From Comments on
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/mt9ak/anders_behring_breivik_not_accountable_for
<http://www.webcitation.org/63YoOPQwG>
Exhibit A:
Hallucinations are not required for the diagnosis to be made. As far as symptoms go, DSM requires two of the following symptoms:
Delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech (eg, frequent derailment or incoherence), grossly disorganised or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms (ie, affective flattening, alogia, or avolition).
Delusions bizarre enough or auditory hallucinations are enough for a diagnosis by themselves.
Youtube "schizophrenia disorganized speech" or something similar to see people who are clearly suffering from the disease but may not be hallucinating.
Schizophrenia is like cancer - so many different types of the disease all under one big umbrella term. At it's simplest, it's a disease that presents in your early 20's and eats away at grey matter in the brain, so it's very real - not a hogwash diagnosis like some would people assume given the distrust of anything psychology-related by the general public.
End of quote.
"Eats away grey matter in the brain" - That would be Alzheimer. Disorganised speech, avolia, and so on and so forth are symptoms that can be faked, should a psychiatrist so wish. Not to mention that my spelling of Swedish has been characterised by some - it is actually the old spelling, as British spelling vs American for English language, along with sometimes aa, ae, oe for å, ä, ö - as "disorganised language" and "incomprehensible".
Other comment/exhibit B:
As a mere psychology student, my personal opinion is that the definition of schizophrenic has been stretched as far as possible here. Like you say, schizophrenia is generally considered to have a biological origin, with both genetic and physiological components. Breivik refused a brain scan, so it's impossible to say if he had the physiological components, but I strongly doubt it.
What "everyone" was thinking based on his manifesto, was probably Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which also can lead to strong delusional ideas, but which rarely leads to "legal insanity" in court. The general grandiose nature of his delusions is typical for NPD, and his amount of planning and clearmindedness, are very atypical for the schizophrenia diagnosis.
The european classification of mental disorders does not include narcissistic personality disorder, so maybe that is why this kind of option was not considered.
For me (again, just a simple psychology student) the conclusion of the evaluation seems, to be honest, completely idiotic, but the long-term impact of this type of judgement might be better. (life-sentence, discrediting Breivik as a political figure, and so on)
End of second quote.
Some people who are psychiatrists would like to do two things at once:
a) enlarge the scope of disorders that may be "treated" by locking someone up (changing a frontier from Breivik on Narcissistik side of border to same Breivik on Schizophrenic side of the border);
b) make the public afraid of people with such diagnoses (it is not logical to say "if a terrorist is schizophrenic, then this schizophrenic is probably a terrorist", but the logic of suspicion works that way) and at same time prepare same public to assume a possibility of such a diagnosis in someone perfectly coherent.
Note that the man - a psychology student - who is honest about diagnosis being bosh is less honest about what should be done: For me (again, just a simple psychology student) the conclusion of the evaluation seems, to be honest, completely idiotic, but the long-term impact of this type of judgement might be better. (life-sentence, discrediting Breivik as a political figure, and so on). Are false diagnoses OK, just because they stop someone from getting influence in the future? Are psychiatrists maybe suffering collectively from some thing that might be considered bizarre and grandiose ideas? Could they, possibly, have some kind of collective - would they call it Narcissism? Have they unlimited ambition?
I write this because:
a) I have already once been in prison;
b) it was because I defended myself against psychiatry, notably against the policeman helping to lock me up;
c) that was 1998. February. 5th, Sts Agatha and Dorothy. For what it is worth, it was also before the Kosova war started an escalation of mutual distrust between Muslim and Christian world. And also before that war, I, who had not gone out of my way to upset Muslims, was deliberately set in a prison block with three Muslims and one ex-Muslim in such a manner as to make it impossible with the light of my Christian conscience to avoid it totally.
There is a difference between prejudice and justice. Killing a man on a scaffold, because he has killed 77 people, or however many they were, is justice. Locking a man up in hospitals because he has "grandiose ideas" is prejudice. Before trying to do that to Breivik - he is still not judged - psychiatrists did that to Hemingway. And a few other talented people. Of course, you can argue that Hemingway deserved it for being on the wrong side of the Spanish Civil War. I do not see that anyone deserves lies. I do not see that anyone deserves pseudodiagnoses. And when this happened, he was not exactly doing any harm in Spain, it was already in the US.
Returning to my case is it just tough luck that: a) after the shooting I did (nobody died), it is arranged that I get Muslims as enemies, and also arranged that Muslims are given cause to distrust westerners? b) just as things start looking a bit brighter for me and my blogs (including some antipsychiatry entries), this happens, on top of it all I am known to be a fundamentalist and the terrorist, at the time of the crime Free-Mason, is precisely falsely and hastily alleged to be a "Christian Fundamentalist"?
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Paris-Les Halles
29-XI-2011
PS, this is also - including the 77 victims - after French police manage to make psychiatry and psychiatry friendly or psychiatric prejudices look bad by a shooting in France:
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/01/temoin-dun-faux-miracle-abbattu-par-des.html
