Charles Reade, l’Associazione Medico-Psicologica e “teoria del complotto” (2021)

Uno dei primissimi – se non il primo in assoluto – usi attualmente conosciuti dell’espressione “teoria della cospirazione” o “del complotto” – così come usata ad oggi – e anche a nostra conoscenza la prima traduzione in italiano del testo inglese che riporta tale uso.

“La teoria del dottor Sankey – concludeva il Presidente – sul modo in cui queste lesioni al torace si sono verificate nei manicomi meritava la nostra puntuale attenzione. Era almeno più plausibile della teoria del complotto del signor Charles Reade e la misura precauzionale suggerita dal dottor Sankey di usare un panciotto imbottito nei recenti casi di mania con paralisi generale – condizione mentale nella quale si trovavano quasi tutti questi casi in discussione – appariva a lui di valore pratico”.

“L’unica meraviglia – aggiungeva il Dr. Tuke – è che nei manicomi pubblici, considerata la natura selvaggia di alcune delle vittime semi-istruite delle malattie mentali, e la libertà che il sistema di non contenzione concede loro, gli incidenti non accadano più frequentemente; che negli ultimi anni diversi sovrintendenti, e molti assistenti, sono stati gravemente feriti, dimostrerebbe che ci sono due facce di questa medaglia.

Il fatto è che nei reparti refrattari dei nostri manicomi pubblici gli inservienti, troppo pochi di numero, portano la propria vita nelle loro stesse mani. Il rimedio è aumentare il loro numero e aumentare la sorveglianza su di loro”.

Aldous Huxley, 1958: intervista Rai in italiano su ‘Ritorno al mondo nuovo’ (2022)

“Dunque ho trovato che ci sono parecchie cose nel mondo attuale, delle forze impersonali e poi delle scoperte tecnologiche che spingono l’umanita’ verso quel totalitarianismo che ho descritto nella mia favola di trenta anni fa.”

“E poi ci sono scoperte tecnologiche soprattutto nel campo della psicologia, della farmacologia e della fisiologia che possono essere utilizzate per dittatori futuri. In questo senso mi trovo un po’ pessimista sull’avvenire.”

‘Hallucinogens, not psychedelics’. A letter to the Editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (2021)

“Narcotics that induce hallucinations are variously called hallucinogens (hallucination generators), psychotomimetics (psychosis mimickers), psychotaraxics (mind disturbers), and psychedelics (mind manifesters).

No one term fully satisfies scientists, but hallucinogens comes closest. Psychedelic is most widely used in the United States, but it combines two Greek roots incorrectly, is biologically unsound, and has acquired popular meanings beyond the drugs or their effects.”

Leading London psychiatric hospital starts a partnership with Nasdaq-listed hallucinogens company (2022)

“South London and Maudsley has announced a new partnership to launch The Centre for Mental Health Research and Innovation to accelerate psychedelic research and develop new models of care for mental health in the UK.

Working together with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, and COMPASS Pathways, a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health, this pioneering collaboration will provide patient access to cutting edge research studies in multiple areas of high unmet need in mental health.

The Centre will accelerate research of emerging psychedelic therapies, support therapist training and certification, evaluate real-world evidence, and prototype digital technologies to enable personalised, predictive and preventative care models.”

Roots of Polish psychiatry (2022)

“The roots of Freemasonry, one of the most important cultural and social phenomena of modern times, are clearly European, but the origins of this fraternal organization are as obscure as they are legendary.”

“There has been very little or no research so far into the impact of the Masonic ideas of tolerance, freedom, equality and brotherhood on the development of psychiatry. The degree of this influence was certainly different from one country to another.”

“Polish Freemasonry was reborn in 1920, with an important role played by three psychiatrists: Rafał Radziwiłłowicz, Witold Łuniewski and Jan Mazurkiewicz, who were Grand Masters of the Grand National Lodge of Poland.”

“Freemason psychiatrists headed the Polish Psychiatric Association throughout the entire inter-war period: Chodźko in 1920–23 and 1928–30, and Mazurkiewicz in 1923–28 and 1930–47.  Radziwiłłowicz was the General Secretary of the Association between 1920 and 1928, and he was also the founder of Rocznik Psychiatryczny (Psychiatric Annual), the journal published by the Association.”

‘The Last King of America’ and proto-psychiatry (2022)

“Though the incapacity of the King had been discussed in Parliament […] the British Constitution (was) not merely shaken, it (was) dissolved, and the reign (was) given to every revolutionary projector, who may seek to raise himself hereafter upon the ruins of his country,” and the situation makes “the sovereign a slave of his servants.”

“The two accounts” – Jain and Sarin concluded – “preserved in the same set of documents by Arthur Cole, regarding events in Coorg in 1809 and London in 1810, highlight the tension between madness and a sense of political order. The account in the Madras Courier emphasizes that the paramount power of the Regent cannot, and should not, be restricted by any other process, parliamentary or medical, as it was absolute, even though the King was insane. The suggestion that there should be parliamentary oversight was tantamount to treason.”

“Putin come Hitler? Cosa significa davvero” – ilGiornale.it (2022)

Intervista – “Cosa c’è davvero dietro l’abuso di termini quali “follia”, “pazzia”, “fobia” legati alla politica?
Ce ne parla il dottor Federico Soldani, epidemiologo psichiatra che lavora nel Regno Unito e studia la storia della psichiatria, in particolare rispetto alla dimensione politica”.

Putin, Pirandello e i cento anni di ‘Enrico IV’ (2022)

Secondo il Financial Times “ci sono analisti che temono che il leader russo si stia trasformando in Vlad il Matto. Pensano che Putin sia al potere da troppo tempo e stia diventando sempre più insensibile e paranoico. Il suo isolamento durante la pandemia ha peggiorato le cose”.

Scrisse Murray – capo psicologo dell’OSS durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale e poi professore ad Harvard – nel 1937 su Hitler: “È un uomo insignificante, che mi sembra comportarsi al di là delle sue capacità. È sotto la costante cura di uno psichiatra di Monaco della vecchia scuola.

Sintomi: grave depressione e incubi (insonnia) – probabilmente di persecuzione. Pensare che la pace dell’Europa dipende dal sistema elettrochimico in quel cranio!”

‘Mario Draghi study group’, 2001. Venti anni dopo, sarà un finanziere a scortarci attraverso la pandemia nella matrix digitale e allucinogena? (2022)

Verso una Terza Repubblica cyber-psichedelica?

‘Structures of Capital’: Centre d’étude des problèmes humains, CEPH (2022)

“Coutrot was probably the first French businessman to perceive the possible use of psychology and sociology in business.”

“This was the spirit in which he created the Centre d’Etude des Problèmes Humains, CEPH, in association with the writer Aldous Huxley, the archeologist Robert Francillon, and the economist Georges Guillaume. Hyacinthe Dubreuil, Jean Ullmo, Alfred Sauvy (who coined the expression ‘Third World’), Teilhard de Chardin (a close friend of Coutrot’s), Tchakotine, and others participated in the CEPH meetings, which included eight commissions: economic humanism, applied psychology, rational and humane limitation of inequality, propaganda, industrial decentralization, psychobiology, history and analysis of Marxism.”

“Open to psychology, even psychiatry and sociology, the new managers wanted to take into account the human factor and analyse the motivations buried deep inside managers, at the very heart of the spirit of capitalism.”

“Social psychology techniques, and industrial psychology imported from the U.S. Thus, a mixed discourse can be seen to be forming in which the words and expressions borrowed from the spiritualist and personalist vocabulary (community, person, man, liberty, dialogue) are blended with terms used for technical efficiency and psychoanalysis. The switch to human relations and the social sciences by the heirs of Social Catholicism.”

“A new generation of psychosociologists followed the importing of group techniques… Most received, after their university studies, a complementary education in the United States from the “masters” of American social psychology, in particular Carl Rogers.”

Moruzzi: fisiologia della vita vegetativa vs. di relazione (2022)

Con la pandemia 2020 e i cambiamenti seguiti a questa si e’ verificata una generalizzata riduzione della vita di relazione e un’attenzione molto piu’ accentuata per tutto cio’ che riguarda gli aspetti della vita vegetativa, per esempio anche rispetto alle funzioni del nervo vago.

Huxley’s introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (2022)

“Man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul.”

“The evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and provent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man.”

“The invention of the steam engine produced a revolution, not merely in industrial techniques, but also and much more significantly in philosophy. … External circumstances came to be regarded as more important than states of mind about external circumstances, and the end of human life was held to be action, with contemplation as a means to that end.”

“The solution… must be be sought in the domain, not of philosophy, but of psychology.”

“The Gita, where the psychological facts are linked up with general cosmology.”

“It is only to a mind purified from egotism that intuition of the Divine Ground can come.”

“There will never be enduring peace unless and until human beings come to accept a philosophy of life more adequate to the cosmic and psychological facts than the insane idolatries of nationalism and the advertising man’s apocalyptic-faith in Progress towards a mechanized New Jerusalem.”

Charles Reade, the Medico-Psychological Association, and “conspiracy theory” (2021)

“The theory of Dr. Sankey – the President concluded – as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Reade, and the precautionary measure suggested by Dr. Sankey of using a padded waistcoat in recent cases of mania with general paralysis – in which mental condition nearly all these cases under discussion were – seemed to him of practical value.”

“The only wonder is that in public asylums – Dr. Tuke added – considering the savage nature of some of the half-educated victims of mental disease, and the liberty which the non-restraint system allows them, accidents do not more frequently happen; that within the last few years several superintendents, and many attendants, have been seriously hurt, would show there are two sides to this question. The fact is that in the refractory wards of our public asylums the attendants, too few in number, carry their lives in their hands. The remedy is to increase their number, and add to the surveillance over them.”

Lady Ida Darwin and the ‘Cambridge Association for the Care of the Feeble-Minded’ (2021)

“In 1912 the Association, jointly with Cambridge University Eugenics Society, held a meeting in the Guildhall, where Ellen Pinsent read a paper on ‘Mental Defect and its Social Dangers’.”

“Since its formation in 1914 the Central Association for Mental Welfare has on numerous occasion drawn public attention to the social problem presented by mental deficiency and to the grave consequences and serious cost entailed by the presence of mental defectives in the community.”

‘Russian Psychiatry – Its Historical and Ideological Background’, Zilboorg 1942 (2021)

“Alcoholism in Tsarist Russia was as typical and chronic a disease as was Tsardom itself.”

“Since the Soviet Revolution, psychiatry has become a branch of public health when it is not a field of laboratory research. What is known here as “mental hygiene” has become the chief field of Russian psychiatric endeavor.”

“The whole working population is brought into the orbit of psychological supervision and educational efforts.”

“A system for ‘the protection of neuropsychic health.’ Sanatoria for borderline cases and for neuroses have been organized.”

“Social hygiene and prophylaxis are the guiding principles.”