This essay ultimately points to how the techniques of the Soviet Andrei Snezhnevsky are emerging in Western liberal societies. And AB is correct. While there actually is a therapist-patient privilege ensconced in US law, it is rather easy to circumvent the privilege during trials by using expert witnesses (hired guns) for independent evaluations. But taking a wider angle, the rise of “surveillance therapy” in the West is even more ominous for another reason: it increasingly is emerging as a tool to repress political dissent and nonconformity, thus echoing the techniques of Snezhnevsky. There is a nonfiction work and documentary titled “On Madness and Dissent” that focuses on psychiatry as a weapon in the Soviet Union that may be worth a gander. (haven’t read). And there are film adaptations as well, such as the “Lives of Others” and an even earlier warning “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. Weaponized psychiatry also was at work with the attempt to destroy Daniel Ellsberg and, with that in mind, it is of little surprise that the CIA is full of psychiatrists, as CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou stated in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Freedom of Speech is the best defense but it’s eroding as well, in large measure by limiting reach via algo’s. And Trump embracing Palantir potentially signals the triumph of of the surveillance State that, in turn, will full enable “surveillance therapy”.
This essay ultimately points to how the techniques of the Soviet Andrei Snezhnevsky are emerging in Western liberal societies. And AB is correct. While there actually is a therapist-patient privilege ensconced in US law, it is rather easy to circumvent the privilege during trials by using expert witnesses (hired guns) for independent evaluations. But taking a wider angle, the rise of “surveillance therapy” in the West is even more ominous for another reason: it increasingly is emerging as a tool to repress political dissent and nonconformity, thus echoing the techniques of Snezhnevsky. There is a nonfiction work and documentary titled “On Madness and Dissent” that focuses on psychiatry as a weapon in the Soviet Union that may be worth a gander. (haven’t read). And there are film adaptations as well, such as the “Lives of Others” and an even earlier warning “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. Weaponized psychiatry also was at work with the attempt to destroy Daniel Ellsberg and, with that in mind, it is of little surprise that the CIA is full of psychiatrists, as CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou stated in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Freedom of Speech is the best defense but it’s eroding as well, in large measure by limiting reach via algo’s. And Trump embracing Palantir potentially signals the triumph of of the surveillance State that, in turn, will full enable “surveillance therapy”.
Well done Bocchi