By Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic,
Labelled D.D.(P) in 11 cost effective minutes 

Next stop: Questioning Normality 

Is it ALWAYS the family that is to blame? No. Of course not.

It is never “always” anybody. The words used to describe this in absolute terms are part of the problem. That is metaphysical and is apart from concrete details and we cannot find the truth for ALL in one metaphysical reality. The idea is stupid not matter who is promoting it. It is stupid when cults do it, when religions do it and when psychiatrists do it in the DSM, a book of metaphysical 'magic' if ever there was one. We are not the same PERSON on the physical level. We have similarities, sure, but to believe that you can identify a one size fits all reality for all people, which can be defined and identified in ten to fifteen cost effective minutes is STUPID. Why don't you KNOW it's stupid? 

So no, it is not 'always' the family that is to blame but it is just as stupid to believe that it is NEVER the family that is to blame. It is also not “always” every member of the family that is to blame, or every member of any other dysfunctional group.  But is IS some of them, to various degrees, depending upon the specific situation.

Life cannot be defined as an abstraction in absolute terms despite anyone's desire to be able to do so. Really solving problems is not going to be done in ten to fifteen minute cost effective sessions with a psychiatrist who has his eyes rolled back in his head checking his programming for a match to the words uttered by the one who sits before him in distress. Believing it will be is delusional and will end up costing all of us much, much more than it would have if we had just spent more time really and truly RESOLVING dysfunctional relating in the first place, and doing so without needing to bury our heads to avoid seeing things we do not like.

Do you not think that there is great ironic  metaphysical weirdness in the fact that the people you call crazy are “seeing things” you cannot even come close to seeing, and “hearing voices” that you desperately want to silence. THINK about that as the supposedly 'sane' ones. Seriously.  Just for the sake of a learning experience, “pretend” that you don't already know everything.

Let's look at another idea shall we?

It may be one member of the family, or perhaps two of them and the rest are being kept in the dark about something. It may also be someone OUTSIDE the family who starts the reality reversal. However, if the individual who complains about the abuse of another, or about group abuse, is not believed and then a psychiatrist labels that one defective, it is most often true that the family, even the innocent ones, along with everyone else who gets involved, will accept the definition, no questions asked. Human beings like to believe that 'authority' figures understand everything. It makes them feel safer and less confused about things they really don't understand themselves. So they grab at the opportunity to have things explained away.

It is just as often well meaning groups, as blatantly abusive groups, which pressure the labelled individuals to accept their containment labels and their fate.

Imagine what it must FEEL like to have everyone you know turn against you for telling the truth about your experience that is not accepted as real.  Once that happens there is virtually no way out and the life you knew, as the person you know YOURSELF to be,  is over. Even your own personal identity has been taken over by other people who now TELL you who you are, and what you may think, say, do, know and feel, which will be considered to be legitimate IF they approve. Anything outside their definition of you will now be considered “illness” and “symptoms.”   

This is why SOME patients say of their controllers and abusers, “they want me dead.” They MEAN the controllers want to “kill” their personal identity and remake them as someone else..someone they are NOT; someone who will validate the perceptions and needs of the other so that those others will not have to know they are wrong about anything and so they can keep themselves convinced as individuals, and as a society, that they are absolutely blameless.

You see when we all think in absolute abstractions we get very predictable absolute effects. 

If only the identified patient is inherently defective, and in need of containment “like a disease process” then no one else has to be defective at all. That way, dysfunctional relating is not dysfunctional and does not need to be changed. It can be 'normal' and as we often hear, “just the way life is, and we all have to accept it.” 

WHY?  

WHY do we have to accept it? WHY don't we change it and make life better for ALL of us and not just SOME of us at the expense of some others?