In his recently released book, ‘The Barefoot Coach’, former mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton has described former Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir as “mentally the most insecure”. However, it didn’t deter him from becoming one of India’s most accomplished batsmen, he added.
“I did some of my best and least effective mental conditioning work with Gautam Gambhir, the International Test Cricketer of the Year’ in 2009. I worked with him up until that time but I had little to do with him being named world’s best cricketer,” Upton wrote in his book.
Based on a scale where 100 denotes uber-optimism and 0 denotes pessimism, Upton writes, “Let’s say his range was 20 to 40 with 30 being normal. When he scored 150, he would be disappointed in not scoring 200.” Upton further wrote that no matter what he and then coach Gary Kirsten did Gambhir was “negative and pessimistic.”
“Using the popular notion of mental toughness, he was one of the weakest and mentally most insecure’ people I have worked with,” he stated further. Gambhir, for his part, isn’t much bothered by Upton’s words. He said, “I wanted myself and Indian team to be the best in the world. That’s why I was not satisfied even after scoring 100 as it has been mentioned in Paddy’s book. I see nothing wrong there. As a driven individual, I have tried to raise the bar for myself alone.”
Ignoring the fact that Gambhir isn’t much bothered by Upton’s words, it does appear extremely unethical on Upton’s part to reveal such details about someone he worked with as a mental health professional. Basically, he appears to be minting money by revealing intimate details about someone who trusted him in his professional capacity. However, in recent times, such unethical behaviour has unfortunately become extremely common among the mental health community. Upton’s conduct motivated me to write on something I had been intending to write on for quite a while: The Corruption within Mental Healthcare Services.
The shoddy conduct of mental healthcare professionals reached its zenith when they began to diagnose Donald Trump, President of the United States, with various clinical maladies due to clear political motivation.
Dr John Gartner, Founder of “Duty To Warn” and co-editor of “Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump,” diagnosed Trump with suffering from malignant narcissism, paranoia and antisocial personality disorder without actually subjecting Donald Trump to any tests of any sort.
“One of the reasons Trump is so dangerous is he actually suffers from multiple conditions,” Gartner said, listing four traits which point to “malignant narcissism”: “narcissism, of course… paranoia, his crazy conspiracy theories and demonization of the opposition, and this constant feeling that he is a victim or aggrieved… Anti-social personality disorder sometimes called sociopathy. This is someone who routinely lies, who violates and exploits other people with no remorse… the criminal personality, predators without a conscience. And finally, sadism, actually enjoying harming other people… The cruelty is not a bug it is a feature, there is an element of pleasure he gets from crushing smaller people under his boot.” “This is the essence of evil,” he said. “They get worse over time, not better.”
Justin A. Frank, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center, applied psychoanalysis, a pathetic excuse of pseudoscience as revealed regularly by its practitioners, and reached the conclusion that Trump is mentally unfit to be President. 27 mental health care experts even published a book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” where it was contended that the President suffers from mental impairment is mentally compromised without ever actually performing any mental tests on the individual. There were dozens of others, if not hundreds more, who offered a similar diagnosis of Trump without ever having any actual evidence to back it up.
It sets a dangerous precedent when mental health care professionals diagnose individuals with debilitating psychological issues without any credible evidence to back their claims. It appears the state of the psychological health of an individual is a matter to be decided by consensus rather than an objective evaluation of the circumstances at hand. The worst part is the individuals who engaged in such grave malicious conduct suffered no consequences for misusing their authority to influence political outcomes. Malpractices within the fields of Psychology and Psychiatry can have extremely dangerous consequences as history evidently tells us.
Imagine for a moment that you are diagnosed with mental disorders merely because the professional disagrees with your opinion. Thus, you are stigmatized and you face the threat of losing your opportunity at a successful career or even leading a normal life. It might appear dystopian but it has happened in the past. Soviet psychiatrist Andrei Snezhnevsky popularized across the Soviet Union and its satellites the notion of “sluggish schizophrenia,” a condition from which thousands of Soviet dissidents were deemed to suffer. Opposition to official government policy, pessimism, religious practice were considered symptoms of mental instability and the solution, of course, was incarceration at an asylum. China has been pursuing a similar policy as well. There are efforts being made in certain quarters to brand Conservatism as a whole as a mental disorder.
The corruption within fields involving mental health has become extremely normalized in recent times. Hormone blockers are being advocated for children as young as 7 years old who have confusion regarding their gender identity. It will permanently alter their otherwise natural course of development and it doesn’t appear sane at all to inject children that young with chemicals based on the mere feelings of an underdeveloped immature child. There are significant concerns associated with sex reassignment surgery as well which have not been addressed adequately. Despite that, the procedure has become extremely normalized.
The most horrific, perhaps, is “Norway’s hidden scandal“, as the BBC calls it. The Scandinavian country’s child protection services (Barnevernet) are using the assessment made by psychologists and psychiatrists to enable the state to snatch children away from their parents. It has led to huge protests against the Barnevernet by parents who had their children taken away from theirs. Of course, there are instances where the child should be taken away from the parents for its own betterment. However, it’s hard to imagine that in general, the state could take better care of children than their own parents. The video linked below is particularly informative.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-PzrwliUk4]
If all of this was not bad enough, efforts are being made to normalize paedophilia. People with backgrounds in psychology are now differentiating between good paedophiles and bad paedophiles. And a larger concerted effort is underway to normalize the vilest crime imaginable.
Of course, the comments made about Gambhir by Upton in his book pales in comparison to the other instances I have mentioned. However, it only reveals the extent to which the professional service has been compromised by those associated with the field. The worst part is such malpractice has become extremely common.
There are far more problematic aspects to the whole scenario. The field of psychology, at least, has been hijacked by liberalism and its ideological derivatives such as postmodernism. Worse is the fact that the core of the subject itself is rotten. ‘Psychoanalysis’ which still remains extremely popular to this day is most appropriately described as utter rubbish. Thus, it appears extremely that things will change for the better any time soon.
The situation in India appears to be much better than the West. However, after studying Psychology for five years and completing my Master’s degree on the subject, I have reasons to be both optimistic and pessimistic about the mental healthcare services in our country. For one, psychology has not been yet politicized. Psychologists haven’t yet imposed themselves in political discourse and it’s unlikely that they will anytime in the near future. Apart from that, Indian psychologists will never advocate for hormone blockers for 7-year-old children or attempt to normalize paedophilia, which is a great thing.
The reasons for my pessimism, however, is the fact that Indian psychologists have completely bought into postmodernist philosophy and other associated ideas. Therefore, things are likely to get much worse in the future.
