Bruce Levine: Psychologist and Author on How Mental Health Treatment Compels Patients to Conform to Anyone's Claims to Authority

Arguably, the MOST important priority for mental health professionals is to ensure that their patients or clientele suck up to and comply with every type of AUTHORITY they encounter. This authority can be legitimate, illegitimate, or abusive (which should de-legitimize those who hold that authority, perhaps even rendering THEM on the wrong side of the law).

Many simpletons believe that non-conformist "troublemakers" try to resist ALL rules and authority figures, just for the fun of it, in favor of making their own rules or otherwise cultivating anarchy. This is binary thinking, where it's all or nothing, black or white, all good or all evil, with nothing in between. As clinical psychologist Bruce Levine has discovered for close to 50 years, anti-authoritarians, or those who question authority, do so first and foremost because they perceive hypocrisy in the system or the individual that holds the authority. For instance, authority figures who write rules for their employees in violation of local ordinances, who then claim that they can enforce those rules at their "discretion" (read: as they fucking feel like) would absolutely classify as hypocritical abusers of authority.

It's worth underscoring that living in the United States is NOT nearly as oppressive, personally stifling, or restrictive as living in many, if not most of the other governed countries on earth: just consider communist China, totalitarian Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so on. But as the original Land of Liberty and also the planet's longest-lasting democracy, the U.S. still incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country whose number of inmates are known. Even with the recent "criminal justice reform," our government (often at the state level) continually classifies more and more criminal offenses as felonies that used to be misdemeanors. But it's not just our penal code that's the problem. Workers' rights are far fewer than they are in almost all other modern, wealthy Western democracies, with American workers given far fewer breaks, sick days, vacations days, family leave, and recourse after being fired. Public schools have more "zero tolerance" policies than ever before, despite the perennial complaints many older folks have about the "loosening of discipline" in schools -- the same nonsense that I remember hearing self-righteous adults bitch about when I was a kid in the 1990s. And even with the horrors of police officers getting gunned down in the line of duty and the stepped-up media publicity about these tragedies, civilians are still MANY times more likely to be shot by a cop (very often, the civilian having been without a weapon of their own to prompt deadly use of force by law enforcement). The lethal use of force by police is far more common in the U.S. than it is in just about any other country worldwide, as is violent crime (save for the nations of Latin America that have the world's highest murder rates and endless drug gang violence).

For reasons that are becoming increasingly obvious, living in the U.S. these days is no bargain. The long quotes below are excerpts from "Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill, and How This Helps America’s Illegitimate Authorities Stay in Charge" (Feb. 23, 2012)

In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not
...Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority.
...Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities...

Levine theorizes that this mindless conformity is anchored deep within the mental health establishment:

I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only [themselves] extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.

And it's all pretty basic psychology, according to Levine, who sees the crop of the mental health establishment imposing the need for compliance that's demanded of them in training, onto their clients and patients:

Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance.

Note Levine's wording: "And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments." In other words, among these anxious professionals are many who'll lay aside the clinically viable criteria to make an accurate diagnosis or do what's truly helpful to the patient, all in the interest of promoting or pressuring the patients' conformance to some authority. And any resistance to this by the patient can indeed lead to the further pathologizing of that patient and in various (perhaps normal) areas of his life.

This epitomizes the ethical debasement of an entire profession.

Levine continues:

A 2009 Psychiatric Times article titled “ADHD & ODD: Confronting the Challenges of Disruptive Behavior” reports that “disruptive disorders,” which include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and opposition defiant disorder (ODD), are the most common mental health problem of children and teenagers. ADHD is defined by poor attention and distractibility, poor self-control and impulsivity, and hyperactivity. ODD is defined as a “a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior without the more serious violations of the basic rights of others that are seen in conduct disorder”; and ODD symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”

Psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading authorities on ADHD, says that those afflicted with ADHD have deficits in what he calls “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of established authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. ODD young people, according to mainstream mental health authorities, also have these so-called deficits in rule-governed behavior, and so it is extremely common for young people to have a “duel diagnosis” of AHDH and ODD

When they're not busy trying to sell themselves to the highest bidder on sugar baby dating web sites, many of today's younger female elementary and secondary public school teachers act out on their thinly-veiled anti-male biases by labeling energetic boys as "disruptive" and "uncooperative" in promoting what is nothing more than a dull, follow-directions-all-day-long curriculum. Parents will be notified of their kids' school troubles, then panic, then put their kids through grueling evaluations with psychologists. If the diagnosis comes back as ADHD or ODD, the psychiatrist is then introduced into the mix, and will then prescribe deeply mind-altering stimulants or sedatives, which can screw up cognition and become quite addictive.

If pathologizing authoritarian mental health professionals love to harp on any insecurity their patients have to get these patients to be more cookie cutter and kiss ass more, it's this one, as Levine describes:

Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized; but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will cause them existential death.

...Authoritarians, by definition, demand unquestioning obedience, and so any resistance to their diagnosis and treatment created enormous anxiety for authoritarian mental health professionals; and professionals, feeling out of control, labeled them “noncompliant with treatment,” increased the severity of their diagnosis, and jacked up their medications. This was enraging for these anti-authoritarians, sometimes so much so that they reacted in ways that made them appear even more frightening to their families.(boldface emphasis mine)

Furthermore,

...Americans have been increasingly socialized to equate inattention, anger, anxiety, and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and to seek medical treatment rather than political remedies. What better way to maintain the status quo than to view inattention, anger, anxiety, and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than normal reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society.

...In an earlier dark age, authoritarian monarchies partnered with authoritarian religious institutions. When the world exited from this dark age and entered the Enlightenment, there was a burst of energy. Much of this revitalization had to do with risking skepticism about authoritarian and corrupt institutions and regaining confidence in one’s own mind. We are now in another dark age, only the institutions have changed. Americans desperately need anti-authoritarians to question, challenge, and resist new illegitimate authorities and regain confidence in their own common sense.

...While it is unusual in American history for anti-authoritarians to take the kind of effective action that inspires others to successfully revolt, every once in a while a Tom Paine, Crazy Horse, or Malcolm X come along. So authoritarians financially marginalize those who buck the system, they criminalize anti-authoritarianism, they psychopathologize anti-authoritarians, and they market drugs for their “cure.”

Does following the system, and those who lead it, pay off? If you want to be a physician, psychologist, lawyer, or accountant, it generally does. Generally. Unless you have someone who's corrupt operating above you, who'll think nothing of doing whatever it takes to get ahead, and think nothing of leaving you behind, even with you holding the bag for his misdeeds. For most who don't end up making their living after attending law school, med school, or a CPA program, it's easy to get roped in by fantasies about The American Dream -- that you can brownnose your way up some now-mythical ladder of opportunity the way grandpa did with even less education than you have. Show up, pay your dues, and that corner office has your name on it. Yet, too much of Generation Y has more total student debt than annual income. Most of them were never diagnosed with ADHD or ODD, either. They DID do what they were told.

As far as the last quote from Levine, how is this working out for American society today, and the taxpayers who funds these "remedies" for the antiauthoritarian?

This is Bruce Levine's 2018 book on the topic of authoritarianism: