This is an article by the psychologist Dr Bruce Levine, who remarks about the extent to which anti-authoritarian leanings are psychopathologized by the medical community, often using such terms as oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, anxiety disorder, and other labels.
www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/
Here is the full text:
www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/
Here is the full text:
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.”
We need you desperately.
