Over on Watts Up With That? is an interesting post about yet another attempt by a ‘psychoanalyst’ to portray man-made climate change sceptics (aka ‘deniers’ as the alarmists like to describe them) as in some way psychologically impaired.
It seems to be the likes of Dr Robert D. Stolorow are rushing to fill a gap in the puzzlement of the alarmists that a significant number of people are still refusing to suspend reality and join the true believers in accepting a hypothesis supported by questionable data as a factual reality. His opinion piece in Psychology Today is lightweight at best and probably more deserving of a slot in Pseuds Corner:
On October 5, 2012, on the front page of the Huffington Post, appeared a terrifying image of melting arctic ice, accompanied by the chilling headline, “Arctic Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise May Be ‘Decades Ahead Of Schedule’”. Why have the majority of Americans and American politicians been largely oblivious to this extreme threat?
Perhaps it has something to do with many people preferring to see hard evidence of what is claimed, or having the awareness to grasp that dire warnings years ago of what would have happened by now have simply failed to materialise. Perhaps they are unconvinced by scientists who fight tooth and nail to conceal discussions and information about their research from a public forced to fund them. Or perhaps they smell a rat when they see those same scientists challenged on the science and responding with personal slights and a refusal to address the questions raised.
Regardless, Stolorow’s ramblings are yet another example of true believers, who cannot win an argument due to the lack of evidence and reason, attempting to sigmatise dissenters with spurious ‘science’ and ‘analysis’. The aim is to make dissenters question themselves in an effort to make them conform to pack mentality in case they are considered to be outside the mainstream. It’s a form of psychological blackmail that seeks to erode inquiry, free thinking and opposite viewpoints. It’s a form of control. And the WUWT post points to other times in history when this approach formed an effort to unsettle those who held an opposing view to the ‘consensus’:
Its just more Political Abuse of Psychiatry, such as was practiced in the Soviet Union:
In the Soviet Union, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place. Soviet psychiatric hospitals known as “psikhushkas” were used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate hundreds or thousands of political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. This method was also employed against religious prisoners and most especially against well-educated former atheists who adopted a religion. In such cases their religious faith was determined to be a form of mental illness that needed to be cured. Formerly highly classified extant documents from “Special file” of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union published after the dissolution of the Soviet Union demonstrate that the authorities of the country quite consciously used psychiatry as a tool to suppress dissent.
As Anthony Watts asks: Sound familiar when looking at what is being written about climate skeptics today? Too right. But sceptics should take heart from this. It demonstrates the true believers are rattled. They are struggling, worried that their claims are being so easily challenged and increasingly dismissed. Not having a solid scientific argument to deploy they are resorting to playing the man instead of the ball.
If namecalling and attempts to make people feel like an odd-one-out is all they have as a strategy to make people accept their supposedly scientific claims then they are losing the battle. You see this all the time in politics – and that underlines that at the heart of all this climate change hysteria is a political objective.
Autonomous Mind 
Well, if you want a classic study of the tactic, have a look at “The Myth of Mental Illness”, by Thomas Szasz.
David Cooper, who wrote “Death of the Family” I knew David quiet well, he stayed at my house in Finsbury Park, and associated with Ronnie D Lang, connected with the Philadelphia Association
Kingsley Hall, although held in high regard in psychoanalytic circles and existential ideology, it is my view one may well view this movement with some reserve.
The essence of these thinkers as a political basis has some merit, such as a critique on the violence perpetrated within society upon the individual.
Not only within the class system as say the lower class or working class structures and the peculiar complexity of the mystifying use of language, and violence as a common feature, but equally the well educated, or middle class, use and misuse of language, as one may see many examples of what I mean within “Autonomous Mind” And the use of knowledge as a weapon to disarm the unwary.
It is likely for some centuries in the foreseeable future, and the widespread use of violence will significantly diminish, in the time of Laing, Scottish, Cooper, South African, Szasz, Hungarian, all of these individuals came from violent backgrounds, it is hardly surprising, they had a purpose in investigating the mind and the mechanics of analysis of what prompts individuals to become what they become, in particular they were well within the ripple effects of the WW2, or rather in it, and from my experience and experiencing London being bombed, I venture to say the effects upon the individuals and those who experienced similar conditions of the time, become either in a mind set of trauma and a peculiar condition of acting sort of normal, and at the same time being confronted by a abnormal condition, is a climate for the production of insanity.
It is not surprising playwrights such as David Potter, wrote plays that had a good dose of normality and interwoven with songs similar as “Pack Up Your Troubles in a Old Kit Bag” if only one can find a solution so simple as packing up one’s troubles and depositing them in a bag for disposal, that may even have the benefit of recycling?