by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
Is someone who can’t conform “mentally disturbed”? Yes, if they suffer from it, say, psychiatrists – then they diagnose the person and declare them in need of therapy. This practice is extremely dangerous. It reveals the brainchild of the pseudoscience that legitimizes it.
Psychiatrists refer to an “adjustment disorder” as a persistent, extreme reaction to stressful external circumstances. It can manifest itself in depressive moods, anxiety, a feeling of being overwhelmed, and social withdrawal, sometimes even aggressive behavior. The World Health Organization lists it under the abbreviation 6B43 in its “International Classification of Diseases” (ICD). (1)
Who is considered mentally ill? This includes, for example, people who cannot cope with a bereavement, a separation, or a divorce, who collapse under intrigue and bullying, and who cannot cope with professional failure, illness, or disability. But also people who despair of an environment that has become alien to them. They suffer from the unkindness, indifference, intolerance, aggressiveness, greed, superficiality, conformity, and stupidity of others.
Is someone who feels alien in a sick world, who cannot come to terms with it, and who rebels against it, mentally ill and in need of treatment? “It is not a sign of mental health to be able to adapt to a profoundly disturbed society,” declared Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), an Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher. (2) The Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing expressed it almost word for word: “Adaptation to a profoundly sick society is not a sign of health, but a sign of madness.” (3) The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm expressed himself similarly: “The fact that millions of people share the same madnesses does not make these madnesses a form of sanity.” (4) The psychiatric critic Thomas Szasz agreed: “If you agree with a mad society, they call you sane.” (5)
Lateral thinkers were branded as dangerous and mentally ill.
“Adjustment disorder”: that was 5 to 10% of the population during the unspeakable Corona years – denounced by the obedient “Team Caution” as mentally retarded “Covidiots,” as irresponsible mask refusers and vaccine hesitant. Yes, their suffering was high – but why? Because they were mentally ill?
“Some lateral thinkers are trapped in a kind of loss of reality. […] This sometimes has traits of delusion,” said Health Minister Karl Lauterbach at the end of 2021. (6)
World Medical Association head Frank Ulrich Montgomery stated: “The behavior of many anti-vaccine activists and lateral thinkers is irrational and dangerous. […] Argumentation often no longer helps – it borders on pathological stubbornness.” (7)
Psychiatrist Prof. Manfred Spitzer stated in a lecture at the University of Ulm: “In many lateral thinkers, we see typical patterns of conspiracy thinking, which can also include psychological abnormalities.” (8)
SPD Chairwoman Saskia Esken stated: “Parts of the lateral thinker scene have become radicalized and operate outside of any rational argumentation. This raises the question of mental state.” (9)
Why discuss when you can simply make a diagnosis?
Doctors, psychologists, and psychotherapists, as well as desk jockeys in the mainstream media, have been quick to assist in such slander with infamous speculations about what cognitive dysfunctions might cause some people to brazenly resist the mandated “no alternative” epidemic control à la Spahn-Wieler-Drosten – and how to deal with them therapeutically. While they pathologized “conspiracy theorists” (10), they ignored the mass phenomenon of conspiracy deniers. Nonconformists became “patients,” and rebellion mutated into a “social behavior disorder.” Conformity was healthy; individuality required therapy. Fortunately, there are pills for being different.
How is “scientific” a medicine that pathologizes nonconformist independent thinkers? Far too many of its representatives have served those in power with such pathetic cowardice throughout history – and apparently continue to be happy to serve them, even here in Germany.
Shame on them.
“The debate about whether lateral thinkers are mentally disturbed reveals dangerous authoritarian reflexes. Criticism, even irrational criticism, is part of democracy,” emphasizes lawyer and civil rights activist Maximilian Pichl. (11) And at least the German Society for Social Psychiatry (DGSP), an occasional lateral thinker within conventional medicine, makes it clear: “Political protest – even if it appears irrational – is not a psychiatric diagnosis. We warn against pathologizing social conflicts.”
Hunting the Nonconformists – Then and Now
The political abuse of psychiatry is a dark chapter in history – and, unfortunately, in part, in the present as well. What does it say about “the best Germany of all time” when it mercilessly continues this tradition as soon as a flu-like wave of infections spreads, one that not everyone can be easily frightened of instantly?
In totalitarian systems, psychiatry was and continues to be used deliberately to stigmatize, silence, or isolate political dissidents, nonconformists, or so-called “socially undesirables.” The most well-known example of the systematic misuse of psychiatry for repression occurred in the Soviet Union from the 1960s until the end of the USSR in 1991. Regime critics, human rights activists, artists, and religious activists were diagnosed with mental illnesses, for example, with the infamous “creeping schizophrenia” – “vyalotekushchaia schizophrenia” – a diagnosis applied almost exclusively to dissidents. The consequences are forced admission to closed psychiatric institutions, administration of psychotropic drugs, electroshock therapy, and physical abuse. The most well-known victims were Anatoly Koryagin, a doctor who fought against this practice, and Vladimir Bukovsky, a dissident who brought forced psychiatry to international attention.
The People’s Republic of China also uses psychiatry to suppress regime critics and nonconformists. For this purpose, the Ministry of the Interior established psychiatric prisons known as “Ankang.” Human rights activists, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs were imprisoned there. Diagnoses such as “endangering public order” were used as pretexts. Amnesty International has documented numerous cases of forced medication, torture, and abuse.
Germany is particularly adept at not only criminalizing political opponents but also psychiatrizing them. The Nazi regime frequently declared politically or socially “conspicuous” people “mentally ill” if they could not be openly prosecuted. Particularly affected were dissidents, pacifists, artists, and intellectuals who did not conform to the National Socialist worldview and people with “deviant behavior,” such as a nonconformist lifestyle or critical statements in private. Reports by doctors loyal to the regime labeled them “mentally disturbed.” Diagnoses included “querulous delusions,” “feeblemindedness,” “psychopathic personality disorder,” and “antisocial behavior.” Those who denounce critics of coronavirus measures 80 years later as “antisocial freeloaders”—like Frank Ulrich Montgomery, Chairman of the World Medical Association (12)—are thus continuing a well-established tradition. (13)
Even in the GDR, psychiatry was an extended arm of state power to marginalize politically nonconformists. Dissidents, artists, or those wishing to leave the country were declared mentally ill. The Stasi worked closely with doctors loyal to the party line to achieve this. To intimidate targets, it was often enough to threaten them with psychiatric admission. Those who remained unfazed were sedated with powerful psychotropic drugs—neuroleptics, sedatives, and even electroshocks. The goal was to break their will.
And today?
In authoritarian states, psychiatric abuse continues to be rampant. Under Putin, cases of dissidents being admitted to psychiatric hospitals have increased in Russia. In Belarus, the Lukashenko regime uses psychiatric hospitals to “calm down” protesters. Reports from Iran indicate that women’s rights activists and political activists are being locked up in psychiatric facilities. Refugees from North Korea report that people who criticize the regime or exhibit “deviant behavior” are being placed in psychiatric institutions. Psychiatry is part of the apparatus of repression, much like prison camps.
The greatest fear of all these systems is, in truth, not the madman—but the sane.
The following applies everywhere: The surest method to cure a free spirit is to break it – of course, only for its own good and the good of the whole. Happiness is when, after enough medication, it finally understands why everyone else celebrates the madness of normality. Its feeling that “something is wrong” is not due to external circumstances – but to its inability to adapt. Criticism is a distortion of reality. Dissatisfaction with the status quo: a classic case of depressive mood. Asking too many questions: neurotic compulsive brooding. Refusing to obey senseless rules: Greetings from Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)! (14) Remember: Healthy people don’t ask questions. They function.
The Advantages of Psychiatry as an Instrument of Suppression
Why is psychiatry so well suited to pacifying the maladjusted?
It stigmatizes: Once declared “mentally ill,” the maladjusted person loses their credibility. Anyone who questions reality is obviously suffering from a loss of touch with reality – that’s what the textbook says.
It legitimizes repression: A medical pretext seems more “harmless” than open political persecution.
It isolates: Psychiatric institutions are closed systems in which control is easy to exercise.
It helps enforce norms: Conform, don’t deviate. Nonconformity is pathologized.
To the extent that psychiatry lends itself to this, it is “less a science than a mechanism of social control,” as the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault aptly noted. (15)
“Our society is disturbed.”
Anyone who persistently suffers under deeply disturbed conditions is not insane – they are exhibiting a completely healthy stress reaction. The system that causes them to suffer would be more deserving of a disease label.
One of the few psychiatrists who persistently thinks outside the box in this direction is Dr. Raphael M. Bonelli, a neuroscientist at the Sigmund Freud University of Vienna and psychiatrist and systemic psychotherapist in private practice. “Our society is disturbed,” he states. (16) Bonelli identifies a state of collective confusion caused by ideological taboos, prohibitions on thinking, and an increasing alienation from reality. Criticism is morally framed, dissenters are excluded, and many topics are taboo, from migration and demographics to gender, climate, and Christian Europe, even coronavirus. Those who speak out risk their reputation and existence. “We live in a taboo society,” says Bonelli, “and these taboos did not develop naturally but were ideologically created. Society is in a state of collective gaslighting. Thinking itself becomes a danger. There are topics we are not even allowed to think about. If we nevertheless dare to formulate an independent thought about them, we risk being canceled.” Dissenting opinions are reacted to with a relentlessness that nips any debate in the bud. “One wrong word is enough to trigger a storm of outrage that no longer allows for differentiation. The new decency has perfected its methods to silence every dissenting voice. The tyranny of the new decency is enforced with the techniques of framing, moral licensing, agenda setting, and whataboutism. They lead to shitstorms, cancel culture, and existential annihilation.”
The result: A large part of society remains silent. Fearing social ostracism, people outwardly nod in agreement, something that has long since seemed absurd on the inside. Bonelli recalls: As recently as the 1980s, it was possible to have a discussion in a coffee house with leftists, rightists, monarchists, and freethinkers – today, one wrong word is enough, and the room is left in outrage.
Perhaps, according to Bonelli, “the therapy of society begins with us saying what we think again.”
(Harald Wiesendanger)
Eine grundsätzliche Kritik der Psychiatrie:Harald Wiesendanger; Unheilkunde. Die 12 Märchen der Psychiatrie – Wie eine Pseudomedizin Hilfesuchende täuscht (2017).
Notes
(1) Nach der neuen Version ICD-11. Im Vorgänger ICD-10: F43.2.
(2) Das Ursprungswerk dieses Zitats ist nicht eindeutig belegbar, da Krishnamurti viele Vorträge hielt und seine Aussagen oft mündlich überliefert wurden. Das Zitat taucht in verschiedenen Sammlungen seiner Gedanken auf, z. B. in “The Urgency of Change” (1970).
(3) R. D. Laing: The Politics of Experience (1967), S. 24.
(4) Erich Fromm: The Sane Society (1955), S. 14.
(5) Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973), S. 113.
(6) Im Interview mit der Süddeutschen Zeitung, 20.12.2021: „Lauterbach warnt vor Radikalisierung der Querdenker“, Artikel hinter Bezahlschranke.
(7) Interview mit dem Deutschlandfunk, 14.12.2021: „Montgomery: Impfgegner handeln irrational“.
(8) Vortrag „Psychologie der Pandemie-Leugner“, Universität Ulm, Dezember 2021, zit. in Augsburger Allgemeine, 10.12.2021, https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/panorama/psychologie-warum-menschen-an-verschwoerungstheorien-glauben-id61150266.html
(9) Twitter-Post vom 22.11.2021; Account inzwischen gelöscht, aber zitiert in Medien, z.B. bei Focus Online, 23.11.2021, https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/querdenker-eskens-polemik-gegen-impfgegner-das-ist-nicht-hilfreich_id_24467835.html
(10) A prime example was provided by the Journal of Psychodrama and Sociometry in the summer of 2022 with an article entitled “Corona Conspiracy Theories and Psychotherapy,” 21 (2) 2022, pp. 395–407. doi: 10.1007/s11620-022-00692-7. „Auf dem Hintergrund psychodramatischer Konzepte“ versucht die Autorin „einen Umgang mit Menschen zu entwerfen, die an Verschwörungen glauben. Dabei scheint es eher möglich zu sein, betroffene Angehörige und Freunde zu begleiten als Verschwörungsgläubige selbst, die sich meist nicht als behandlungsbedürftig erleben.“ Gewissen „Studien“ zufolge könne „die Faszination von Verschwörungswelten Suchtcharakter annehmen. Dies zeigt sich im Kontrollverlust bezüglich der einschlägigen Internetaktivitäten und Vernachlässigung von Beziehungen und sonstiger Verpflichtungen. Solcherart Süchtige befinden sich in einem Teufelskreis von Misstrauen und Entmutigung und fühlen sich nicht mehr mit anderen verbunden. Dieses Leiden macht manche zugänglich für Psychotherapie.”
(11) Gastbeitrag in Verfassungsblog, April 2021, https://verfassungsblog.de/querdenken-und-die-grenzen-der-demokratie/
(12) Im Interview mit der Rheinischen Post, 13. Dezember 2021: „Weltärztebund-Chef nennt Impfgegner asoziale Trittbrettfahrer“.
(13) Solch perfide Ausgrenzung erlebte beispielsweise Friedrich Kellner (1885–1970), ein Justizbeamter und entschiedener NS-Gegner aus Hessen: Weil er sich kritisch äußerte, drohte man ihm wiederholt damit, ihn wegen „gefährlicher Gedanken“ in eine „Heilanstalt“ wegzusperren. (Zwischen 1939 und 1945 verfasste Friedrich Kellner das berühmte Tagebuch mit dem Titel „Mein Widerstand“. Auf über 900 Seiten dokumentierte er die Verbrechen des Regimes, die Kriegspolitik – und die Schuld der Bevölkerung.)
Elisabeth Schmitz (1893–1977), eine Theologin und NS-Gegnerin, musste untertauchen, nachdem sie wegen „hysterischer Anwandlungen“ denunziert wurde. Als scharfe Kritikerin der Judenverfolgung verfasste sie 1935 die berühmte Denkschrift „Zur Lage der deutschen Nichtarier“, in der sie die evangelische Kirche anklagte, die zu den Verbrechen gegen die jüdische Bevölkerung schwieg.
Künstler und Schriftsteller wie der Dadaist Johannes Baader wurden als „geisteskrank“ abgestempelt, weil ihre Kunst als „entartet“ galt – verbunden mit psychischer Abwertung.
Einweisungen unter solchem Vorwand bedeuteten oft lebenslange Internierung oder endeten in der Ermordung im Rahmen des verbrecherische Euthanasieprogramms. (Siehe Ernst Klee: „Euthanasie“ im NS-Staat. Die „Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens“, Frankfurt am Main 1983.)
(14) Die Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) – auf Deutsch meist „oppositionelles Trotzverhalten“ oder „oppositionelle Verhaltensstörung“ genannt – ist eine Diagnose aus der Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie. Sie bezeichnet ein wiederkehrendes, negativistisches, trotziges, widersetzliches und feindseliges Verhalten gegenüber Autoritätspersonen. Zyniker übersetzen die ODD-Diagnose so: „Das Kind hat ein Problem – es gehorcht nicht blind.“
(15) Michel Foucault, Überwachen und Strafen: Die Geburt des Gefängnisses (1975), S. 304.
(16) Raphael M. Bonelli: Tabu: Was wir nicht denken dürfen und warum. Das prägende Thema unserer Zeit – tiefgründig, provokant und psychologisch erklärt (2025).