The Myths of Witchcraft and Mental Illness

It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistaken, even absurd beliefs so we may fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that the historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths. 

This sort of statement makes it appear as if the psychiatric historian were a socially neutral person, discovering historical facts — when, in truth, he is a psychiatric propagandist, actively shaping the image of his discipline. Weyer has been canonized as the father of psychiatry because he was one of the few physicians who had opposed the persecution of witches. By claiming him as its founder. Institutional Psychiatry has tried, and largely succeeded, in concealing its oppressive practices behind a facade of liberational rhetoric. 

It is significant that Weyer was discovered to be the true father of psychiatry in the twentieth century, and by American psychiatrists this is when and where Institutional Psychiatry became a major social force in the Western world. 

It seems to me that to maintain that what we call mental illness is not a disease is like asserting that two and two make four and that to maintain that involuntary mental hospitalization is an immoral practice is like saying that three and three make six. I have 

Perhaps the best way to understand the mythical character of certain beliefs is to examine their history. Why did medieval man choose to believe in witchcraft and seek the amelioration of his society in the compulsory salvation of witches Why does modem man choose to believe in the myth of mental illness and seek the amelioration of his society in the compulsory treatment of mental patients In each of these mass movements we are faced with two interlocking phenomena a guiding myth (of witchcraft and of mental illness), and a powerful social institution (the Inquisition and Institutional Psychiatry) the former provides the ideological justification, the latter, the practical means for social action. Much of what I have said so far in this book, and particularly in Chapter 4, was an effort to answer the questions posed above. Since, in the discussion heretofore, my emphasis has been on institutional practices rather than on ideological (mythological) justifications, I shall concentrate, in this chapter, on what men believe and the imagery they use to express their belief, rather than on what they ostensibly seek and the means they employ to achieve it. 

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The myth of witchcraft was thus used to account for the extraordinary privileges and duties of the inquisitor similarly, the myth of mental illness is used to account for those of the institutional psychiatrist. Myths are not artistic embellishments, fairy stories men make up to amuse themselves and their fellows they are the very heart and brain, as it were, of the social organism, necessary for its survival—as that particular society. 

I consider this entire system of interlocking concepts, beliefs, and practices false and immoral. In an earlier work. The Myth of Mental Illness, I tried to show how and why the concept of mental illness is erroneous and misleading. In the present work, I shall try to show how and why the ethical convictions and social arrangements based on this concept constitute an immoral ideology of intolerance. In particular, I shall compare the belief in witchcraft and the persecution of witches with the belief in mental illness and the persecution of mental patients. 

The second section of Part I of the Malleus is entitled Whether it be a Heresy to Maintain that Witches Exist. The peculiarly inverted phrasing of this sentence should be noted. Sprenger and Kramer ponder whether the belief in witchcraft is a mistake—only to conclude that to disbelieve it is a grave sin. The question arises, they ask, whether people who hold that witches do not exist are to be regarded as notorious heretics. . They answer yes. This is as if modern psychiatrists were to ask whether mental patients exist, and would answer that to believe otherwise is a serious error and a grave offense against the psychiatric profession. Since I have dubbed mental illness a myth, precisely this argument has been advanced by several psychiatrists critical of my views. ... 

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