‘It makes me feel…’
One of the things that I hear often is some version of “it made me feel...” When it’s a case of neurosis, I ask ‘Who is forcing you to feel that way?” Generally, “it made me” increases feelings of helplessness, fear, and overwhelm, but substituting “it provoked my…” is more empowering than attributing power to someone else. It also distinguishes the person from the distress or pathology, and increases a sense of well-being.
But there are exceptions. In cases of abuse or manipulation, a perpetrator corners their target into a predicament, in which case it would be curious to feel something other than helplessness. And whenever I hear someone say “I wanted to make them…” it almost always signals covert hostility. Vaccine politics are no different. If we as a society take mental health seriously, we must consider the psychological impact of vaccine mandates and the psychodynamic motivations beneath them.
‘The Devil made me do it’
Last week I wrote on the subtle shame-submission strategy, and in recent weeks the shame campaign against the unvaccinated has reached a new level. The issue is gaining attention as a human rights matter as well as one of public health. It has yet to be explicitly stated however, that vaccine mandates (not vaccines) are equally a matter of psychological health. Perhaps the growing number of vaccinated individuals who support the unvaccinated are sensing that what is at stake is not merely physical survival. Governments around the world have declared war on the human mind and spirit, albeit under the guise of benevolence.
The psychological trauma of involuntary injection
For simplicity’s sake, let’s suspend all doubts or concerns about the vaccine itself. It still leaves the ethical matter of coerced or forced injection, which has precedents and parallels in psychiatry.
According to Dr. Peter Breggin (aka “the Conscience of Psychiatry), it is not only the contents of the syringe that must be considered potentially harmful. It is the experience of involuntary treatment.
“In my decades of clinical experience, many if not most victims of involuntary treatment experience it as torture. They know it aims at breaking their will and they physically and mentally resist, resulting in even more dire consequences. Involuntary treatment humiliates and demoralizes people, reinforcing their feelings of being worthless, powerless, and helpless. It leads to outrage, which is then crushed by psychiatric drugs.”
- Peter Breggin, MD in Forced “Treatment” is Torture
In 2020, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture noted that imposing helplessness qualifies as torture. It also condemned involuntary psychiatric interventions (including injections) as equivalent to psychological torture. In an analysis by attorney and psychiatric survivor Tina Minkowitz, inflicting involuntary treatment is never justified by any “danger to self”, any decision about a patient’s “best interests,” or even when there is a perceived “danger to others.”
The U.N. report explains that such interventions
“generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or ‘correcting’ the victim’s personality, behavior or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering”
Whether the vaccine mandates lead to forcible injections or to coerced injections, the ‘correctional’ treatment of resistors is an act of aggression. So when policymakers and propagandists attempt to justify involuntary vaccination as protecting the health and safety of those who they deem a danger - either to themselves or to others, it masks deep hostility and contempt, not benevolence and concern.
Sadism and Soul Murder
Is it surprising that Breggin observed a correlation between involuntary injection and higher rates of suicide and perpetration of violence? As a therapist, I wonder how much of the rise in suicide, terror and dread worldwide is a result of covid bioterrorism, and how much of it is due to the vaccine mandates. How could any doctor or government be so oblivious to something so obvious? That question alone deserves several posts, but it helps to recognize the presence of sadism wherever it occurs (which is far more often since 2020) as we begin to understand the strategy to normalize torture. For more than a hundred years, big pharma, big tech, and big government have exploited their consumers and citizens. Is it any wonder that these systems that are dominated by psychopaths and narcissists are marketing torture as “for your protection”?
“Torture often has a straightforward goal―to break the victim’s will and to intimidate others who fear that torture will also be inflicted on them.”
- Peter Breggin, MD in Forced “Treatment” is Torture
Prior to the misappropriation of the term “soul murder” by those crying for “the de-colonization of psychotherapy” (that’s another future post), the term was coined by professor of psychiatry, Leonard Shengold to describe psychological abuse that is designed to break or compromise a child’s will and mold their identity to their perpetrator. The same applies to adults because inside every adult is a child who identifies a parent in authority figures. In cults and totalitarian systems, personal choice, values, and autonomy - the things that make up our identity - are gradually dissociated, crushed, and colonized by the perpetrator.
Social psychologist Alexandra Stein escaped from a Marxist cult twenty years ago and described this experience as
“smaller suicides of the self… the rejection of one’s inner self, of one’s family, friends, beliefs, morals.”
-Alexandra Stein, PhD in Terror, Love, and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems
Psychiatrist Joost A. Meerloo called this systematic crushing of the mind and spirit, “menticide”. Is it any wonder that an administration that passively facilitates a cultural genocide in Afghanistan (that includes American citizens) initiates menticide in America?
Meerloo, who endured torture by the Nazis and studied the survivors of torture by Chinese Communists and Korean Communists found that
“The system starts with verbal conditioning and training by combining the required stereotypes with negative or positive stimuli: pain, or reward. In the P.O.W. camps in Korea where there was individual and mass brainwashing, the negative and positive conditioning stimuli were usually hunger and food. The moment the soldier conformed to the party line his food ration was improved: say yes, and I'll give you a piece of candy!”
- J.M. Meerloo, MD in Rape of the Mind
Likewise, the vaccine mandate rewards the compliant with full access to normal life - as long as they remain in good standing - one injection at a time. Meanwhile, the non-compliant are subjected to denigrating stereotypes, ridicule and segregation. In addition to the concerns about the vaccines themselves, the dilemma that divides so many is between risking physical death or risking mental death.
So who are the scapegoats that are ‘wearing on the patience’ of the ruling patriarchy? In unhealthy family systems, scapegoats and negative stars are lightning rods for the wrath of the abusive parent and their supporters. In larger social systems it is no different. Rebels are scapegoated because totalitarian leaders require abject obedience from everyone. Anything less threatens the system.
We’re better off than we thought.
Person-centered and strengths-based psychotherapy appreciates resistance as a strength developed for survival in unsafe conditions and key to initiating positive change in the system. In the matter of vaccines, those who resist involuntary vaccination are necessary for a free society, and society has begun to notice.
A socially healthy society is a balance of:
Individuals who are courageous enough to be optimistic about the vaccine and the risks.
individuals who are courageous enough to be skeptical about systems and unethical operations.
We need both those motivated to achieve herd immunity as well as those motivated to preserve individual human rights for all.
The good news is we already have both!
This is an opportunity for these complimentary groups to find mutual respect and to collaboratively defend our right over our minds and our bodies, or else resign ourselves to mass psychological trauma.