Eugenics and behaviourism in psychiatric science.

Photo by Erkan Utu from Pexels, edited with a Norwegian troll

Psychiatry must stop discriminating against us.

Why should I describe what eugenics and behaviourism are, after a brief historical review? Why does society still use these “isms” against neurodivergent people? Let’s take a look at the science behind these concepts, the “neuronormativity.”

In particular, how psychiatric science uses it to declare us uncontrollable. And under this pretext to format us. Sometimes in the manner of Clockwork Orange, so well described by Stanley Kubrick.

Since the first third of the 20th century, part of the world has experienced the worst doctrines. Eugenics with Nazism, Mussolinism, Francoism and Bolshevism. And behaviourism with Stalinism.

Were these fascist doctrines isolated events?

However eugenics existed long before modern genetics, it was people from other provinces. With a different culture and sometimes a different language. As for behaviourism, with Pavlov, it is about conditioning. And one might as well say that both are as old as the domestication of animals.

Until the end of World War II, both eugenics and behaviourism have used science to justify genocides. Eugenics in concentration camps, including some in European colonies since the XIXth century, and behaviourism in the gulags. Genetics, physiology and social norms were among the most studied, either in the West or in the East.

In a desolate manner after the Holocaust, although not comparable, we have had years of eugenics. With compulsory sterilisations still happening today, as you can see here. And that happened in neo-liberal countries, as well.

We now name behavioural therapies with complicated acronyms like ABA*, CBT* or PBS*. But they have no other means than to make autistic people conform, sometimes by ultra-violence at the Judge Rotenberg Center. And since 1960, scientists have introduced behavioural genetics, to study encoded influences on the way we behave.

Genetics to explain non-existent biological races, adherence to culture and now behaviour. It seems that all these disciplines are concerned with “selecting” people according to only their genes. This is instead of addressing the far more important need for support. As long as genetic determinism tries to rank the abilities of people, including their behaviour, it is still eugenics.

Eugenics and behaviourism under the guise of psychiatric science.

Neuronormative is power over our bodies and minds. And this biopower needs well-defined categories to simplify subjection. As a result, by being outside these boundaries, neurodivergent people become discriminated against.

An example of unjustified discrimination:

One author presumes that autistic children are so mentally ill that they don’t even know they have “internalised homophobia”. By the way, this theory of internalised homophobia does not last one second when compared to the huge diversity of trans people. What about internalised transphobia, internalised ableism?

Even more, Rowling quotes this psychiatrist who suggests that trans children are mentally controlled by their autism. In other words, autism would be a disease to be cured, and that would be the reason why people are trans.

You would think that these discriminations are bearable, that someone could live with them.
This is not the case. When an authoritarian regime starts, there is only one thing that keeps you alive long enough: not being different. Be it your body, or your mind.

And authoritarian regimes are not alone in promoting such bad practices. All neo-liberal regimes have eugenics and behaviourism on their agenda.

And what practice differentiates these neurodivergent people? When labels such as ‘disorder’, ‘deficit’, ‘disturbed’, ‘defiant’ are overused in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

It is high time that the psychiatric community speaks out and reforms. Because we live in a dangerous world.

If you disrupt someone’s presentation, you are an accomplice of these bad doctrines.

We are living through a pandemic, there are more than twenty-one wars in the world, climate deregulation and the collapse of biodiversity. Technology will not save us, but care, love and solidarity will! Make a better place for us, with us.

And to conclude, this quote from Rael D. Strous about psychiatric genocide says it all:

“The German code of medical ethics, already in 1931, was known to be one of the strictest and most advanced in the world. German doctors in the 1930s were familiar with this code and were certainly intensively trained in its subtleties. We now know how much difference that made. We cannot allow the profession to fall again.”

ABA stands for Applied Behaviour Analysis, CBT is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, PBS is Positive Behavioural Support.