectivity.
On the ethical failure of institutional systems:
"The institution that forgets the face of the Other becomes a machine that crushes the human."
(Otherwise Than Being, 1974)
This can be read as a critique of psychiatric institutions that prioritize diagnosis and control over ethical responsibility to the individual’s lived experience.
Martin Buber
Buber, known for his philosophy of dialogue (I-Thou), critiqued systems that treat people as objects (I-It), including medicalized approaches to mental health.
On the dehumanization of patients:
"When a man is treated as an ‘It,’ as a case to be managed, his humanity is stolen, and no healing can occur."
(I and Thou, 1923)
Buber’s I-Thou philosophy critiques psychiatry’s tendency to treat patients as diagnostic objects rather than engaging them in authentic, reciprocal relationships.
On the need for genuine encounter:
"All real living is meeting… The physician who sees only symptoms and not the person before him fails to heal."
(I and Thou, 1923)
Buber emphasizes the importance of relational presence, implicitly criticizing psychiatric approaches that prioritize technical intervention over human connection.