Scumbags, etc.

I have represented clients who were credibly accused (by opposing counsel) of being scumbags, predators, blackmailers, wreckers of havoc upon society... and I dislike all those types of people; but the people I dislike most are those who think I'm stupid.

Clearly, anyone thinks I am stupid when they try to tell me that a man is at fault when he is in involuntary custody (to be treated for insanity) of a woman who has legal authority through her state institutional employer to constantly monitor the man's thoughts, mental and emotional condition and his most intimate behavior. If that woman is a state employee who ends up having sex with the man for her own selfish benefit, she completely ruins any possibility for a therapeutic milieu, and her action is a crime that turns what is supposed to be a "hospital" into an effective slave plantation. 

Blaming the man for the sex in this circumstance is (ironically) misogynistic, dehumanizing, ridiculous, and (most importantly) contrary to the law. A staff member who has sex with a patient at a psychiatric institution commits a felony, and the patient does not. It does not mater at all who is male and who is female or who is horny. Some people seem to believe that men always enjoy sex, that sex is always a benefit for men, no matter the circumstances (e.g., of power, coercion, force, drugs). Implicitly they think women are never sexual predators. This is contrary to wide human experience.

If my client is some irredeemable, anti-social scumbag, maybe he was made that way by being abused. And surely, any "mental health professional" who has sex with a patient whom she is being paid to help heal from such mental disorder as rendered him NGRI, is equally an anti-social scumbag. Most people, and most lawyers, don't want to work very hard for one anti-social scumbag against another. I have chosen to make that a major part of my legal practice.

The reason is not because it pays well! It's partly because nobody else is doing it, partly because I believe, whether I am realistic or delusional, that I have some special ability to tell which of two anti-social scumbags is worse; and it's partly because there is a lot at stake for the future of my community and the world.

The claim by psychiatrists that they have a better understanding than laypeople of human cognition, emotion and behavior is the most destructive fallacy in many centuries. The scam has garnered ill-deserved respect and authority for psychiatry. The public generally think of psychs as doctors rather than overseers of slave plantations, which is a much more accurate description for what they do. The drugs they have infested into our society are tragically debilitating and dehumanizing. Their apotheosis of the brain as the asserted source and only reality of the individual is spiritually and heuristically abominable.

After the first half of my life, I determined to combat psychiatry for the second half. I organized my new war around a maxim from Thomas Szasz: one need only abolish the insanity defense and outlaw involuntary treatment to precipitate the total attrition of psychiatry as we have always known it. The insanity defense and involuntary treatment ultimately live in state-operated institutions called "mental health centers." So that is where I went, and that is where I've been since I became a lawyer.

As the rabid abolitionist in Chester, Elgin, Alton, Choate, etc., I quickly noticed several useful things: 

1. State-employed mental health professionals are insecure and incompetent. They cluster together in the isolated institutions with eccentric cultures because they fear outsiders will notice that they don't know and don't like their jobs. They hide in the state bureaucracy so no one will see them or blame them for being useless and cruel. They lie under oath. They are pitiful. Those who aren't so pitiful leave and get honest work. An extremely rare few try to change things, but they are never successful for more than a year or two.

2. The flawed theory of mental health causes people to become criminal. Blaming every human failing on a malfunctioning or inferior brain justifies immorality and lack of discipline. Why not have sex with the beautiful young black boy? He wants it, the middle-aged social worker wants it, too. Uncontrolled and banned responses to natural desires are imminently justifiable when everybody in sight is "treated" medically for their personality failures and even their petty foibles, not to mention psychotic or dangerous behavior.

3. No one cares. The public wants nothing to do with insanity, they are terrified of it. When I tell my neighbors what I do they are initially fascinated, and they might even imagine I'm some noble crusader for justice. But if I see the same person a week later, they've forgotten all of it. They'd never visit EMHC to find out whether it's a hospital or a slave plantation; they're happy to pay their taxes and not think about it.

My experience over the last couple decades has made me extremely secure in whatever optimism I do retain. Sometimes that's not much, but it can always, and does always, come from face-to-face communication with patients and staff. As long as I am able to personally engage, I am not afraid, or stupid.

Fear of insanity comes from no face-to-face contact with crazy people.

They're all basically good.