Body: | The History of Psychiatry: "doctor of the soul"
Church ministers were the first Psychiatrists!
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Introduction:
The word psychiatrist literally means, "a doctor of the soul" and
church ministers were the first psychiatrists who specialized in working
with the insane.
The record of history is clear. Before 1775 AD, church ministers
were seen as the best source of "professional help" with all troubles of
life including insanity.
A church minister would view insanity as a behaviour that needed
correcting like any other sin like habitual stealing, adultery, laziness,
anger or selfishness.
The minister would ride his horse over to the house of the insane
and provide counsel (talking cures) without ever removing the person from
his home environment. There was no coerced treatment and the insane were
never forcibly confined in an asylum away from his home.
Today, the takeover of institutional psychiatry has gone so far,
that the insurance companies now tell church ministers never to use the
word "counseling" when they perform their God given mandate to be "a doctor
of the soul". Most preachers and church members blindly accept this, which
as old brother Keeble used to say, "is absurdity gone to seed". It
represents a wholesale abduction of the duty by preachers to less qualified
psychiatrists and psychologists. A bizzare twisted inversion of the
universe has come to pass where the advice of an atheistic psychiatrist or
psychologist is considered "way better" than any advice a church minister
might give. Insurance companies say, "never use the "C" word
(counseling)... instead use the phrase, "spiritual insights" etc. The fact
is that any judgements a minister might make based upon the Bible are
always infinitely better than anything an atheistic psychiatrist or
psychologist might ever say.
"My intention is not to promote or to criticize organized religion,
although I do wish it would not relegate the "curing of souls" to
psychiatry." (The Heart of Being Helpful, Peter Breggin, 1997 AD. p 65)
The important thing is for church ministers to never charge for
their counseling of the insane. When a member comes for to them for help,
advice and "spiritual insights", preachers don't charge for the gospel! It
is important to understand that historically, church ministers counseled
the insane as part of their overall ministry in helping people with the
full range of every day life problems.
Almost everything good and positive in the world today had its
origin in the benevolent work of Christians and church ministers. Most
major organizations, institutions and "movements" were begun by church
ministers including universities, hospitals, asylums, conservation
movements, emergency relief organizations, the legal system and
constitution of the USA and Canada.
The English word "hospital" comes from the Latin "hospitalia" which
is based upon the Greek word: "philoxenia" used throughout the New
Testament. "Do not neglect to show hospitality (philoxenia) to strangers,
for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it." (Hebrews
13:2) It denotes extending kindness, help, comfort and food to strangers in
need. Modern society defines hospitality as something you extend to friends
and family whereas for the Christian, hospitality was always something
practiced on behalf of strangers. Jesus instructs us: "If you love those
who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who
love them." (Luke 6:32). It was natural that individual Christians began
benevolent, non-profit "hospitals" where the traveler, the needy, the poor,
the sick and the insane could find refuge, help, care, food, shelter and
Christian love. The modern hospital system as well the asylums all trace
their origin back to a time when church ministers, not medical doctors,
were the ones doing a loving work of benevolent care.
There are three distinct branches in the history of psychiatry:
Church ministers, psychoanalysis, chemical psychiatry. These three can be
divided into two competing views of the causes and treatments for insanity:
1. spiritual causes with talking cures vs. 2. biological causes with drug
and electric shock cures. The majority view, right up to the 1950's, was
that insanity was caused by life choices, circumstances, sin and "treated"
with simple counseling. Keep in mind that the now debunked Freudian
psychoanalysis was opposed to chemical psychiatry and sided with the
talking cures that church ministers had been giving for 2000 years.
Freudian psychoanalysis has been rejected as quackery by most today:
"Where will psychoanalysis be even 25 years from now? ... I predict it will
take its place along with phrenology and mesmerism." (Are Psychoanalysis
and Religious Counseling Compatible?, Leo Steiner, Paper read to Society
for the Scientific Study of Religion, Harvard University, 1958 AD).
The vast majority of historical surveys of psychiatry are highly
selective and biased, so as to mislead the reader into thinking that
chemical psychiatrists have always dominated history. Only in the last 50
years has chemical psychiatry been dominant and they are now in decline.
"The fatal weakness of most psychiatric historiographies lies in the
historians' failure to give sufficient weight to the role of coercion in
psychiatry and to acknowledge that mad-doctoring had nothing to do with
healing." (The Medicalization Of Everyday Life, Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p
55)
Before the age of the large public asylums (1775 AD), psychiatry was
correctly viewed as outside the realm of science or medicine: "In the
eighteenth century psychology was a branch of moral philosophy, not of
natural philosophy or science, and had almost no point of contact with the
medical study and treatment of the mentally ill." (300 years of Psychiatry,
Richard Hunter, 1963, p335)
It is important to remember that before 1860 AD, the medical
knowledge of a doctor was not much more than what a 13 year old knows today
after he plays with his chemistry set and dissects a few rabbits on the
back porch. The quacky Hippocratic concept of the four humors with its
bloodletting etc., was the foundation of their knowledge and approach.
Chemical psychiatry from its tiny beginnings, has vainly searched
for a biological cause of insanity for 300 years and failed. Church
ministers generally had it right all along with their spiritual causes of
insanity and counseling as the "cure" without the use of coercion, drugs or
electric shocks to the brain.
A. The historic role of church ministers in psychiatry: 30 AD - 1650 AD
Although there were leper colonies, there were no corresponding
mental asylums for the insane in either the Old or New Testament.
Before about 1650, there was no such thing as a mental hospital,
insane asylum (except Bedlam), or even private mad houses. At this time,
the insane were not removed from their homes and placed into "treatment
homes" like leper colonies.
"As far back as the thirteenth century, common law recognized two
classes of incompetents: idiots, mentally sub-normal from birth, who were
considered to be permanently impaired; and lunatics, normal persons who
went mad, who were considered to be capable of recovery. The procedure for
declaring a person a lunatic was similar to that of declaring him
incompetent: "Commissions examined such persons before a jury that ruled on
their sanity. . . . Physicians played essentially no role in the
certification process itself." (The Medicalization Of Everyday Life, Thomas
Szasz, 2007 AD, p 59)
At this time, church ministers were the "professionals" that
everyone turned to in matters of anxiety, depression, insanity as well as
all other life problems. Insanity was not seen as a biological problem, but
a spiritual problem.
Medical doctors did not "treat" the insane: "Boarding out the
lunatic or idiot at a private dwelling, in the company of a servant, was
also commonplace; this practice in some respects anticipated the
development of private madhouses in the eighteenth century ... Role Of The
Medical Profession: Apart from an incidental appearance as a guardian, what
role did physicians play in this jurisdiction? ... physicians played
essentially no role in the certification process itself." (Diagnosis,
Guardianship, and Residential Care of the Mentally Ill in Medieval and
Early Modern England, Richard Neugebauer, American Journal of Psychiatry
Dec 1989 AD)
The insane lived and moved among the population freely and were not
coerced by doctors to be cured. However the English "poor laws" of the 16th
century outlawed vagrancy and begging and cast all these into workhouses or
jail. There was no distinction in England or America between the sane or
insane beggars: "In providing relief, [American] colonial towns made no
distinction among the mentally ill, criminals, orphans, the sick, the aged,
the physically maimed, and the unemployed. These undifferentiated
dependents were thrown together in jails and workhouses. Here they remained
in dingy cells, attics, or cellars, treated with scorn and indifference,
and allowed to vegetate and suffer alone. This condition persisted
throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century. No
medical treatment was involved or available; care was strictly custodial.
... Colonists were subject to Indian attacks, and they faced such natural
calamities as famine and epidemics. Idleness and vagrancy were viewed with
disdain. Cooperative group effort sustained a community, and any form of
dependency became a burden, an obstacle that threatened community survival.
Social dependents thus were not only morally reprehensible, but also
required controls and restrictions so that they could not undermine the
cohesive fabric of society." (Treating the mentally ill, Leland V Bell,
1980 AD, p 1-4)
The insane were under the jurisdiction of church ministers and
churches, just like any other willful sin: "For at least two centuries (the
thirteenth and fourteenth) the plight of the mentally ill was entirely the
domain of the theologians, whilst lay physicians dealt as best they could
with the organic problems of the body." (Bedlam, Anthony Masters, 1977 AD,
p26)
"WHILST there is little information regarding the precise treatment
of the insane in medieval times, there is evidence that the mentally
afflicted were accommodated at times alongside the physically diseased in
the infirmaries of the period. In addition, monastic houses [church run
shelters under the control of church ministers] often gave shelter to
lunatics in company with vagabonds and vagrants." (The Trade in Lunacy,
William Ll. Parry-Jones, 1972 AD, p 6)
Some church ministers believed that sinful living caused an
imbalance of the four humors which in turn caused insanity. While some
medical doctors viewed "bad melancholy blood" as the primary cause of
insanity, these church misters viewed the primary cause to be sinful
living. The key difference is in the ultimate etiology of the behaviours.
Ministers viewed the etiology of insanity as choice, which caused the
"melancholy blood". Doctors believed "bad blood" caused insanity as a
disease. Both would practice blood letting to purify the blood as part of
the humoral medicine of the era.
In 1670 AD, Richard Baxter, Church Minister, took the view that
insanity and depression were caused by life circumstances, moral choices
and sins of an individual, that induced bad "melancholy blood". Although
his etiology is humoral, it important to realize that he believed that sin
and emotion actually were the foundational cause of melancholy blood, which
then caused insanity! 1. sin. 2. bad blood. 3 insanity. "Root and
Foundation, is usually a Depravation of the Mass of Blood, which is the
Vehicle of the Spirits, and that is usually accompanied with some Diseases
of the Stomach, Spleen, Liver" First on his list of causes of melancholy
was: "SINFUL Impatience, Discontents and Cares, proceeding from a Sinful
Love of some bodily Interest, and from want of sufficient Submission to the
will of God, and Trust in him, and taking Heaven for a satisfying Portion.
This is one of the most common Causes". He then goes on to list things
like: "when they are in Debt to others", "the secret Root or Cause of all
this, is the worst Part of the Sin, which is too much Love to the Body and
this World". He also identifies high self esteem and a lack of contentment
as a cause: "not sufficiently humbled for our Sin, or else we should be
thankful for the lowest State, as being much better than that which we
deserved". He also identifies cognitive dissonance (bad conscience) as a
trigger of insanity: "great Cause is the Guilt of some great and wilful
Sin, when Conscience is convinced, and yet the Soul is not converted". His
cure of insanity was to repent: "repent, to love God and your Neighbour, to
live soberly, righteously and godly, to pray at all; here you must strive,
and not excuse it by any Backwardness; for it is that which must needs be
done, or you are lost". Although he believed typical Hypocrites junk
medicine, he attributed depression and mental illness to freewill choices
as the primary cause, which in turn cause the blood to become melancholy.
So the real problem lay in fixing the mind, not the body! Repentance, he
believed, would correct the melancholy blood and restore the person to
normal. (The Signs and Causes of Melancholy, Richard Baxter, 1670 AD)
"The clergyman labored under no such tradition, which explains his
role as pioneer mad-doctor and madhouse keeper. Subsequently, as the
clergyman's power diminished, the mad-doctor's increased, and theological
coercion was replaced by psychiatric coercion." (The Medicalization Of
Everyday Life, Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p 63)
B. The English "poor laws": 1552 -1601 AD
Before the series of English "Poor Laws" of 1552 - 1601 AD, they
roamed freely throughout the community like any other peasant beggar. As
these poor laws were passed and begging was outlawed, the insane were swept
up with all the other beggars and put in workhouses or sent to jail to be
tortured to become self sufficient.
The insane who owned property or were not "homeless" continued to
live in their homes usually under the supervision, advice and council of
church ministers.
B. The rise of private mad houses run by church ministers: 1650 AD
The sad truth, is that the origin of psychiatric committal
(coercion) rests with church ministers, who for 50 - 100 years, starting in
1650 AD, began to jail the insane relatives of the rich in mad houses. This
action legitimized psychiatric jailing for money which immediately sprang
into a new industry that church ministers were eventually excluded from by
1775 AD.
"At the beginning of the seventeenth century (1600 AD), there were
no mental hospitals, as we now know them. To be sure, there were a few
facilities- such as Bethlehem Hospital, better known as Bedlam-in which
a small number, usually less than a dozen, of pauper insane were confined.
By the end of the century, however, there was a flourishing new industry,
called the "trade in lunacy."' To understand the modern concept of mental
illness, one must focus on the radically different origins of the medical
and psychiatric professions. Medicine began with sick persons seeking
relief from their suffering. Psychiatry began with the relatives of
unwanted, troublesome persons seeking relief from the embarrassment and
suffering their kin caused them. Unlike the regular doctor, the early
psychiatrist, called mad-doctor, treated persons who did not want to be his
patients, and whose ailments manifested themselves by exciting the
resentment of their relatives. These are critical issues never to be lost
sight of Annoying, unconventional behavior must have existed for as long as
human beings have lived together in society." (The Medicalization Of
Everyday Life, Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p 55)
1650 AD marked the beginning of institutional care for the insane in
private mad houses run on a non-profit basis. Thus began a new trend, never
before seen in history, with the insane being taken from their homes and
placed into "mad houses" privately owned and run by church ministers. At
first, the insane were taken directly into the homes of ministers for a
monthly maintenance fee from the mad person's rich relatives who used this
as an opportunity to dispose of annoying and troublesome relatives.
Since church ministers were seen as the experts who had already been
helping the insane, the rich began to offer money for food and lodging of
their insane relatives in the ministers home. Suddenly church ministers
found themselves with a whole new set of duties to be round the clock
caregivers for the insane in their own homes for a price. This was a grave
mistake.
Church ministers began to function like "foster parents" to care for
the needy and unwanted for cash. Was it a profit seeking motive for the
ministers? Perhaps. But remember that officially foster parents are
volunteers who receive only enough money to support the needs of the child
and are not paid any wages. Yet very few foster parents would care for
children if they received no money for doing so. In fact, being a foster
parent can be a great subsidy on house mortgages and other household
expenses. Remember that part of the payment for support is for expenses
like food and clothing and the other part is for housing, utilities etc. So
just as the cash payments made to foster parents helps support their
standard of living, so too church ministers likely viewed the "support
payments" as a way to help with every day expenses and raise their standard
of living. Having said all this, the initial motivation was genuine
altruistic love and care for the insane not the profit seeking motive that
set in a few decades later by profit seeking business men.
"If he were wealthy, he might be sent by his relatives to one of the
small private madhouses which combined high fees with a pledge of absolute
secrecy, or confined alone with an attendant. If he were poor, he might be
kept by his family in whatever conditions they chose, or sent to the
workhouse or prison for greater security; but whether he lived in London,
or in a small and remote village, whether he was rich or poor, he was
almost certain to be confined, neglected, and intimidated, if not treated
with open cruelty." (A history of the mental health services, Kathleen
Jones, 1972 AD, p3)
"In the seventeenth century, it is known that lunatics from the more
affluent classes were cared for individually, often in the custody of
medical men or clergymen. An example of this system is provided by the case
of one Edmund Francklin of Bedford, who was found lunatic by inquisition in
1630 and later cared for, privately, by Dr Helkiah Crooke, physician to
Bethlem Hospital.' Similarly, in 1679, it is recorded that Anne Grenville,
the youngest daughter of the Bishop of Durham, was placed in the charge of,
'a person famous for the ordering of distempered persons', a physician who
lived at Worcester.' There is evidence, in addition, that, during the
seventeenth century, there were many establishments run specifically as
madhouses, which provided accommodation for a number of lunatics. The
following references have been singled out as representative of the range
of this evidence. In 1815, it was claimed that there had been an asylum at
Box, Wiltshire, for 200 years.' There was a mad-house at Glastonbury, in
1656, where the Reverend George Trosse was confined. It is recorded that,
in 1661, the Reverend John Ashbourne, who kept a small madhouse in Suffolk,
was murdered by one of his own patients. Thomas Willis (1683) referred to a
madman `being placed in a house convenient for the -business and, in 1673,
John Archer, self-styled `one of His Majesties Physicians in Ordinary',
advertised his house for lunatics, placed `in an excellent air nere the
City'. An advertisement for the house kept by James Newton `on Clarkenwell
Green', London, dated c. 1674, has survived.' David Irish (1700) and Thomas
Fallowes (1705)" publicized their respective houses, at Guildford and
Lambeth, in short publications. Such evidence suggests that the confinement
of the insane in private madhouses was a well-established practice by the
beginning of the eighteenth century and, during the reign of George II
(1727-60), their number increased steadily." (The Trade in Lunacy, William
Ll. Parry-Jones, 1972 AD, p 6-8)
"The nub of the history of psychiatry is the story of involuntary
mental hospitalization: that is, the removal of the unwanted person from
his family or home, presented and publicly perceived as the treatment of
the mentally ill person by psychiatrists struggling to cure mental illness.
Forcibly removed from his home, the mad person was forcibly re-housed in
the home of a surrogate caretaker. The first such domiciles for housing the
mentally ill, later called "mental hospitals," were the private homes of
so-called asylum keepers, mainly clergymen or apothecaries." ... "Except
for some historians of psychiatry, few people realize that the early
madhouses were not hospitals, but the keepers' homes into which they took a
few, often only one or two, madmen or mad women as involuntary boarders. As
previously noted, the keepers who owned and operated these private
madhouses were principally clergymen, not physicians. Once again, we touch
here on the close connections between religion as the cure of souls, and
psychiatry as the cure of minds. The practice of healing began as an
undifferentiated religious-medical enterprise. Later, as the social world
split into sacred and profane parts, the practice of healing also split,
one part remaining a sacred, religious activity, the other becoming the
secular profession of medicine." ... "In Rush's day (1812 AD), psychiatry
was a newborn infant. Many madhouse keepers were clergymen, not
physicians."(Coercion as Cure, Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p 26, 29, 71)
"But in the seventeenth century the distinction was blurred by the
prevailing negative attitudes toward insanity and the crude, exotic
remedies applied to cure it. The upper- and middle-class sick found relief
within the family. Here the afflicted individual may have received solace
from relatives and a family physician. The existing moral condemnation of
the mentally ill may have encouraged some affluent households, sensitive to
community ridicule, to hide the disturbed family member in the cellar or in
the attic, chained to a bed or a post. If the family milieu itself
contributed to a person's disorder, home care became a private hell."
(Treating the mentally ill, Leland V Bell, 1980 AD, p 1-4)
It was easy to see why the rich first offered church ministers money
to care for their insane. After all, the minister was already making "house
calls", out of genuine care and concern at no cost. An offer of money to
care for the insane was a natural next step. Paying someone who "really
cared" seemed like a good choice.
The homes of church ministers became a convenient place for rich
property owners to "get rid of" their troublesome insane relatives. The mad
houses were initially funded entirely by the rich relatives of the insane.
At the very beginning the insane, who resided in mad houses, were
wealthy, rich land owners. The rich did not have to work manual labour
because they managed peasant labourers who worked the land for them and
provided their daily needs as servants. Having an insane person with
nothing to do all day would be annoying so they looked for a way to remove
the problem. They chose to send the insane to a mad house and all they had
to do was pay the mad house owner about the same amount as what one of
their peasant labourers was getting paid. It was a very cost effective
solution to a problem.
The poor working class insane would never be put in mad houses
because their relatives couldn't afford it. Further, since the poor had to
engage in manual labour for daily food, the clan needed the labors of the
insane (what little they would do) just to survive as a group. Today we see
an inversion of those in asylums as being predominantly the poor and
unemployable.
"Today, we associate mental illness with homelessness and poverty.
In the eighteenth century, the typical person denominated as mad had a home
and was well to do. The problem that commitment then posed was how to
justify forcibly expelling such a person from his home and relocating him
in someone else's home. Mad-doctors and laws regulating the management of
private madhouses provided the justification. The practice of incarcerating
rich persons in private madhouses was later extended to the incarceration
of poor persons in public insane asylums." (Coercion as Cure, Thomas Szasz,
2007 AD, p 27)
The first "insane residents" of mad houses run by church ministers
were rich, since only their relatives could afford such an expense as a
luxury. Posed with a problem relative, only the rich could give someone
money as a solution for the embarrassment the insane family member was
causing the clan in general.
The genesis of psychiatric committal, therefore, was clearly a form
of social control.
"The practice of psychiatry as we know it began in England in the
eighteenth century when members of the upper classes began to "outsource"
the care and coercion of certain embarrassing and troublesome relatives. In
what ways did English men or women of means embarrass and offend their
relatives, prompting them to take such action? They did so by deviant
personal habits, for example by improvidence or self-neglect, behaviors
that provided a convenient conceptual bridge between the old idea of
incompetence and the new idea of insanity."" (Coercion as Cure, Thomas
Szasz, 2007 AD, p 26)
These church leaders began to set up these mad houses as a type of
"social gospel" because of a misplaced humanitarian and altruistic
extension of Christianity. Individual Christians are to help orphans, but
churches should not run orphan's homes. Individual Christians should help
the sick, but churches should not run hospitals. Individual Christians
should feed the needy, but churches are not authorized by God to set up
large charities and food banks. Churches are to preach the gospel and save
souls, not expend their collective energy with physical things like
providing food, shelter, medicine etc to the needy. That is the job of
individual Christians. The church is authorized by Bible command, example
and inference to preach the gospel and extend benevolence to needy
Christians. The Bible doesn't authorize the church to run private mental
asylums any more than running hospitals, orphan homes, old folk homes or
missionary societies or sponsoring church arrangements. The command to
"show hospitality to strangers" is an individual duty each Christian is
charged to obey not a collective duty under the oversight of a local church
or board of elders. While it is true that ministers were the best people to
consult to help those who are insane, these church ministers planted the
initial seeds of what would eventually become full blown publicly funded
institutional psychiatry we see today that does so much damage to people's
lives.
C. The rise of the secular "for profit" mad house: 1700 - 1725 AD
This new trend of getting paid to house the insane in the private
homes of ministers, quickly became a profit making industry for
businessmen. Between 1700 - 1720 AD, there was a gradual, but exponential
growth in the number of "for profit" mad houses.
"Throughout its history, the private-madhouse system was subjected
to persistent disparagement and censure, due, principally, to the fact that
patients were received for profit and, thereby, became the objects of
financial speculation." (The Trade in Lunacy, William Ll. Parry-Jones, 1972
AD, p 290)
"T. Bakewell (1815) had stated that, at some madhouses, the
pecuniary interest of the proprietor and the secret wishes of the lunatics'
relatives, led not only to the neglect of all means of cure, but also to
the deliberate prevention and delay of recovery, conduct which he
considered a crime that may be perpetrated with perfect impunity as to
human laws'. This statement is in keeping with what Mitford (1825 ?)
claimed to be the rule at Warburton's house, namely: 'If a man comes in
here mad, we'll keep him so; if he is in his senses, we'll soon drive him
out of them." Similarly, 100 years previously, Defoe had stated that if
persons were not mad on entering a madhouse, they were soon made so by the
barbarous usage they there suffer . . . Is it not enough to make one mad to
be suddenly clap'd up, stripp'd, whipp'd, ill fed, and worse us'd ? C.
Crowther (1838) observed that in private-madhouses the rich did not recover
in the same proportion as the poor"." (The Trade in Lunacy, William Ll.
Parry-Jones, 1972 AD, p 241)
At this point, the scene still resembled the "foster home" model of
today, where a few insane would be taken into a single private home. A few
larger facilities that might house 10 people did exist. These resembled
today's privately owned and operated "for profit" group homes for people on
public welfare or disability or old age or psychiatric outpatients.
By 1720 AD, the number of private "for profit" mad houses had
multiplied greatly and had become an established industry. Three events
between 1725-1728 AD mark the completed transition from privately owned
non-profit mad houses run by church ministers to profit oriented mad houses
run by non-Christians. The three markers are: 1. Patrick Blair in 1725, 2.
Eliza Haywood in 1726, 3. Daniel Defoe in 1728. These three witnesses of
history also show a new trend where husband threw their "sane" wives into
mad houses to either punish them for disobedience or to gain access to
their family money.
The committal of unwanted "sane" wives by their husbands suddenly
began to occur. This marks the entrance of secular mad houses since no
Christian would ever have any part in such a sinful action.
"The entrepreneurial origin of psychiatry as a form of private
imprisonment needs to be reemphasized because, in the nineteenth century,
madhousing became transformed into an essentially statist program of
confining troublesome people, poor and rich alike. In the seventeenth
century, England was a two-class society, consisting of those who owned
property and those who did not. Because wealth, especially land, generated
income, members of the propertied classes did not have to work to procure a
livelihood for themselves and their families. The poor, whose only property
was their labor, had to work or face destitution. Hence, their relatives
had nothing to gain, and much to lose, by having them declared mad: the
poverty of the poor protected them from the "care" of the early
mad-doctors." (Coercion as Cure, Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p 31)
"It must be emphasized that madhouses were the principal form of
institution catering for the insane in anything approaching a specialized
way until the mid-nineteenth century and, by 1848, one- half of the total
number of lunatics confined in asylums in England and Wales were in private
licensed houses. During the first half of the century, they had made
available accommodation for pauper lunatics, at a time when public
provisions, in the form of county asylums, were extremely slow in
developing and, in the second half of the century, they met a legitimate,
if diminishing, demand from the upper and middle classes for facilities
that were not widely available elsewhere." (The Trade in Lunacy, William
Ll. Parry-Jones, 1972 AD, p 282)
"In reviewing the geographical distribution of provincial licensed
houses, a notable finding was that, as their number increased, the
geographical distribution of licensed houses widened to produce a veritable
network of madhouses. In fact, the number of counties containing houses
doubled during the period 1807 to 1844." (The Trade in Lunacy, William Ll.
Parry-Jones, 1972 AD, p 283)
Large asylums, except for Bedlam, still did not exist. The mad
houses were filled with the insane from wealthy families who could afford
to pay the mad doctors the price of room and board. The insane poor, were
left on their own as they had in all history, since no individual would opt
to care for them for free. The families of the poor could not afford to pay
for the "care" of their insane, like the rich were able.
D. The rise of large institutional asylums: 1725 - 1775 AD
Christians and church ministers have been responsible for almost all
the good in society throughout history. Bedlam, for example, began in 1247
AD as a religious Priority house by Order of the Star of Bethlehem. In 1330
AD it became a general hospital, and admitted its first mental patient in
1357 AD. This was quite exceptional and out of the ordinary for the
treatment of the insane. Although it started altruistically by church
ministers, Bedlam was destined to be where full institutional psychiatry
made its big splash, complete with forced commitment and forced treatment
that was in full swing by about 1735 AD.
At first, it was only the rich were taken from their homes and
placed in mad houses by relatives. Bedlam, also accepted money from
relatives for the care of their insane. But as more public money became
available, large institutional asylums began to house the poor, the vagrant
and the street people who bothered society in general. "The historical
record is clear. When the trade in lunacy began, the asylums were privately
owned and operated, and the individuals incarcerated in them were members
of the propertied classes. ... The incarceration of propertied persons in
private madhouses came first and was followed, considerably later, by the
incarceration of poor persons in public insane asylums." (Coercion as Cure,
Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p 28)
As more and more public funds began to be directed to Bedlam, the
poor who did not own property, for the first time, were gathered from their
homes into the public asylums, being paid for by the state. Now asylums,
being funded by tax dollars, were used as a way to remove vagrants,
unemployed, unwanted wives and the poor street people from the parks and
streets even if they were not insane. Asylums were used to "clean up the
neighborhood".
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"Like others engaged in this project of collective social mobility,
mad-doctors had to seek public approval and trust, and as they struggled to
establish control over a particular territory and to define and protect the
boundaries of their jurisdiction, they necessarily found themselves engaged
in a never-ending campaign of persuasion and propaganda. Trust is vital to
the professional because he or she needs to secure assent to claims to
possess, not just skills and knowledge that the laity lacks, but skills and
knowledge the professional argues the public is not even in a position to
assess with any degree of precision. Likewise, the laity must come to trust
that members of the profession will exercise their skills in a
disinterested fashion and in large degree must be persuaded to rely upon
the professionals' own valuation of their knowledge. Yet trust was a
particularly difficult commodity for mad-doctors to acquire, not least
because their involvement in the trade in lunacy prompted endemic suspicion
about their motives, and because their claims to possess expertise in the
identification and treatment of madness provoked persistent scepticism even
among those laymen most heavily involved in the campaign for lunacy reform.
The prominent role played by medical men in the whole series of scandals
about treatment in asylums and madhouses that erupted in the first half of
the nineteenth century only intensified the difficulty of the task they
confronted. Yet, in the face of these and other obstacles, a recognized
specialism did emerge over the course of the nineteenth century and secured
some significant respect. The mad-doctors known to the authorities grew
from two or three thousand in 1800 to almost one hundred thousand [100,000]
a century later, their guardians successfully constituted themselves as the
public arbiters of mental disorder, the experts in its diagnosis and
disposal. They created a professional organization to defend and advance
their interests and edited journals and wrote monographs to provide a forum
for transmitting (and giving visible evidence of) the body of expert
knowledge to which they laid claim. During Victoria's long reign, they
increasingly dominated public discourse about insanity, and in the process,
they elaborated and refined a set of career structures and opportunities
for themselves. Fragile as their public standing might be, marginal and
somewhat embarrassing as their medical brethren might find them,
psychiatrists nonetheless had secured some accoutrements of professional
status, if only as the custodians of a chronically incapacitated and
generally economically deprived clientele and as advisers on mental hygiene
to a broader population concerned to avoid such a dismal destiny." (The
Transformation Of The Mad-Doctoring Trade, Andrew Scull, 1994 AD, p 6)
Up until 1751, Bedlam was the only public asylum among thousands of
privately owned mad houses run by church ministers and for profit
businessmen.
The three generation Monro dynasty at Bedlam lasted from about 1728
- 1815. Three generations of Monro's were in charge at Bedlam starting with
James in 1728, then John in 1751, then Thomas in 1787. The dynasty ended
with the firing of Thomas Monro in 1815, after the government documented
the horrors that took place at Bedlam.
William Battie worked at Bedlam for about ten years under John
Monro, after which he quit and started up a competing public asylum called
"St. Luke's" in 1751 AD. In 1758, a huge public fight broke out between
Monro and Battie when Battie published his, "A Treatise on Madness" highly
critical of Monro's approach at Bedlam. Monro shot back a reply with his,
"Remarks on Dr Battie's Treatise on Madness" the same year.
Even at the end of 1775, Bedlam and St. Luke's, were about the only
large public asylum in the world, but after this, their numbers began to
explode not only in England, but in every country of the world like France,
Germany etc.
In 1792 AD, a third public asylum in England called the "York
Retreat" by William Tuke. Tuke was a minister for the Quakers and believed
insanity was caused by sin, and personal choices of life circumstances.
Hence it is clear that the concept of the large publicly funded
asylum, is an English invention, copied by other nations around the world.
E. The Enlightenment, individual rights and asylums: 1775 AD
The rise of large publicly funded asylums corresponds with
enlightenment in England that brought about new personal freedoms never
before enjoyed. The best example of enlightenment thinking is the
Constitution of the USA.
Before the enlightenment, under the two class system, heads of the
upper class ruled everyone in their family like lords and kings. If someone
was behaving in an insane, annoying or embarrassing way that brought shame
on the clan, the clan leader could take direct steps to remedy the
behaviour as they saw fit. The clan leader had the power to suppress the
personal freedom of an insane.
The Constitution of the USA was written on September 17, 1787 in
direct opposition to the two class system of England in order to endow
individual rights and freedoms to each and every individual regardless of
income. God Bless America once again, for bringing about positive changes
in the world that were long overdue.
With a new emphasis each person being endowed with "inalienable"
personal rights and freedoms, it became harder to deprive individuals of
these rights in order to get them committed to a mad house or asylum
against their will.
"Consider the predicament of an upper-class person in England living
with a spouse, elderly parent, or adult child who had flaunted convention
and perhaps neglected her or his health, but was endowed by law and social
status with the right to liberty and property. No longer could such persons
be treated as they had been in earlier times-as members of the clan,
devoid of individual rights, responsible to the group. The
post-Enlightenment view of the rule of law destroyed the autocratic
prerogatives of elders or the family vis-à-vis deviant adults.
Increasingly, adult members of families were held together by cooperation
and compromise, rather than coercion and domination. However, cooperation,
as the term implies, requires a willingness to cooperate by at least two
persons. One person's willingness to cooperate is useless vis-à-vis
another person who is unable or unwilling to do so. Embarrassed or
victimized by his (mad) kinsman, the (sane) relative lacked means by which
to control him. The sane, or perhaps merely scheming, family member needed
a socially acceptable legal method for gaining control over his
troublesome, unwanted relative. Mental illness as medical disease, coercion
as care, and mental health laws turning these fictions into facts, resolved
this dilemma. ... Both elements, that is, the medicalization of madness and
the infantilization of the insane, were needed to reconcile people's
devotion to individual liberty and responsibility with their desire to
relieve themselves of certain (troublesome) individuals by means other than
those provided by the criminal law." (Coercion as Cure, Thomas Szasz, 2007
AD, p 28)
A legal method was needed to deprive the insane of their personal
rights and freedoms without committing a crime. This was accomplished, as
we will see shortly, by medical mad doctors excluding church ministers from
their role of helping the insane and claiming only they were able treat the
insane. Once this was accomplished, these same mad doctors then lobbied
governments for the personal authority to declare someone insane and also
deprive them of their rights... all on the basis of the doctors own
personal opinion.
F. The ejection of church ministers from psychiatry: 1775 AD
Take note, that church ministers never possessed the authority of
committal of the insane to mad houses. Families brought their insane to the
ministers for care. But their historic role in helping the insane was about
to end.
This marks the beginning of the war that began by demonizing church
ministers as causing more harm to the insane than good. Today we see the
battle has been won by chemical psychiatrists who view belief in God as a
mental illness and openly label Jesus as a schizophrenic and apostle Paul
as suffering from temporal-lobe epilepsy (TLE). The only one's who are
unaware of the war between psychiatrists and Christianity are Christians.
In a shocking trend, the very church ministers who were historically
charged with the care and counsel of the insane were entirely ejected by
the large secular institutional asylums. This "take over" of function of
"doctor of the soul" by secular doctors began in the large institutions and
gradually squeezed out church ministers entirely.
In 1774 AD, the Act for Regulating Madhouses ejected ministers from
their historic position of working with the insane. This was a political
move motivated by doctors who were wanting to protect their business
interests in a power grab sanctioned by law. Church ministers were even
forbidden to enter Bedlam.
"Two years later (1774), the Act for Regulating Madhouses (14 George
III c. 49) was finally passed. Perhaps, as Porter has suggested, the
prolonged delay in enacting legislation should be seen as a function of the
opposition of the College of Physicians, some of whose members "had a large
financial stake in metropolitan madhouses." 59 If so, it is somewhat ironic
that parliament handed over the power to license and inspect madhouses in
the metropolis to the College. (In the provinces, similar authority was
granted to local magistrates.) There were other signs, too, that medical
men had successfully lobbied behind the scenes to protect their interests:
the 1772 appeal notwithstanding, commitment under the new act required only
a single medical certificate, and local clergymen were firmly excluded from
any officially sanctioned role in the process." (Undertaker of the mind:
John Monro, Jonathan Andrews, Andrew Scull, 2001 AD, p 159)
"In all probability, John Monro shared the traditional hostility of
Bridewell and Bethlem's largely Anglican board of governors to sectarian
religions, the Methodists in particular. It must be said, however, that
most of the available evidence on this point appears to derive from the
period of James's physicianship rather than John's. For example, attempting
to visit Joseph Periam and other Methodist patients in Bethlem during the
second quarter of the century, George Whitefield (1714-70) and John Wesley
(1703-91) both complained that they were refused entry. According to
Wesley, recalling an interrupted visit of a year or so before John's
election as joint physician, it had been decreed that "none of these
preachers were to come there" (although there is no trace of such an order
in Bethlem's records). Wesley was repeatedly to censure Bethlem's medical
regime in print-for this and other reasons-and here he laid on the
sardonic irony with a trowel, alleging that the prohibition on allowing him
in was "for fear of making them [the patients] mad."" (Undertaker of the
mind: John Monro, Jonathan Andrews, Andrew Scull, 2001 AD, p 32)
There has been a progressive takeover of the traditional role church
ministers have historically played in helping the insane. First, in the
early 1700's when businessmen started to compete with church ministers by
opening up mad houses. Then in the late 1700's, a takeover by "doctors" who
agreed with church ministers that insanity was caused by spiritual
problems, but used an atheistic and secular approach to "cure". Finally, a
takeover by chemical psychiatrists when the first psychiatric drug,
Chlorpromazine was created on December 11, 1950. These new drugs were
prescribed by "doctors" who believed insanity was a biological disease.
Chemical psychiatrists only became a majority about 1970 AD over their
"Freudian talking cures" fellow psychiatrists. Today, both talking cures
and chemical cures still exist, but 98% of the industry is dominated by
chemical psychiatry with their mythical "chemical imbalances of the brain,
bad DNA" and provide only two treatments: drugs and shocks to the brain.
In the chart below, you can see how church ministers helping the
insane out of the goodness of their hearts, were replaced by profit seeking
mad house owners and public institutions like Bedlam. The only difference
between talking cures of church ministers and the talking cures of Sigmund
Freud, was that Freud used secular reasoning and church ministers grounded
their wisdom and advice firmly in the Bible. It is important to know that
there were a few church ministers who believed some cases of insanity were
caused by "humoral imbalances" as well as a few Chemical psychiatrists who
believed some madness were caused by life choices and circumstances. These
are generalizations that correctly represent history.
Click to View
G. Family members stripped of power to commit: 1775 AD
Just as 1774 AD Act for Regulating Madhouses stripped church
ministers of all their involvement in dealing with the insane, so too
family members were stripped of their power to have their insane family
members committed to an asylum against their will.
Before 1775 AD, it was the family of the insane who were the agents
that committed them to a mad house. After 1775 AD, a gradual trend
developed where new laws were passed that made mad doctors the sole agents
of committal to an asylum. At the same time, church ministers were stripped
of even offering an opinion, even banned from asylums.
In 1725, it was clear from Patrick Blair in 1725, Eliza Haywood in
1726, Daniel Defoe in 1728 that it was the family who instigated the
committal. The wife was committed into Blair's hand by her husband. The
bride was delivered to the mad house by her "keepers" in Haywood's play.
Defoe condemns the husbands who committed their sane wives to the mad
houses. However in 1738 we see something new in the arrest of Alexander
Cruden (Cruden's Concordance) where he was arrested by Robert Wightman, the
owner of a mad house and held against his will with the full consent of his
daughter! This last case is eerily familiar to the "ambulance chasing"
liability lawyers of today, where Wightman went out looking for anyone he
could to commit to his own private mad house. Cruden took Wightman to court
for unlawful imprisonment. These four witnesses of history also show that
it was the family of the insane who were the agents with the authority of
committal.
"Battie and John Monro, the two most eminent psychiatric physicians
of the day, supported the view that wrongful consinement in madhouses did
take place. The former quoted, as an example, a case in which a man had
tried to confine his wife in Battie's madhouse and had justified his
conduct by the belief that the house was 'a sort of Bridewell, or place of
correction'. [Report 1763 S.C., J.H.C., Vol. 29, p. 488] Reference to the
findings of this Committee and to the prevailing abuses was made in 1866,
by a writer who signed himself L.T.F.3 A description was given of a
narrative, in MS., dated 1746, in which a lady of distinction was confined
in a madhouse, by her husband's authority, because of her extravagance and
indifference towards him. Other inmates of this particular madhouse, near
Harrow, had been placed there for such reasons as drunkenness, violent
tempers and, in the case of two young girls, to break off love-affairs
which did not meet with their parents' approval. Also amongst those reputed
to have been improperly confined in madhouses in the eighteenth century
were individuals from the ranks of the early Methodists, the revivalist
field-preachers and their followers, who were so often exposed, at this
period, to persecution and derision." (The Trade in Lunacy, William Ll.
Parry-Jones, 1972 AD, p 255)
The medical mad doctors in the largest Institutions of psychiatry
(Monro in Bedlam, England, Heinroth in Germany etc.) influenced their
respective governments to give them the sole power to treat the insane and
determine when someone should be committed against their will.
The "inalienable" personal rights and freedoms of the insane were
violated by doctors claiming that they were not responsible for their
actions. In 1818 AD. Dr. Heinroth for example, takes the unusual position
that although man becomes mad on his own free will choices, once full
insanity has set in, the man becomes "unfree" and is no longer to be held
responsible for his crimes. This is the earliest concept of the insanity
plea in Germany. Heinroth says: "But we must not forget that in a true
mental disturbance each of these disorders must occur to an extent
equivalent to complete, permanent loss of freedom ... For the moment at
which unfreedom makes its appearance and clearly manifests itself by
unnatural, i.e., unreasonable, actions, behavior, words, glances, or
gestures, that is the moment of this procreation. From this moment on, the
man has lost claim to the kingdom of freedom, to the kingdom of the
spirits, at least for as long as he remains in this cycle. He is an
automaton: his thinking, his sensation, his activity, proceed in a
mechanical manner, no matter whether it appears as if they were determined
by himself. They are in fact determined by urgent impulses only, if they
are controlled at all." (Textbook of Disturbances of Mental Life and Soul,
Johann Heinroth, 1818 AD)
More important, is the fact that Heinroth believes that the mad
doctor alone should possess the sole right to determine if a person is
"unfree" and can invoke to deprive the insane of his personal rights. "This
will be easy for the physician to determine once he has observed the type
and the degree of the unfree state." (Textbook of Disturbances of Mental
Life and Soul, Johann Heinroth, 1818 AD)
Heinroth argues that only medical doctors are able to make the
determination of when a person is insane and therefore only they should
decide when a person can be arrested against their will, deprived of their
personal rights and freedoms and be thrown into an asylum jail without a
trial.
In 1818, a person could be committed to an asylum on the sole basis
of a single doctor's opinion. Family members and church ministers had no
authority at all in the matter.
The only way you can legally deprive someone of their right to
freedom is by declaring people not capable of being responsible for their
actions. This idea led directly to the insanity plea where criminals are
set free rather than hung for their crimes because they are not guilty for
reasons of insanity.
It is therefore impossible to commit someone to an asylum against
their will, without a trial unless you first dehumanize them by making them
into a chemical robot whose actions are determined by the body, not the
mind.
"The creation of a system of private madhouses and the forcible
rehousing of people in them entailed depriving the inmates of their basic
right to liberty and required a persuasive justification. This was
accomplished by analogizing the outsourcing of the care of mad persons to
the out-sourcing of the care of infants. Once society advances beyond the
stage of subsistence economy, the role of the mother, in families able to
afford domestic help, is often taken by surrogates-wet-nurses,
governesses, and tutors. This arrangement served as the template for
transferring the care of mad persons from family members to hired help.
Delegating the care of an insane adult, however-especially if he resists
being cared for-presents a problem very different from that of delegating
the care of a child. Children have neither the physical strength nor the
political power to resist being controlled by their parents and the
parents' deputies. Adults do. Before an adult deemed to be insane can be
treated as a madman, he must first be divested of his rights.' Reframing
the political status of the insane adult as similar to that of a child
accomplishes this task." (Coercion as Cure, Thomas Szasz, 2007 AD, p 27)
In this way, it is easy to see how psychiatry had its origin as a
parallel prison system to remove from society those who were annoying,
embarrassing, non-productive, lazy but not criminal. If the insane had
committed crimes and broken laws, there would have been no need to suddenly
grant to psychiatrists the power to throw them into a jail called an asylum
and lock them up against their will without even a trial.
Today, psychiatrists still possess the power to strip and divest the
insane of their right to freedom in order for their relatives to get them
locked up in an asylum. Remember, the insane themselves never want to be
put in an asylum against their will, it is the relatives of the insane that
wish to commit them. For the insane, the actions of insanity are a
solution, but for their relatives, these actions are a problem. Committal
to an asylum is the relative's solution to the problem.
H. The rise and decline of Freudian Psychoanalysis: 1875 - 1960
Psychoanalysis did not originate with Freud, but his German
predecessors like Dr. Heinroth 1818 AD.
Psychoanalysis is aligned with church ministers and opposed to
chemical psychiatrists since it involves nothing more than merely talking.
This is why it is called "talking cures". The question is who would be a
better person to talk to about your problems? An atheistic, evolutionary
psychoanalyst spouting the latest pop-psychobabble or a church minister who
uses the Bible as his guide for human behaviour?
Freudian psychoanalysis (dreams, repression, neo-natal sexual
trauma) has been discarded into the trash can beside phrenology and
mesmerism and has fallen out of favor with most psychologists.
When psychologists rejected Freudian psychoanalysis, they moved
another step closer to the historic methods that church ministers would use
to help the insane: talking, listening, counseling.
Although psychoanalysis dominated the mental health industry the
discovery of neuroleptic drugs in 1950 marked their rapid decline.
Psychoanalysis was eclipsed by chemical psychiatry.
I. The rise and fall of chemical psychiatry: 1950 - 1990
The first neuroleptic drug, Chlorpromazine was created on December
11, 1950. This marks the beginning of the take over of chemical psychiatry
as the dominant force in psychiatry we see today.
Before the discovery of neuroleptic drugs like Chlorpromazine and
Lithium, the "talking cures" of Freudian psychoanalysis and the good old
counsel of church ministers dominated the "therapy" for the insane. However
after 1950, a sudden takeover of chemical psychiatry as the treatment of
choice began so that today, it dominates the minds of thinking of almost
everyone involved in the mental health industry.
TV ads that say, "depression is a serious medical condition" become
increasingly common. Drugs are equated as fixing "chemical imbalances in
the brain" the same way insulin fixes diabetes. Of course all these claims
are wicked lies that have caused enormous harm and suffering to millions
who have been treated by drugs.
The huge side effects and the little efficacy has caused many to
rethink the utility of drugs to change simple human behaviours.
While drugs stupefy and create a chemical lobotomy, they are
generally ineffective in changing human behaviors in the long term.
Behaviours are based upon choices that originate in the human spirit, not
the physical brain.
The end of chemical psychiatry is approaching and in the year 2100
AD it will be extinct.
The day will come when the drugs and electric shocks of chemical
psychiatry will be seen as just another historical example of the harm
psychiatry had inflicted upon society.
Conclusion:
The sad truth, is that the origin of psychiatric committal
(coercion) rests with church ministers, who for 50 - 100 years, starting in
1650 AD, began to jail the insane relatives of the rich in mad houses. This
action legitimized psychiatric jailing for money which immediately sprang
into a new industry that church ministers were eventually excluded from by
1775 AD.
From the first century, Christians have correctly understood that
insanity is a behaviour not a disease.
Although Sigmund Freud popularized psychoanalyses, he did not invent
it. It became a pop psychology fad for a few decades but is now extinct,
with the exception of a few extremist fringe therapists.
With the discovery of mood stabilizing drugs in the 1950's chemical
psychiatrists suddenly began to dominate the thinking of all mental health
organizations. Being evolutionists who reject the dichotomous nature of
man, chemical psychiatrists had no place to look for the cause and cure of
insanity except the brain.
With the dawn of modern medicine and scientific forensics, it was
hoped that a biological etiology for insanity would be discovered. The 100
year search has ended in vain. Just like Darwin predicted missing links
would validate the theory of evolution, but were never found, so too
chemical psychiatrists predicted a chemical cause for insanity would be
found. Both Darwin and chemical psychiatrists began their respective hunts
at about the same time. Both have ended in failure.
At the same time, chemical psychiatrists expected that new drugs
would be synthesized that would cure insanity like depression, anxiety,
delusion, paranoia. Again they have failed since most psychiatric drugs
cause brain damage and are no more effective than placebo.
With the utter failure of Chemical psychiatry to find a biologic
cause or chemical cures for insanity, it is time to label them for the
quacks they have always been.
What is left, is what we have always known, but needed the courage
to say: Insanity is a behaviour of choice that is under the complete
control of individuals. The old joke rings true once again: "How many
psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? None, if it really wants
to change itself." The most difficult part of the process of counseling the
insane, is helping them see their own contribution to their own problems
and behaviours. Whereas Chemical psychiatry has brainwashed the general
public into believing insanity is not caused by moral failure but a
disease, the truth is that the insane can only blame themselves for how
they have chosen to conduct themselves. Anxiety and depression are as much
a choice of behaviour as smoking, overeating or alcoholism.
Church ministers, equipped with the perfect manual of human
behaviour (the bible) and the hope, joy, purpose and forgiveness that comes
through faith in Jesus Christ, are the only hope of helping those who
engage in behaviours associated with mental illness and insanity.
Non-Christians really have nothing to offer. Evolutionists and atheists are
actually a cause of anxiety and depression since they believe life on earth
is the result of random chance processes that provide no real purpose for
life and no hope in the future.
Historically, church ministers had it right all along, when they
understood that insanity was a behaviour choice not a disease. Christians
know that you can not force a person to believe in God and you cannot force
someone to change behaviours associated with mental illness. But you can
point them towards the light. Just like the gospel, most reject the good
advice, but a few listen and change.
It is a mistake for church ministers to become actively involved in
the industry of counseling people for money, essentially competing with
secular counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists. Although it is not
wrong for a church minister to accept money for 1 hour of his counseling
services, it is not wise and perhaps it may violate the free nature of
grace and the gospel message itself. A real minister would never charge an
hourly fee to teach someone they need to believe, repent, confess Jesus and
be immersed in water for the remission of their sins to be saved. Likewise
a minister should never charge for his counseling services for people who
are in need of divine guidance from his reservoir of wisdom and the do's
and don'ts of the Bible.
Church ministers altruistically point to the way of spiritual
healing through Jesus Christ, and those who hear are healed. In the end,
counseling the insane is no different than teaching someone the gospel to
be saved. When seekers as for guidance, the minister identifies behaviours
that are in violation to the law of Christ as revealed in the Bible and
suggests these behaviours be stopped. Just as many sinners reject the
message of repentance and refuse to be baptized, so too many insane reject
the message of behaviour change and remain insane.
Forced coercion of changing the behaviours of the insane are just as
wrong as forced coercion of conversion to Christ. Just as a church minister
would never force a sinner to be baptized against his will, so too forced
psychiatric committal to an asylum or drugging is wrong.
Sinners and the insane are both free to live any way they choose, in
spite of the good counsel of a church minister. They must both be free to
live and move and conduct themselves in any sinful manner they choose.
However, when laws are broken, sinner and insane alike should be arrested,
tried and thrown in jail, not an asylum.
Faith and obedience to Christ is the only hope of true happiness,
purpose, joy, contentment in the world. Pick of your Bible and read it.
Attend a good Bible based church: click here.
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By Steve Rudd: Contact the author for comments, input or corrections.
Send us your story about your experience with modern Psychiatry
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