WORLD PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION SEEKS CONTROL OF CHINA'S PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEM

They "teach" us that Dr. al-Abub may have fit either of two personality categories: an "extrovert," which would make him seek and enjoy the dangerous life of the terrorist, or a "paranoiac" type, suspicious, and aggressive, sensitive to any slight, always prepared to defend himself.⁴⁶

In other words, this poor misunderstood and murdering terrorist is the victim of nature and a few personality problems.

This is the same meaningless psychobabble that has decimated our criminal justice system. Our poor criminals are not dangerous; no, they are just misunderstood and a little upset because they had a rough childhood; this to describe someone who is guilty of savagely murdering innocent people.

But it is not meaningless in the context of either society or the world. By decriminalizing the dangerous criminal in our justice system, we now see the released murderer terrorizing society and committing murder again. Internationally, our defense and intelligence organizations are advised that terrorist leaders like Bin Laden and Abub are not madmen, just a little power hungry, misunderstood or upset because our governments won't confer with them. We cannot possibly defend ourselves against criminal terrorists if we rely on the semantic confusion of this sort of psychobabble.

In 1979, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) itself was forced to admit in a Brief Amicus Curiae to the U.S. Supreme Court that, "Psychiatric expertise in the prediction of 'dangerousness' is not established and clinicians should avoid 'conclusory judgments in this regard.'"

In fact, what is established repeatedly, is that psychiatry and psychology cannot predict dangerousness at all. Take such infamous criminals as the Unabomber, Buford Furrow, John Hinkley, Eric Harris and Kip Kinkel, neither their treating psychiatrists or psychologists recognized their murderous capabilities.

Psychiatry's inabilities to recognize murderers and predict dangerous outcomes are symptoms of its unscientific diagnostic criteria and lack of expertise. Jeffrey Harris, a former Executive Director of the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime, commenting on the lack of reliability in psychiatry's and psychology's diagnoses of criminals on trial said, "You'd be better off calling on Central Casting to get 'expert psychiatric testimony' in a criminal trial."

In 1992, Judge Jeffrey Boles warned that courts should not be "co-opted by emerging psychiatric theories not grounded in appropriate validation and based on subjective belief or unsupported speculation."⁴⁷

The same holds for our national and international intelligence and defense organizations. It is disconcerting that intelligence communities around the globe put such faith, and maybe the fate of many countries, in the hands of experts who are characteristically incapable and incompetent in their predictions of dangerousness and possible outcome.

Next: THE WAR AGAINST THE MIND