"Sometimes, the only way to comprehend the extent of a deception is to be first thoroughly deceived and then slowly disillusioned."
(John Friedberg, M.D. 1976, p. 4).An Open LetterDate : 16 April 2008
To : Kitty Dukakis
From : me (W. Paul Tabaka)
Re : electroshock treatment, or, EST, eventually renamed ECT.Dear Sir,
Please find someone who can read to examine the "scientific" texts by Fink, Abrams etc. ; also by Cerletti, Bini, Kalinowsky, etc.
I, for one, cannot but have most severe doubts about the impact of you misleading text on the subject.
"Who is fooling whom" had been the title of this page, from the outset. I am in no mood to pry into every such detail.
The stated theses of your text cannot serve well any parties concerned, possibly not even those who try to delude themselves with such ideas as this one hoax being capable of being continued indefinitely long.
During the time somebody is trying to perpetuate bunk science (pretended as "medicine") somebody else is working on some other evil designs.
What might blow up, where and when are wild variables ; anything off track can only increase the danger to humanity and to any person in particular.
If your text had been published in error (which I contend it had), then any other problem anywhere else was aggravated thereby, by way of some people having been distracted.
Combine this with other, numerous, excesses of "science", and the stage may be set for some new developments in certain traditions of the 20th century — of the sorts so many people say they would rather never see again.
None of those had to happen ; any of those had happened because of some error somewhere ; which I am proposing should not multiply.Sincerely,
W. Paul Tabaka
Los Angeles, Calfornia, USA.
[rev. 19 Apr 08, etc.]
Some Notes
(Note : these notes have been made from a text I found on-line in February 2008 presented as part of "Google Books" project. Some notes further on had been made from a copy found in the library."There is no treatment in psychiatry more frightening, etc.". So begins the text by Kitty Dukakis and another writer — as I found it on-line.
Does not that make you a trifle uneasy, the reader ?
Before anyone get depression some facts of life could very well be considered.
So far, am only getting uneasy, when I read, a few lines later : "There is also no treatment in psychiatry more effective than ECT".
No mention of its being safe. Hum. (In the meanwhile I had got used to it).
I am merely uneasy : effective it might be — but to what effect ?
This treatment has been already studied for half a century at the least. Had these studies been scientific indeed, there should have been no doubts by now on certain questions concerning it. The most recent literature on the subject ("scientific") had better been examined by some scientists who are ones not in name only.
So far, there has been a relatively small coterie of psychiatrists who would insist on this sort of treatment ; who had not yet proved anything irrefutable nor did they convince the majority of the profession. Have you ever heard of any such discrepancies within the more exact branches of medicine ?
As a common sense observation, being treated with high-voltage electricity searing through one's brain is something one would normally rather do without.
On the other hand, would anyone who is himself sane really want to rip through somebody's brain — solely because some others had done so ?
(May some non-corrupt medical doctors come out from some closet somewhere ? May some scientists take some interest in this allegedly "scientific" matter ? )
Back in the text I find, further, "on whether ECT can help them [the patients] battle depression, etc". 'Depression' was an illness alleged to have been suffered by one of the writers of this book.
I have not the least doubt that someone could feel bad from time to time, with the strains of the career and of the politics (as I vaguely know the story).
(Though I do not see how can one 'battle' 'depression' ; one battles the problems in or of life ; this might lead to depression if the battle gets lost too often, but the battle had better been against something real and not against somebody's "diagnosis".)
I further read about the "dramatic yet subterranean comeback" of this therapy. This looks intriguing : this subterranean comeback, so stated in the plainest words, and I suspect there may have been some reason for this particular expression. Could it be that something had been, inadvertently, given away ?
I read further : "Money .. buys the insurance that pays for ECT". This does begin to connect. Especially : "Today there is an opposite, troubling concern: that the poor are denied ECT".
Unfortunately, this is not defensible, the authors. The poor are being denied one of the most murderous inventions ever made by man -- is that troubling somebody ?
Use your common sense the reader and consult other, somewhat numerous witnesses and authors on this subject.
Does not somebody's crocodile tears about the poor not being suppressed even more by something smack of some totalitarian designs ?
I am not at all inclined to minding the case of Kitty Dukakis ; I would rather not do so were it not that the case has been already made public anyway. A Family Misled by the Quacks
So far as I know, a brother [in-law?] of Ms. Dukakis had been treated with this electroshock.
Does not that suffice to make someone depressed ? The mystery of this all : somebody being hit with high-voltage electric current is supposed to be cured ? nay, of some mysterious illness ? [see "More notes, copy to hand" below].
Further on : I gather that Ms. Dukakis would go, at times, through bouts of drinking and depression.
It has been some years since I for one had been drinking anything at all ; as I recall the college years and some few other times, it can be with 100% exact scientific accuracy reported that any instance of drinking above a certain quantity (this might vary with the individual) would be invariably followed by a period of personal discomfort (this is usually called "hangover" in the English, so far as I know).
Is that depression : Whatever term you place on that, it usually goes away within a day, two at the most. But this should not be confused with any clinical 'illness', which it seems may have occurred in this case considered. (This part is one on some guess-work side ; some other parts of this article are not.)
WPT, Apr 2008
More Notes, Copy to Hand.
Page 3 : A brother of Ms. Kitty's husband "in 1951 .. was a junior .. at Bates, and doing very well academically. .. He hadn't done a lot of dating but had feelings for a gal who was a a senior at Lewiston High at the time, an attractive and fun person. .. He was on his way back to Bates from a student government conference at Brown just after this girl broke things off with him. He was crushed." etc.
"He had no sign ever of any mental illness" — (I omitted that from the above because it looks out of sequence. "He was on his way back" etc. also looks out of sequence).
He had no sign ever of any mental illness, anyway. "He was crushed" after a girl broke with him — that looks neither unusual nor new.
A family member, "a doctor, sent him to see a psychiatrist. Shortly after" he "tossed a pile of sleeping pills in his mouth, attempting to end his life or at least blot things out" [?] The family member "and the psychiatrist decided he had to be hospitalized, at a facility not far from Boston called Baldpate. They gave him ECT along witn insulin" etc.
So far as I know (do your own surveys, the reader) — any people crushed because of a girl who were not "sent .. to see a psychiatrist" had usually recovered ; some other girl would often be found.
This one family member however, after the treatments (as above) "was never really the same person. He put on weight, which was not like him, and there [p. 4] wasn't much affect [?] there. There wasn't much communication. He had a zombielike look" etc.
This does resemble a true story of someone what had received the treatment — (which this text promotes).
I cannot pretent to try fully to make sense of this wild jumble of illogics. One of the authors is being thereby reported to have somehow benefited from this treatment. I wonder, was she maybe given an anesthesia and no treatment (shock) at all ?
I have no way of knowing, but anything could be expected on this one market : if you do not believe me find it out on your own, the reader — and better before you get any treatments.
(Do not try too hard, to find out — because that is one reason people do get sick of this "medicine". Just find them out — at such a pace as would not bring too severe a strain on your wits).
I have seen some reported statements by some, few, persons who had received this treatment and who were speaking in favor of it — or, who had said they had received it, the facts of the matter being otherwise unknown.
Just find out, the reader ; just find it out on your own — if this had happened to intrude upon your interests.
WPT., Apr-May 08
Dukakis, Kitty. Title(s) Shock : the healing power of electroconvulsive therapy / Kitty Dukakis and Larry Tye. Publisher New York, N.Y. : Avery, c2006. Paging xiii, 289 p. ; 24 cm. Notes Includes bibliographical references and index.
Title(s) Shock treatment is not good for your brain / John Friedberg. Publisher [San Francisco] : Glide Publications, c1976. Paging viii, 176 p. ; 23 cm. Notes Includes bibliographical references.