Psychotherapy, Soviet-Style
Quist, Terry
called into question. This is why it is not surprising to find that one of the Philadelphia 11, Betty Bone Schiess, was so determined to be licensed as a priest that she filed civil suit against...
...Soviet psychiatric inquisitors sighed relief and resumed the torment of dissidents...
...An old dear crosses herself, goes out and carries on with her own affairs, having forgotten about God already...
...as such it produces exaggerated muscle tremors, violent convulsions, and elevated body temperatures...
...Gennady Shimanov ignored a summons for psychiatric examination for several months...
...Shimanov had engaged in no dissident political activities...
...Reserpine has the frightful effect of destroying the cells which support the brain cells, so that portions of the brain collapse...
...publicity of an arrest in Moscow, authorities detained Grigorenko in 1969 while he was testifying in Tashkent for the rights of Crimean Tatar leaders...
...he suffers from a schizophrenic dissolution of his Soviet personality...
...post mortem examinations on reserpine victims reveal damage similar to cerebral atrophy...
...eventually, he is examined by a commission of at least three psychiatrists who may declare him nonaccountable for his actions and commit him to a regular mental hospital or a special psychiatric prison...
...How can we catch this schizophrenic?' " At the examination, Haslayeva, the hospital's deputy medical director, remarked to Shimanov: If you had grown up in a religious family or had lived somewhere in the West, well, then we could have looked at your religiousness in another way...
...Starchik could not be present because he was languishing in a psychiatric prison, his mind numbed by drugs...
...His brooding presence follows the reader of the samizdat through the psychiatric examinations of several of the most noted victims of psychiatric incarceration--Natalia Gorbanevskaya and Ivan Yakhimovich as well as Grigorenko and Plyushch...
...but inmates in both special and common hospitals are tortured by a gruesome combination of chemicals, beatings, and electroshock...
...The manual by Bukovsky and Gluzman advises psychiatric detainees how to avoid incarceration and how to encourage the earliest release when confined in a psychiatric prison...
...in 1969 he joined the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the Soviet Union...
...4. SSIS-2, p. 20...
...the dissident may be committed to a mental hospital at the discretion of the psychiatrist...
...My answers did not please the doctor," said Shimanov...
...2) 8 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977 Shimanov was threatened with psychiatric treatment, and the painful effects of the prescribed drugs were described to him...
...has been blessed with a President twice-born...
...Hereafter SSIS-I...
...Triftazin is a toxic derivative of the Western drug stelazine...
...Incorrigibles are bound tightly with wet sheets, and the sheets are allowed to dry, crushing the patients with enormous pressure...
...2. "Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Repression in the Soviet Union," Volume I, Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, 1972, pp...
...6) One psychiatric prisoner was told he wouldn't be released until the "Second Communism...
...The KGB may decide that the arrest of a dissident on criminal charges is inexpedient for some reason (for instance, insufficient criminal evidence...
...As if the courts could decide what people must believe...
...Beatings are common in the psychiatric prisons because ordinary criminals are employed as orderlies and male nurses...
...On the beds patients were writhing from haloperidol...
...Following his release, he was warned that continued songwriting would betray a relapse of madness...
...Last October about forty people crowded into the small apartment of dissident songwriter Pyotr Starchik to sing his songs and listen to his voice on tape...
...A Soviet psychiatrist who defected to the West reported that Lunts once told a group of his colleagues at the Serbsky Institute: "If I want to call an ashtray a schizophrenic, I'll call it a schizophrenic...
...he'd better leave off "religious propaganda" and save his skin...
...The patients immediately explained to political prisoners that they shouldn't complain here...
...The horror of"psikhushki" [the mad house] gripped me from the start...
...Perhaps the most horrible among the instruments of the psychiatric Torquemadas is the assortment of agonizing, mindcrippling chemicals injected into sane psychiatric prisoners as t r e a t m e n t or punishment--most horrible, because the mind and personality are threatened with destruction...
...so Lunts maintains that no social basis for crime exists in the Soviet Union...
...he was sentenced to two years of prison, five of camp, five of exile...
...Grigorenko subsequently gained notoriety by protests on behalf of dissidents such as Andrei Sinyavsky, Yuri Daniel, Alexander Ginzburg, and Anatoly Marchenko...
...Restated: anyone who does not acquiesce in the myth of Soviet bliss and perfection suffers a psychotic separation from Soviet reality...
...He balked, began a hunger strike, and shortly secured his release...
...But concrete estimates of the number of dissidents remaining in these torture chambers range from 1,000 to 8,000 and more...
...although declared non-accountable and committed to a pyschiatric prison for 15 months, he was deprived of his pension...
...This figure includes, according to my latest information, Yuri Belov, Mykola Plakhomiuk, Zinoviy Krasivsky, Vladimir Trifonov, Georgi Paramanov, Pyotr Starchik, and Vyacheslav Igrunov...
...Psychiatric prisoners are never "cured" when they are discharged...
...Lunts asserts in his monograph "The Theory and Practice of Forensic Psychiatric Examination" that all violation of the law demands psychiatric analysis...
...consisting of 1% sulphur in peach oil, it causes extreme fever, inflammation of the joints, severe pain, and some brain damage...
...One readily understands now why Marxists and theists crowd the insane asylums...
...Psychiatrists at Tashkent declared him sane and accountable, but perspicacious physicians at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow rectified the error and bundled him off to Chernyakhovsk psychiatric prison...
...Born in 1939, Plyushch began writing neo-Marxist dissident tracts in 1966...
...One man's tongue was lolling out, another was rolling his eyes, a third walked around unnaturally bent over...
...According to a remarkable underground manual prepared for psychiatric prisoners by Bukovsky and dissident psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, two diagnoses will nearly always be rendered for dissidents: latent or paranoid schizophrenia...
...Perhaps, if the K GB had its druthers, this circle of the Gulag Hell would be harrowed only with the coming of the Marxist eschaton...
...You have cut yourself off from life...
...When I woke up the next morning, I saw two male nurses beating up a patient...
...Norman Hirt, Vancouver psychiatrist and leading North American activist against Soviet psychiatric oppression, has persisted since 1970 in applying pressure to Soviet psychiatry by successfully soliciting condemnation of Soviet psychiatric abuse from Canadian, American, and international psychiatric and medical associations...
...two obtuse pyschiatric hospitals failed to commit him...
...they direct a psychiatrist in an administrative position to detain the dissident for examination...
...But it is quite different with you...
...The Soviets can be moved by international opprobrium...
...rather, claim you did it all for the attention and publicity...
...It is enough to admit, simply, that the proponents of women's ordination are right about one thing--we are entering a new age...
...In late April of 1969, he was finally taken from his work to a clinic, where he was frankly informed: "...inquiries are coming to us from the KGB...
...He may never meet his lawyer, he may be sentenced in absentia, and he may never learn directly the results of the examination (how can he participate in his defense when he's crazy...
...Fearing the Terry Qui.rt is a student in philosophy and classics at the University of Texas, Austin...
...He is both a trained psychiatrist and a colonel in the KGB...
...After all, how do healthy believers behave...
...but witnessing to friends was forbidden, and the KGB didn't give a hang for the Constitution...
...Sulfozin is a favorite for punishment and intimidation...
...Yet it is important to note that many of our churches are of a radically different stance and color than their predecessors of just a generation ago...
...Or a dissident who has been arrested on criminal charges may be incarcerated in a hospital for an indefinite period of observation...
...Daniil Lunts of the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow...
...The contemporary wave of psychiatric repression has generated a plethora of hard evidence in the form of samizdat documents and the testimony of several inmates expelled from the country...
...If you did you were given a reinforced treatment of neuroleptics, injections of sulphur, they prevented you going to the toilet...
...their disease allegedly goes into "remission...
...Of course, some do not have to worry about readmission--those killed by beatings or chemicals...
...After release in 1970, he was arrested once more in March of 1971 for collecting material on psychiatric prisons and transmitting it to the West...
...As they explained to me, they were being punished for bad behavior...
...In 1961 he delivered an antiStalinist speech and commenced anti-Khrushchev and antigovernment fulminations, all from a Marxist perspective...
...Diagnosed later that year by state psychiatrists as afflicted with "sluggish schizophrenia from an early age," Plyushch began the internment at Dnepropetrovsk which ended only Veith his expulsion from the country in January 1976...
...Soviet psychiatrists apply the term "latent schizophrenia" to patients with few and mild symptoms of mental illness (e.g., melancholy, introversion, rigid persistence in opinion...
...And suddenly...wham!...you're religious!...lt's very odd indeed...and makes one wonder if some abnormal processes were not already developing in your youth, which later on brought you to religion...
...Bukovsky was arrested again in December of 1965 for a relapse of"psychotic delusions" in which he planned a demonstration for Sinyavsky and Daniel...
...He edits an unofficial campus monthly, Forum...
...Some lay and groaned with the painIthey had been given injections of sulphur...
...The most terrible and notorious among the special hospitals are Chernyakhovsk, where Grigorenko was treated...
...5. SSIS-1, p. 26...
...otherwise, discard all considerations of pride or moral integrity for the sake of survival...
...He continued association with dissident political and artistic activities until arrested in May of 1963 and confined in the Serbsky Institute...
...The delusions attributed to dissidents may take two forms, according to Bukovsky and Gluzman: reformist delusions, by which the subject believes that something is wrong with Soviet reality which should be corrected in conformity with the subject's notions...
...I was put as the third person on two bunks that had been pushed together...
...You had to admit to the doctors you were ill and renounce your views...
...renounce or recant any dissident sentiments...
...After vigorous Western protest, Grigorenko was released in June of 1974, physically broken by his imprisonment...
...Aminazine and haloperidol recur in dissident accounts as the most common components of regular treatment...
...He became a decorated war hero and wrote more than 60 scholarly works on military science...
...General Pyotr Grigorenko, born in 1907, was a Party member at age 20...
...6. Viktor Feinberg, SSIS-2, p. 100...
...With cold and cynical logic, Lunts deduces his inclusive definition of insanity from official Soviet ideology...
...213-4...
...George Gallup has recently pointed to a resurgence of religious conviction in America and, as everyone knows, the U.S...
...In December he was transferred to a psychiatric prison in Leningrad, from which he was released after 15 months...
...Sychevka, where Yuri Belov to my knowledge remains, whence no living survivor has filed a report...
...I could see that from her face...
...Patients on aminazine may be stripped and placed in a small wire cage to thrash around until death or exhaustion...
...Lysak was treated with drugs for eight years in a Leningrad psychiatric prison, then disappeared to the Sychiovka psychiatric colony...
...Senate candidate, has solemnly observed, the radicalism of the '60s has become the common sense of the ' 70s...
...As Tom Hayden, erstwhile revolutionary and U.S...
...Paragons of Marxist virtue like General Grigorenko have the least socials background for aberration...
...Grigorenko, Vladimir Gershuni and Vladimir Borisov have been released from psychiatric prisons...
...in 1972 he was arrested and jailed for six months...
...There are two routes to the psychiatric hospital for sane dissidents...
...Andrei V. Snezhnevsky extorted silence from the Congress by threatening to withdraw his delegation...
...4) That the cynical boast is far from hyperbole may be gathered from the following symptoms of "illness" excerpted from psychiatric examinations of dissidents: "a persistent mania for truth-seeking," "wears a beard," "meticulousness of thought and insufficient insight with regard to the existing situation," "considers the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia an act of aggression," "pathologic development of personality combined with zeal for reform and initial symptoms of arteriosclerosis of the vessels of the brain," "spoke much and heatedly, trying to prove his point of view and trying to impose it on his interlocutor," "has an exaggerated opinion of himself," and "is pretentious and inclined toward scriptomania...
...The foremost theoretician and architect of Soviet psychiatric repression is the sinister Dr...
...of course, the dosage and frequency of injections may vary in accordance with the patient's docility and alacrity in abjuring his insane opinions...
...Unfortunately," they write, " i t is just such 'ugly' explanations that are accepted in a positive spirit when one is undergoing expert examination...
...In 1968 he was sacked from his post as a mathematician...
...5) Engineer Pyotr Alexeyevich Lysak was arrested in 1956 for asking a Communist lecturer, "Why is it that in such an allegedly free country as the USSR, foreign radio broadcasts are being jammed...
...The prospect of censure by the World Psychiatric Association so frightened Soviet psychiatrists that they eased the regimen in some institutions and prepared to release or transfer some patients...
...Perhaps...
...But you were educated in a Sovie~ school, and were brought up in a family of non-believers...
...The wet sheets are particularly popular as punishment for rebellious, contumacious, and disobedient inmates...
...The diagnosis "paranoid schizophrenia" is reserved for patients who suffer from gross delusions or hallucinations--for example, patients who believe they are made out of glass, patients who believe the Soviet government is repressive and imperialistic...
...Other specifics for reformisl and litigious delusions include triftazin, metrazol, insulin, and reserpine...
...Aminazine is a toxic derivative of a drug used in the West called largactile...
...His wife, his two small children, and Grigorenko are present...
...From the clinic he was sent to Kashchenko hospital for a couple of weeks for observation...
...Do not, they say, betray friends and relatives...
...but crime results from dysfunctional and pathological social and economic arrangements...
...Does this mean that religion is on the upswing...
...Orderlies may beat inmates to keep them quiet and docile, to extort prison rations or food sent by relatives, to satisfy sadistic urges...
...metrazol, a drug abandoned by the West, induces seizures...
...his "incorrect behavior" consisted entirely in his religious activity (churchgoing, religious witnessing to friends...
...He was arrested in 1964...
...Ergo dissidents are mad...
...Hereafter SSIS-2...
...In the ward there were more patients than beds...
...the term "asymptomatic schizophrenia" has in fact been employed...
...Some released prisoners, like Olga Yofe, are neutralized by permanent brain damage...
...Do not deny recorded participation in demonstrations and the like --that would be another symptom of illness...
...In the latter process the prisoner has no procedural protection...
...It is not up to this writer to predict whether the changes in American religion and in American lifestyles presage either the bliss of a bacchanalian revel or the gloom of an Orwellian nightmare...
...Haloperidol causes apathy, chills, a general decline in health, loss of appetite, and inability to read or write...
...Reserpine treatment has been termed "chemical lobotomy...
...He was first imprisoned in a mental institution for three years after passing out political leaflets in 1972...
...The current vogue of locking political trouble-makers in insane asylums began in the late sixties, was sanctioned at an important conference on schizophrenia in 1967, and flourished with the arrest of protestors agaifist the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968...
...Tell the psychiatrist you had a normal childhood...
...embrace normal Soviet opinions and attitudes on every subject...
...You are an educated person, I am ready even to admit that you know more about philosophy and religion than I do...
...3) "Latent schizophrenics" may never have broken the law, but they allegedly possess criminal potential...
...One vaguely cynical psychiatrist admitted that the Soviet Constitution granted religious freedom...
...Your symptoms are a one-sided fascination with religion...
...This is why it is not surprising to find that one of the Philadelphia 11, Betty Bone Schiess, was so determined to be licensed as a priest that she filed civil suit against her bishop, charging him with illegal sex discrimination...
...The Soviet state is the incarnation of progress in history...
...It seems you have been behaving incorrectly...
...The inmates frequently harass each other: dissidents are punished and intimidated by assigning them to wards with the most violent and bothersome psychotics...
...or litigious delusions, by which the subject believes his rights have been violated and complains to the authorities...
...So speaks Leonid Plyushch of the horror of his first days in the Dnepropetrovsk special psychiatric hospital in the Soviet Union...
...religious believers affirm the most profound renunciation of Soviet reality...
...OQ~QOQIUQ6D00UBOO61OOIDO~OQQ~OPODQOOPUO ~Q00QtBDm0~6~00~000OPD0000OoP~006QD000iD0QDU0D06QDI~0BQ0O9QDmDa0~9OQ~o~DUD60OO0PDBO~B0PI6~D0~9OPI~gQ~D~mI~ 10 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977...
...the doctors at Serbsky at last penetrated his madness, but Western protest provoked release after a few months treatment...
...In December 1976 Soviet authorities released Bukovsky to the West in exchange for the imprisoned Chilean Communist Luis Corval~n...
...Starchik had been seized again exactly one month prior to the gathering at his apartment...
...Early in 1967 he was sentenced to three years in a regular labor camp...
...I. "Psychiatric Abuse of Political Prisoners in the Soviet Union-Testimony by Leonid Plyushch," House Subcommittee on International Organizations, 1976, pp...
...I t is not a pretty sight," Bukovsky grimly notes...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977 9 Dissidents may be consigned to a common mental hospital, a special psychiatric prison, or a special psychiatric colony...
...Insulin is used for dangerous "shock treatment...
...1) The history of his madness is not explained...
...Norman B. Hirt," Volume II, Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, 1975, pp...
...Vladimir Bukovsky, born in 1942 to privileged Party members, commenced his dissident career as a schoolboy in 1960 with the publication of a satirical magazine...
...Because of international protest former psychiatric prisoners Bukovsky, Plyushch, Zhores Medvedev, Alexander Yesenin-Volpin, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Feinberg, and Vladimir Balakhanov have been expelled from the country...
...A young man with a guitar sings the words of hope written by the bard in prison: "Spring will triumph, the pressure builds--the seed of love will push aside the icy ground and g r o w . ' ' Stalin reportedly commenced the practice of psychiatric repression of political dissidents, but no one has survived who is talking very much about it...
...Examiners tried vainly to bait Shimanov into saying that he had visions or hallucinations, that he believed himself a saint, that he had eccentric religious notions...
...See also "Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Repression in the Soviet Union--Testimony of Dr...
...Treatment at a common mental hospital is somewhat milder because the regime is less rigorous, the stay is seldom more than three months, and events are shrouded with less secrecy...
...disclaim interest in philosophy or other abstruse concerns...
...Patients are released at the pleasure of the psychiatric authorities and the KGB, although official reexaminations are supposed to be conducted every six months...
...Terry Quist Psychotherapy, Soviet-style How Soviet psychiatrists cure dissidents' delusions...
...In light of this trend, we might find ourselves wondering whether religion will continue to be truly religious if it comes to reflect the play of societal forces alone...
...3. SSIS-1, p. 26 fn...
...This intimidates the dissidents and facilitates readmission...
...The psychiatric prisons apply two sorts of external "treatment" to the Prisoners: electroshock and wet sheets...
...Dnepropetrovsk, where Plyushch was treated...
...Bukovsky's compilation of material on psychiatric prisons was circulated among delegates to the World Congress of Psychiatry in late 1971, but active Soviet psycho-butcher Dr...
...Lunts was known as a Stalinist informer in medical school...
...20-1...
...That is what worries us...
...Then reality would accord with Soviet reality, or no one would dare mention the difference...
Vol. 10 • April 1977 • No. 7
