Archive for the ‘Topic for Discussion’ Category
Echoes of the Past: Punitive Psychiatry by Alexander Podrabinek
Source: Echoes of the Past: Punitive Psychiatry by Alexander Podrabinek
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Echoes of the Past: Punitive Psychiatry
21 October 2013
Alexander Podrabinek
In October, Russian activist Mikhail Kosenko, one of the accused in the "Bolotnaya Square Case," was sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment. This was the first instance of an open use of psychiatry for political purposes in post-Soviet Russia. Author and human rights campaigner Alexander Podrabinek, who was Read more [...]
Soviet Psychiatry Returns
On Oct. 8, a verdict was announced in the case of Mikhail Kosenko, one of the demonstrators in the May 6, 2012 protest march at Moscow’s Bolotnaya Ploshchad. Kosenko was just one of the 28 people accused in the case, but his verdict was immediately picked up by the press and caused mass protests outside the courtroom. The crowd chanted “Misha!” so loudly that Judge Lyudmila Moskalenko could barely be heard in the courtroom. Read more [...]
Soviet Forever by Alexander Podrabinek
Former Soviet dissident, Alexander Podrabinek, describes the calculated revival of the Soviet Union by the Putin regime. Published on the 10th of April 2013 by the IMR Institute of Modern Russia in its Analysis category, this article confirms with numerous new and crucial details, the assertions by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky in his own public Distinguished Lecture of Tuesday, October 13, 2009 for the Cato Institute under the title: “The Power of Memory and Acknowledgement,” namely that Old KGB-ers are Reviving the Soviet System. Read more [...]
The “Catastrophe” is Returning: Old KGB-ers are Reviving the Soviet System
What is more depressing is that the country returned to political repressions. We have today, a couple of dozens of political prisoners, again. Which I thought would never happen in my lifetime.
Even more than that, at a certain point, the psychiatric use for repressions was returned again. And that was by far the most depressing news for me. I thought we buried that method of repression forever.
And yet, it did happen again. Several cases. Luckily, we managed to stop it in time, but we cannot guarantee it would not be renewed tomorrow. Read more [...]
Abuse of Process
The Hon. Senator Anne C. Cools tabled a bill in the House of Commons (the text is linked below in both languages) numerous times in the years leading up to 1996, but unfortunately, this draft law died on the order paper. The present author is of the opinion that this bill should be tabled one more time, but amended to include judges and the ministers who conspire with lawyers to manipulate procedure. Read more [...]
Détournement de la justice
L’hon. Sénateur Anne C. Cools a présenté un projet de loi au Chambre des communes (le texte est branché ci-bas dans les deux langues) et ce à maintes reprises ces dernières années, mais dommagement ce projet de loi est mort au feuilleton. La présente auteure est d’opinion que ce projet de loi doit être présenté encore une fois, mais modifié pour inclure les juges et les ministres qui s’entendent avec les avocats de manigancer la procédure. Read more [...]
In Two Minds about Soviet Psychiatry
Next week, the World Psychiatric Association will decide whether to let the Soviet Union back in. The Soviet Union resigned in 1983 rather than answer a debate on the political abuse of psychiatry. Already, the battle lines have been drawn between those committed to allowing the Soviets back and those who believe it would be premature. Sceptics want better safeguards before the Soviet Union is made respectable again. Read more [...]
Another Betrayal by Psychiatry?
By I.F. Stone
December 22, 1988, The New York Review of Books
Seventeen years ago I attacked the World Psychiatric Association in these pages in “Betrayal by Psychiatry”1 for refusing to hear complaints from Soviet dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov, about the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. The WPA staged a repeat performance a few weeks ago at a regional meeting here in Washington.
The WPA leadership turned down a request from Western and Soviet activists to present Read more [...]
Soviet Psychiatry: A Message from Moscow by Alexander Podrabinek
The address that follows is a slightly condensed version of remarks recently made by Alexander Podrabinek on videotape in Moscow. Their intended audience is the world psychiatric community and all doctors and laypeople who are concerned about the perversion of psychiatry for political purposes. The tape was shown on October 14, 1988, at a symposium of the International Association on the Political Use of Psychiatry held in Washington, DC, during, but separately from, a conference of the World Psychiatric Association. The WPA refused to allow the symposium to be part of its program. Read more [...]
Reports of Psychiatry Abuse
Counter Talk of a Soviet Shift
A political dissident recently released from a Soviet psychiatric hospital said today that the habitual use of punitive psychiatric treatment in the Soviet Union remained unchanged despite recent criticisms of such practices in the Soviet press. “There are no changes,” said the dissident, Vladimir Titov. “On the contrary, it’s getting nastier.” Mr. Titov was released Oct. 9 from the special psychiatric hospital in the Russian city of Oryel. Mr. Titov said his most vivid recollections were of two strong psychotropic drugs that caused fever, pain, slurred speech and left him unable to lie, sit or stand comfortably. He also spoke movingly of dissidents still inside, while other human rights advocates at the news conference played a tape of another patient, Sirvard Avakian, an Armenian dissident, asking in a trembling voice for Western help in releasing her from what she described as the abuse of her doctors. Read more [...]
The Case of Dr. Koryagin
Fears are mounting that the psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin is near to death in the notorious jail of Chistopol in central Russia. Letters that have reached the West from his wife and a friend indicate that he is so weak that unless he is given expert medical care he could die at any time. Dr. Koryagin has been in prison for the last four years for actively opposing the political abuse of psychiatry. The abuse takes the form of labeling dissidents as mad and forcibly treating them with drugs in mental hospitals. Read more [...]
The Attack on Anatoly Koryagin
The Attack on Anatoly Koryagin
Peter B. Reddaway
March 3, 1983 Issue
A detailed account of the “physical torture” of Soviet political prisoners “through starvation, cold, and deprivation of sleep” has just been smuggled to the West from a forced-labor camp in the Urals. Its author is the well-known Russian psychiatrist Dr. Anatoly Koryagin. In 1981 Dr. Koryagin was given a twelve-year sentence for documenting the Soviet practice of interning dissenters in mental hospitals and then “curing” Read more [...]
An Appeal to Psychiatrists
The New York Review of Books
March 18, 1982
Peter B. Reddaway
A defiant appeal to world psychiatrists has recently been smuggled to the West from a Russian labor camp in the Urals. The author, Dr. Anatoly Koryagin, is a Soviet psychiatrist who was given a twelve-year sentence last June for opposing the use of political psychiatry to lock up and torture dissidents. His analysis of the practice was published in April in Western medical journals. Now he calls for an international campaign.
Doctors Read more [...]
Yves-Marie Morissette's Poster Boy for 'Legalizing' Chemical Lobotomies: Valéry Fabrikant
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