Psychiatry and Society

In this section of Lee’s site, you can access:

• Lee’s books on psychiatry.
• Articles written by Lee.
• Lee’s contributions to legal briefs.

The documents housed on this site are divided into three categories. These are:

• Work,
• Home and
• Soul.

With respect to his work, Lee wrote in a note to Falcon:

“From the beginning, as early as medical school, I understood that psychiatry and medicine did not belong together. It was not difficult to see, given the fact that I was being trained as a physician at the same time as being exposed to psychiatry.

In the former, diagnosis was central and that meant finding the cause of the patient’s distress. The process required skills of many kinds, from the taking of a good history to the careful weighing of laboratory data and findings gleaned from physical examination. From pediatrics to geriatrics, it was obvious that medical doctors were scientists.

Psychiatry, on the other hand, claimed to focus on health with problems related to behavior and emotion. However, all one had to do to understand that there was no science involved in psychiatry was to listen to a ‘diagnostic conference’ between a psychiatrist and a psychiatric patient. Everybody had his or her opinion, and of course the most senior psychiatrist was right. The parallels with religion were obvious.

Add to that the fact that psychiatry was not respected by other doctors, and the reason was obvious. Everybody knew that psychiatry was different, but that didn’t have to mean that a wise doctor couldn’t help a patient. It wasn’t until I got out into the real world of seeing patients, sometimes against their will in the 1970’s, that I realized that I would have to make a complete break from accepted psychiatric practice. No drugs, no shock, no force — it was a matter of civil rights and a recognition that you can’t help people unless they remain in charge of their life.

That complete break with ‘the mental health system’ led, of course to the disdain of my colleagues, and my hobbies. All my hobbies, including furniture making, listening to jazz ardently, collecting of indigenous craft items, was my response to the isolation that resulted. Those lonely days are now gratefully behind me, and my heart is gladly given to educating the public on the dire threat that psychiatry now represents.”

“I’m pleased that you found your way to my Collection, but far more important than the objects displayed are the feelings that drove me to make or acquire them. For that you must understand my work as a psychiatrist. My refusal to believe that emotional problems could be “diagnosed” and “treated” by drugs; my belief that forced treatment would drive away the very people most in need of help; the heartbreak, injustice and outright fraud that comes with “forensic” psychiatry— the false claim that psychiatry can unlock the true meaning of human behavior and actions – those are the things that lie behind the objects in my Collection.

Please click on the video before you, as I introduce “Psychiatry and Society,” a series of Youtube posts aimed primarily at the general public. I hope with these videos to add my weight to a growing movement that helps the general public understand the harms being perpetrated by our current “mental health system,” in collaboration with Government and Big Pharma. I also want to help you understand how our society’s readiness to turn to Psychiatry in the courts brings injustice and pseudoscience.

Then, I hope you keep coming back to the Collection and enjoy the objects displayed. I truly believe, and hope you will consider the possibility, that both the objects themselves and the stories connected with them, contain a message that will inspire you to pursue your interests with passion and confidence.

You may have arrived here just looking for fun, but I want you as a student. We have a lot of work to do.