I can think of nothing more likely to push me over the edge than the sudden realisation that all of my family and friends really have been conspiring against me behind my back.

Abso-fucking-lutely! The whole thing reeks of some kind of communist concentration camp ethics too: confront the traitor, turn in the trouble-maker.

I think a similar thing (and cf. alpha dog post) happens with world leaders (sic) - when everyone around you starts sending subconscious signals / pheromones that you are top dog your genetic code actually responds, like an alpha wolf’s altered scent, or a silverback gorilla, or that crazy thing that happens to male Orang-Utans. Hence Presidents, Prime Ministers etc, seem to fill out physically when they come into power, and suddenly look weakened and fragile when they leave it (step forward, Bill Clinton. And now step back again). [Also some scientific studies on crowds at football games - those males have higher testosterone levels whose team has won, and lowered levels whose team lost.]

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‘“How To Confront Loved Ones About Mental Illness” - which fucking creeps me out.’

I always got freaked by the whole (American?) idea of ‘the Intervention’ - I can think of nothing more likely to push me over the edge than the sudden realisation that all of my family and friends really have been conspiring against me behind my back.

Same as that Into the Wild dude showing us what happens when you try to go all lone wolf and live wild. These ‘episodes’ are tutorials for the potentially malcontent. Hope you’re all paying attention, there will be an examination.

People who play by their own rules:

A) Starve to death in a bus
B) Are publicly humiliated and lose custody of their kids
C) Crash their Mercedes in a tunnel in Paris
D) Are not you if you know what’s good for you

Ben Fairhall had a nice series on Britney’s woes last year. Totally worth a read, as is the rest of his site.

They have to /look/ like they play by their own rules.

Speaking of electroshock, there are some really good bits in that Dr. Bronner documentary about that. He calls the mental institution he was committed to (and later escaped from) a concentration camp, the people who run it communists, and talks about how its important to have these phrases and slogans he came up with saved in your frontal lobe or something so that they won’t be erased by electroshock.

for many years it was common practice to have people institutionalised by loved ones for “thier own good” and be subjected to electric shock treatment, drugs and various forms of state sanctioned brainwashing……in this country.

My parents knew three people who had this done to them after they were ‘Saved’, changed their lifestyle and began speaking in tounges.

See also the rise of Scientology, a corporatized religious psychology alternative for the super-elite

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/06/14/drugs-vs-scientology-a-set-up/

the pendulum is merely swinging back that way again, and ms.spears is the poster girl for the movement.

many of the nations homeless are former guests of the government, and when the funding for the psychiatric hospital programs dried up all of the guests were asked to find alternative accomodation.

my feeling is that the money will suspiciously re-appear fairly shortly.