Psychopharmacology or "pharmacology of the soul" is really a contradiction in terms, but then so is psychiatry itself. It is the art of influencing and controlling behavior that we consider socially unacceptable by means of chemicals, yet psychiatry pretends to be a part of medicine, of an effort to help and heal.

Sometimes psychiatrists have been called shrinks or head shrinkers. Shrinking heads was a traditional practice of some ferocious jungle tribes. Psychiatrists shock and drug their patients, many of whom end up leading a life of mere vegetation, and they may well feel that their head has been shrunk to resemble one of these...

Shrunken heads - image credit: Sony Pictures

I want to thank Vince Boehm for making me aware of the following essay is from medical ethicist Barry Turner. Mr turner is a lecturer in law at Leeds School of Law in the U.K. He teaches mental health, criminal and tort law and he explains, in very erudite terms, why psychiatry and especially psychopharmacology contravene the social values of our society.

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Critical Psychiatry

By Barry Turner

January 17, 2008

The dissemination of information is the hallmark of a free society and is the basis of freedom of speech. This fundamental human right is founded on the concept that information and knowledge are essential to free choice, it is the right of many individuals to hear that is being protected rather than the right of one individual to speak...

It is a sad fact that even in our mature pluralistic society a good deal of effort is still expended to suppress the rights of individuals to hear views, which may be at variance with current orthodoxy. In medicine this is particularly evident and in psychiatry unhealthily so.

Current orthodoxy in psychiatry has it that all psychiatric disorders are organic in nature and arise form alleged chemical imbalances that may be genetic in origin. This orthodoxy in a branch of medicine is all the more startling when it is subjected to examination. Virtually none of this organic theory has ever been empirically demonstrated and while it is very possible that aberrant genetics plays some part in mental illness there has never been any categorical evidence shown where these defects lie. In short current orthodoxy is based entirely on unproven beliefs.

The pharmaceutical industry provides the most powerful support for this orthodoxy. Since psychopharmacology developed in the 1950’s vast amounts of effort and money have been expended in seeking out chemical cures for mental illness. The logic is simple chemical imbalances need chemical remedies. This is the fundamental orthodoxy of what has come to be known as Biopsychiatry. It has to be said that the use of pharmaceutical interventions has made vast improvements to the lives of very many patients who are happy to express their thanks to and support for pharmaceutical interventions. As with most orthodoxy however overemphasis on the beneficence of the creed has been used to hide the darker side that is to be found in all belief systems. The undoubted benefits conferred to many by psychopharmaceutical treatment has been disingenuously used to suppress the very significant adverse effects suffered by many others.