Vol.1 No.6 1973

The Committee Opposing Psychiatric Abuse of Prisoners (COPAP) is posing serious questions of public concern regarding the conception and operation of the proposed Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence (CSRV), being quietly implemented at the University of California, L.A., in conjunction with the Neuro-psychiatric Institute there. Projects to be undertaken by the Center have generated political, ethical and scientific controversies around the allocation of substantial sums of taxpayers’ money for ambiguous and potentially harmful research. Proponents of CSRV claim it will be a multi-faceted research and development program designed to analyze and diminish the incidence of violence in our society. While COPAP agrees that violence has reached a critical level in the U.S. and the world today, it feels that the proposed Center constitutes a greater threat than it purports to remedy. COPAP believes that the Center will be an institution dedicated to the exploration of technological means for social control of individuals and population pacification.

THE CENTER’S FOCUS

In testimony before the State Senate hearing on the proposed Center, Dr. Louis (“Jolly”) West, Medical Director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute admitted: “We understand that most of the violence is not caused by sick people, but often by respectable institutions and their leaders. Much group violence stems from social oppression, racism and neglect. But we are primarily concerned with individual violence.” (emphasis added) Proponents of the Center observe that it will be a “university-based” institution. What they leave unsaid is that it will not be a “university-controlled” institution. Analysis of the drafts of the proposal for CSRV reveals that selected state officials from law enforcement and correctional agencies will direct its operations and make the key policy decisions. The California Council on Criminal Justice (CCCJ), bankrolled by the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), will contribute 75% of the SI million first-year budget. Law enforcement and correctional officials are expressly the intended beneficiaries of the research to be undertaken at the Center, as well as the ones to determine the nature of that research. The final irony is that they are also to act as the ethical overseers of the projects.

HUMAN GUINEA PIGS

The Center plans to utilize persons incarcerated in prisons and state mental hospitals as subjects for experimentation which will involve invasion of their mental and physical privacy. The use of these populations which are subject to coercion from state officials and do not possess many basic civil rights or the means of protecting them raises serious questions about the meaning of “informed consent” in this context. How can an individual under these constraints give voluntary consent to being used as an experimental subject? Furthermore, the Center will be focusing on populations primarily composed of black and other Third World people. The proposal states that “The major known correlates of violence are sex (male), age (youthful), ethnicity (black). and urbanicity.” This leave little doubt about what kinds of communities will be studied. A project to survey violence in schools and test out programs will look at two schools only: one in a black neighborhood and the other in a Chicano area.

BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION THE AIM

COPAP believes that the specific projects to he undertaken at the Center represent an effort to achieve easy technological solutions to difficult social and political problems. The medical and psychiatric research on individual behavior may he utilized by law enforcement agencies as a “scientific” legitimation of increasingly sophisticated and repressive techniques to identify, predict, control and treat “troublesome” populations. Experimentation to be conducted on violence and brain waves, studies of males with XXY chromosomes to seek a “link” with aggressive behavior, use of experimental castration drugs, research on hyperkinetic children and on violence in women connected to menstrual cycles all indicate that CSRV intends to do work-oriented toward future mass screening and behavior modification through chemical and surgical means.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

On July 27 CCCJ held a hearing on the Center in Burlingame. Dr. West made a plea for approval of his “brainchild,” declaring all criticisms had been met. Representatives of a host of community organizations (NOW, MAPA, UPU, PU, COPAP, BPP, NAACP, AFSC, FAS. the Presbyterian Ministry and others, as well as MCHR) spoke in opposition. The decision of the Regan-appointed council was a foregone conclusion. They voted approval of the Center on condition that several of the proposed studies be dropped. This was a questionable victory for the Center because in June the state legislature, responding to COPAP complaints, had adopted a proviso in the annual budget which prohibits all funding for the Center from whatever source without prior approval of the legislature. In addition, MCHR is joining a coalition of the groups mentioned above to file an administrative complaint with CCCJ against funding the proposed Center. The regional LEAA office has already indicated its serious reservations regard-ing federal financing. MCHR anticipates the battle will now shift to the next session of the legislature.

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DRAPETOMANIA

In May 1851 a distinguished New Orleans surgeon, Dr. Basil Cartwright delivered a lengthy lecture on “The Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race.” It was humane gesture for a Southern gentleman of that era. The times were troubled. The nation was divided essentially in-to Slave and Free State blocks. Slaves took advantage of the confusion by running in greater numbers than ever before. Cartwright’s diseases were more behavior disorders as we know them today but he felt they offered a humane interpretation of irrational actions at the time. Cartwright warned his fellow white Southerners not to think that the runaway slave was being willfully disobedient. No, he was suffering from a disease of the mind called “drapetomania,” a Greek word he coined, a mania for running away. Cartwright was hopeful. Drapetomania seemed to him eminently curable, unlike other “species of mental alienation.” The ‘cure’ is to treat all “negroes, with firmness and kindness, and they are easily governed.” He came up with another ‘disease’ which he used to explain the extreme insensitivity of the black skin and the extra-ordinary dullness of the negro’s intellect. There was, fortunately, a cure: “anointin the whole body with oil and slappin the oil in with a broad leather strap” and then putting “the patients to some kind of hard work in the open air and sunshine.”

from Joe Hunt’s article in “The Real Paper” (Boston), May 30; 1973, headlined – “Two Boston Doctors Paid to Pacify the ‘Violent’ – by Cutting into Their Brains”

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Please, if you send us letters, indicate whether you want us to print your name or withhold it.

MADNESS NETWORK NEWS is being distributed free to patients and staff of psychiatric treatment centers and alternative centers in San Francisco, Berkeley, Marin and the Peninsula and on sale on various newsstands. We also have a mailing list. If you wish to be on it, $3.00 is requested in order to pay for mailing and printing for one year. Any additional contributions you wish to make will be greatly appreciated. MADNESS NETWORK NEWS appears every other month. Our address
is:

MADNESS NETWORK NEWS P.O. Box 684 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 94101

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In the Spring of 1973, Glide Publications asked Madness Network News if we were interested in putting together a “reader.” In August, Madness Network News and Glide Publications agreed to release a book, tentatively titled A Madness Network News Reader, for international distribution beginning the first part of 1974. We are now in the midst of selecting and editing mate-rial for that book, primarily material we have received from our readers, material now numbering in the hundreds of items. We feel very good about publishing the Reader since it will enable us to reach a much wider audience with our information and ideas. It is, however, a very time-consuming and demanding task, currently the main focus of our energy, and will remain so until the end of December. Having now taken a summer “break,” we will continue to put out the newsletter approximately every other month.

We also plan to continue to generate and organize other energy towards the goal of fundamental change in the whole Psychiatric Racket. Previous notices about a Conference were motivated by this commitment. however, we now realize that a major Conference is too massive an undertaking for us at this point. So, instead, we are presenting a heliotrope course beginning October 1, 1973. Heliotrope is a “Free University” with offices at Columbus Ave., S.F., Ca. The course will meet at the Frank Gallery, 629 Sutter Ave., S.F. Following is the course description as it was submitted for the Heliotrope catalogue:

k.77: madness inside and out
$10 madness network news San Francisco

Crazies, post-crazies, and pre-crazies from Madness Network News will lead a series of discussions on Madness — Escape or Breakthrough?; The Place of Madness and Psychiatry in Current Social Change; Psychiatry and The Law; The Use and Misuse of Drugs; and Beyond Tyranny, Religious and Psychiatric. Opening presentations will be followed by small group (6-8) discussions. The staff of Madness Network News includes ex-inmates, a lawyer, a half-way house director, a psychiatrist, a technician, a psychologist, and various other folk.

5 meetings

Mondays 7-10 pm starting October 1.

Class size: unlimited.

Heliotrope 21 Columbus
San Francisco California 94111

Phone: 398-7042
Hours: 1-7 pm

Madness Network News people are available to speak to groups or organizations about many of the issues we discuss in the newsletter. You may reach us through the Frank Gallery in S.F. 771-3344.

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A SZASZ SAMPLER FROM THE SECOND SIN

“‘Where there is a will, there is a way,’ says the proverb. Not entirely true; but it is true that where there is no will, there is no way.”
“No drug can expand consciousness; the only thing a drug can expand is the earnings of the company that makes it.”
“Treating addiction to heroin with methadone is like treating addiction to scotch with bourbon.”
“The problem with psychiatric diagnoses is not that they are meaningless, but that they may be, and often are, swung as semantic black-jackal cracking the subject’s dignity and respectability destroys him just as effectively as cracking his skull. The difference is that the man who wields a blackjack is recognized by everyone as a thug, but one who wields a psychiatric diagnosis is not.”

“Quotations of Dr. Freud”, an outrageous selection of thoughts from the founder of psychoanalysis, assembled and printed by Leonard Roy Frank, can be obtained by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope and 250 in stamps to The Frank Gallery 629 Sutter Street San Francisco, California 94102

THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LEGAL AUTHORITY AND MENTAL PATIENT STATUS (LAMP), 2014 CHANNING WAY, BERKELEY, CA. 94704 (415) 841-9396

NOTES FROM LAMP about psychiatry and the law

Looking back over developments in the field of Psychiatry and Law in recent months, we have some good news and some bad news to report. Overall, these recent developments indicate to us the opportunity for helping to produce positive changes in a number of areas relating to the rights of in-patients and other persons labeled mentally ill or, as we prefer to say, accused of mental illness. The phrase you choose can make a big difference. A person labeled mentally ill might be seen by the courts as being in need of care and treatment in a mental institution. This is a medical problem, and strict legal procedures for commitment are thus out of order on such an analysis.

On the other hand, a person accused of mental illness is more easily seen as being threatened with a deprivation of liberty. Such a person has the right to a court hearing and legal defense against the accusation. This view is gaining in acceptance in a number of jurisdictions. But first, the bad news. The U.S. Supreme Court in a couple of cases recently affirmed the constitutionality of commitment procedures in Connecticut. Plaintiffs there had challenged Connecticut’s commitment procedures as violating Due Process and allowing for too long a period of detention prior to a court hearing.

The Court agreed with a lower court opinion that says in part that a 45-day confinement period without a judicial determination of the reasons for the confinement, is okay in the case of a person judged by a doctor to be a danger to himself or others. In coming to this conclusion, the Court accepted the idea that commitment is not punishment, but a medical, “diagnostic” process, and thus the standards of Due Process that apply in criminal cases need not be met. The Connecticut court had written, “The patient is committed for treatment and care, and some knowledge of his mental condition can be gained by visual observation and diagnostic tests. This takes time.”

Fortunately, there’s a bunch of good news that indicates there are two Supreme Court Justices, and a number of lower federal court judges who are better informed about the nature of mental institutions than the seven men who concurred in these opinions. Justices Douglas and Powell dissented. And, several lower federal court cases around the country are pointing in the direction of more civil rights for persons detained in mental institutions against their will.

A federal district court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, for example, has held that commitment to a mental institution is very much like imprisonment for crime. Thus in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, hearings are required within 48 hours of confinement. The accused has a right to a free lawyer, to be free of disabling drugs at the hearing, to have a lawyer present at psychiatric interviews, and to remain silent under psychiatric interrogation. The application of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination is especially- important. What this all means is that the court faced the fact that going to a mental institution is as bad in many ways as going to prison. Most judges, and most lawyers, have generally felt that commitment is a medical, not a legal, problem. They have been encouraged in this belief by many elements of the medical professions. But the myth appears to be breaking down.

Clearly, when a person is confined against his or her will, a civil liberties question is involved. The argument for “care and treatment” doesn’t really hold water, because for most alleged “illnesses” the patient has a right to refuse treatment. Doctors have been saying that this right doesn’t apply in commitment cases, be-cause a “mental Illness” is involved which only they, the doctors, are competent to diagnose and deal with.

Now more people are beginning to understand that the inmates of mental institutions may be troubled, maybe in pain, or may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, with-out being “sick.” In short, the “myth of mental illness,” as psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has called it, is under more critical examination. More people are coming to realize that the commitment process can be as much a power play as it is an exercise in “medical judgment.”

We’re not saying that mere politics is at the basis of every commitment, though a political power question is obviously involved in every case. But we are saying that the political system wherein doctors become judges, and commitment is accomplished by medical, rather than legal, authorities is fundamentally wrong. Persons accused of mental disorder are not “sick” in any clear medical sense. Doctors are not, therefore, automatically any better qualified to deal with the problems of such people than anyone else. In a few cases, physical illness is found in a person labeled “mentally ill.” In all other cases, there is no medically definable disease entity involved. There is, at worst, some behavior that some people view as odd, erratic, eccentric, bizarre, what-have-you. Human problems, difficulties in living or communication, clearly exist. But their solution is not chemical, or even medical in any ordinary sense.

A recently published law review article written by a few of us at LAMP deals with this point in some detail. We run through a critique of the idea of “mental illness” from a scientific point of view, deal with the historical development of some clinical terms, and point out the ambiguity and bias involved in the application of these labels. You might want to order a copy of the article, entitled “Into the Abyss: Psychiatric Reliability and Emergency Commitment Statutes,” or of the whole Symposium on Psychiatry and the Law of which the article is a part, directly from the Santa Clara Lawyer, University of Santa Clara, California 95053; or check out any large law library for a copy.

Getting back to cases, a federal circuit court in Michigan has ruled that an involuntarily detained person cannot give effective consent to experimental forms of psycho-surgery. The decision is quite limited but important in that the court applied some First Amendment and Right of Privacy thinking to the case in new ways. It was held, for example, that the First Amendment guarantee of Free Expression implies a right to be free to generate ideas, and thus that there are limits to what the government-van do to a person’s mind, even in the name of “treatment.”

Another case, involving the use of succinylcholine*, the “fright drug,” on a prisoner at Vacaville has come back down to the district court for a re-hearing on the issues of cruel and unusual punishment and “impermissible tinkering with the mental process.”
The Supreme Court decisions mentioned at the outset are clearly not encouraging. But the amount and kind of activity indicated among lower federal courts shows the opportunity for affect-ing the law in this field through continuing education, of judges and lawyers as well as other people, regarding the realities of mental institutionalization. *Succinylcholine’s trade name is ANECTINE and is better known as such.

Please let us know if you’ve found the above material interesting or informative, and send us suggestions as to how this legal report-ing business can continue without becoming dull. Are there readers out there who would like more information on legal research, anybody interested in reading these court opinions? Should we include citations for research in future editions of these Notes, or is there already too much detail in what we’ve done here? Finally, can you spare some change, or better still a check, to help us continue this work? Contributions to LAMP are tax-deductible.

An article by Bob Roth, LAMP’s Director dealing with sex-based discrimination in psychiatry, is to be published shortly in Women: A Journal of Liberation, as part of a special issue on women locked up in prisons and mental institutions. Copies should be available shortly from the Journal at 3028 Greenmount Blvd., Baltimore, MD. 21218.

A Handbook of Patients Rights, covering a broad range of areas in the medical fields, will contain a section on Mental Patient Rights pre-pared by LAMP. Direct inquiries and pre-orders to the Medical Committee for Human Rights, P.O. Box 7677, San Francisco, California 94119. This manual has been prepared with specific reference to California law. Less detailed but very helpful information for other states is contained in The Rights of Mental Patients, a paperback by Bruce Ennis and Loren Siegel. The book also contains a short essay by Bruce Ennis dealing with trial tactics in commitment cases, which should be useful to lawyers and patient/inmates in California as well as throughout the U.S.

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“I don’t believe in Thorazine”

-Dr.Caligari

“In 1949 Henri-Marie Laborit of France used Chlorpromazine (Thorazine that is) to produce a ‘hibernation syndrome’ in patients undergoing prolonged surgery, and he noticed that a ‘side-effect’ was a striking indifference to environmental stimuli.’ (1)

in 1973 the same thing is happening now but with psychiatric patients, namely, people are being drugged into passivity and indifference, a spiritual hibernation. The drug is being pushed by spychiatric pill-pushers (otherwise known as psychiatrists) and is called Thorazine or Stela-zine or Mellaril or Haldol or Navane or Serentil or Prolixin. The growth of the use of the injections of Prolixin is especially frightening to me; it is the mental patients/prisoners methadone and is a drug that needs only be injected once every two weeks in someone elses’ ass for chemical mind control. Replacing the mechanical straight Jacket with a chemical one as they used to say smirkingly.

I don’t believe in using such drugs as Thorazine, Stelazine, Mellaril, Haldol, Prolixin, etc. I think they are dangerous, physically and spiritually, as is the label schizophrenia. “The pharmaceutical houses out-perform all other major American industries in net profit after taxes.” (2) The drug companies through their pushers, the ‘detail-men’ hand out free pills to googling medical students and doctors and apply the fast sell, quick kill technique of salesmenship to make sure pills (a created need) are popped so that big drug companies such as Smith, Kline & French (Thorazine), Squibb (Prolixin), Roche (Valium, Dalmane), CILIA (Ritalin), Sandoz (Mellaril) make a lot of money. Thus pills, money, control, and the more pills popped the more money made. All this pill-pushing leaves out the human supposedly being “helped” except for his or her mouth which is needed to dispose of all the pills produced. Few of those being drugged (those with psychiatric labels, Dog-tags such as schizophrenic) are told why they are being chemically controlled, and who benefits from it; and just how it supports the economy of psychiatrists, nurses, community mental health centers and drug companies. ProNixon Prolixon, our “gated” president has recently by executive order abolished the Bureau of Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs (which controls legal drug flow in the country) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement and its office of National Narcotic Intelligence (internal spies). In place of this old drug control system is a new one under the tail of the Attorney General, called Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). You can be sure this new governmental control tool will not investigate the drug abuse perpetrated by psychiatrists under the legal mask of “treatment.”

Pills make money for people with money, while making malleable mush of the minds of the many labelled mad, labelled bad.
“Don’t ignore the Obvious” F. Perls In past issues of Madness Network I have dis-cussed drugs such as Thorazine, Stelazine, ril, Haldol, Navane, Prolixin, Trilafon, etc. which I think are falsely and deceptively labelled es anti-psychotic, tranquilizers, medication. They are powerful mind-altering, mood-altering, body-altering drugs which make thinking a burden, moving more difficult, feeling naturally impossible and have a lot of side effects which are dangerous including permanent brain damage. there are other kinds of tranquilizers such as Librium Valium and Miltown and anti-depressants such as Elavil, Vivactil, Tofranil, Norpramine, Imipramine which I also don’t believe in using and which I also think are dangerous and abused hugs. These so-called psychoactive drugs, there “tranquilizers” are part of the mind control methods of the psychiatric system like electroshock, psychosurgery, insulin coma, ovary compressors, seclusion rooms, chains, police, etc…They say in Russia the government uses its psychiatrists to carry out political control and it can’t happen here?, oh yeh?

I don’t think these drugs such as Thorazine cure anything but they do create powerful mind control tools for doctors, nurses, psych-techs and families who are faced with a person they think is crazy. I have previously mentioned the side-effects of the so-called anti-psychotic drugs like Thorazine, §telazine, Mellaril, Haldol, Prolixin, etc. and they are

1. Muscular Side-effects

A. Tardive Dyskinesia – permanent brain damage created by prolonged antipsychotic drug use (it’s not known how long it takes for this to occur). “Tardive Dyskinesia consists of slow rhythmical movements in the region of the mouth with protrusions of the tongue smacking of the lips blowing of the cheeks and side to side movements of the chin as well as other bizarre muscular activity.” If any of these muscle problems start all anti-psychotic drugs should be stopped, immediately.

B. Temporary Muscular side-effects -they disappear when the anti-psycho-tic drug is stopped.

I. Bizarre muscle spasms (called acute dystonic reactions) especially of eyes, neck, face and arms.

2. Inability to stay still (called akathisia)

Ants in your pants
Eat while you rant

3. The making of Zombies-Zombification (called Parkinsonism) be-cause the same stiffness and muscle rigidity occurs in Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is a naturally occurring disease but your local psychiatrist can give you a synthetic chemical version of this disease as part of your “tranquilization” and all you need to do is act crazy.

II. Non-muscular Side-effects (They don’t happen to everyone but they might happen to you, who knows?) Sedation; weight gain; skin rash with exposure to sun; fainting when stand-ing; low blood pressure; changes of unknown importance in electrocardiogram (EKG, Heart tracing); obvious changes in brain waves (electroencephalogram) which last up to three months after stop taking the drug; loss of sexual desire; impotence (especially with Mellaril); stopping of periods; secretion of milk by breasts; a form of hepatitis; rarely, a decrease in white blood cells leading to frequent infections and some-times death (this condition caused by the drug can be corrected by simply stopping the drug and then curing the infections with antibiotics if needed), dry mouth (which can make talking and swallowing difficult); constipation; difficulty urinating; blurred vision; apathy—Isn’t that enough?

Caligari doesn’t believe in control through pills. Do YOU?

Bibliography

1 & 2. Scientific American, September 1973.
Caligari mentions an article in Science, Vol. 181, July 13, 1973, by George Crane called: “Clinical Psychopharmacology in its 20th year Late Unanticipated effects of Neuroleptics (meaning tranquilizers such as Thorazine, Mellaril, Stelazine, Prolixin, Haldol, pavane, Serentil, etc.) May limit their use in psychiatry.”
Amen

THANK GERALD PIER or CLINICAL PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
IN ITS 20th TEAR!
Dr. Caligari is a licensed physician and surgeon in the State of California.
Caligari welcomes and invites your reaction to his column.

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NEOLOGISMS

By Leonard Roy Frank

Psychiatrists define neologisms as a newly coined and often bizarre word or phrase, or an old one used in a new way. According to psychiatrists, making up neologisms is a common symptom among schizophrenics.

CARDIOSCLEROSIS – (Cardia = heart; skleros = hard. Gr.) hardening of the heart. Inability to feel sympathy for those who suffer.

FREUDIANITY – A contemporary secular religion based on the belief that there is no God and Sigmund Freud is his prophet. Better known as psychoanalysis, its priests see in the psycho-analyzation of man the only solution to his un-resolved Oedipus complex, their version of “original sin.”

IATROMANIA – (latros physician Cr.) – mania for doctoring others whether they want it or not.

IN LOCO DEIS – (in place of God. Latin) – a position of divine-like authority assumed by a psychiatrist in his relationship to the designated “crazy” person.

MENINGERITIS – a severe inflammation of the thought processes common among, but not restricted to, psychiatrists. Affected persons imagine their pseudo-medical procedures, called -treatments,” benefit those who are subjected to them.

PSYCHIATRIC INFALLIBILITY – the profession’s answer to Papal Infallibility. A major difference between the two is that while the Catholic Church proclaims only one individual’s infallibility, the American Psychiatric Association (the Psychiatric Church) ascribes infallibility to all its psychiatrist/members in good standing.

PSYCHIATROPHILIA – love of psychiatrists. Affected persons accept without question all opinions and advice from psychiatrists who in reciprocation and gratitude regard them as the only truly sane members of society.

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Dear Friends,

Though AND MOM CRIED is a rather jazzy view of WOMAN in our society, the message is most sincere…in its advocation that Woman be included in The Trinity. Feeling that out Patriarchial interpretation of the Bible is to blame for woman’s present inferior status in our society and basic reason for problems of earth, Mille Marsto contends that so basic is this principle that failure of Society to recognize it will soon lead to further and more crucial madness of our world. To subordinate half our Society to inferior status of Humanity is, in itself, Madness. FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST? Where does woman come in? And why is she not mentioned?

According to Mille Marsto, only when social violence has unbalanced the Father OR the Mother principle in the child, can the child be made to violate another. Mille is currently concerned with the plight of those middle-aged mothers who happen to be swinging in limbo between their busy MOTHER DAYS and a bleek, lonely, uselessness she finds too overwhelming with which to cope…. landing many of them in mental institutions, bereft of not only their self-respect but of rights to self-will and their worldly rights to property….Often imprisoned for the rest of their lives. It is the contention of Mille Marsto that many of these woman, And Man too, are programmed into this situation by LOVED ONES with selfish motives. The takeover of properties can be accomplished with little or NO legal OR monetary problem….if the manipulator knows the ropes.

As Mille says, on page 123 of AND MOM CRIED,
“So if you would escape, THE FUNNY-HOUSE HEARSE, After its siren,…. Has stopped at your door, Just pull yourself up, And look in reverse, At the webs being spun, You chose to ignore

Mille Marsto

Was romance a hex…
Have you had it with sex?
Send $3.50 M.O.for AND MOM CRIED.

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Howdy!

My name is Carl. I’m 21 years old. I’m a composer of “Classical”, Jazz and Rock Music. I’m also on ATD and in therapy. Anyway, I’d like to meet people who are in a similar boat and interested in forming a commune. If interested, please write to me.

Carl Martineau

c/o 701 Welch Road 111106

Palo Alto, California 94304

….At present I am trying to establish and find an institute in New Jersey to pursue the relationship of “mental illness” and social processes. We would like to establish some kind of “halfway house” as an alternative to mental hospitalization in this area. I would appreciate any help you could give me in this regard, e.g. names of people in this area who are working on such a project or would like to be.

We believe that the attack on Institutional Psychiatry must be coupled with a struggle to affirm alternatives to hospitalization for people in distress….

Bruce Wm. Cameron RD

2 Cherry Valley Rd. Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Sherry,

Thank you so much for these copies! I received them yesterday, and ye have an International Meeting next Saturdays
I send you this paper in French. It is a problem, I see. We shall try to translate the most important “publications” we have.
Just a few words more: 1) this meeting must be held/attended/followed (I have not my dictionary, here…) by those who have been (or are) labeled “crazies”; we are expecting English, German and Spanish friends. I shall keep you informed about the English MENTAL PATIENTS’ UNION, especially. 2) I wrote to FOUCAULT (Michel), the (alternative) Press Agency “AGENCE DE PRESSE LIBERATION”, and I sent him some photocopies of M.N.N. no. 4 (March 9). He answered to me that he would write to M.N.N. Other French people must contact you.

So, more news in a few days – the “crazies” are all right….

Friendly, Corine

Dear M.N.N.

Find my subscription plus money for an additional subscription for a friend. Having been present at the first network news (that I know of), published by a “schizophrenic” network in 1965 or 1966, your recent issue generated some nostalgia…

Sincerely,
Ross Speck (Co-author Family Networks Pantheon, N.Y. 1973)

Editor’s note:

We have a copy of one of the “Network Newsletters” (from the winter of 1969) that was put out by some of the people associated with Kingsley Hall and the Philadelphia Association in London. One of our members was a close friend of some of the people who worked on that newsletter. When we were thinking of a communication tool for members of our madness group, a network newsletter felt right.

Dear Madness:

I’m into the first rewrite of the Cuckoo’s Nest screenplay. But I haven’t been in a nut-house for more than ten years. Your paper came at a perfect time to remind me of something un-rememberable. Thanks.

Also, we are bringing out a magazine in the Fall called Spit in the Ocean. The theme of the first issue is Old in the Streets. Have you got a piece telling what it’s like to be an old looney and observations therein?

Long live Thomas S. Szasz!
Ken Kesey

If you read French (and even if you don’t – they have interesting graphics).
Cahiers pour la Folie 40 Madame Hubert 68, Rue d’Asnas 75006 – Paris, France

….We need people to fill our problem solving groups. Would it be possible to place the following “ad” in your newsletter???? I would appreciate hearing from you, either way.

WE ARE A POLITICALLY RADICAL COLLECTIVE OFFERING PROBLEM SOLVING GROUPS. OUR GROUPS ARE UNIQUE IN COMBINING A SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE WITh EFFECTIVE PROBLEM SOLVING. OUR GROUPS ARE A SAFE PLACE TO WORK (no encounter group techniques) ON FEELING GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF AND LEARNING HOW TO HAVE GOOD RELATIONSHIPS.

COST NEGOTIABLE.
call: Brian (after 6:00) – 451-2125 (E. Bay) Becky – 388-0576 (Marin)

Editor’s note:

Although in the past we have published “ads” about groups, we are ambivalent about continuing this practice. On one hand we feel an obligation to share information about where people can seek aid and feel that it is up to the person to decide whether that group or helper is right for them. On the other hand we don’t really feel comfortable advertising groups’, therapies and the like because a.) some of us are not “believers” in the value of such and b.) others of us feel uncomfortable about advertising something we haven’t tried on ourselves. In this case, none of us have tried the group, although one of us knows the people and likes them.

To publish or not to publish? We published this one. What do you think?

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BOOK REVIEW

THE POSSIBLE BEGINNING OF A REVIEW

By Wade Hudson

Inversions, written by Burt Alpert, published by Burt Alpert, and distributed by Burt Alpert, is the best book I have ever read. No other book I know about has so clearly pulled together so much that is so important. The book, 445 pages long, makes no claim to be original. On the contrary, Alpert draws upon 5000 years of resistance to the dominant civilizations of the world: a resistance that shares a great deal in common from one region to the next, as do, in contrast, the dominant civilizations share a great deal in common. However, steeped in historical references as it is, Inversions is a remarkably creative book, an incredible blend of the abstract and the concrete, the past and the present, the complex and the simple. Through it all, the book remains lucid, profound, and inspiring

Inversions, Burt Alpert, 877 26th Avenue, S.F., Cal. 94121, $2.50 per copy, postage included.