Extreme Racism: an example of medicalisation?
by endlesspsych
From here
“The psychiatric profession’s primary index for diagnosing psychiatric symptoms, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), does not include racism, prejudice, or bigotry in its text or index.1 Therefore, there is currently no support for including extreme racism under any diagnostic category. This leads psychiatrists to think that it cannot and should not be treated in their patients.
To continue perceiving extreme racism as normative and not pathologic is to lend it legitimacy. Clearly, anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people and seeks to eliminate them to resolve his or her internal conflicts meets criteria for a delusional disorder, a major psychiatric illness.
Extreme racists’ violence should be considered in the context of behavior described by Allport in The Nature of Prejudice.2 Allport’s 5-point scale categorizes increasingly dangerous acts. It begins with verbal expression of antagonism, progresses to avoidance of members of disliked groups, then to active discrimination against them, to physical attack, and finally to extermination (lynchings, massacres, genocide). That fifth point on the scale, the acting out of extermination fantasies, is readily classifiable as delusional behavior.”
I’d have to say that depending on what “extreme racism” is meant to entail it seems vanishingly unlikely that everyone in South Africa (during apartheid (assuming the creation and enforcing of apartheid is a reasonably decent example of “extreme racism”)) was mentally ill and suddenly got better. That and given that evidence suggests that ethnic minorities proportionatly hold more “racist” views (about the majority and about other ethnic groups) and ideations this move (which seems largely political) could backfire in sublimly ironic fashion.
Furthermore the work of Sherif into in-group and out-group behaviour (ye olde summercamp experiments) and the work of Fryer in economics found here, amongst others, would possibly suggest a more elegant and likely explanation for extreme racism (or sectarianism or any other -ism you care to mention) arising “naturally” (I’m wary of incurring the nature fallacy here) from the cognitive mechanisms involved in defining and determining social groups.
I’d be more convinced by a disorder that should marked extreme problems in in-group and out-group identification, as it is if this disorder exists I would suspect that it does in very few individuals and not to any great degree among those most practiced in bigotry and hate crime. For instance I’m not sure it makes sense just to apply it to race – surely you would expect (if this is indeed an actual disorder) that you’d also be able to classify extreme sectarianism as a mental illness? Or (to be a touch glib for a moment) Rangers fans being classified as mentally ill for hating Celtic fans…
Now I don’t think there are all that many grounds to consider that there is some sort of disorder based around an unhealthy in-group association or perhaps even one based upon overly concrete bounds of what the in-group is. Mainly because in-groups and out-groups can be notoriously fluid in their constitution and construction. That and people can be members of many different in-groups depending on different settings (someone can a member of their workplace or profession in-group, member of a political party or other social grouping and a fan of Man United if they wish – all of which are different in-groups that don’t have mutually exclusive membership criteria.
Basically I think that the calls for Extreme racism to be added to the DSM are based upon a psychiatrist being so shocked by the depths of racism that some people sink too that he has had to create a mental disorder to cope with the dissonsance they have experienced by having to accept they are in the wider in-group they belong to.
The in-group of the human race.
Thoughts?
and your electron microscope 
“To continue perceiving extreme racism as normative and not pathologic is to lend it legitimacy”
No it isn’t.
“Clearly, anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people and seeks to eliminate them to resolve his or her internal conflicts meets criteria for a delusional disorder, a major psychiatric illness.”
No they don’t.
What of anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people for their admittedly socially reprehensible beliefs to the point of branding them pathologically ill, and seeks to “cure” them, to resolve his or her internal conflicts? By that logic, they’d meet such criteria too, wouldn’t they?
Apparently, there were some attempts in the Soviet Union to categorise dissenters as ‘mentally ill’ (“one has to be insane to be opposed to the USSR”) to explain why some people’s views were so at odds with the official line. Political dissension under the Soviet Union is of course much more sympathetic to us than racism, but this appears to display the same tendency to ‘normalise’ those whose views fit the accepted social norms and conveniently class those who don’t, who might be said to be on the fringes of such norms, as ‘mentally ill’. The irrationality of racism is not an indicator of mental illness; it’s merely the kind of irrationality that has abounded in human belief for centuries.
[…] and Statistical Manual is nothing new: see this post looking at the proposal to enter “Extreme racism“. Some of these proposed classifications are more valid then others and have a greater weight […]
I was pondering this myself recently, and I think that the comment ‘anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people and seeks to eliminate them to resolve his or her internal conflicts’ sums up my feelings about such people – that there is a case to answer that their mental health is not the best it could be. But… clinical definitions aside, surely one criteria defining mental health or lack of it is functionality – can such people who have such extreme and reprehensible views function in their society? If they can refrain from vicious attacks etc the vast majority of the time then the answer would have to be yes. If such a person seeks a separatist life as a result of their bigoted beliefs then they are actually showing the basic understanding for self care!
I think that if a person ACTIVELY sought out confrontations WITHOUT the back up of a peer group (as I think that throws a whole new strand of debate into the mix) there would be a case to answer for delusional and mentally ill behaviour, but again cultural context has to be considered. A vicious attack on an openly gay man or lesbian woman in this country 50 years ago, or in many other countries today, would have been met with sufficient social approval, even official approval (the police would have actively taken part, or instigated such abuse), to be normalised. Surely then it is just a case of finding a place and a target group where ones viciousness can be acceptable! That is, after all, what Hitler did – anti Semitism was hardly a new idea and he only capitalised on existing bigotry.
I saw a programme a few years ago about ‘the most dangerous man in prison’. He was extremely violent and would just go for people. But… he targetted sex offenders… suddenly our sympathies shift? I know mine did!