Seven deadly sins

Vice Virtue
Lust Chastity
Gluttony Temperance
Greed Charity
Sloth Diligence
Wrath Patience
Envy Kindness
Pride Humility

Before psychiatry there was sin and virtue, vice and virtue. Look at the descriptions of the sins/vices.(lower down the page)

What you are experiencing is not new, nor is it unique.

The seven deadly sins/vices.

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Anger, Envy, Pride. (scroll down to see the full description)

The virtues.

Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility.

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Commentary

There is also the tendency for the stubborn to do the opposite of what is directed by authority, though I am not sure where it fits in here. To make a mule go forwards push it backwards in reverse psychology. To defy authority is to express individualism, to have an identity and mind separate from the ruling power. I defy psychiatry, yet now at my advanced age, need psychiatry to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly with the welfare check I get for being seriously mentally ill.

Guilt, if you do something wrong you are supposed to feel guilt. This usually happens after one sins. Guilt should motivate one to make amends or justice. A trouble is people who are not guilty, feel guilty, and those who have no feeling of guilt are often guilty of wrong-doing.

Psychiatry does not like its patients feeling guilty. Wants their patients to feel (as they do) clinical detachment akin to psychopathy. “It’s a brain chemical imbalance just like diabetes“.

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Not feeling Guilty

Rod Blagojevich

FBI agents arrested the governor before daybreak at his Chicago home and took him away while his family was still asleep, saying the wiretaps convinced them that Blagojevich’s “political corruption crime spree” had to be stopped before it was too late.

Blagojevich said he “has done nothing wrong” and would not resign as governor in the face of federal corruption charges.

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psychiatrist, Joseph Biederman

A Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of antipsychotics in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drugmakers from 2000 to 2007.

In an e-mailed statement, Dr. Biederman said, “My interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study,” and he said he took conflict-of-interest policies “very seriously.”

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/06/harvard-psychiatrist-didnt-report-pharma-income/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

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psychiatrist Dr. Heinrich Gross

A psychiatrist who worked at a clinic where the Nazis killed and conducted experiments on thousands of children.

Dr. Gross published five articles from 1955 to 1965 based on research using the preserved brains of children killed because they were deemed handicapped or antisocial.

Dr. Gross, who proclaimed his innocence for decades, had insisted he was not present at the hospital at the time in the 1940’s when most of the children were killed.

“I was always against euthanasia,” he told the weekly magazine News in 2000. “I never sped up anyone’s death, nor did I assign anyone to do so.”

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Former president of Enron Jeffrey Skilling

“Enron’s stock price which hit a high of $90 per share in mid-2000, plummeted to $0.10 in October 2001. The drop in Enron’s stock price is estimated to have caused its stock holders to lose $11 billion.” wikipedia

“I thought the stock was a great buy. I think anybody that bought the stock in 1999 was – saw over the next couple of years a strong growth. During the year of 1999, I significantly increased my ownership of shares in the company.” Skilling

Skilling was convicted of 19 of 28 counts of securities fraud and wire fraud and acquitted on the remaining nine, including charges of insider trading. He was sentenced to 24 years, 4 months in prison, and cannot be released before serving less than 20 years, 4 months. In addition, he must pay $630 million to the government, which includes a $180 million fine.(wikipedia)

* In January 2009, the sentence was vacated by Judge Simeon Lake

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psychiatrist Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin

“An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular public radio program “The Infinite Mind,” produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media, earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program.”

“But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin told his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”

Child bipolar is not established as a mental illness and the benefit VS physical damage/injury/danger is unknown.

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psychiatrist Dr. Charles Nemeroff

“was editor in chief of the influential journal Neuropsychopharmacology.” (nytimes)

“Nemeroff is one of the biggest depression researchers in the world and his work is hugely influential in the field.”

“he’d taken in $2.8 million in pharma consulting monies since 2000, but had only reported less than half of that–all while taking NIH research grants on the other hand and assuring his university that he was taking in less than $10,000 a year in pharma dough.”

Dr. Nemeroff, ‘To the best of my knowledge, I have followed the appropriate university regulations concerning financial disclosures.’

Short biography from Furious Seasons

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money manager Bernard Madoff ( now after arrest+trial, confessing guilt)

“In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules.” —Bernard Madoff, money manager, Oct. 20, 2007 On Dec. 11, Madoff was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme that cost investors almost $65 billion.

…..

“Why is executive pay so high?… Sociopaths.”

Sociopathic Kings, Queens & Lords: Wealth Is Proof Of Goodness…

http://violetplanet.blogspot.com/

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Those that feel guilty, you know who you are.

Is feeling guilty like a person who feels their hands are dirty , so must wash them too many times during the day? (even though the hands are relatively clean) Is that a chemical imbalance, or really the need of human interaction and companionship. How do things go out of balance? How and why do people pick up bad habits?

Anyways

Descriptions

Lust

is usually thought of as involving obsessive or excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature. Giving in to lusts can lead to sexual or sociological compulsions and/or transgressions including (but obviously not limited to) sexual addiction, adultery, bestiality, rape, and incest. Dante’s criterion was “excessive love of others,” which therefore rendered love and devotion to God as secondary.

Gluttony

Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In the Christian religions, it is considered a sin because of the excessive desire for food, or its withholding from the needy.
Depending on the culture, it can be seen as either a vice or a sign of status. Where food is relatively scarce, being able to eat well might be something to take pride in (although this can also result in a moral backlash when confronted with the reality of those less fortunate). Where food is routinely plentiful, it may be considered a sign of self control to resist the temptation to over-indulge.

Greed

(or avarice, covetousness) is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to the acquisition of wealth in particular. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that greed was “a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.” In Dante’s Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts.

“Avarice” is more of a blanket term that can describe many other examples of greedy behavior. These include disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason, especially for personal gain, for example through bribery . Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one profits from soliciting goods within the actual confines of a church.

Sloth

More than other sins, the definition of sloth has changed considerably since its original inclusion among the seven deadly sins. In fact it was first called the sin of sadness or despair. It had been in the early years of Christianity characterized by what modern writers would now describe as melancholy: apathy, depression, and joylessness — the last being viewed as being a refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world God created. Originally, its place was fulfilled by two other aspects, acedia and sadness. The former described a spiritual apathy that affected the faithful by discouraging them from their religious work. Sadness (tristitia in Latin) described a feeling of dissatisfaction or discontent, which caused unhappiness with one’s current situation. When Thomas Aquinas selected acedia for his list, he described it as an “uneasiness of the mind”, being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing sloth as being the “failure to love God with all one’s heart, all one’s mind and all one’s soul.” He also described it as the middle sin, and as such was the only sin characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love. In his “Purgatorio”, the slothful penitents were made to run continuously at top speed.

The modern view of the vice, as highlighted by its contrary virtue of zeal or diligence, is that it represents the failure to utilize one’s talents and gifts. For example, a student who does not work beyond what is required (and thus fails to achieve his or her full potential) could be labeled slothful.

Current interpretations are therefore much less stringent and comprehensive than they were in medieval times, and portray sloth as being more simply a sin of laziness or indifference, of an unwillingness to act, an unwillingness to care (rather than a failure to love God and his works). For this reason sloth is now often seen as being considerably less serious than the other sins, more a sin of omission than of commission.

Anger

(or Wrath) may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. These feelings can manifest as vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (such as engaging in vigilantism) and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others. The transgressions borne of vengeance are among the most serious, including murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide. Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest (although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy, closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as “love of justice perverted to revenge and spite”. In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally rather than externally. Thus suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of wrath directed inwardly, a final rejection of God’s gifts.

Envy

Like greed, envy may be characterized by an insatiable desire; they differ, however, for two main reasons. First, greed is largely associated with material goods, whereas envy may apply more generally. Second, those who commit the sin of envy resent that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it. Dante defined this as “love of one’s own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs.” In Dante’s Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire, because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. Aquinas described envy as “sorrow for another’s good”.

Pride

In almost every list pride (or hubris or vanity) is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to give compliments to others though they may be deserving of them, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante’s definition was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor.” In Jacob Bidermann’s medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. Vanity and narcissism are prime examples of this sin. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the penitent were forced to walk with stone slabs bearing down on their backs in order to induce feelings of humility.

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Virtues (not as well described as the vices)

Chastity Courage and boldness. Embracing of moral wholesomeness and achieving purity of thought through education and betterment.

Temperance Constant mindfulness of others and one’s surroundings; practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation.

Charity Generosity. Willingness to give. A nobility of thought or actions.

Diligence A zealous and careful nature in one’s actions and work. Decisive work ethic. Budgeting one’s time; monitoring one’s own activities to guard against laziness.

Patience Forbearance and endurance through moderation. Resolving conflicts peacefully, as opposed to resorting to violence. The ability to forgive; to show mercy to sinners.

Kindness Charity, compassion, friendship, and empathy without prejudice and for its own sake.

Humility Modest behavior, selflessness, and the giving of respect. Giving credit where credit is due; not unfairly glorifying one’s own self.

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Important Note

Thomas Szasz has written in Cruel Compassion that our feeling of compassion to help the lest fortunate may blind us to our actions. We want/need to help the other person/thing in trouble. In helping the person/object, we feel better, a job well done, our guilt relieved.

In order to save the town we had to destroy it.

Link to successfulschizophrenia The experience of people viewed as schizophrenic is something like being told by a smiling, powerful authority “I have only love and compassion for rotten assholes like you.”

A wise person knows when to do nothing.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

-Reinhold Niebuhr