"You're Politically Crazy!"

Jim West has a post that says Ann Coulter should be in an insane asylum. I'm sure he's just kidding (right Jim?), but the post reminded me of an issue I've encountered in right-wing and left-wing political literature: the fear that people will be institutionalized for their political beliefs.

1964 was the year of Barry Goldwater's candidacy, and a number of right-wing books emerged that encouraged Republicans to select the conservative Goldwater as their nominee. One such book was John Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason, which attempted to document Communist infiltration in various aspects of American society. I'm not sure if I agree with many of Stormer's conclusions, but he asked good questions, and I also admire his extensive documentation.

There was a chapter in Stormer's book entitled "Mental Health," which included quotations from prominent psychiatrists. One was Dr. G. Brock Chisholm, who was head of the World Federation of Mental Health and the World Health Organization. Stormer presented quotations in which Chisholm criticized morality, believing parents and teachers, and defending one's wealth from those in need. In these criticisms, Chisholm used psychological terms like "neurotic." He also called upon psychiatrists to support world citizenship and the redistribution of material wealth, and he raised the issue of compulsory treatment for neurosis. Other influential figures Stormer quoted were Harry and Bonaro Overstreet, who served as consultants to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. The Overstreets discussed a neurosis called "rigidity," which could manifest itself in angry opposition to "public housing, the TVA, financial and technical aid to backward countries, organized labor, and the preaching of social rather than salvational religion." The Overstreets said that people with such characteristics were "well along the road toward mental illness."

What Stormer probably envisioned was a leftist government capturing American society and immediately institutionalizing its opponents. Some may call him paranoid, and yet he was right to ask if psychiatry could ever be forged as a political weapon. And he presented examples in which it was. For example, right-wing General Edwin Walker (the guy Oswald tried to shoot before he went after Kennedy) was confined to psychiatric examination after a political demonstration. Sure, he was released, but what kind of precedent is set when having abnormal political persuasions makes one "mentally ill"?

And the issue lives on. Type in "Bill Frist AND political paranoia" on Google, and you will see articles from the far right and the far left that express concern. According to these articles, Bill Frist as Republican Senate Majority Leader filed a bill that classified "political paranoia" as a mental disorder. This "disorder" includes anxiety, depression, and paranoia about political issues. Naturally, paleoconservatives, hard-core leftists, and Ron Paulites wonder just what that means. Does it include anger about the 2000 election, or obsessive opposition to the Iraq War, or a belief that Americans are not getting the whole truth about 9/11? How far does one have to go before he is labelled "politically paranoid"?

I'm not exactly as scared as Stormer and the authors of these articles, who act as if political dissidents will be institutionalized tomorrow (or, in Stormer's case, yesterday, since he wrote in 1964). But I wonder what kind of slippery slope we're on when a form of political ideology or activism is labelled a "mental illness."