I am quite sure more psychiatrists would claim to be brain doctors than would claim to be soul doctors. Years ago I attended a speech by the President of the American Psychiatric Association who predicted psychiatrists would be at the forefront of emerging brain science, and derive power and wealth from that close proximity. But I've never heard a psychiatrist in any similar position predict that the profession would benefit from its proximity to the emerging science of the soul.
Ironically, now the psychedelic drug cult tries to admonish all of us that we have some moral duty to turn on, tune in and drop out. It's the latest version of the "mental health awareness" imperative, and perhaps akin to the vaccine imperative. The next thing we know, we'll be getting cancelled for not agreeing that LSD should be widely available to everyone for the salvation of the world!
I recently read The Beginner's Guide to Ketamine Therapy for mental health, by Leah Benson, LMHC, Ed.M. (Leah Benson, LMHC, Ed.M.: Tampa, FL, 2023). This book has the character of holy scripture for psychedelic religion. It has a post-dedication page with a quote from Aldous Huxley's Collected Essays. But a Forward by Kazi "Zayn" Hassan, M.D. states that Ketamine is "...the biggest breakthrough in psychiatry in the last 50 years," and positions the psychedelic renaissance, IV ketamine clinics, non-profits like Rick Doblin's MAPS, and institutions like Johns Hopkins along with Yale Department of Psychiatry.
Hassan cites a need "...to soften and reorganize the mind through psychedelic transformation." Some of us might recall the MKUltra work of such luminaries as Richard Helms, Sid Gottlieb, Ewen Cameron, Harry Baily, and Joly West from the 1950's and 60's. Those guys were all about softening and reorganizing minds, too--but their agenda was dark!
Leah Benson's book is distributed free by a recently established LLC called Brain Health Restoration of Illinois (BHR), located near Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. I got a tour of their clinic recently, and spoke for about an hour with two staff, Michael McCully and Alexis Magat, who were very gracious hosts. Michael mainly runs the delivery of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment at BHR. He didn't seem to be 100% enthusiastic about Ketamine assisted therapy, but he had impressive anecdotes for the value of TMS.
I told these guys I had seen an article entitled "The Truth About Ketamine" in Sheridan Road magazine, written by one of the founders of their clinic. I had emailed Dustin O'Regan, the Managing Editor of the magazine, to complain that the article tried to say IV Ketamine is approved by the FDA for treatment resistant depression, which is not true. Michael McCully quickly agreed with me when I read the offending paragraph aloud to him. He lamented that the statement had somehow gotten past his proofreading, and said he would recommend that the company should publish a correction, because BHR absolutely does not want to disseminate false information about their treatments.
A day or two later, I had a very pleasant phone conversation with Terry Yormak and Karen Todd, who are both known as founders of BHR. Terry is also the author of the article which appeared in Sheridan Road. They agreed that there should be some sort of published retraction. I will have to leave that to them and J.W. Conatser, the magazine publisher.
It's interesting that the entrepreneurs and enthusiasts in the so-called "psychedelic reanaissance" are generally in agreement that psychiatry, or at least the established, orthodox, APA-types in the profession, are mostly bad psychiatry. They prescribe drugs that are bad for their patints, and they almost universally fail to help people because they are only trying to control behaviors that people are afraid of or don't like. They largely depend on coercion for their customers. They're not really even trying to free people or heal them. The people pushing psychedelics on the other hand, are into expanding consciousness, evolutionary spiritual leaps, saving the world, etc. They are supposedly the latest and greatest chance for a good psychiatry.
In all likelihood, psychedelics will ruin psychiatry as any kind of scientific medical specialty. Even such a fossilized extremist as Jeffrey Lieberman knows that. The "renaissance" will bring back such horrors as Manson family murders and Jonestown, but many times more, because the cultural setting today is far darker than it was in the 1960's. People like Jeffrey Lieberman and (I'm sorry to say) Dustin O'Regan, Michael McCully, Terry Yormak and Karen Todd will end up all in the same, blamed boat. Right now they think they are so different from, or even the antithesis of, MKUltra and the Nazi doctors and Manhattan Project scientists, from whom Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and Augustus Owsley Stanley III actually inherited their evil.
But we cannot doctor the soul. We can only communicate as souls, with souls. This means that the study of the mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion or condoned in non-religious fields.
And just incidentally, we cannot eliminate the soul. It is the only thing we cannot eliminate. (Brains on the other hand, are no problem.)
There is no good psychiatry, and we need not say psychiatry is bad.
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