I managed to order Thomas Szasz ~ Ceremonial Chaos for a small research project.

Also printed out the thirty pages of Plato's Sophist for the research.

Meanwhile, I'm reading a book on madness in sixteenth-century Germany for my ongoing studies of mind, mental illness, and psychiatry. I read so slow though.

I have some books from the mid 50s to late 60s on the mind and various ways to explore increasing your mental state. Some of it is kind of wacky.

It's interesting to just read about the mind set of the person who wrote the book and try to put everything into context. One was about project MK Ultra. The U.S. government's clandestine use of L.S.D. on random civilians from the 50s all the way into the 80s. I know this was done to test the effects of the drug in a real world environment. But still, talk about a sure fire way to end up with a bad trip or worse. Giving somebody something that strong without letting them know is crazier than anything that you could even think of on an acid trip. I know quite a few test subjects sued and I'm sure some never even knew what had really happened to them. Some of the books were about the media and it's influence. Even back in the mid-fifties they were already starting to worry about the amount of power that television and other new media had amassed.

All these books were from my local library. Since they were moving to a new building, all that they cost me was $1 for as many as I could get into a paper sack. I think I bought 5 bags full.

The MK-Ultra/MK-Naomi are far more insidious than what your post suggests.

You can learn more by reading at Vigilant Citizen, reading Cathy O'Brien, or watching The Industry video series. It's really bad news and it ties in deeply with a lot of the horrific acts of violence we see in our day. I have no doubt that some of the killers have been mind-altered or brainwashed.

I would also add to that, there is a really intriguing documentary on Youtube produced the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (spoiler: an advocacy arm of the Church of Scientology) supposing to explore the history and modern application of psychiatry, which I found reliable and insightful.

Now the evidence suggests that some individuals coming out of Scientology have been subject to a control dynamic and intimidation prior to leaving, and in one case on Coast to Coast AM an author claims he was quite literally detained for some hours or days before he could get to drive off the property he was being held. The veracity of which I can't confirm.

I know those projects were much worse, just didn't want to get into it in depth in that post.

The information that some individuals coming out of Scientology have been subject to a control dynamic or some other form of mind/behavior control and intimidation prior to leaving is undoubtebly more reliable than any info put out by the Church of Scientology about the history or modern application of psychiatry. They have had a clear agenda against psychiatry going way back to when L. Ron was still alive and raking in money hand over fist from his Dianetics book. Send me a PM sometime if you want to talk more about it, not Scientology though...I mean talk about interesting stuff related to the mind. I was a Pychological Operations specialist when I was in the Army(At least for a small part of my crazy life I was).

Serial position effect.. I notice your first and last comments and wonder in what way they are related...

"I know those projects were much worse, just didn't want to get into it in depth in that post."

"I was a Pychological Operations specialist when I was in the Army..."

The documentary.. obviously has to be weighed logically. But psychiatry as an institution is broken. It had the auspicious beginning of torturing its supposed demonically possessed subjects. Well into the twentieth century it was experimenting with psychosurgery, lobotomy, and unconscionably high rates of electroconvulsive therapy, used mostly on women and the elderly (imagine that). And you probably don't want to hear it but SSRIs have been implicated in a number of the school shootings having taken place in the last twenty years. Psychiatry, if it can be, should be reformed, but I don't think it can.

Please don't take me to be some nutty anti-government alarmist either. I think people usually get the government that they deserve, either from elections where they vote or mostly not vote and complain about the results later or from a lack of really holding elected officials acountable when they don't end up representing the true will of the people on an important issue.

Neuroleptics, have a black box warning. Use in the elderly with dementia has a heightened risk of death.

Do you know why the warning was put there?

After neuroleptics were developed in the 1950s, they became very heavily used in the nursing homes or care facilities for the aged. It was easier to drug them with tranquilizers than to spend time with them or keep them entertained, and some of them we can imagine might have been more trouble than others.

It took a long time but it was finally realized the drugs ran the risk of a spontaneous 'causeless' sort of death in the elderly who were diagnosed with dementia.

A lot of them died.

You recall the 'practice' of medicine, medicine as a practice. The psyhiatrists have had a long time to be practicing and have we had any appreciable benefit in the modern day that makes it more effective than in the primitive age of psychiatry?

You haven't alarmed me. I don't see anything you said contrary to the government.

'Free' elections.. You are free to call them free, sure. You are on the fringe if you suggest that tey are not as free as they appear and certainly you are freer if you admit they are free.

But I only recall Orwell at this point.

"Serial position effect.. I notice your first and last comments and wonder in what way they are related..."

They're related in the fact that they're both true. You're going to have to be a lot less vague and say what you are trying to get at if anything. Did you think I conducted the experiments myself back when I was in the C.I.A(not) or maybe you thought that I was a test subject?

I might be crazy but I'm not a lunatic.

"It was easier to drug them with tranquilizers than to spend time with them or keep them entertained, and some of them we can imagine might have been more trouble than others."

All these examples you cite are ones involving human fallacy and not cases where the psychoactive drugs themselves are to blame. You can't blame the tranquilizers just because the nurses and other staff didn't want to put up with a bunch of bored elderly folks. That's improper medical practice. People are always going to want to take the easy way out with things, this is true in a lot of areas not just mental health.

It's kind of hard to reform the mental health care system when everytime they are looking to cut money out of a budget, they go straight after the social programs first.

"All these examples you cite are ones involving human fallacy and not cases where the psychoactive drugs themselves are to blame. You can't blame the tranquilizers just because the nurses and other staff didn't want to put up with a bunch of bored elderly folks. That's improper medical practice. People are always going to want to take the easy way out with things, this is true in a lot of areas not just mental health."

What it shows however is that there is a known contraindication in which case the medicine is extremely risky and the risk-benefit analysis advises against it.

But I do agree with you that these health professionals were using a sometimes beneficial drug is a self-serving, non-medically indicated way.

"It's kind of hard to reform the mental health care system when everytime they are looking to cut money out of a budget, they go straight after the social programs first."

I would question whether funding is the main obstacle or it is was something else.

The way I see it, the SSRIs are known to incite some people to suicide and perhaps even an extreme homocidal ideations. Second, we know in many of the mass shootings, the shooters were prescribed the same. It's speculated by some outside of the mainstream is that we have seen the emergence of a very specific reaction to anti-depressant medication that causes violence, sometimes extreme, in the person.

My thinking at this point, especially with the tragedies of the last couple years, is that funding is counteractive to the equation. If we fund the organized psychiatric industry to greater levels, my belief is that these sorts of tragedies will not be prevented but be multiplied.

"They're related in the fact that they're both true. You're going to have to be a lot less vague and say what you are trying to get at if anything."

I was merely interested in how much you were exposed to when you were in psyops. You spoke as one who had some sort of knowledge about it, maybe not first-hand. I guess I was just being giddy.

Can we please get this topic back to one on Books? Either that or it will be moved to another forum. Thanks

Psyops is this strange child within the Special Operations Forces. A hybrid of things learned from early psy-warfare attempts in 'Nam and other DoD programs involving e.s.p. experiments, remote spying(somebody in a room in Virginia trying to psychically view missile sites in Russia and yes the CIA's LSD-25 projects indirectly. The movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats" was a good overview of it's beginings and early successes.

Calm yourself, no giddiness allowed here in the forums. :-P

Sorry, remove my posts if you need to.