By: Teresa Simon-Noble
An answer to Charles Krauthammer's recently uncovered Bush Derangement Syndrome.
In a recent Op-Ed piece dated Dec. 5, 2003 , posted in the Washington Post and entitled "The Delusional Dean", in which he indicates that it has been 25 years since he discovered a psychiatric syndrome, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37125-2003Dec4?language=printer Charles Krauthammer writes, "A plague is abroad in the land. Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise n or mal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay - the very existence of Ge or ge W. Bush."
Krauthammer goes on to write, "Now, I cannot testify to Howard Dean's sanity bef or e this campaign, but five terms as govern or by a man with no visible tics and no hist or y of involuntary confinement is pretty good evidence of a n or mal mental status." And, he adds, "When he avers, however, that 'the most interesting' the or y as to why the president is 'suppressing' the Sept. 11 rep or t is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance, it's time to check on th or azine supplies."
-To make truth tellers appear crazy is nothing new. Krauthammer knows that. Such was the fate, acc or ding to novelists like Lawrence Schoonover, of Juana la Loca a/k/a the Prisoner of T or desillas in Spain in the Middle Ages, or the burning at the stake of Joan of Arc during the reign of Charles VII of France in 1431.
By the l970s, twenty-five years, or so, ago, while Charles Krauthammer was busy discovering a new "psychiatric syndrome" which he called "Secondary Mania", psychiatry in America was seeing the dawning of new ways to think about and conceptualize mental illness. These new ways of looking at mental illness would take psychiatry away from the established "medical model" seemingly used by Charles Krauthammer to diagnose patients, and would become known as the Family Therapy Movement.
Research practitioners like Murray Bowen, M.D., August Napier, PhD, Nathan W. Ackerman, M.D., Jay Haley, M.A., C. Christian Beels, M.D., Carl Whitaker, M.D., Donald Jackson, M.D., Paul Watzlawick and many others were part of a pioneering movement of thinkers, who in the 1950s had begun to f or mulate new the or ies and had, by the l970s brought their new the or ies and treatment modalities to the field of mental health. They thought of the individual not as an island unto himself but as part of a system. These thinkers w or ked independently of each other but were united in their approach to understanding that an individual's symptoms may have their root cause in the system of which he or she is a part.
The underlying concept of this new, systemic way of looking at mental illness which we know today as Family Therapy, posited that understanding the dynamics of a family would provide a clue to the serious emotional symptoms in a given individual. They believed, and Family Therapy still believes, that emotional symptoms in any individual point to the individual's family system as being out of balance. The symptom bearer in any given family system -nay, in any given system""is not the problem. Rather, he or she is the voice, the standard bearer, the compass which points to a problem somewhere else in that system.
F or these pioneers of psychiatric research and early practitioners of family therapy, Th or azine and other psychotropic medications never were, and never are, the honest to God scientific way to treat a problem.
The key to w or king on a problem and relieving a symptom is to locate the source of the problem within that system and treat the problem, not the symptom. They posited that this type of an intervention, in and of itself, balances the system and relieves the symptom bearer.
F or instance, if a child is exhibiting symptoms of underachievement, and if, in examining the system a parent is found to be overbearingly overprotective of the child, the key to treating the child's symptomatic underachievement is to treat the parent's overbearing protectiveness of the child so as to give the child breathing room to grow in self confidence and, in the development of his or her own abilities and talents.
Sometimes, it is easier f or a parent who does not want to face a problematic area within self, to focus solely on the child. Making the child's underachievement the source of the parent's problem provides said parent an escape from a painful or troubling aspect of his or her marriage, or family of or igin hist or y. The parent's projection of his or her problem onto his or child weighs the child down.
In family therapy parlance these are children who triangled by the system, or who are part of systems that are so enmeshed that there is no room f or growth, individuality, or independent thinking, no space f or breathing. These may be systems where the togetherness f or ces prevail over the individuality f or ces, or systems in which parents say one thing but mean another""these are children whose family system is in need of some readjusting, realigning, rebalancing, or reframing""the child's truancy, belly aches, running away, lying patterns, or descent into a flight of fancy, are seen as the hook which brings the family into therapy.
As parents resist looking into their own problem area, it is the skilled practitioner, who, armed with the new the or ies postulated by the fathers of family therapy, open, even if ever so slightly a do or to the complicated dynamics of the "I don't want to face certain realities about myself or the hist or y of my family of or igin parent". F or every do or opened ever so slightly, f or every weightful unfinished business that is ever taken away from a child's shoulder by these skillful practitioners, f or every parent that is ever helped to deal with his or her own problems, a child is made better; a child is given room to grow. F or every parent who is ever given room to differentiate between his or her problems and those of his or her child""a whole system is moved f or ward.
All of which brings me to Charles Krauthammer and his discovery of the Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Yes " there are a great many people who, in greater degrees and to greater numbers than people have reacted to any other American president, react to Ge or ge W. Bush with very symptomatic feelings of distaste, disgust, and revolt towards the man, his policies and his antics.
Yet, contrary to what Charles Krauthammer postulates, it is not Howard Dean who needs Th or azine, n or does he need to be called paranoid f or suggesting what now appears to be a reality that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance to its happening.
It is those 9/11 papers suppressed by the Bush Administration that, like a parent's dee ply barricaded pain, need to be allowed to surface and to be examined. If paranoia is defined by the DSM IV Diagnostic Manual of Mental Dis or ders as, "a pattern of pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent"". it is the Bush Administration's penchant f or constantly sounding false alarms and raising Alert Levels to instill fear and suspiciousness in the American public that needs to be examined. It is Bush as the "Auth or of Dark Chapter f or America " http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1228-03.htm the one who needs to be placed under the spotlight of psychiatry. It is his repressive, dishonest and lying ways that need to be placed under the light of truth""perhaps then democracy would again stand a chance.
It is not Howard Dean, Barbra Streisand, Bill Moyers or Paul Krugman who bravely to point to Ge or ge W. Bush as the very source of darkness and repression on our democracy, the ones who are suffering from any s or t of Derangement Syndrome as Krauthammer would have you believe.
It is Krauthammer, who, views these symptom bearers, these voices and compasses pointing to an unbalancing of our Democracy by Ge or ge W. Bush and his Administration as crazy or mad, and who calls f or donations to the Republican Party to keep the Bush administration in the oval office the one who needs to be examined. It is Charles Krauthammer's use of Th or azine to silence the voices of our standard bearers and to blow smoke in the lungs of our democracy that needs to be examined. But most of all, it is the Bush and the turning over of our Democracy to the People f or the New American Century that need to be examined.
An airing of the root causes f or what Krauthammer calls the Bush Derangement Syndrome, may just save the day f or our own American Democracy.
Teresa Simon-Noble
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Teresa Simon-Noble fchiok@bellsouth.net is a computer activist f or peace and social justice who lives in the sunny state of Fl or ida . She is a f or mer mental health clinician. A poet and a freelance writer, her w or k has been published in several online publications
