I would like to begin by thanking the Russell Foundation and Dr. Bauer and Mr. Talbot and the other organizers for puting on this very important event and I would like to greet the participants and the audience for participating and being here. 

Now, let me make a few preliminary comments about language, which is very important. I will usually or sometimes use the word "we" (plural) or the word "I". I am really speaking for myself and to the extent to which many other people who agree with me and share this point of view, to that extent I am speaking in the plural.

Words are very important in this business which we are considering today. Because in some way, war against humans begins with a war with words and I might call your attention to the placard, to the announcement that you see in front of you: "The Fifth International Russell Tribunal on Human Rights in Psychiatry, Berlin". This is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction: there are no human rights in psychiatry. Psychiatry is about "human wrongs". Now to make this point simple and obvious: Can you imagine a meeting on human rights in dermatology, on human rights in imunology, in cardiology, in gastro-interology? So obviously, psychiatry is a medical specialty, whose is to do dirt to people. Now, how does it do dirt to people? Well it's very simple again. There are two aspects of human dignity that we all treasure and they are really two aspects of the same coin. One is liberty. Psychiatrists specialize in taking away people's liberty. This is called in jargon "hospitalization". But if you are locked up in a building, it doesn't matter if it is the Adlon Hotel, then you are a prisoner. 

So how good or bad the building is, is very important! Because it is better to be in the Adlon than some horrible prison in Turkey or in Bangladesh. But if you can't get out, you are in prison and I think that if they forget that, they have lost the battle. Psychiatry should have no more right to lock up people that dermatologists too, or professors in English. The other way in which psychiatrists deprive people of humanity is by saying that they are not responsible. You think of responsibility usually as a burden. But actually, responsibility is a right – you are responsible, in that you decide for being in this hall. If you don't like being here, you get up and leave. Now how do psychiatrists do this? By declaring individuals not responsible for their crimes for which they would like to be responsible. And then locking them up and saying: "We are not punishing you, we are treating you". Professor Alexander will greatly expand on this. 

How can doctors or lawyers or policemen do these terrible things to human beings? Here again the answer is contained in one very important word – an english word, probably; a german equivalent exists. And that is that the interference, the act has to be legitimate. Legitimate means: has to be right; has to seem right to the people who are doing it and to the people to whom its done very often and certainly to the public. The original legitimator of doing wrong to people is of course – forgive me for saying this – is God. Religion is the instrument by which people have traditionally been persecuted. Reiligion has done a lot of good but it has, to the extent to which it has used power, persecuted people. This is essentially the principle on which freedom of religion in America and separation of church and state is based on. 

The second great institution of legitimation is of course the law. The law is a system of rhetoric, explanation and so forth, which tells the world that it is wrong to steal, it is not wrong to use your own property and sell it, of course. And in this sense the law legitimizes involontary psychiatry and the insanity defense and all the other wrongs which are inherent in psychiatry. I object to the terminology of psychiatric abuses. Psychiatry is an abuse - per se, to the extent to which it utilizes power. Psychiatrists as doctors need no more power than cardiologists. 

Which is a third grade instrument of legitimation, especially in our age? Professor Narr has already referred to it and you are all familiar with this wonderful letter - which is really a gem – from Professor Häuser, which says that we are damaging science. But who speaks for science? Then it uses power. Well, it wasn't so many years ago that Albert Einsteins books were burned in this city. Obviously that was not good science! That was not long ago! They can't burn our meeting anymore but they can throw it out, they can not cover it in the press, they can "totschweigen" it. And that is exactly what they do! 

So what is the force instrument of legitimation and de-legitimation – obviously if you have power to legitimate, you have power to de-legitimate. And that's the media. The media – I don't want to place too much blame, because everyone has to make a living – and the media are essentially whores, they are prostitutes. But that is an honorable profession: you give a service and you get money for it. The media live on advertising and mental patients can't advertise but pharmaceutical companies can advertise. Psychiatrists in a way – indirectly – can advertise, they can benefit from the media. So can you imagine when all of these forces: God, law, science, the media and the state all agree that there is such a thing as mental illness and that psychiatrists help to diagnose and treat it. 

Well that is quite a task to take on this combination of forces. This is one of the most massive constellations, of combinations of untruths, of falsehood in the .............. of mankind – similar to previous falsehoods usually connected with religion, sometimes with science exemplified by the argument about helio-centric and geo-centric universe, an explanation of the cosmos: does the earth revolve around the sun or vica versa. That was a nice example of a fight about an "untrue truth". What we have in psychiatry is "untrue truth". Which brings us to the analogy between psychiatry as I see it and heresy and religion. Essentially, our point of view is heresy. So naturally, if we want to present our point of view in the Vatican, that the Pope is not the delegate of God and so forth, like Luther - again the German analagy – wanted to ........... what happens. But Luther was smart enough not to accept the Pope's generous invitation to come to Rome to be .......... and congratulated. So he escaped being burned at the stake. Like ......... and all the other protestants that they could get hold of. 

Protestantism is now an accepted religion. It was then a "protest" against catholicism in its abuse of power, not in its moral code. I have no objection personally to psychiatry between consenting adults. Psychiatrists say that they are doctors. And they are indeed doctors: they go to medical school, they have an internership, they are licensed by the state. They are doctors! All that I am asking for, is that they behave exactly like other doctors and that is: not be able to do anything to any person called a "patient" without the patient's consent. And the most important right a patient has, is to say: "Doctor, thank you very much, you go to hell!". 

It is very dangerous to talk about the right to treatment, the right to services and so on, because the minute you start to do that, you are going down a slippery slope. Now people do need help. It is not my purpose in this presentation to speak about the problem that is called "mental illness". Suffice it to say at this point, that what we call "mental illness" is human manifestations of the turmoil, the vicissitudes, the tragedy of life. Life, as I like to say – as I used to tell my children – life is no picnic. Don't expect it to be a picnic, it is a struggle, at the end of which you die. 

Now let's get back to issues of liberty and responsibility and the laws and deprivation. Because, after all, typically when liberty is lost and when responsibility is lost, it is not lost passively. This is very important – when a person gets a polio-myalitis – let's say - or a stroke, he uses his ability to move his limbs but he doesn't lose any political liberty, he is no less free. He cannot walk out of the room, but he is politically free. Now, to confuse these two things is fatal, so that liberty and responsibility are taken away from people. To whit: psychiatrists, lawyers, judges as representatives of the state – only the state can do this. All of them act as representatives of the state. 

Again, to emphasize the obscenity of Professor Haeuser's letter – this is obscene, no other word is right – these are not medical matters. Whether or not psychiatry is making great progress, is a legitimate question. I personally think that it is going backwards. But they can call it progress. But regardless whethere it is making progress or not, liberty and responsibility are not medical matters – doctors know no more about liberty and responsibility than do ordinary people, not to mention theologians or philosophers.

What then, is the problem before us? Again it can be summed up in one word: the medicalization of life. In particular, the medicalization of so-called "bad behavior", whatever that might mean. You see, people have no interest in medicalizing "good behavior". People have no interest in saying that Prof. Haeuser's letter is good to mental illness or is anti-anything. But they are quite ready to say that our point of view is crazy... and deviant. This is the question of who has the majority view, who has the power? Then they call it some medical term. Human problems are human problems. Typically problems in the family, economic problems, problems between the individual and the state such as criminality.

Modern societies have developed various formal and informal criminal ways of dealing with these things. What we have ....... is a complete separation of psychiatry and the state, on the analogy of the separation of church and the state in America. If psychiatry were deprived of any state support, it would, for all practical purposes dissapear without anything else having to be done. Because there is no way for a psychiatrist to get hold of a patient who doesn't want to be a patient. And if someone wants to be a psychiatric patient, that should be his/her right, just as much it should be his/her right to go to church or a synagogue or doesn't want to go to church or a synagogue or anywhere else. 

I think I can summarize now by repeating what I said at the beginning: I demand that psychiatrists act like other doctors. They claim to be doctors – let them act like other doctors. You may have noticed just by living your life, that other doctors are not too eager to claim having power over patients. Many medical doctors can a great deal of good for patients. Take the example of a patient with diabetes. Doctors and indoctonologists (?), specialists in diabetes treat diabetics. A patient goes to a doctor, is diagnosed and is told to take insulin. He has a right to stay at home and either not take any insulin and kill himself that way or to take so much insulin that he will die very quickly of insulin shock. This is not considered to be a problem for a doctor who treats diabetes. It is considered to be a problem for the patient. He has been told what to do and now does whatever he wants to do. The same thing could be repeated ad infinitum. ............, hypertension, arthritis, brain tumor, you name it, any specialty. The doctor's responsiblity is to help the patient by giving him proper medical opinion, diagnosis and treatment with the consent of the patient. 

In America and I suppose in Germany – I don't know if this is the case here – but in America when you go to a hospital, before you see anybody – assuming you are not in shock, an emergency case – before you see a doctor or nurse or anyone else, you are ushered into an office and are given twenty forms to sign. They are all legal documents, they are legal documents which empower doctors to take x-rays, to take blood from you, to make diagnoses, to do all kinds of diagnostic and therapeutic things and to notify your insurance company of your diagnosis and so on and so forth. These are the first steps. 

Now the first steps in comparison in psychiatry is that you sit at home and the police show up and they hand-cuff you and say you are dangerous to yourself or others. Your wife has called and said you might kill yourself and they better take you to the hospital and you have lost all your rights. Not only have you lost all your rights, but anyone who wants to help you has lost all his rights. Because, supposing you know a lawyer who is friendly with you. And you call him up and say: "I'm in a mental hospital. Get me out!". In 9 cases out of 10 this lawyer will say that this is very difficult, why don't you just co-operate with the doctors and they will probably let you out tommorrow. Now, if you call a psychiatrist, and say: "Let me out!", the psychiatrist will say: "Leave me alone!". Now, if you get a psychiatrist who is like one of us, some of us here, and you go and try to help this patient, what happens is that your testimony is considered to be essentially as crazy as that of the patient's symptoms. Because the court has decided that the psychiatrists who say that the patient is crazy, is a scientific psychiatrist. 

So this step of taking the person and transforming him from an american citizen, let's say – or german citizen – into the patient is the crucial step and I think it is fair to analagize that step in this place – and I apologize for this kind of... (I don't want to overwork this) – but it is very similar to transforming a german citizen with an iron cross, who only speaks German, his grand-parents were German and who is a proud Prussian and saying: "You are no longer a German, you are a Jew, you are a vermin!". And then everything follows from that.

Thank you very much