Psychoanalyzing the Internet.

Dear George,

God bless our shrinks! Their Soviet colleagues have taught them the value of psychiatry as an extension of the State’s control over an individual’s thoughts and actions.

The latest breakthrough came in an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Jerald J. Block M.D.[i]

The good doctor wants to add “Internet Addiction Disorder” to the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V. The DSM is to American Psychiatric Association what the Malleus Malefactorum was to the European witch hunters during the torching of the witches. Both sought to scrub society clean of deviant thinking.

These days, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a major source of contemporary deviant thought is the Internet. It is here that we see the emergence of the antisocial dissent that questions and mocks our contemporary American values of greed and exploitation.

Were Internet Addiction Disorder to be accepted as a psychiatric condition requiring treatment, it would put a real damper on internet use. Who wants to be considered whacko because he researches an issue like the lies that lead up to the Iraq Enterprise and writes a strong article exposing them. Such an activity is the proper scope of the Mainstream Media who are best qualified to bury such a story on the back pages where few people will see it and even fewer people will be upset by it.

It also raises the possibility of court ordered treatment for bloggers who refuse to be silent.

I am glad to see American psychiatry adopting the Soviet methodology. The Soviet’s started out with the premise that theirs was the perfect society and that anyone who thought otherwise was mentally unbalanced since only a fool would criticize a perfect society.

Artists, poets and thinkers tend to be obsessive. All are major sources of dissent. How much better would life be had Karl Marx not obsessed on the injustices of the Industrial Revolution. The most effective way to tamp down art, poetry and thought is to pathologize obsession. Let a person spend too much time on one activity at the expense of those activities that contribute to the economic well being of the state, and he is, right away, deemed to be mentally unbalanced. (Of course, if Henry Ford hadn't been obsessive about the automobile, or Charles Goodyear hadn't impoverished himself to devolop a process for vulcanizing rubber, who know where we would be. The bottom line is that it is okay to obsess on profit and progress, but that's it. Eveything else is asking for trouble.)

My God, George, combine the good doctor’s diagnosis with the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorist Act" that wants another HUAC to expose funny thinking on the internet, and you just might finally eliminate the dissent that has the potential for destabilizing America.

Incidentally, we are assured that the fact that Dr. Block has the patent on a device that restricts computer access has nothing to do with his findings.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones


[i] I couldn’t get the link to work, so try going to http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/02/18 and see if it works.