Comments on: What happens when you ignore power relationships.

By: pj

pj — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:38:35 +0000

I`ve never been locked up anywhere but even I can see what an absolute stupid statement this woman made, and how someone like this is completely detached from the reality of her patients. Someone like this is a prime example of a person that needs to stay out of people professions.

By: Assorted Thingies › A relatively lucky escape

Assorted Thingies › A relatively lucky escape — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:36:22 +0000

[…] to get some of these mistakes corrected, instead of having them define my life through layers of power-blind professionals who’d rather believe papers than […]

By: Irit Shimrat

Irit Shimrat — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:07:24 +0000

Please contact me. I’m locked up and being given harmful “medications” in a town called Comox in British Columbia. I can no longer access my main (gmail) account on the computer for use by patients so I googled myself and found you. I can be phoned at 250-339-1490 but e-mail is probably better. The hospital is called St. Joseph’s General Hospital and I’m in the inpatient psychiatric ward. I’ve been here since July 5 or 6 and was in “seclusion” 12 days; don’t know quite how or when I’ll get out but have a paradoxical reaction to a drug my psychiatrist, though a good man, can’t understand he needs to stop giving me every day – it makes me quite ill. I thank you for having found me and very much wish you to find me again.

Yours in big trouble and much fear,

Irit Shimrat

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:13:06 +0000

Oh… yeah. I used to think that one place was great because they restrained us face-up instead of face-down. Stockholm syndrome here we come.

By: Thirza

Thirza — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:09:56 +0000

I found your site recently and am really liking it. As an ex-inmate I’ve often felt that psychiatrists or people working in the psychiatry industry get paranoid and upset when Mad movement activists call them on their shit. It gets to the point where they demand we find SOME decent thing about our experience and that for that one thing alone we should be grateful. Like “I was put in four point restraints for six hours, sure, but I also got a cup of ice cream with my dinner, so it wasn’t so bad.” Just ridiculous.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:30:57 +0000

After reading this entry I understood the flaw in the “reverse discrimination” argument.

By: Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:45:36 +0000

What a delightfully simple-minded parallel. And doubtless plausible, to vast numbers of people.

(Semi-randomly, and not really: a friend asserts that psychiatry isn’t as bad as scientology, on the grounds that psychiatric types have good intentions.)

By: scap64

scap64 — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:28:31 +0000

It is very common and typical act of “professional narcissism” (as Sheila B. so aptly defined her own response) to immediately scream “victimization” and try to turn the tables at the slightest criticism.

By: Mike Stanton

Mike Stanton — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 05:00:27 +0000

This happens with all power relationships. I saw a story in one of our quality newspapers last week about the hidden shame of battered husbands. We were supposed to feel that the whole history of violence against women was somehow balanced by the fact that in a small number of cases the boot was literally on the other foot.

By: Charles

Charles — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 21:37:00 +0000

You wrote:

Am I to assume then, that Irit Shimrat and her co-authors locked Dr. Bienenfeld in a small room and would not let her out until she renounced her profession? Did they put her in a building where her every movement, statement, and feeling was noted and controlled by anti-psychiatry activists who repeatedly put pressure on her to stop practicing?

In fact, Bienenfeld can choose to stop practicing. The best we can do is pretend not to be autistic, often not very well, and at great personal expense. We can’t choose not to be autistic.