This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Editor's Introduction

In 1992, MIM published "Abolish Psychology," in the second issue of MIM Theory. There we argued against the practice of attributing human behavior to individual mental "traits" instead of to material circumstances and conditions. In the years since, we have developed this thinking in two ways. First, we tried to find ways to deal with problems of individual behavior, motivation, depression, and so on in a practical way as part of the struggle against imperialism and patriarchy. Second, we expanded our historical and theoretical treatment to cover mental health practice in socialist China, a critique of "radical feminist" therapy, and so on. This issue is the result of that dual process of developing theory and practice. In it, we advance and deepen the work we began to report on in 1992.

We never want to take our focus off the goal of overthrowing imperialism and patriarchy. As soon as anyone starts to treat mental health in theory or practice as a way to adjust to the oppressive and alienating status quo, then the battle is lost. Prozac or other mind-numbing drugs are a great way of coping with parasitism if you have no aspirations to achieving humanity and ending oppression. But, like the search for better sex, that approach represents the adaptation of the privileged, not a challenge to the system of oppression.

Still, as one testimonial from a formerly-suicidal revolutionary that we publish in this issue illustrates, the systems of oppression take their toll at many levels. If people are so depressed or suicidal that they can't do revolutionary work, it doesn't do much good to put off dealing with it until socialism. In this issue, looking at the Chinese practice, our own developing experience, and learning from various critiques of mainstream psychology, we begin to find the kind of stopgap answers to, on the one hand, get people up and active in the revolutionary struggle, and on the other hand to develop the theory we need to deal with these problems as they extend into a future socialist era.

The issue is complicated, and our answers here are somewhat tentative. It is easy to see that psychology is used to legitimize the oppression of internal colonies with U.S. borders and oppressed nations around the world. Everything -- from "IQ" to "crime" and poverty itself -- is blamed on the "psychology" of the oppressed. This extends from the macro-psychology of culture through behavior to the micro-psychology of "genetic" or "chemical" causes of individual behavior. But, does the practice of psychology oppress the oppressors, such as rich white women? These people may waste their lives in a chemically-induced stupor at the "suggestion" or coercion of patriarchal medical authorities. Young white revolutionaries may be medicated or committed while their oppressed-nation comrades are incarcerated or executed.

But MIM concludes that the practice of psychology among the oppressors, while rendering lives even more empty than they already are in human terms, nevertheless represents the decadence of a parasitic culture and lifestyle. It is the paradox of oppressor cultures that many of the parasites themselves face empty lives which seem out of their individual control. Though most will not, some of these may choose class, gender and nation suicide and join the forces of revolution. This potential is especially promising among youth, who are often crushed under the weight of both outright patriarchal abuse and psychology at the same time. The youth who survive this double-whammy are potential revolutionaries and valuable assets to the struggle.

Like cocaine, psychology under imperialism means different things at the same time: death to the oppressed, a plaything for some members of oppressor nations, and an alienating force, motivating for some potential defectors from imperialism and patriarchy. In the hands of imperialism and patriarchy, it is a weapon against the oppressed, and a symbol of all that which revolutionaries hope to eliminate in the struggle to lift society into a socialist and communist future.

--MC12