The modern Left’s full-spectrum devotion to equality gives it a strange relationship to social norms and to health. Almost instinctively, the “normal family” is cast as the site of oppression, while alternatives to it are glorified. Healthy and athletic bodies are said to represent the spiritual disfigurement of fascism, while obese bodies are framed as a different kind of health, with a bonus of spiritually enlightened self-acceptance. Now, there is at least one author who is mainstreaming the fringe activism that seeks to normalize mental psychosis:
What psychiatry calls psychosis, the Hearing Voices Movement calls nonconsensus realities. It provides support groups for people with hallucinations and is part of an effort to reform how the mental health field approaches severe psychiatric conditions.https://t.co/qO8rRmk51s
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 17, 2022
This article grows out of a book, and I have to agree with the assessment of the leftist writer Freddie deBoer that the article is journalistic malpractice, relying entirely on an unrepresentative group of activists and allowing no mainstream voices. DeBoer himself suffers from bipolar disorder and has had dangerous, frightening psychotic episodes that were only treatable with modern pharmaceuticals. His tearful video response to the author’s article and book is worth watching both for its true passion and its moral realism about psychosis:
My Response to Daniel Bergner's New York Times Magazine Piece on Psychotic Disorders https://t.co/F0JcwzxOKD pic.twitter.com/es95fnzuIf
— FreddiedeBoer.Substack.com (@freddiesubstack) May 17, 2022