Yes, even the ancient Greeks complained about the younger generations. The Baby Boomers were called lazy by their elders and are now calling the younger generations lazy. It seems to be a part of getting older.
I think it is undoubtedly the case that psychiatry has been used to enforce ideas of normality in a non-scientific way and against the best interests of those harmed by it. It's virtually impossible for any aspect of human society to be approached completely objectively, and not be distorted by unexamined assumptions - the best we can hope for is that the mechanisms that expose these biases and corrects them remain in action. Anti-psychiatry goes too far in challenging the abuses of psychiatry and cynically uses the deficiencies of what is arguably still a fairly new discipline, to push an anti-empirical, non-realist relativism. Capitalism reduces human beings to economic units in the profit machine. I'd argue that psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience (whist embedded in capitalist structures and unhelpfully shaped by them) have actually in more recent times been working against capitalism in that they have been providing objective explanations for disability (thus making harder the earlier argument that people had flawed moral characters) which in turn has fuelled greater demands from the population as a whole for more social security and adaptations for the disabled. I think this is why those politicians who serve the capitalist class (well they all do, but some like the Tories exist only for that purpose) now focus so heavily on the idea that vast numbers of people are fraudulently claiming to be disabled. They rarely deny disability outright (though many believe it - such as Mathew Parris' recent 'ADHD doesn't exist' comments) because that would be politically unpopular, so they instead claim that lots of people are fakers. Again the NDM movement is not helping with this, because the more they promote the idea that autism, adhd, etc are superpowers, the more they undermine the public's belief that people claiming to be disabled are indeed disabled.
Yes, even the ancient Greeks complained about the younger generations.
The Baby Boomers were called lazy by their elders and are now calling the younger generations lazy. It seems to be a part of getting older.
I think it is undoubtedly the case that psychiatry has been used to enforce ideas of normality in a non-scientific way and against the best interests of those harmed by it. It's virtually impossible for any aspect of human society to be approached completely objectively, and not be distorted by unexamined assumptions - the best we can hope for is that the mechanisms that expose these biases and corrects them remain in action. Anti-psychiatry goes too far in challenging the abuses of psychiatry and cynically uses the deficiencies of what is arguably still a fairly new discipline, to push an anti-empirical, non-realist relativism.
Capitalism reduces human beings to economic units in the profit machine. I'd argue that psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience (whist embedded in capitalist structures and unhelpfully shaped by them) have actually in more recent times been working against capitalism in that they have been providing objective explanations for disability (thus making harder the earlier argument that people had flawed moral characters) which in turn has fuelled greater demands from the population as a whole for more social security and adaptations for the disabled. I think this is why those politicians who serve the capitalist class (well they all do, but some like the Tories exist only for that purpose) now focus so heavily on the idea that vast numbers of people are fraudulently claiming to be disabled. They rarely deny disability outright (though many believe it - such as Mathew Parris' recent 'ADHD doesn't exist' comments) because that would be politically unpopular, so they instead claim that lots of people are fakers. Again the NDM movement is not helping with this, because the more they promote the idea that autism, adhd, etc are superpowers, the more they undermine the public's belief that people claiming to be disabled are indeed disabled.