NYC, NY, Anti Psychiatry Therapy Center for depression, major depression, bi-polar reactions, schizophrenia, hallucinations, delusions, "chemical imbalances" with medication-free effective psychotherapy that is positive and constructive

Some of the ways to relieve psychological suffering by making positive life choices are outlined below.

As the left side of the flow chart indicates (see below), it helps to give up the "tyranny of one's IMPULSIVE AND AUTOMATIC ways" to reach decisions.

And as the right side indicates, it also helps to give up being under the "tyranny of the SHOULDS" - the feeling that others expect one to do something, not because one really wants to, but because one just "should."

Once one has learned how to accomplish both (give up on blindly following impulsive and automatic urges or "shoulds") it becomes possible to choose a life on the basis of something entirely different: what one mostly wants and what makes the most sense to oneself.

As one learns to make life choices in the way the chart outlines, life becomes more flowing and joyful. One then can continue to grow, to become more in charge of one's life.

And as one develops further self-growth and constructive self-change one becomes able to eliminate one's psychological suffering and pain.

Since for some people the experience of joy has been taboo and regarded as forbidden, a whole new perspective must be learned: a perspective in which one strives to restore one's inner harmony as well as one's harmony with nature and the cosmos.

Once one develops such balance and harmony, it becomes possible to experience joy and balance in one's everyday life.

For some, the acquisition of a new, positive perspective may be the most difficult part of the therapeutic process.

Many people may feel it is frightening, strange, or even impossible to have joy and "flow" as natural parts of their everyday life.

Too many people, in fact, may doubt that a better life is ever achievable. They may actually have this doubt until they actually achieve a better life, and until they continue to achieve it on a regular basis.

Let me first clarify what is meant by the word psychotherapy, as it is used on this Web site.

The first part of the word psychotherapy, derives from psyche - the Greek word for soul.

The soul can be considered as that aspect of a person that has an integrated, bio-psycho-social holistic way of experiencing life. It's really a mix of acts, thoughts, moods and emotions that characterize a particular person.

The word therapy which now mainly means healing and treatment, derives from the Greek therapeia, service, from therapeuein, to be an attendant.

The word therapy thus is used both in the sense of healing, i.e. making whole, and in the sense of attending to and being of service to another human being.

In practice, natural psychotherapy can be considered a two step collaborative process.

The first part of the process is generally the lessening of one's psychological anguish, fear, depression and confusion.

This part of the therapeutic process often happens rather quickly - a matter of weeks or months.

It involves becoming aware of one's blocks to independent, loving and creative living, and then looking at one's problems from a new perspective: being willing to see one's emotional suffering and conflicts as problems in living rather than as "mental diseases," "mental illnesses," or mythical "chemical imbalances."

The second part of the process involves learning to unlearn patterns of passivity as well as self-destructive patterns that may have become part of one's way of life.

Other psychological patterns that need to be given up if one decides to focus on attaining a better quality of life are: False assumptions, destructive emotional attachments, learned helplessness, just plain ignorance and a reluctance to acquire new knowledge, automatic passive withdrawal, excessive and inappropriate pessimism or optimism, insufficient assertiveness and insufficient constructive planning.

The second part of the therapeutic process involves making significant cognitive changes and letting one's natural creative self develop. And as one makes these significant cognitive therapeutic changes one learns to look honestly at oppressive or destructive patterns in oneself and one's environment.

Natural Psychotherapy is thus an integrated educational, scientific and thoroughly humanistic enterprise.

Natural psychotherapy is not a medical enterprise nor a practice of psychiatry, but one that is thoroughly contextual and bio-psycho-social.

It is anti-psychiatric in that it recognizes the following important fact: human beings cannot be reduced to mindless biological automatons.

They are beings who grow and learn, who change over time, whose spiritual, emotional and intellectual experiences, intentions, and choices give them powerful means to choose, and then learn how to maintain the kind of life style that makes sense to them.

In natural psychotherapy human beings are therefore not falsely labeled (the so-called psychiatric diagnoses).

They are not assaulted with forced hospitalization and with harmful drugs (the so-called psychiatric medications).

They are not damaged with electroshock or with laser surgery or regular brain surgery, or with dangerous magnetic or other "treatments" or implants.

All of these risky and potentially damaging psychiatric "treatments" are not supported by natural psychotherapy.

But despite not being necessary, these destructive ways are perpetrated in most "psychiatric treatments" on upset and helpless persons in the guise of help.

They are assaults conducted by an unholy alliance of most psychiatric professionals and most of the powerful multinational pharmaceutical corporations.

What psychologically troubled persons do need is to learn how to give up passivity and how to actively make a better life for themselves.

And at the same time, they need to unlearn the self damaging and self-defeating ways they learned in the past and may be repeating in the present.

Once the self destructive patterns have been unlearned one can learn to substitute those attitudes and patterns of behavior that bring love, joy and real satisfaction to oneself and others.

And that is what may take time. Especially if, in the past, one has not habitually made productive and positive life choices.

Although it takes time and focus to make positive life choices and changes, it can be done. Even if one has never thought that one can.

Actually, it is more possible, easier and more pleasant to make positive changes while one is in natural therapy than most people may think - and that is always a welcome surprise to many.

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Philosophically, natural psychotherapy is based on a naturalistic psychology designed to relieve psychological suffering and foster natural well-being.

Philosophically, natural therapy is rooted in critical realism, with a contextual, holistic, positivist, dialectical and relational approach.

The philosophical slogan of this naturalistic and eclectic psychotherapy is: "A unified holism and positivism with natural science methods appropriate to the subject matter!"

The main aim of natural therapy is the achievement of drug-free conditions and experiences of natural happiness and well-being."

The subject matter of such a psychology is always the creative, unique and existentially free bio-psycho-social individual within the context of and in relation to society, culture, nature and the cosmos.

Especially relevant are some of the concepts developed by R.D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and the anti-psychiatry movement.

Anti-psychiatry, as a world-wide movement, and anti-psychiatry groups representing "survivors of psychiatry" are both still alive and well despite rumors to the contrary.

An Example: Effective, Natural Psychotherapy of "Schizophrenia" - "Delusions" and "Hallucinations"

EFFECTIVE THERAPY OF "SCHIZOPHRENIA" - AN EVENT WITH THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

This incident happened some years ago during a psychotherapy session with an in-patient in a major hospital in New York City.

A 23 year old patient had been admitted to the psychiatric ward about two weeks prior to this incident, and "diagnosed" as having "paranoid schizophrenia."

During this therapy session he told me in a frightened and agitated voice after the session had been underway for about half an hour that we better stop the session since someone was yelling, "You're gonna die." When I began questioning him about the voice, he became more agitated and insisted that we stop the session at once.

I asked him to tell me more. "There's a fire!" he said. "Don't you see the smoke coming from the basement? I've got to get out!"

I didn't say that I did not see any smoke and agreed that we stop. He hurried out and went to his room.

At our next session, the following morning, he appeared somewhat calmer, though still tense and on-guard. I told him I had inquired about the smoke coming from the hospital basement, and that I had discovered that the problem was far more serious than even he had thought.

I told him that I'd learned that at the very time we were having the first session, his parents were in the hospital and consulting the medical director, whose office was in the basement. During that consultation, they had attempted to have him committed to a state hospital, since they were sure "from what the doctors had told" them that their son suffered from a major mental illness and that their son's "mental illness was incurable." When I mentioned this, he said that he had suspected his parent's intentions, in fact, had overheard them whispering about his fate before the consultation.

As we discussed his fear of being sent to "die a slow death" in a state hospital we agreed that the "smoke" he had "smelled" was quite real to him (as a symbol and metaphor of his predicament), and that the "fire" he had feared was (again, as a symbol) truly substantial.

He gradually came to realize that he had some serious, "burning" issues to deal with.

It became clear to him over the next several therapy sessions that as long as he could remember, his relationship to his parents had always been enveloped in "fog and smoke" and punctuated by "fiery confrontations." He had always felt totally helpless in his parents' presence, he said. Not dependent. Helpless. He doubted that he could ever function without them. The intrusive voices he experienced seemed to confirm this doubt.

Though he was able to avoid being sent to a state hospital, and he was discharged from the present hospital after several weeks, it took months of therapy in my office (therapy that gradually shifted from regular psychotherapy to natural psychotherapy sessions - three to four times a week) to become completely medication-free, and to gain sufficient confidence to start taking charge of his own life.

And then, learning and practicing how to lead an active, independent and constructive existence took four years of natural psychotherapy sessions - initially three times a week, and in the last year twice a week.

The fact that no one had actually yelled at him, "You're gonna die," and the fact that there had been no actual fire or smoke gradually got to be considered by him as a possibility. He also gradually was able to consider the possibility that certain significant truths could be revealed by the metaphors of smoke, fire and the voice.

But for these symbolic truths, these metaphors of the truth, to be clearly understood as very meaningful illusions (and not hidden by him in cryptic metaphors anymore) he had to learn how to get to feel less frightened.

And in order to feel less frightened, he had to learn how to become empowered so he could actually be in charge of his own life.

And most important, he had to become free of the false and extremely debilitating and toxic psychiatric view that he was a "patient" with a "mental disease." He had to get free of the ideas that he was "sick" and a "patient" who needed "treatment" by a psychiatrist in order to "become healthy."

He had to learn to become responsible for himself, to take charge of his life so that he himself could figure out during natural therapy how to increase his own well-being.

It was, however, very difficult for him to actually and truly get to be in charge of his own life. It was difficult because wanted his parent's approval and love.

He had never developed and nurtured the habit of fully directing his own life. He had not yet learned the habit of thinking through and choosing, slowly, calmly, constructively, what he valued, what made sense to him what he really wanted out of life, what his priorities were.

It took him many months to become fully aware of the nature of his relations to others and the world, especially of the role of helplessness he had learned in childhood. And then it took four years of intensive (and often stormy) natural psychotherapy to learn to take charge of his life, to truly avoid being oppressed by anyone, and to respect his own desires, reasoning powers, and will.

Once he learned to respect his complexity, uniqueness and creativity he became able to resolve his inner conflicts about individuation.

He did so well that no one (even a psychiatrist) could say that he had a major "mental illness," and needed psychiatric drugging or hospitalization again.

In addition to having developed and maintained a productive and satisfying love and work life, he became creatively active in the anti-psychiatry movement.

He had learned and continued to learn how to attain and maintain a state of natural happiness and well-being!

What are the main theoretical issues involved in this event? What are the implications for practice, for research?

Why is it that powerful feelings of trust develop hand in hand with the growth of healthy skepticism? How that is related to confidence in one's own reasoning powers and the capacity to differentiate between what Erich Fromm has called rational and irrational authority.

The brutal ways some parents suppress a child's reasoning, skepticism and powerful desires for individuality (e.g. the Schreber case) result in "insane" experiences and behavior that have their roots in the severe, mostly unconscious conflicts between these desires individuality and independence, and the equally powerful desires for passivity and dependence that are generally present in these individuals.

Also, we need to explain why it is that very upset, frightened, or angry people do not see while they are in emotional turmoil that, as Donald Davidson has emphasized, "most metaphorical statements are patently false... (and that) absurdity or contradiction in a metaphorical sentence guarantees we won't believe it and invites us, under proper circumstances, to take it as metaphor." This part of the theory must specify what happens psychologically and physiologically to result in the constriction of consciousness that disables the ability to recognize metaphor.

Of course, also needing explanation (as those in the anti-psychiatry movement point out) is the contemporary biological psychiatrists' loss of observational and reasoning capacities to recognize what the so-called "mentally ill patient" is doing - expressing metaphor and symbol of emotional turmoil literally - in feelings, words and acts that are then falsely labeled "psychiatric disorders."

There indeed is sadness, despair, anger, madness, disorder in the lives of many people, just as there is much ignorance, prejudice, superstition, lying and deception in this world.

Of course, distressing life conditions may upset people sufficiently to cause physiological disturbances, and eventually chemical imbalances and physical illness.

Worry enough and you can produce an ulcer, fatigue or worse. Deny enough and you may become what others label a drunk, drug addict, con-artist, criminal, hysteric or psychotic.

People acquire such labels as a consequence of psychosocial, not physical problems.

Physical problems may follow the psychosocial problems, or, they may not. But the psychosocial problems are always related to and always involve significant psychosocial factors.