Abstract
The Council for Secular Humanism identifies Secular Humanism as a "way of thinking and living" committed to rejecting authoritarian beliefs and embracing "individual freedom and responsibility ... and cooperation." The paradigmatic practices of psychiatry are civil commitment and insanity defense, that is, depriving innocent persons of liberty and excusing guilty persons of their crimes: the consequences of both are confinement in institutions ostensibly devoted to the treatment of mental diseases. Black's Law Dictionary states: "Every confinement of the person is an 'imprisonment,' whether it be in a common prison, or in private house, or in the stocks, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets." Accordingly, I maintain that Secular Humanism is incompatible with the principles and practices of psychiatry.
Highlights
It is the power and the duty to coerce mental patients – to protect them from themselves and to protect society from them – that has always set psychiatrists apart from other medical practitioners
When I was a medical student in Cincinnati in the early 1940s, there were no voluntary patients in Ohio state mental hospitals
Individuals civilly committed to state mental hospitals were considered legally incompetent
Summary
It is the power and the duty to coerce mental patients – to protect them from themselves and to protect society from them – that has always set psychiatrists apart from other medical practitioners. A person could no more gain admission to a state mental hospital voluntarily than he could gain (page number not for citation purposes)
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