Neurosis has been necessary for nation-state consensus (Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari). As technology-based trust systems replace "human-based trust systems", neurosis becomes obsolete. Will future humans view neurosis and statism as a mental illness ?

Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Ljung, et al, put forth the hypothesis that neurotic people exerted a force on other people which led those other people to develop mental illnesses. Are we diagnosing and treating the wrong people ?

In one of his recent blog-posts, Sterlin Lujan puts forth the idea of "psychiatric immunity" and a "consensus delusion", forming conditions in which neurosis goes untreated. I've envisioned a #NewPsychiatry as a force to counter this disease in society.

I have argued that the "old psychiatry" forms an environment where neurosis thrives, which is not only a pseudo-scientific practice but also corrupt.

Psychiatry - The intersection between law and psychology

Psychiatry could be defined as the intersection between law and psychology. That is the role it has filled, it has tried to look at humans as part of a system. Psychiatry has been detrimental to those who fell victims to it, much like those who fell victims to healthcare in the 19th century and practices such as bloodletting etc, but as a phenomena it has still attempted to be its own niche with its own perspective, namely how legal systems and human brains interact, and how humans when ruled by law exert behaviors that do not originate from themselves.

As those working in psychiatry are themselves people, with psychological biases, the field has failed to reach its full potential, and is in its development where medicine was in the 19th century.

With the advent of the internet, a decentralization of communication, and the beginnings of a decentralized legal system, there is a niche for a broader and more general view of human behavior. The research by Hoyle Leigh, later publicized by The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, provides a foundation for a broader definition of things like mental illness, etc, what I've referred to as a "governance 2.0 definition of mental illness." (1)

For a broad overview of psychiatry as the intersection of law and psychology, see Law, Memes and Mental Illness: Towards a new Psychiatry

The New Psychiatry as a Force against Cognitive Biases

The role of ideologies and movements like libertarianism has been to apply a force against the self-reinforcing nature of centralization. In The Importance of Selfishness, The Dangers of Altruism, Max Moore argued that

If people look after their rational self-interest, rely on their own judgment and not on any ‘higher’ authority, if they are honest, self-reliant, and proud, statism cannot take hold.

The #NewPsychiatry achieves this same force through the use of science, modeled on the same form of non-ideological authority that came with Darwin's theory of evolution, or scientific reformations in general. From the perspective of individual mental health, self-determination is put forth as the best possible treatment.

The new psychiatry is a code of ethic for treating the fight and flight symptoms that we call mental illness. The model defines mental illness as obedience to coercion, and follows up with that the only possible treatment for obedience is self-determination.

Fighting coercion can have two outcomes: Either the subject wins and conquers the system, or they internalize why they must force themselves to accept the coercion. Both outcomes increase longevity compared to passive obedience.

The New Psychiatry further puts forth that "old psychiatry" has been corrupt and biased, recommending treatments that where effectively pathological, and that this originated from cognitive biases in those who gave authority to "old psychiatry".

“Before Pasteur popularized the notion that bacteria cause disease, healthcare was effectively a disease vector, and we will come to look at centralized legal systems as vectors for what we have called diseases of the mind. “

Genes, Memes, Culture and Mental Illness: Towards an Integrative Model

I deeply recommend Genes, Memes, Culture and Mental Illness: Towards an Integrative Model (The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2011)

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry presented Seeth Vivek, MD, feelings for Hoyle Leigh's work, calling it a "must-read for those fascinated by novel models in mental health".

"The interface of biology, evolution, and culture is exciting. Dr Leigh’s book is a must-read for those who are fascinated by novel models in mental health.

In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to denote bits of information that replicate themselves. These bits of information include the “percepts” created by the interaction of the brain and outside sources of information such as books and digital materials. The author makes a case for understanding mental illness in the context of memes going awry. "

The monomyth and how foreign ideas enter a meme pool

Genes, Memes, Culture and Mental Illness gives a broad overview of how new ideas are evaluated. The initial response for peers within a meme-pool is an emotional response that co-opts genetic imperatives like sex and dominance, filtering the foreign idea through the contents of the association cortices and limbic structures which contain resident memes.

This evaluative process is highly resilient against foreign ideas, as it co-opts the limbic system and genetic imperatives. Galileo, Darwin, and knowledge as a process, were met with what could be viewed as an cultural immune response, which is rooted in the resilience of historical memories, Jung's "collective unconsciousness" (Genes, Memes, Culture and Mental Illness, pg 133).

Childhood assimilates memes from the meme pool called society almost automatically, without undergoing the filtration process for new memes that comes with age, and form the basis of a priori prejudice or predispositions that we call cultural traits. Tradition as a signal-control system is echoed in Des Cartes work to empirically disprove the validity of blind empiricist reasoning, what Genes, Memes, Culture and Mental Illness explains with a lack of evaluative processes for historical memories.

How an idea views "first they laugh, then they fight you, and then you win"

In general with new ideas, the foreign meme is incompatible, so first they laugh and filter out the meme through their resident memetic store. This evaluative process of the brain that includes the executive function of the frontal lobe is the process of meme manipulation — making the incoming stimuli interact with existing memes and genetic imperatives including emotion.

If the new idea forces its way through that first barrier, then they fight and try and destroy the source of the meme, exposing themselves and upping their own risk of failure in the process.

If that fails, then they eventually succumb to it. The fight response has diminished the number of hippocampal neurons and causes attenuation of the hippocampal dendritic connections resulting in a disconnection of long-term memory (resident memetic store that may attenuate the stress response), which are favorable circumstances for invasion of a new idea.

Further reading:

What we call mental illness is coerced contractual agreements - ieet.org

New Psychiatry: From Centralization to Security to Decentralization as Security - Backfeeed.cc

Law, Memes and Mental Illness: Towards Ideation Without Coercion - Reset.me