State-run medical practice and the miraculous cure of Thought Crime

Thought Crime: The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness, or preemptive policing where a person is apprehended in anticipation of the possibility that they may commit a crime, in any modern or historical contexts. [wikipedia]

From a review of Punitive Medicine by Alexander Podrabinek (1980)
Reviewed by Leila Marie Lawler [Modern Age, Winter 1982]

[page 105] Podrabinek describes the process by which a prisoner of conscience will come to be incarcerated--for such is the case: one is in prison, Podrabinek carefully explains, in a special hospital. Accusation is carried out on the basis of carefully prepared manuals (included as appendices to this book) delineating the process of “forensic psychiatry,” as it is called. The rules, which completely deny rights that Westerners regard as fundamental, are set out as though they were the embodiment of rectitude. In fact, these manuals simply codify the ultimate power of the state.

This is perfectly illustrated in the instructional paper “Forensic Psychiatric Examination in the U.S.S.R.” which contains a chapter headed “Rights and Duties of Psychiatric Examiners,” but no chapter even pretending to be concerned with the rights of the accused.

[p. 106] But after we have been thoroughly chilled by the horrors recounted in this book, it would be a terrible mistake to go away without having heard a warning for our own society. The awful maltreatment and indeed incarceration without recourse to justice might cease to be a purely Soviet phenomenon. It would be difficult to imagine a Gulag system springing up in America; thanks to the survivors of death camps elsewhere, we are quite alert to that danger. Indeed our newspaper editors are likely to see prison camps as the logical next stage of any program with which they disagree. But how many criminals in this country are given psychiatric treatment rather than jail sentences?

The psychiatric hospital whose purpose is to “treat” criminals is already a reality in our society. Of course our aim is not to punish these people; they are not political prisoners, and our methods do not approach the brutality of the Soviets’. But as to the treatment, its methodology is not much less murky than that in the Soviet system, and it has seldom been scrutinized by Americans anxious to uphold freedom of conscience.

But we Westerners have allowed our system to follow its own ill-conceived, positivist logic to the point where we can barely discern the principles of justice from which we began.

Those who safeguard liberty do not seem to be interested in sweeping away the accumulated specious reasoning that obscures the truth. If there should ever come a time when those same champions of liberty are punished for their beliefs, they will never be sent to a prison camp, unless it be called a special psychiatric hospital.

Is "Conservatism" A New Kind Of Mental Illness?
By MANIFESTO JOE [Marc McDonald], Sunday, February 12, 2006

When I heard the title of Michael Savage's screed -- Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions -- the irony wasn't lost on me.

. . . But Savage isn't the only "conservative" who's been waxing psychopathic lately. The vilification of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan showed a zany viciousness once heard only from the most demented elements of the right. The typically milder-mannered Fred Barnes called her a "crackpot."

. . . Savage is right about one thing: There is a strain of mental illness spreading in America. Problem is, he's pointing in the wrong direction, as usual. Many of those who call themselves "conservatives" are not merely dangerous radicals. They could use a dose of anti-psychotic drugs.