Saturday, December 10, 2005

"Extreme Bias" - A Mental Disorder?

This is a slap-yourself-in-the-forehead article in tomorrow's Washington Post. We have been dealing for the past year with a group of nutty people who just go crazy over the idea that there are gay people and that some people -- that would be us -- don't see any problem with that. On a related note: did you look at Michelle Turner's Powerpoint slides yet?

They speak, they organize, they write stuff in the blog comments, and you just look at it and wonder how in the world anybody can think that way. You study their words, looking for a unifying theme, looking for some rationality, and there just isn't any.

Well ... could it be? ... maybe they're actually, certifiably nuts.
The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.

These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.

"He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis. Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness

How come I never thought of this?

Do you remember the study a couple of years ago that analyzed the conservative agenda? Here's a link to a press release: Researchers help define what makes a political conservative. Those psychologists were gentle, but ... there is something there, definitely.
Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.

If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish "ordinary prejudice" from pathological bias. Thorny discussions about how mental illnesses are defined would get even more prickly.

Many urge more research, saying they are unsure whether bias can be pathological. Solomon, for instance, is uncomfortable with the idea. But several experts say that psychiatry has been inattentive to the effects of prejudice on mental health and illness.

"Has anyone done a word search for 'racism' in DSM-IV? It doesn't exist," said Carl C. Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, referring to psychiatry's manual of mental disorders. "Has anyone asked, 'If you have paranoia, do you project your hostility toward other groups?' The answer is 'Hell, no!' "

This is an eye-opener. Very interesting...
"When they reach that stage, they are very impaired," he said. "They can't work and function; they can't hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication."

Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.

"We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders," said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices."

There's more. Lots more.

16 Comments:

Blogger Alex K. said...

I do marvel at how some of these people manage to live [semi] productive lives.

To them, I say: "You are what you should fear"

December 10, 2005 12:54 AM  
Anonymous Steve Boese said...

I've known a few folks who were as obsessed about being anti-gay as they were about spiritual warfare.

Superstition and irrationality seemed, to me at least, to be driving their concept of spiritual warfare -- that Satan remains actively at war with God and is able to infuse simple, innocuous acts with evil forces -- often inspiring them to shun critical thought.

Pathologizing extreme bias sounds really tricky, though, and at risk of political manipulation.

December 10, 2005 2:12 AM  
Anonymous Tish said...

Is pathological bias the problem, or the expression of a deep-seated fear of change? Our world is changing. Society is changing, technology is changing, the ecomony is changing and it is frightnening. Why not look for a boogie-man to blame? **It's the fault of "them," the ones who don't speak my language, or who share their houses with extended family, or who worship on a different day of the week, or who have a love I don't understand**

It is so much easier and more familiar than learning to live with the new.

December 10, 2005 11:37 AM  
Blogger Andrea said...

I read this article in today's Post and found it very interesting. Certainly any problem that interferes with a person's life to the extent that they are unable to function would qualify as a mental health problem. However, I'm not sure that giving people with extreme homophobia or racism their own DSM classification is necessary or appropriate. It easily falls under a form of specific phobia. People have specific phobias to all kinds of things, but we do not have separate classifications for all of them.

In addition, I want to kindly point out that calling the people at CRC "nutty" and "certifiably nuts" does a disservice both to our side of the debate as well as perpetuates stigma against people with mental illness. Words such as "nutty," "nuts," "crazy" all contribute to a systematic discrimination and stigma against people with mental illness. Stigma against mental illness is what prevents far too many people from getting the treatment that they need. Mental illnesses are real illnesses just like cancer, diabetes, or HIV. I would bet that most people would never think of making derogatory or demeaning comments about people with these illnesses, yet it is very common in our society to call someone "nuts," or "crazy," when they say something that you might disagree with.

Health education is about more than just sex ed. It is important for teens to know that mental health is just as important as physical health (and that they go hand in hand). According to SAMHSA, 1 in 5 young people suffers from a mental health problem and 2/3 of them are not receiving the treatment they need. Refraining from using mental illness as a joke and recognizing that mental illnesses are real (not just "in your head") and treatable is important information for teens to know. I would hope that TTF would be more conscious of how they present their information in the future.

Sorry for getting up on my soap box but stigma against people with mental illness is something that I feel very strongly about. It is so accepted in our society that many people use derogatory terms without thinking about their impact. I am merely trying to bring awareness so that people can become more conscious of how they phrase things in the future.

Keep up the good work TTF! I love the blog :)

December 10, 2005 7:23 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

Thank you for your comments, Andrea, and you're right, comparing people like the CRC to actual mental patients is disrespectful to the
mental patients.

But there's a problem here, a trap really. Certain people demand to be taken seriously, they want to engage you in a discussion but they are incapable of it. They don't understand that reason is grounded in reality, and that there is a difference between logic and fantasy.

In our county, there are some people who feel that children's innocence should be protected, and that sex is a matter to be learned at home. There are others who feel that children should be given information they need and that the school is a good place for frank discussion of the topic. Those two groups of people can discuss the issues, explain their points of view to one another, and eventually come to a compromise that both can accept.

There is another group, however, that only wants to interrupt the discussion, not take part in it. Their goal is not to improve the curriculum but to eliminate it. Instead of debating the issues, they file lawsuits, smear people, lie -- I mean, flat-out make stuff up ... they'll do anything to block any change to the curriculum. They'll claim their way of life is threatened, they will accuse everybody else of immorality, and their hatred has no apparent limit.

The trap is that it is tempting to try to reason with them. You think you can show them some facts, and connect the facts with logic. You think you can learn something from them by listening to them. But this only gives them opportunity to drag the whole thing down further.

It's not a pretty thing, but my resolution to the situation works pretty well. I refuse to take them seriously, having tried many times before realizing what they're up to. And why don't I take them seriously? --Because they're nuts. This psychiatric news story is pretty good, even though of course it opens up a can of worms (are we supposed to feel worry for them?), because it asknowledges that there's something wrong with those people.

So... it's not that I disagree with them -- I disagree with lots of perfectly intelligent people about lots of things.

You might want to go back and re-read a blog post called On Calling a Nut a Nut, that I wrote months ago after one of them complained about my use of the word.

It's not nice to call them that, but it's better than taking them seriously.

JimK

December 10, 2005 8:51 PM  
Blogger Orin Ryssman said...

Andrea writes,
In addition, I want to kindly point out that calling the people at CRC "nutty" and "certifiably nuts" does a disservice both to our side of the debate as well as perpetuates stigma against people with mental illness. Words such as "nutty," "nuts," "crazy" all contribute to a systematic discrimination and stigma against people with mental illness. Stigma against mental illness is what prevents far too many people from getting the treatment that they need.

To which JimK writes...err, opps, I mean rationalizes about why it is okay to call people he strongly disagrees with nuts, crazy and whackos.

It's not nice to call them that, but it's better than taking them seriously. Well, actually it is not only "not nice"...it is unethical, i.e. would you like to be treated that way?

Orin

December 10, 2005 10:01 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

Orin

Your comment appeared twice, so I deleted one of them.

I said, and meant, that a "nut" is not just someone I disagree with. For instance, I disagree with you on just about everything, but you support your argument with facts and logic, and I meant to contrast that approach with the nutty approach. If you and I had to work something out, we could do it. We could find a common ground and work out a compromise, I'm sure of it.

Go over and look at Michelle Turner's powerpoint. You will see, there's no way to discuss the issue when someone's whole point consists of trying to associate someone they disagree with with something negative. That's not how civilized people reason, and I cannot take it seriously.

For instance, the GLSEN point. First of all, SO WHAT if teachthefacts worked with GLSEN? There would be nothing wrong with that at all, they care how this curriculum comes out and so do we, and we're on the same side. But the fact is, we don't work with GLSEN, and we have explained that, and they know that, but it doesn't matter. They think that associating us with GLSEN somehow makes a point in their favor. That's crazy, and you can't deal with it by using facts and reason. That's just one little example, there have been many many things like that.

JimK

December 10, 2005 10:44 PM  
Blogger Dana Beyer, M.D. said...

Orin,

I feel the same way. I enjoy engaging in dialogue with you, and EH. I even don't mind sharing personal reflections about my life.

But when the response comes from the latest Anon, who takes words completely out of context, misconstrues others and severely exaggerates -- all with a tone of personal insult and hostility, and extremely poor spekking and grammar -- I won't respond to that.

December 10, 2005 11:01 PM  
Blogger Andrea said...

Jim -

I appreciate your response, and I don't want to hijack this thread by turning it into an anti-stigma platform, but I think you're missing the point (or maybe my point just wasn't clear enough the first time around).

1. I totally understand that there are many anti-sex ed people who frustrate you and don't seem to want to/be able to listen to logic. It frustrates me, too. However when you resort to name calling, it weakens your argument. The evidence for comprehensive sex education is so strong that there is no reason to need to sink to that level. If the people on the other side of the issue are unable to form a logical argument, the best thing to do is ignore them (in my opinion). Personal attacks do nothing to further the debate besides sparking more animosity on both sides.

2. I don't think defending your semantics with the word "nut" is very convincing. In your own post that you referenced you state "In common usage, the word "nut" is reserved for people who are mentally unbalanced" - right there you are defining the word "nut" as someone with a mental problem. You then go on to use the word "nut" and "nuttiness" to describe someone in a derogatory manner - thus equating mental illness with something derogatory. By using the term "nut" to describe someone who you feel displays negative characteristics, you are reinforcing the stigma against people with mental illness. I am not saying this was your intent - merely this is the way it was expressed - AND DEFINED by you.

Using the words "nut" and "crazy" are very common insults for people to use and many people don't think about the implications when they use them. I am just trying to educate you and others about the impact of their words on people with mental illness. A little forethought can go a long way in decreasing stigma. - Just doing my part one person and one blog at a time :)

December 10, 2005 11:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The killers of Matthew Shepard and
Gwen Araujo and all other anti-gay
vigilantes should not be given an
excuse for their hate-motivated
crimes.

December 11, 2005 9:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I see you pulled my last post. I am sorry did I touch a nerve? You still seem unwilling to produce any documentation to contradict what I have said. The most you have done is criticize my grammar is that all you are capable of? Seems to me that you are having trouble facing reality. Weather it is that you are homosexual’s, public statements you have made, or the lack of any scientific evidence to substantiate your beliefs. Is that what this is. I have no problem with you living in your own little worlds. But the Montgomery county School board has selected you as an organization to help craft the new sex-ed curriculum. Specifically Jim Kennedy ie (Jim K.) so I think that the people have the right to know.

December 11, 2005 5:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I see you pulled my last post. I am sorry did I touch a nerve? You still seem unwilling to produce any documentation to contradict what I have said. The most you have done is criticize my grammar is that all you are capable of? Seems to me that you are having trouble facing reality. Weather it is that you are homosexual’s, public statements you have made, or the lack of any scientific evidence to substantiate your beliefs. Is that what this is. I have no problem with you living in your own little worlds. But the Montgomery county School board has selected you as an organization to help craft the new sex-ed curriculum. Specifically Jim Kennedy ie (Jim K.) so I think that the people have the right to know.

December 11, 2005 6:00 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

I explained already.

We maintain a web site here where people discuss issues related to the development of a sex-ed curriculum in Montgomery County. I can overlook your linguistic incompetence, but the personal comments and the ignorant, unconstructive bigotry will not be tolerated.

If you wish to express your views here, you are welcome. But when you come into our house we expect you to behave like a civilized human being. If you can't do that, we'll just kick you out. No problem.

JimK

December 11, 2005 6:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anont mistakenly said..."The most you have done is criticize my grammar."

No, Anont. You have to read beyond the first paragraph of rebuttal where I explained first, second and third person to you, a point of grammar which you brought up. I also provided explanations and information which you obviously skipped. Beyond correcting your grammar, I:

1. pointed out the flaw in your logic about Dr. Beyer saying "So what;"

2. provided evidence from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of the mistreatment of gays by the Nazis; and

3. provided the CRC/neo-Nazi names you requested and links to relevant on-line information about them including when they worked together; and

4. provided Merriam-Webster definitions of terms ("homophobe" and "human") you think are equivalent, showing how different they actually are.

That's a lot more documentation than you've provided. You have cited precisely zero studies or references. Of course we've already seen the "studies" put out by the discredited Paul Cameron. What else have you got?

Signed,
I'll sign when you do

December 12, 2005 7:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am betting that you will pull this. You can’t handle the truth.


That's a lot more documentation than you've provided. You have cited precisely zero studies or references. Of course we've already seen the "studies" put out by the discredited Paul Cameron. What else have you got?
None of this is documentation. You might want to look up the word, while you have the Merriam-Webster out.
I don’t know who Paul Cameron is.


I am asking for your definition of homophobe. How you interpret the meaning of the word I do not think that you are using any definition of the word but just using it to attack those you disagree with.

4. Provided Merriam-Webster definitions of terms ("homophobe" and "human") you think are equivalent, showing how different they actually are.

I am asking for your definition of homophobe. How you interpret the meaning of the word I do not think that you are using any definition of the word but just using it to attack those you disagree with.


3. provided the CRC/neo-Nazi names you requested and links to relevant on-line information about them including when they worked together and


Don’t know a Susan Jamison never heard of her Don’t know a Jim White never heard of him I have no respect for people who are intolerant of religion which is why I have no respect for TTF. The National Socialist Movement is defiantly a leftist organization. As is the Anarchists both are intolerant of religion

1. pointed out the flaw in your logic about Dr. Beyer saying "So what;"
The Pink Swastika: Homosexuals and the Nazi Party (Keizer, Oregon: Founders Publishing Company, 1995).

One of the keys to understanding both the rise of Nazism and the later persecution of some homosexuals by the Nazis is found in this early history of the German "gay rights" movement. For it was the CS which created and shaped what would become the Nazi persona, and it was the loathing which these "Butches" held for effeminate homosexuals ("Femmes") which led to the internment of some of the latter in slave labor camps in the Third Reich.
The "Butch" homosexuals of the CS transformed Germany. Their primary vehicle was the German youth movement, known as the Wandervogel (Rovers or Wandering Youth). "In Central Europe," writes homosexual historian Parker Rossman, "there was another effort to revive the Greek ideal of pedagogic pederasty in the movement of 'Wandering Youth'... Ultimately, Hitler used and transformed the movement...expanding and building upon its romanticism as a basis for the Nazi Party" (Rossman:103).
Rising spontaneously in the 1890s as an informal hiking and camping society, the Wandervogel became an official organization at the turn of the century, similar to the Boy Scouts. From early on, however, the Wandervogel was dominated and controlled by the pederasts of the CS. CS co-founder Wilhelm Janzen was its chief benefactor, and its leadership was rife with homosexuality. In 1912, CS theorist Hans Blueher wrote The German Wandervogel Movement as an Erotic Phenomenon which told how the organization was used to recruit young boys into homosexuality.

Hitler is listed as a homosexual in Viennese police records (Seward:299).

2. provided evidence from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of the mistreatment of gays by the Nazis;

US Holocaust museum (Rose:40), was a tiny fraction of the total camp population. Of these, an undetermined percentage were heterosexuals falsely labeled as homosexuals. Homosexuals who died in the camps (mostly of disease and starvation) were "a small fraction of less than 1 percent" of homosexuals in Germany (S. Katz:146),

2. provided evidence from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of the mistreatment of gays by the Nazis;
While any prisoner could be chosen as a Kapo (a slave overseer), none of the other interned groups except homosexuals had counterparts among the Nazi guards and administrators. Examples of the homosexuality of the concentration camp guards can be found in many of the personal accounts of Holocaust survivors. Elie Wiesel, sent to the Buna factory camp in the Auschwitz complex, for example, acknowledges this in his book Night:
The head of our tent was a German. An assassin's face, fleshy lips, hands like wolf's paws. He was so fat he could hardly move. Like the leader of the camp he loved children...(Actually this was not a disinterested affection: there was a considerable traffic in young children among homosexuals here, I learned later) (Wiesel:59).
In Treblinka, the narrative account of the Treblinka uprising, Steiner records the story of another Nazi administrator, taken from interviews with survivors:
Max Bielas had a harem of little Jewish boys. He liked them young, no older than seventeen. He had a kind of parody of the shepherds of Arcadia, their role was to take care of the camp flock of geese. They were dressed like little princes...Bielas had a little barracks built for them that looked like a doll's house...Bielas sought in Treblinka only the satisfaction of his homosexual instincts (Steiner:117f).
The most famous incident in the history of the American Nazi Party resulted from its 1977 demand to stage a march through the largely Jewish neighborhood of Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb and the home of many Holocaust survivors. This plan was devised by Frank Collin, who often appeared with his followers "in full Nazi regalia: brown shirts, black boots, and armbands..." Civil authorities effectively blocked the march at first, but the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) rose to Collin's aid and forced the City of Chicago to allow it. The subsequent event drew international media attention. Homosexualists Johansson and Percy in Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence have finally revealed, more than 15 years later, that Collin was a homosexual pederast. In 1979 Collin was arrested "for taking indecent liberties with boys between ages 10 and 14" and was sentenced to seven years in prison (Johansson and Percy, 1994:130).
Meanwhile, back in Germany, the alarming increase of neo-Nazi skinheads is also linked to homosexuality. Elmay Kraushaar, a journalist for Der Spiegel, Germany's equivalent to TIME, is quoted in The Advocate:
There is a gay skinhead movement in Berlin. They go to cruising areas with leaflets that say, "We don't want foreigners." A major leader of the neo-Nazis in Germany, Michael Kuhnen was an openly gay man who died of AIDS two years ago. He wrote a paper on the links between homosexuality and fascism, saying fascism is based on the love of comrades, that having sex with your comrades strengthens this bond (Anderson:54).
Signed,
I'll sign when you do
I already told you I have know interest in knowing any of you personally. And who I am should not change the outcome of your answers. The people have the right to know what is the scientific bases for your beliefs. if the Dr. is an example of a gender type than give up the peer reviewed duplicated evidence to back up her clam. I am not interested In Dana’s “sharing personal reflections about my life” I am asking for factual information. Which none of you seem to be forthcoming about.

December 12, 2005 10:40 AM  
Blogger andrear said...

Anon,
Scott Lively is hardly a scholar of note- he is rabidly anti- gay and so his book is published by a "company" which has two books to its name- both full of lies about gay people. In fact, I imagine that Mr. Lively may own this so-called publishing company. Don't think that anyone is fooled by so-called facts from books that no real company will publish.

the National Socialists left?- far-right- like you- is more like it. You sound like the sort of people who post on Yahoo newsboards- no one there cares if you have real sources or wrote them yourself or if your "books" are copied at Kinko's and printed 10 at a time.

December 12, 2005 1:53 PM  

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