ABSTRACT
During the twentieth century many reports have been published in Western Europe and United States concerning the internment in mental hospitals of political dissenters in U.S.S.R. In the Soviet Union, the public expression of views that are regarded as political slander is dealt with severely as a crime against the State. Many western countries have gradually and painfully acquired a toleration of political dissent and an appreciation of its value. This chapter focuses on the psychiatric issues raised by the fact that some of the dissenters, perhaps one-fifth of those whose names are known in the West, have been diagnosed as mentally ill. The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia demonstrated that there was little difference between psychiatrists working in various parts of the world so far as a relatively narrow diagnostic concept was concerned. Ezra Pound's views on usury, which he thought caused all the problems that beset mankind, came to him in a blinding flash of revelation in 1916.
