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Journal Opinion Science

Authoritarianism in Mental Health Settings

When I began this journey in Forensic Psychology, I did not expect to learn as much as I have. The main tenet of this career consists in understanding psychopathy, and psychopathology.

It does make me question authoritarianism and the ways in which it can manifest. For instance, Milgram and Adorno et al. studied the psychology of obedience under pressure, and how following orders led to the holocaust. An aspect that has been questioned little is how scarcity or the fear of scarcity has led to similar phenomena due to how people have been conditioned to see money as an enabler of everyday behaviour. For instance, when Milgram conducted his obedience experiments during the 60s, he monetarily rewarded his participants for taking part in the studies. Modern psychologists have attempted to re-examine the dynamics at Yale’s laboratory and what might have led the participants to show that they were capable of being sadistic under such conditions. An example is Gibson’s (2013) work which meticulously examines the prods given by the experimenter. In a way, Gibson seeked to understand how the orders and requests given by the authority figure contributed to the decision-making processes of the participants. However, I have not come across much research highlighting the role of the monetary incentive in everyday behaviour; or how being given a monetary incentive places a subconscious obligation on individuals to comply with requests, even if such requests at times make them feel uncomfortable.

The c/s/x movement, also known as ‘the psychiatric survivors movement‘ (Wikipedia, n.d.) explores how a large number of individuals report feeling or having felt dehumanised by the mental health system. For the unstigmatised person, it is often more common to assume that all these people expressing dissatisfaction with the system are crazy, than to understand the nature of what it means to respect a person’s dignity and human rights. It is quite a complex situation, because it is unclear what reinforces and keeps some mental health settings from actively listening to their patients’ concerns.

According to Turner (2015), signal detection theory (SDT) “describes processes whereby information that is important to the perceiver (known as the ‘signal’) is distinguished from other information that is unimportant and potentially distracting (known as the ‘noise’)”. It is my hypothesis that some of the inherently dehumanising behaviours occurring in the mental health system happen as a result of the hyper-normalisation of object-relations with patients. As I mentioned on my post Investigating the neuropsychopathology of prejudice‘, people can at times perceive those with stereotyped and stigmatised characteristics as non-human objects. This would of course increase the chance of mental health settings staff processing signals coming from clients as background noise, rather than as worth-listening-to human signals. Such established conscious and unconscious behaviours leading to the dehumanisation of many clients are reinforced through monetary incentives, and through an intragroup, mob-like co-validation of such unconscious biases. Like Eichmann, many live their lives constantly affirming to themselves that they were just following procedures and orders, or just doing their job; and therefore they believe it is not their responsibility to reflect on how clients are impacted by this. But the signals coming from mental health patients often stand in stark contrast to the common belief that these dehumanising, and at times non-empathic methods are appropriate, or even de facto acceptable.

I do think everyone deserves to be paid for their labour, and that having access to a basic form of income is an important foundation in any society; and I also think that mental health settings need to be encouraged or trained appropriately to detect clients’ signals as more than just background noise (i.e. as more than non-human objects signals) in order to reduce risk outcomes. The situation is problematic, persistent, and pervasive with these manifestations of authoritarianism in mental health settings. It would indeed be arrogant to assume that all the patients/clients expressing dissatisfaction with the service are wrong, or to culturally pathologise reasonable dissent. It would also be irresponsible and de jure unacceptable to fail to take steps towards alleviating feelings of ‘being dehumanised’ in civil society, especially if such feelings of dehumanisation have the potential to lead to never events, such as suicide.

References

Gibson, S. (2013) ‘Milgram’s obedience experiments: A rhetorical analysis’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 52, York, The British Psychological Society/York University, pp. 290-309 [Online]. Available at https://pmt-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/gvehrt/TN_cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A332152211 (accessed 11 October 2020).

Turner, J. (2015) ‘Making sense of the world’, in Turner, J. and Barker, M. J. (eds) Living Psychology: From the Everyday to the Extraordinary, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 7-45.

Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Psychiatric survivors movement’ [Online]. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement (accessed 11 October 2020).

Categories
Books Journal

Investigating the Neuropsychopathology of Tyranny

Lately I have slept better. Taking Zopiclone has helped me sleep through any kind of disturbance. Consequently, my mental health feels more in balance, and I have been able to once again concentrate on my research. I still feel a deep sense of injustice, but the things I research about give me hope for a better future.

As usual, I have been studying a lot. The books I am currently reading are really interesting. One of the chapters I am currently working on (Dixon, 2015) for university speaks about the neuropsychopathology of social cognition, and how prejudice can result from an institutionalised (i.e. culturally conditioned) context, becoming predetermined emotional responses. One of the excerpts that has mostly sounded relevant to my independent research on cultural narcissism is the following:

‘In a series of studies, using similar kinds of photographic stimuli and fMRI technology, Harris and Fiske (e.g. 2006) found that certain social groups do not produce the neurological signature of person perception. Instead, these groups are processed mainly by areas of the brain more associated with the perception of non-human objects; i.e. they are literally treated, neurologically, as though they were not, fully, fellow human beings. This reaction is worrying because the ‘dehumanisation’ of others has been associated with extreme expressions of prejudice (e.g. the willingness to torture, rape or murder other people)’ .

John Dixon (2015, p. 150)

Now, this object-relational evidence of prejudice and how it leads to the neurologically-based, inherent dehumanisation of those who are considered as out-groups (e.g. Here in the UK, those who are protected by the Equality Act 2010) is consistent with the narcissistic approach to relationships. The idea that simply categorising an individual as an outgroup is enough to attribute characteristics to them that are not humane is truly concerning. Now, combining this with the corporate-narcissistic agenda is essential for social change. It links up to the book I am currently reading about corporate psychopathy:

“While individual lapses in judgement may garner attention in many cases, the ability of psychopaths to cover or explain away their individual decisions makes evidence of these lapses difficult to obtain. Rather, it is the long-term impact of their behaviours in a variety of situations and their dealings with a variety of people that shed more light on who they really are”.

Robert Hare and Paul Babiak (2006, p. 248).

Based on the above, I begin wondering just how deep the neuropsychopathology of tyranny is. That is, what are the common excuses the general corporate narcissist uses to justify violations of human rights? Has the corporate narcissist been made through institutionalised behavioural conditioning which is partially reinforced by unconscious dogmatic-authoritarian beliefs? I suppose this is where forensic psychology as a science collaborates with occupational psychology, social psychology, and educational psychology to uncover these answers.

References

Dixon, J. (2015) ‘Why don’t we like one another? The psychology of prejudice and intergroup relations’, in Capdevila, R., Dixon, J., and Briggs, G. (eds) Investigating Psychology 2: From Social to Cognitive, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 133-178.

Hare, D. R. and Babiak, P. (2006) Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, New York, HarperCollins.