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An Existential Approach to Sane and Sober Living

in a Schizophregenic Society:

 

The Schizophregenic Society

 

Author: Tom Blaise Shepherd

 

As an existentialist, my concern is with improving the quality of life, rather than with entertaining illusions of an afterlife. My approach is inner-directed rather than other-directed. My mental energy is focused creatively rather than competitively. It is my opinion that competition in the classroom is unhealthy and ultimately destroys incentive and the creative process for the most gifted individuals. Interestingly, the most gifted males, who are the most likely to neglected by teachers and bullied by classmates, are generally the slowest to mature. Their brains do not reach full maturity until the age of 25 or later. It is also my opinion that the desensitization process involved in combat training and alcohol-drug dependency are the primary causes of violence, personality disintegration and schizophrenic reactions.

 

Children who are reared in the Judeo-Christian tradition are taught early on in life that it is wrong to kill under any circumstances. Males are nourished in our classrooms and in our church Sunday schools to “share,” to “give to one who asks,” to “turn the other cheek,” to “love thy neighbor as thyself” and to “love one’s enemies.” Yet males are also conditioned along the way in our primary and secondary public schools, in our military academies and in our state-supported institutions of higher learning to “compete,” to “intimidate,”  to “deceive,” to “exploit,” to “fight back with their fists and with other weapons” and to learn methods for killing others with bayonets, shotguns, handguns and other explosives. They are taught that if they refuse to engage in aggressive, violent and combative behavior that they are “wimps,” that they are “pansies,” that they are “faggots,” that they are “cowards,” that they are undeserving of being viewed as “men.” In the process, they develop ambivalent feelings for themselves and for others and contradictory attitudes towards violence.

 

By the time a typical American male reaches the age of 21, he is, whether or not he realizes it, a full-blown schizophrenic personality. Schizophrenia has nothing to do with experiencing so-called “auditory hallucinations.” Nor does it have anything to do with experiencing so-called “delusions.” Schizophrenia is the mental confusion one experiences as a result of having internalized mixed messages during the formal and informal educational process.

 

The voices that motivate males to compete, to intimidate, to exploit and to kill are the voices of our teachers, of our university professors, of our business leaders, of our athletic coaches – they are the voices of our military commanders. Our criminal justice system thus has no business prosecuting any American armed services veteran for any crime. To even prosecute a U.S. veteran, one who has experienced institutionalized double-bind communication and institutionalized “desensitization” during his training process, is the ultimate crime. We live in a sick society. We also live in a schizophregenic society.

 

Tom Blaise Shepherd, author (September 10, 2007)

 

 

Frieda Fromm-Reichmann coined the term “schizophregenic mother” to describe a mother who through double-bind communication or contradictory messages creates a child that is confused as to what is appropriate and what is inappropriate behavior (right is wrong and wrong is right). The child is thus “damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.” Dr. Fromm-Reichmann and others, including Dr. Henry Stack Sullivan and R. D. Laing, believed such communication to be at the root of what psychiatry calls schizophrenia.

 

Tom Blaise Shepherd has more broadly applied the concept of  “schizophregenic” to describe a society or culture, namely the American culture, which through its institutions reinforces double-bind communication and schizophrenic behavior.

 

The government, the alcoholic beverage industry and the pharmaceutical industry encourage alcohol and drug dependency as an acceptable way to socialize, relax, and medicate one’s self. Yet, those who exhibit the dysfunctional behavior directly resulting from alcohol or drug dependency are moralistically caged in either a mental institution or a jail or prison, and sometimes branded a felon and permanently stripped of their civil rights. Shepherd shuns the use of terms such as alcoholic and addict because they are arbitrarily applied, ambiguous in meaning and stigmatizing.

 

Alcoholic beverages, including wine, are not ‘health foods,’ and they should not be promoted as ‘health foods.’ They are brain disabling psychoactive drugs, which neither children nor adults should be persuaded to consume. Alcohol interferes with the normal functioning of the brain’s neurotransmitters, impeding the supply of tryptophan to the brain, thus reducing serotonin formation. Reduction of serotonin levels increases the likelihood of an individual becoming anxious, psychotic and violent. Inadequate serotonin is also a primary cause of insomnia.

 

The problem with our society is the profiteers who manufacture, promote and distribute alcoholic beverages, falsely suggesting that they are beneficial to one’s well being, says Shepherd.

 

As for grapes and wine, it is the unfermented red grape and red wine vinegar (used as a condiment) that are health foods.

 

It is demoralizing, says Shepherd, that children and adults are brainwashed by TV alcoholic beverage commercials while watching sports events, commercials that falsely associate alcoholic beverage consumption with superior athletic ability and with a healthy lifestyle. Alcoholic beverage advertising poisons the minds of the children and adults who are exposed to the advertising. View a typical advertisement, promoting beer here.

 

Shepherd Exposes Psychiatric Fraud

Recommends Reforms

 

Shepherd attacks the “psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry” as fraudulent and exploitative―as more interested in creating drug dependent clients through mind-disabling prescription psychotropic drugs than in enabling them to be independent and self-reliant. The neuroleptic drug-dependent client is the primary source of income for unscrupulous psychiatrists and their bedfellows, the clinical psychologists and social workers. “The fact is,” says Shepherd, ”that pharmaceutical psychiatric drugs do not improve the functioning of the nervous system. They severely impair the functioning of the nervous system.”

 

Whereas the psychiatric industry has determined that the brain’s chemical neurotransmitters are a causative or resultant factor in schizophrenic and bipolar behavior, and since the building blocks of the neurotransmitters are the vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and amino acids found in food, it is Shepherd’s opinion that the only sane prescription for schizophrenia or bipolar behavior would be a prescription for practicing sound nutrition, not a prescription for psychotropic drugs.

 

Dopamine, according to neurologists, is the chemical neurotransmitter that when produced in superabundance as a result of stress, produces the so-called positive symptoms (paranoid delusions and hallucinations) commonly associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Canadian psychiatrist Abram Hoffer and others, including William J. Walsh, PhD, also believe the body’s overproduction of adrenaline to be a factor associated with schizophrenic or bipolar behavior.

 

Serotonin, according to biologists and neurologists, is believed to be the chemical neurotransmitter that produces a calming effect. Niacin (Vitamin B-3) is believed to suppress the overproduction of adrenaline. Thus a well-balanced diet to include daily servings of foods rich in tryptophane, niacin and folic acid: poultry, fish, white meat, boiled or baked potatoes, soy beans and/or garbanzo beans, broccoli/cauliflower, fresh fruit and nuts, non-fat milk and fresh, leafy green vegetables, would seem to be the best prescription for stabilizing the nervous system. Regular exercise is also necessary in order to stimulate blood-flow to the brain.

 

Complementary vitamin C, niacin, calcium, magnesium and zinc supplements is also recommended by Dr. William J. Walsh, Dr. Hoffer and others, in lieu of drug therapy. However, it is Shepherd’s opinion, based on his own personal experience, that a well-balanced diet, one ample in generous daily servings of fresh vegetables and fruit, and daily exercise in the form of walking and weight lifting, is the overall best prescription for achieving optimum brain functioning. The perhaps best available comprehensive guide to nutritional therapy is Dr. Andrew Saul’s Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing That Works, published in 2003. To read what Dr. Saul has to say about the use of niacin and tryptophan in the treatment of schizophrenia and depression, check out his website www.doctoryourself.com/index.html.  Once again, getting your niacin and tryptophane from a well-balanced diet of foods rich in niacin and tryptophane is a far superior method than depending on manufactured vitamin and mineral supplement tablets.

 

Shepherd, incidentally, has been diagnosed with various forms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder over the years, beginning while he was serving with the United States Coast Guard between the ages of 18 and 21, when he was hospitalized for a schizophrenic reaction* (characterized by paranoia, ambivalence and severe ego impoverishment) and depression, following assaults and batteries and ongoing sexual harassment of him by his own shipmates, including by his supervisors, while he was trying to perform his duties.

 

Shepherd said he blames the abuse in part on the fact that the Coast Guard commanders encouraged alcohol dependency and drunkenness by operating on-base beer gardens and by distributing free beer to crewmembers while the ship he was stationed on was anchored offshore in the South Pacific. Coast Guard commanders and officers in charge also encouraged and facilitated onboard ship sexual harassment of male subordinates. Shepherd himself was repeatedly physically and verbally sexually harassed by his immediate supervisor and by others with higher rank while stationed aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Triton.

 

During boot training [spring 1957] at Cape May, New Jersey, Shepherd and his teenage classmate-recruits were subjected to a lecture in which the instructor advocated the practice of rectal intercourse as a safe method of “birth control.” The instructor, according to Shepherd, told the recruits “the rectum is the cleanest organ in the human body.” No mention was made of the fact that rectal intercourse can result, not only in rectal hemorrhaging, but that it is also a method for contracting and spreading multiple types of venereal infections, including syphilis and gonorrhea. The AIDS epidemic was non-existent at the time.

 

It was the consensus of the recruits, at the time, that the Coast Guard instructor was indeed sanctioning or encouraging male-male rectal intercourse, which may indeed have accounted for the on-board ship sexual harassment that Shepherd witnessed.

 

On two occasions during his military service, when Shepherd summoned the Shore Patrol for assistance, after having been the victim of a crime, instead of assisting him and apprehending his assailant or assailants, they instead incarcerated him.

 

While undergoing training as a radio operator, his classmates took his uniform cap off his head and were playing catch with it while a Coast Guard instructor walked onto the scene, observing what was going on. Instead of citing the classmates who were playing catch with Shepherd’s uniform cap, he instead cited Shepherd for being “out of uniform,” and required Shepherd to get down on his knees and pick up his classmates’ cigarette butts from the ground while his classmates were in a nearby classroom receiving instruction in Morse code. Shepherd himself did not even smoke. In fact he was about the only member of his class that did not smoke.

 

While the ship he was assigned to was anchored off-shore in the South Pacific, Shepherd became a victim of an assault and battery, as another seaman, who had consumed beer at a beer party hosted by the captain following the workday, abducted Shepherd while Shepherd was sleeping in a hammock on the aft deck of the ship by grabbing hold of him, throwing him out of the hammock onto the deck, then battering him about the head, while attempting to strangle him. According to Shepherd, no mention of the assault and battery is made in his official records, as Coast Guard officials desired to cover up the crime since the captain of the ship (Commander Billy Bush) had provided the beer to the seaman that assaulted and battered Shepherd. Following the assault, Shepherd began experiencing periodic bouts of amnesia after being provided with alcoholic beverages at other Coast Guard social functions.

 

In another incident a few weeks later, a 1^st class boatswain mate and supervisor persuaded Shepherd to participate in a chug-a-lug contest aboard ship just prior to attending another ship’s party hosted by the captain of the ship at a nightclub in Yukoshka, Japan. After Shepherd compliantly attempted to chug-a-lug a small bottle of Sake in order to be a good sport, the boatswain himself backed out of the agreement. About an hour later, Shepherd collapsed onto the floor of the nightclub. After being revived by officers, he was later apprehended by the Shore Patrol (while in the company of the same Boatswain) for unknown reasons, while in an apparent state of alcohol-induced amnesia.

 

On another occasion Shepherd was bludgeoned over the head by a drunken female civilian stranger in a Washington, D. C. club designated as a safe place for military personnel to socialize. Although the Shore Patrol took Shepherd to a Navy infirmary for surgical repair of his forehead wound, they failed to apprehend his assailant, who was in an out-of-control state of drunkenness when the Shore Patrol arrived on the scene. The woman had initially approached Shepherd in an attempt to solicit him for drinks and for a lewd act with her male companion. After Shepherd walked away from the two of them, the woman approached him again in order to verbally humiliate him and batter him merely because he had repeatedly asked her and her male companion to stay away from him.

 

Shepherd was not accustomed to drinking on a regular basis and prior to and after that particular Coast Guard hosted event Shepherd attempted to avoid socializing with his shipmates while off duty, only to be further harassed both sexually and otherwise while performing his duties aboard ship. The sexual harassment included both demoralizing verbal remarks or innuendos and demoralizing physical aggressions against Shepherd.

 

*Shepherd blames his so-called schizophrenic reaction and seizures on the fact that the Coast Guard authorities not only encouraged and facilitated alcohol dependency, but also repeatedly humiliated, punished and confined him, in lieu of his assailants, when it was clearly evident to officers in charge that he was a victim of robbery, of demoralizing sexual harassment (including sexual assault) and of aggravated battery by his drunk shipmates and by drunk civilians. It was also evident to the police and the shore patrol that he suffered from seizures, invariably triggered by alcohol.

 

Shepherd claims that the long-term psychotropic drug treatment to which he was subjected against his expressed wishes was of no benefit to him whatsoever, and that it in fact impaired his psychomotor reflexes, diminished his ability to concentrate, impaired his judgment, significantly destabilized his blood pressure and his heart rate to dangerously high levels and damaged his nervous system. Prescribed neuroleptic drugs, although categorized as tranquilizers, frequently cause an ongoing feeling of restlessness, as do so-called anti-depressant drugs, according to Eliot Valenstein and leading neuro-biologists.

 

Shepherd has always maintained that he experienced a severe form of alienation, as well as despondency, a reaction to the intolerable living and working environment that he experienced during and after his military service, beginning with high school Army ROTC and exacerbated during his service with the Marine Corps Reserve and with the United States Coast Guard during his developmental teenage years.

 

Psychodynamic theorists, to include R. D. Laing, M. D. and Silvano Arieti, M. D., would characterize the condition as borderline schizophrenia, a condition in which the individual has extreme difficulty in coping with difficult others – moreso than the average individual.

 

Because Mr. Sbepherd had no father for the first eleven years of his life and because his highly distressed mom had to go to work before he was even weaned, there was no close, consistent maternal and paternal bonding during his early developmental years. As a result, he had extreme difficulty in dealing with the threatening, anti-social behavior of significant others during his adolescence and adult years.

 

He was also born with a partial cryptorchidism. Although the condition was partially corrected through surgery at the age of eight, the condition nevertheless resulted in severe psychological complications – ongoing self-consciousness and resultant anxiety in being required to disrobe himself in the presence of other males in gymnasium shower facilities and while closely confined with other males during military duty and in the presence of females he was married to. The ongoing rejection and humiliation he experienced by both males and females, who were knowledgeable of his condition, contributed to low self-esteem, ongoing anxiety and paranoia – a tendency to avoid entering into close relationships with others throughout his adult life.

 

Mr. Shepherd’s military and employment medical records were invariably tainted with documentation of his cryptorchidism and the surgical procedure (orchipexy) he underwent at age eight, as well as his multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, beginning at age 20 while serving with the Coast Guard.

 

Shepherd has repeatedly presented a damage claim (seeking retroactive payments in excess of $1 million and continued service-connected disability payments of $2,000 a month) to the U.S. government for having been victimized on several occasions by assaults and batteries by his own shipmates while serving his country and for the fact that the Coast Guard encouraged and facilitated alcohol dependency. His claims have been repeatedly denied as a result of what Shepherd claims to be concerted and criminal efforts by U.S. government agents, including Coast Guard officials and Veterans Administration physicians, social workers and claims examiners, to suppress evidence. Shepherd claims he was threatened and intimidated by Dr. Thomas A. Grieder, a psychiatrist connected with the West Los Angeles Veterans Hospital, merely for speaking out about the nature of abuse he endured by a Coast Guard Training School instructor-petty officer, who wrongly cited and punished him for being out of uniform, when it was evident that the reason he was out of uniform was that his classmates had taken the uniform cap off his head and were playing catch with it.

 

“What Sunday school taught me during my early formative years to be right, the military taught me during my adolescence to be wrong. Right was wrong and wrong was right. That’s called double-bind communication. That is the primary cause of behavior that is typically characterized as mental illness by psychiatry,” comments Shepherd.

 

“As a result of the stigma of merely having been hospitalized for psychiatric observation during military service and the stigma of having been diagnosed with a psychiatric condition, I was thus denied many career opportunities, placing me in a checkmate situation that ultimately reduced me to poverty, “ says Shepherd.

 

 

Shepherd Characterizes Mainstream Religions as Barbaric:

They Are Incompatible With Sane and Sober Living

 

Shepherd also focuses on the schizophregenic Jewish/Christian/Islamic heritage that dogmatically teaches citizens to not kill and to love and forgive their enemies, yet simultaneously teaches citizens methods for systematically killing their enemies in armed combat or through weapons of mass destruction. He also focuses on the unforgiving, un-Christian American criminal justice system that is more punitive than rehabilitative and that resultantly reinforces criminal behavior and recidivism.

 

Shepherd, who was selected by his teachers and the Joplin Rotary Club to be a delegate to Missouri Boys State during his junior year of high school and who was selected to be president of a Missouri Council of Churches interdenominational youth council, has since become a teacher of philosophy and religion. It is his conclusion that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are barbaric, fascist ideologies that have served the purpose of reinforcing sexism, racism and slavery in its various forms and that such ideologies are incompatible with sane and sober living and with true democracy. True democracy, according to Shepherd, cannot exist without 100 percent egalitarianism.

 

It is Shepherd’s further conclusion that Christianity in particular, with its ritualistic use of wine as a representation of the blood of Christ during the rite of Holy Eucharist, actually reinforces alcohol dependency among those reared in the Christian faith.

 

Shepherd recommends transcendental meditation (TM), a process of altering one’s consciousness by relaxing one’s breathing process in a quiet place where one is alone. Interestingly, TM has been proven to be an effective method for mental and physical relaxation and for the reduction of blood pressure to normal levels.

 

Following his studies in the International School of Philosophy and Letters at the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, where he enrolled following his graduation from high school in 1956, Shepherd received a B.A. degree from the college of Arts and Science of the University of Oklahoma. He continued his studies in sociology, political science, police administration and regional and city planning at the OU Graduate College, and in psychology, alcohol-drug studies and counseling in the Los Angeles area, where he completed an internship in counseling. He has continued independent studies and research in existential psychology, psychiatry and nutrition.

 

Shepherd also took classes in architecture and hands-on building construction technology at Crowder Community College in Missouri. He designed and hand-built his own 1000 sq. ft. cabin-home many years ago, although he was compelled to sell his house two years later after suffering a foot injury that disabled him for months, during which time he was unable to work as a self-employed deck builder.

 

Mr. Shepherd is also a self-taught furniture designer and builder. He is the founder of the Shepherd-Montessori Institute for Classical and Technical Education.

 

Shepherd Outlines His Platform for a Sane Society

 

Shepherd’s agenda includes:

 

(1) His opposition to the manufacturing and distribution of alcoholic beverages and psychotropic drugs.

 

(2) His advocacy for sweeping changes in the American criminal justice system in which (a) education would replace corporal punishment and in which jails and prisons would be converted into learning and behavioral research centers and (b) all civil rights would automatically be fully restored to anyone previously convicted of a felony.

 

(3) His advocacy for land reform policies that would greatly expand homesteading.

 

(4) His advocacy for housing reform policies that would rapidly facilitate the expansion of government-subsidized rental housing and economical, environmentally feasible owner-built and owner-occupied housing.