A precious case from Middle Earth

Roelof suggests to us that, “perhaps you should see him (Gollum) for
what he really was for one moment in the book … (not as a creature
existing as the object of all sorts of devised schemes to "socialize" him)
… a very old tired hobbit who knows more about what goes on with such
power struggles then maybe anyone else, and listen (rather than judging
his "social" skills and calling his attempts at trying to express the
anxiety around the ring as "highly developed verbal repertoire" even
though he may act out (live through) the pull that the ring has over him)”

Is this not an apt description of the basis for the supportive,
community help that has been offered, with great success, to individuals
subject to schizophrenia?

As Roelof stated, “This moment was ruined when Samwise became
paranoid and shouted something hostile to Gollum ... the real nature of
what the ring is would only be known to those who have been bearers of the
ring not to staff in an institution bent on analyzing this bond and
devising schemes to change it.“

Since when has confrontation, intimidation and coercion brought out
the best values for any individual?

I find little amusing in the cheery group support responding to
psychiatric analysis of Gollum's "mental illness." Accept for the notable
exception of one (Thank you Roelof.), there is no recognition that we are
discussing an organic illness that has not yet been proven to exist,
anywhere in the universe (See Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), except
for the surreal plane of cultural socio-political dictates to the social
norms of behaviour in deference to the profitability of a powerful few.

What has frozen my response (for months) about the Gollum analysis is
the presumptive ease with which mental health professionals devise use of
false assumptions (such as denial of the aforementioned truth reality) to
create artificial analysis, thereby finding fault for behavioural
difference (thought/emotion), by centering their commentary within the
individual (victim-blaming) with little recognition as to fault exterior
to the individual and then only as an aside with little significance
(scape-goating).

Once again, fantasy models real life, as there has been a rarely
mentioned effort to discern the relationships between the intra-psychic
and the inter-psychic. Even in the world of make-believe, eluding to
‘sorcerer-speak’ would naturally result in an honest assessment of
profitable, oppressive, socio-political factors supported by and in
support of eminent financial factors. Clearly, the overwhelming power-over
the individual by these psychosocial factors is based in community
traumatizations that denature individual psyches driving the victims
temporarily dys/nonfunctional, hence subject to and subject of a
psychosocial disability.

Of course, suppressing inherent human expression is the purpose for
which biopsychiatry (psychiatry/behavioural psychology) was created.
Therefore finding fault within the individual is a must needs basic to any
‘hired help’ subjective judgment with mandatory attention to the ‘company
line.’ Unfortunately, the staging of the debate creates an argumentative
'turf' for those of us who are working to enhance the quality of mental
health services. Our purpose is to break the industrial-strength bonding
of mental health services to the exploitation by power--into something
more akin to a humane effort promoting supportive community caring. But to
‘bite into’ the debate is to become as trapped as the victim into a
defensive criticism based on individualism, thereby disabling our
discourse’s effort to achieve holism in community vitality.

Competing interests:
Psychiatric Consumer-Survivor, X-Patient Self-Advocate