From Pine View Farm

Misdiagnosis 0

Joe Pierre, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, looks at dis coarse discourse and argues that attributing belief in political or scientific fairy tales to “mass delusion” or “mass psychosis” is, as my old boss used to say, “in error.” Rather, he suggests that such beliefs are symptomatic of a sick society, not of sick individuals.

Here’s a bit of his piece (emphasis added); follow the link for the complete article.

Although there’s a long history of misusing psychiatric terminology more loosely as a pejorative, this hardly justifies the act today in responsible journalism, politics, or civil public discourse. Besides being technically inaccurate, using terms like “delusion” and “psychosis” to “other” those whose beliefs we find objectionable or unfathomable unfairly stigmatizes those who suffer from actual mental illness. Furthermore, invoking clinical terms to dismiss our ideological opponents does us all a disservice by steering away from understanding and addressing the real root causes of false beliefs related to politics and scientific matters that have become politicized which are more appropriately categorized as conspiracy theories.

Aside:

I would argue that the ultimate “real root cause”–to use his term–of our present poisonous politics is America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the racist ideology created to justify and excuse it, which is perpetually promoted by political actors for power and profit.

But that’s just me.

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