William Hoffman Pincus, _The Problem of Gaugin's
Therapist_, Avebury, 1994.
 
     In this book, I hope to demonstrate that
     formulations of madness and therapy are language-
     bound; that all human phenomena are open to
     competing and, often, mutually-exclusive
     interpretations.  Therefore, psychotherapy is as
     likely to serve as an oppressive force stifling
     freedom and cultural advancement as it is to be a
     liberating agent of the individual; and, most
     significantly, that no criteria can distinguish
     whether it serves as the former or the latter.  All
     of these claims follow naturally from a proper
     understanding of the structure of language and its
     role in the construction of social reality.  p 5
 
     (U)nconscious and conscious political choices merge
     in the declaration that a particular individual, in
     conflict with his community, requires psychological
     counseling.  Increasingly, conflicts between an
     individual and the wider society are being defined
     as psychological in nature and dealt with
     therapeutically.  Far from questioning the
     political assumptions underlying this approach,
     society see this as progressive and humane.  p 4
 
     Most of the "care" with which we treat those who
     fail to conform to our social norms, or who hold
     beliefs outside the broad middle band of accepted
     differences, effectively operates to systematically
     beat down their uniqueness.  This results in the
     *norm*alization of society, in the most ominous
     sense of term.   p 5
 
     (A) question not asked, a word or phrase repeated
     or withheld, the language of debate shapes public
     perception and opinion.  The manner in which ...
     controversies are presented to the public are
     political choices, political events.  ... (n)o
     mater which interpretative framework we use, we are
     always making political choices.  p 33
 
     (E)very society designates some class of people ...
     to decide which manifestations of the core
     alienation endemic to the human condition will be
     classified as "normal" and which abnormal."  ... 
     (What are) the costs to society of maintaining the
     status quo ... (and is there) a more tolerant
     alternative to the objectification through
     classification of other human beings.  p 34
 
     (L)anguage structures our experience of the world,
     particularly our experience of social reality.  ... 
     (W)e learn to perceive madness in exactly the way
     that the experts in our culture language madness. 
     Rural Haitians *are* possessed and New York
     intellectuals *are* neurotic.  ...  (Categories of
     presumed psychopathology are primarily used to
     serve the social order rather than to ameliorate
     individual suffering.  p 40
 
     (T)he concept of madness has value only in relation
     to established norms of behavior.  There is no
     other external standard in respect to which we can
     measure whether any particular behavior should fall
     on one side or the other of the sanity/insanity
     dichotomy.  That is, there is no absolute sanity or
     insanity.  ...  Madness is revealed to be a
     linguistic construct dependent upon cultural
     formulations for its supposititious "essence."  p
     43
 
The mental health establishment is a socializing agent of
the dominant culture and labels as mad the range of
behaviors the culture won't tolerate.  p 47
 
     The Mental Health Establishment acts under the
     unexamined delusion that it works as a beneficent
     force for change when it in fact serves as an agent
     for social conformity or for its won economic gain. 
     p 55
 
     The Mental Health Establishment protects existing
     power relations in society by bestowing a negative
     status upon a class of troubling citizens and
     resocializing them to better fir the society's
     needs or, at least, occupying them so that they do
     not hinder the achievement of other social aims.  p
     61
 
     Horacio Fabrega, Jr, ... discovers that some
     cultures, tern societies in particular, produce far
     greater incidence of schizophrenia than others. 
     ...  (H) concludes that the decisive factor is the
     manner in which the culture tolerates the outward
     manifestation of disturbance.  "A schizophrenic
     illness will evolve differently in a milieu where
     its properties are not disvalued and the self that
     reveals it is not likely to be discredited.'  p 64
 
     Changes in the political and social structure
     invariably result in corresponding changes in
     psychological notions of health and sickness.  p 77
 
     Madness ia an ambiguous concept wholly dependent
     upon the language used to articulate it and the
     culture which gives it expression.  79
 
     The patient suffers the ultimate alienation from
     his won language; his words no longer mean what he
     the patient, intends them to mean -- they now mean
     what the analyst, as "expert", declares that they
     mean.  p 94
 
     So long as we listen with the ear of a Mental
     Health Professional, ready to interpret the
     "underlying meaning" of their speech ... (w)e never
     hear them speak their own meanings in their own
     voices.  p 192
 
     There is nothing irrational, I maintain, in
     objecting to being indefinitely confined, having
     one's entire life history reinterpreted by a
     stranger, being subjected to a schedule of mind-
     altering drugging, and living under the threat of
     having one's brain shocked or even dissected, all
     on the as-yet-unproven theory that this is good for
     you.  Why is it so hard of the Mental Health
     Establishment to hear these voices?  p 103   
 
(Judi's book is cited on this subject on the preceding
page.)
 
     When we call a thing "mad", we fail to see its
     truth or beauty.  When we a thing "art", we
     overlook its narcissistic, delusional and/or
     hallucinatory qualities.  p 109
 
     (C)ontemporary mental health practices would have
     denied Gauguin his destiny, denied the world a
     great artist and almost certainly have done nothing
     to benefit Gaugin or his family.  ... (I)t is not
     Gauguin who should be judged by contemporary mental
     health practices, rather it is the contemporary
     practice of mental health which must be weighed
     against the works of Gaugin.  p 113
 
     This study of language, madness and therapy leads
     to four devastating conclusions which, in
     combination, destroy the therapeutic enterprise: 1)
     Inasmuch as language is prior to and independent of
     the communicating subject, language must displace
     the 'sovereignty of consciousness' as the customary
     starting point of the therapeutic project.  2) The
     demonstration that language creates social truth
     robs madness -- the subject of therapy -- of
     essence and reduces it to a mutable cultural and
     moral valuation.  3) As cultural articulations of
     madness imply their "cure," therapy's masquerade as
     a benevolent activity is exposed and its true
     object is revealed: the oppressive normalization of
     deviance.  4) Finally, as madness and creativity
     comprise a unitary phenomenon such that every
     appearance of one contains the other, the true end
     of all psychotherapeutic effort is the reduction of
     the extraordinary to the ordinary.  Our
     deconstruction of therapy is complete.  p 114
 
     People who are confused, scared or angry don't have
     to be conceptualized as "sick."  They might just be
     confused, scared, or angry.  Behavior which is
     unconventional, unorthodox or just plain strange
     does not have to be "treated" by society.  It could
     just be tolerated.  p 115
 
There remain people who are criminals, people who are
disturbing, and people who are disturbed.  p 115
 
     (T)he therapeutic solution has not been
     demonstrably successful, yet more and more legal
     but atypical behavior is classified as sick.  ...
     By eliminating the third-party complaint (usually
     police or family) as a means of entry into the
     mental health system we could prevent the worst of
     the present abuses.  p 116
 
     (For the disturbed individual), the aim of ...
     treatment should be to convey to the patient that
     they must seek their own partial and unsatisfactory
     answers in life.  No therapist can cure the
     alienation at the core of the human condition.  p
     117
 
     (It) is possible for society to abolish or severely
     limit the application of concepts of
     psychopathology.  In so doing, the society would
     necessarily become more inclusive of its members,
     more respectful of those who accentuate their
     differences from social norms and more directly and
     successfully helpful towards those who most need
     that help.  p 118