MIM Notes No. 200      December 15, 1999

Prisons and psychiatric hospitals:  Stigmatizing the Oppressed

by MC45

The murder trial of Andrew Goldstein, who doctors define as 
schizophrenic, has ended in a mistrial. Jurors were unable to 
agree if Goldstein was "not guilty by reason of insanity" when he 
pushed Webdale in front of a subway train and killed her.(1) The 
well-publicized murder trial in New York City has demonstrated 
again the incompetence of capitalism and the Amerikan criminal 
justice system to deal with people who do not fit in to 
imperialist cultural norms.

MIM finds it crazy that under capitalism, a trial is seen as the 
place to decide that a persyn is either insane or criminal. MIM 
will speak of "mental illness" or "disability" at times although 
we reject the psychological idea that these are conditions 
confined to the individual. History has demonstrated that neither 
criminality nor sanity is a fixed character trait.

People exhibit all sorts of behaviors in reaction to the society 
in which they live. It is not surprising that under a system where 
people are divided into nations, classes and genders and are 
oppressed on that basis, there is much strife and violence. MIM 
does not look to "cure" some people of psychological problems by 
helping them to be happy under capitalism, we look to help all 
people with whom we work to understand that imperialism is a 
system of violence against the world's majority and it must be 
overthrown to bring peace and cooperation to the people of this 
planet.

MIM recognizes that some individuals have mental or emotional 
problems that keep them from fitting in comfortably with 
capitalist society, but we also understand that psychological 
treatment including hospitalization is only a form of coercion, in 
many cases an alternative to prison. Most acts that are punished 
as criminal under capitalism are in fact mildly asocial or anti-
social actions of the oppressed. A very clear majority of 
prisoners in the united snakes have been convicted of non-violent 
crimes. For those people who do have mental problems, the 
available options of isolation through drugs, imprisonment, 
homelessness or hospitalization can only exacerbate these 
problems. For all prisoners and institutionalized people in 
Amerika, MIM advocates working with MIM to build independent 
institutions of the oppressed to replace the destructive 
institutions of the bourgeoisie.

Prisons & hospitals: two prongs of repression

In MIM Theory, we have described prisons as a means of coercive 
control primarily of oppressed nation men. For wimmin and white 
people who break society's rules by their rebelliousness or simple 
inability to conform to the bizarre rituals of life under 
capitalism the pseudo-science of psychology is capitalism's 
solution.(2) MIM does not see a need to advocate one of these two 
types of oppression over the other. Prisons cage the oppressed, 
attempting to remove them from the physical means of political 
organizing. Various applications of psychology either dull the 
minds or constrain the bodies of its "patients." Either way, the 
creativity and potential of the institutionalized individual is 
squashed.

Given the scattershot definition of schizophrenia for example, it 
is not surprising that so many people who are labeled as being 
mentally defective are under the control of the prisons system. 
MIM Theory 2/3 quotes the psychiatrists' contradictory definitions 
of schizophrenia at length and concludes "if a person has a rare 
belief, s/he is schizophrenic. ... In one case, a dean of a school 
at which MIM was doing work threatened a radical activist with 
being committed to a mental hospital if s/he did not stop 
political activities."(3)

In 1997, a South Carolina prisoner reported in MIM Notes that 
revolutionary prisoners (who are outspoken about prison conditions 
and known to study political theory and history) have been placed 
in extended isolation units and compelled to submit to a 
"psychological profile test" to gain possible release from the 
units.(4)

Both of these are instances of psychology being used to discredit 
and silence revolutionary political organizing. In this context, 
we have no interest in advocating psychiatric care over prisons 
for those labeled mentally ill. We prefer to give people who 
capitalism sees as insane a place to express themselves and to aid 
in the struggle against all forms of oppression.

The more honest news reports on the Goldstein trial in New York 
have spoken of the numbers of mentally ill people on the streets 
and unemployed as a result of insufficient programs to help guide 
them through life. As psychiatric hospitals are full or closed, 
mentally ill people are likely to wind up homeless and unemployed.

A factsheet from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) 
states that "roughly 80 to 90 percent of people with serious brain 
disorders are unemployed."(5) While we do not follow NAMI in 
calling biology the source of mental illness, this figure does 
support the knowledge that capitalism does not foster equal work 
opportunities for people who are harder to employ. The same 
statistics can be found among people with physical disabilities. 
Capitalism sees jobs as pre-defined tasks that need people to 
complete them, so it understands no intrinsic value in humyn 
effort.

Abuse and mental illness; chicken and egg

A 1999 survey by the u.$. Bureau of Justice Statistics, which 
collects numbers for the federal prisons authority, reported that 
16 percent of all prisoners in the united snakes are mentally 
ill.(6) The percentage of diagnosed mental illness among prisoners 
is the same in Oregon. An alarming 45 percent of incarcerated 
youths in Oregon have some sort of mental illness diagnosis, and 
20 percent are taking psychotropic drugs to control their behavior 
by the time they come under the Oregon Youth Authority.(7) In some 
Michigan jails, as many as 24 percent of prisoners are classified 
as mentally ill, with twice that number being treated with 
psychotropic drugs. The Wayne County Jail in Detroit is the 
state's largest facility for poor, mentally ill people.(8)

MIM wonders openly about the coincidence of mental illness with 
poverty and imprisonment, as some prisoners report being driven to 
mental illness while others who have problems to begin with are 
tormented by their keepers. In 1998, a New York prisoner reported 
on the suicide of a prisoner who had been stigmatized by 
Corrections Officers as having a "serious mental condition." 
Daniel Horn was treated with repeated isolation including denial 
of his clothes, mattress and access to his family, he was denied 
his persynal property (family photos, trial transcripts, eye 
glasses) for weeks and then told it had been thrown away.(9)

In these conditions it is clear that psychological and psychiatric 
problems are defined either as refusal to go along with a system 
of oppression, or as a response to torture. We seek to overthrow 
this system because it is ruining people's lives and blaming them 
for resisting.

Guilty or insane?

MIM believes that under imperialism, it is most correct to speak 
of people's actions as rational or irrational. When imperialism 
attempts to silence its opposition by telling people that this 
system is the best possible thing, MIM believes imperialism is 
guilty of attempting to drive people insane.

It is well known among readers of MIM Notes that as Maoists we 
deeply disagree with the notion that crimes of violence and other 
social dysfunction will be eradicated by a system of imprisonment 
under imperialism. As dialectical materialists, we believe it is 
unconscionable to think about locking people up for the duration 
of their lives without thinking systematically about what effect 
this will have. It is a demonstrated fact that the prison system 
of this country has no mitigating or preventive effect on 
crime.(10) The same has been shown of psychiatric institutions' 
effect on mental health.

MIM points to the Chinese example of dealing with people who 
exhibited anti-social behavior. In Maoist China, mental health 
problems were treated cooperatively as were all other health 
problems. The perspective of fostering public health, rather than 
stigmatizing disease, was principal. In revolutionary China, 
particularly during the Cultural Revolution, psychiatry made great 
strides in doing away with stigmatization of patients. Prior to 
1958, the belief in a biochemical basis for schizophrenia was in 
force.

MIM is not certain that there is such a basis at all; it is 
possible there is a biochemical component to schizophrenia, it is 
also possible that there are biochemical effects of schizophrenia. 
Regardless, it is clear that biological-determinist (and anti-
dialectical) science under capitalism is not going to uncover the 
basis for what it calls mental illness,(11) yet it continue to 
treats such conditions every day with drugs and other therapies 
and punishments.

Just as Maoist therapies eventually included experimenting with 
diet (on the assumption of a biochemical basis) to treat 
schizophrenia, MIM believes that involving patients actively in 
their own treatment is essential. For this reason we encourage all 
prisoners and others who have been told that they are somehow 
mentally defective by imperialist standards to work with us in the 
constructive task of building independent proletarian institutions 
that serve the needs of the oppressed.

Notes: 

1. New York Times 3 November, 1999. 

2. "Abolish Psychology," MIM Theory 2/3; "State Tyranny: Non-
profit Mental

Institutions," MT9 , p. 31.

3. MIM Theory no. 2/3: Gender and Revolutionary Feminism, p. 45. 

4. MIM Notes 142 15 July, 1997

5. "facts about mental illness" http://www.nami.org/fact.htm 

6. NYT 24 October, 1999. 

7. Portland Oregonian 24 Oct., 1999. 

8. "Mentally Ill Crowd Metro Area Jails" Detroit News, 29 August, 
1999 http://detnews.com/search/navi.htm

9. MN167 1 August, 1998.

10. "Prison boom rockets despite 'crime' drop,  MN194 15 
September, 1999. 

11. MIM Theory no. 9: Psychology and Imperialism, p. 35. In 
addition to MIM Theory 9, see Not in Our Genes by Lewontin, Rose 
and Kamin for discussion of the methods and quality of science in 
the search for a cause of schizophrenia, for example.