It is not easy to know where to begin so let's begin with the diagnosis that has been applied to me; I am, apparently, hypermanic. Hey folks, this is one of the c00lest illnesses you can "suffer" from! Psychiatric diagnosis is based on an assessment of behaviour - if one has irregular sleeping patterns, or eating patterns; if one has "grandiose" ideas and flight of thoughts, "inappropriate" affairs(!) and pressure of speech then one may be diagnosed as suffering from hypermania. And, I must admit, I did display many of these attributes so the diagnosis was pretty reasonable. What was not reasonable was the treatment!

I felt pretty sure that I had things under control; that my "illness" was not so much an illness as something I had worked hard and studied hard to get. But let's treat this as an illness for a while and see what we can learn about hypermania - where it comes from, how it effects one's personality and what it says about other mental illnesses. Obviously, I can't talk for all hypermanics but I can tell you about my experience. What I am attempting to do is to give you some insight into me and how I think and, where psychiatry was concentrating on the similarities between my behaviour and that of someone diagnosed hypermanic, I shall concentrate on the similarities between hypermanics and entrepreneurs; between hypermanics and someone who is in love or excited; between someone becoming hypermanic and someone experiencing a religious conversion; between eccentricity and illness; between the desirable attributes of someone who is trying to be very effective and successful and someone whose mental state represents a danger to themselves and/or others.

The core of the problem seems to be that people focus on what could be rather than what is. We spend so much time anticipating bad things happening and looking for the precursors and omens of ill-news that we fail to appreciate how things actually are. If you spend your life anticipating bad things then bad things will happen and if you concentrate on good things then good things will happen. I do not use that statement lightly - it is logical and born out by experience. We even say "People get what they expect" and other similar things so this is not my idea - my defective or delusional view of the world - but an idea which is embedded in our language and culture (and all languages and cultures). It seems to me something like a universal rule and it is a rule that is unlikely to suffer a special aberration in my case!

My best explanation of how this rule works is that when we concentrate on what could be we fail to notice what is - so whenever we are anticipating something in the future we must first make a careful effort to appreciate how things are right now. If we fear that bad things will happen then we are on special alert; sensitive to and easily able to recognise those things that may confirm our prognosis. If we begin instead by recognising those things that are good and if we can imagine good things happening then we will be particularly aware of good things when they happen and find good explanations for all things that happen.

The above explanation is encapsulated in the Zen attitude that insists the student of Zen finds out about his past. Why should this be so important? Zen is truly an attitude to life, a summary of what works and a guide for the route to nirvana. Those who reject the lessons in Zen may do so because they believe it to be a religion and have already "found" God. Or they may feel certain that there is no god - that all that which religion claims to be representative of God can be explained by simple science (or will be when science has had the time and energy to look at it). Zen is not so much a religion as a way of life even though it is taught as a religion. The main tenets of Zen are very useful and logical approaches to life; practical and simple things you can do which will lead to happiness and enlightenment - not in some future life but in this one; heaven on earth; nirvana.

The first practical and useful thing you can do is to concentrate on what is good. On what is good in others; on what is good in business and education and politics; in science and art. An argument, which will be raised in connection with this, is that people differ on what is good and what is bad and this argument is entirely valid and needs an answer. People do disagree about what is good and bad but the importance of this is the realisation that people are different - so they will obviously vary in their estimation of what is good and what is bad. That is a really important thing to realise and if it is seen as a problem then it is one that we must find a solution to. The best solution to many of these differences of opinion is not to be found in the most popular religions on earth but in some of the less popular ones: Witchcraft has a rule "May it harm none, do what thou wilt". Differences of opinion only bring harm when people place too much value on normality and don't realise that people are naturally different from each other.

I am sorry to be taking so long to get to the point but the point of my story and my explanation of events requires that I justify each statement I make and put in context the events that occurred. Only by doing so will my truth be heard. So let me go on to some of the actual events which led up to my incarceration. We might then be in a position to understand what happened.

The first I knew about being sectioned was when a psychiatrist and social worker arrived at the door. I was pretty certain that they had come to assess me for section (although they were hesitant to admit as much). I am continually damned by people withholding the truth from me - as are all of our children. I insist that the truth has never harmed me; that lies have done so often, as has not knowing the truth. Why, oh why, do others insist on hiding the truth if not that they are afraid of the truth in relation to themselves. Here we must go back and reassess the importance Zen places on examining the past. Zen has not justified this importance but I feel I am in a position to do so.

We teach our children that mistakes are a BAD thing when the truth is that mistakes are an almost inevitable part of learning. At home and at school we punish mistakes (because we would rather not make them) but mistakes always apply their own punishment without our adding to a child's misery. We make such a big deal of mistakes that children learn to fear making mistakes for they anticipate the punishment that would follow. I believe that children have an innate sense of fairness, because the world is a fair world, and that most of our psychological problems - indeed, many of the problems that man is prone to - arise when this balance of fairness is upset. This is one of the central teachings of my understanding of the psyche. Let me continue with a diagram which I will go on to explain:

Let me tell you a story about a boy called Matthew. It is a story that I made up so I am not insisting that things happened just like this or that this is really the way Matt behaves or the way his Mummy behaves. Matt was told by his Mummy that it would be naughty to take a biscuit from the biscuit tin but he did so anyway (because children are a little bit naughty - they have to be in order to find out what the boundaries are). Matt had been a little naughty and so long as Matt is only punished a little then his sense of fairness (natural justice) is satisfied. If Mummy flies off the handle and beats the crap out of Matthew (because she has had a hard day or because there were marriage problems or maybe just simply because it happened at the "wrong time of the month") then Mummy's problems become Matt's problems. What wasn't a problem to begin with is made into a problem by contagion with other problems. Problems seem to have a natural affinity to each other; something for which I believe you will be able to find many examples from your own experience.

In psychology we might identify this mechanism as "projection". Mummy has a problem and this makes her feel upset and anxious and she will be looking for some explanation for these feelings so she projects them outside herself onto those around her - Matt, in this instance, because he happens to be around and because he has done something naughty. Mummy can't assess the true naughtiness because she is influenced by her own problems. Again, this is not something I have made up but something which has been recognised by psychologists and the justice system and has become embedded in our culture, in science, art, literature and religion and we have only to look in those places for confirmation.

This is a most important lesson for psychologists, teachers and parents - indeed, anyone who sets out to achieve something. Before you start you must be at peace with yourself. It becomes important, then, for me to suggest some ways in which you can become at peace with yourself and there is one way that I have already hinted at: Make sense of your past.

Let's go back to Matthew's naughtiness for a moment and see how much sense we can make of that. If Mummy had found the true explanation for her anxiety then she would not have projected it onto the situation with Matt (she would not have used the situation with Matt as the explanation for the anxiety she was feeling). If she had identified the cause of her anxiety then she could have dealt with it before dealing with Matt's little bit of naughtiness; in the words of the Bible "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

Again and again we come across lessons which exist - with different wording, to be sure - in all religions, in folk-law and throughout all of the cultures of the world. The lesson in "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" is the same lesson which is in that Japanese motorcycle manual; is the same lesson that is there in Zen's philosophy and I am sure you can find examples in other religions. It must be a very important lesson then.

Religions are good at teaching rules (e.g. you must make sure that you are blameless before condemning others) but very poor at providing explanations and justifications. If psychiatry had provided some explanations for what they were doing to me then I would have gladly accepted their treatment but they never justified what they were intending to do and I steadfastly refused any treatment until they could provide good justification. My psychiatrist insisted that what I needed was medication - a tranquilliser - but I refused to agree to treatment until she could furnish a good reason for giving it. I asked for just one good medical reason or, failing that, an explanation how this treatment would make me a more effective person. She absolutely refused to answer me.

I would have even accepted a good reason for her refusal to answer my questions - but none was offered. Her only concession was to say that she "felt" it would help. People - distrust psychiatrists. Indeed, distrust anyone who will not provide good reason for what they have done or what they intend to do. Fight for reason in all things and life will be reasonable, protect secrecy and the world will be a secretive and confusing place. Let me back this statement up with a quote from the Bible: Matthew 18.18 says "And so I tell you: what you prohibit on earth will be prohibited in heaven and what you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven."

People fear that piece of scripture because they cannot reconcile it with the dread belief that people will permit what is wrong and forbid what is right. They have no faith in others even though they know that they would always permit what is right and good and prohibit what is bad. I have yet to meet anyone who sincerely wants to permit what they feel is bad or to prohibit what they think is good.

Before we can begin to distinguish what is good from what is bad we must first ensure that we are good but we have been taught that we are bad so strongly that finding "peace of mind" proves elusive. Back to the "Let he who is without sin..." argument again.

If I were doing good science here then I would begin by identifying something that is already proven and use that to confirm or deny what I am setting out to prove. But the search for something indisputable is not an easy one. The way we actually go about doing good science is to make things up and then do our best to disprove them. This process is called the "scientific method" and it works as follows: Just assume something is right and then do your best to prove it wrong. That is what an hypothesis is; something which is taken as true in order to test whether it is true or false.

Another way of expressing the above is that you must first have faith in something and then you are in a position to prove or disprove it. Things must be done this way because it is impossible to prove a negative (just try proving that statement false). All that religion asks you to do is to take something on faith until you have good reason to disbelieve it. All we ask of our scientists is that they prove the statements they make. All I asked of my psychiatrist was that she prove that her medicine would do me good (or at least that any good it did would be greater than any bad).

My psychiatrist would not prove her medical model to me and I refused to accept it because I have a medical model that continues to stand up to any tests I put it to. She was asking me to put my faith in a model that she, herself, was not prepared to justify. Or perhaps she used for justification the effort she had invested in learning the model. She may have felt it was unreasonable of me to insist on proof when I could have simply had faith in her that she would know what is best for me. Indeed, it may have seemed preposterous to her that I, a mere psychologist, should question her, a medically trained doctor and psychiatrist. I imagine that she felt insulted that I should question her judgement since the implication is that there was some fault in her training or that I was bringing into question the whole field of psychiatry. She would have been correct in so thinking, since that is precisely what I was doing and is what I am continuing to do here (where, for the moment, I am safe from psychiatry).

In order to prove myself right (and sane) I have to prove my psychiatrist wrong and in order to prove my psychiatrist wrong I have to prove the whole psychiatric model wrong. That would be some feat to perform but I intend to do so - if you will spare me the time and attention required.

I began my crusade against psychiatry with the first psychiatrist to cross my path; the guy who turned up to assess me for section. His name is Dr Chan-Pensley and I greeted him with some questions that concerned schizophrenia - a mental illness that I know something about. When he failed to provide good answers to my questions I said, "I do not believe that you are qualified to assess my mental state". You can imagine how he took this attempt at enlightenment! In his view he was eminently qualified so to do. He even, I am sure, has certificates and diplomas that should be enough to convince any sane person. But just remember I have not been certified sane but labelled hypermanic. Dr Chan-Pensley is certainly qualified to append such a label to me - I was, as I have already admitted, displaying many of the characteristics required to give, with certainty, a diagnosis of hypermanic. I had yet to be convinced that he was qualified to assess my mental state and I would have been much more ready to accept such an assessment from a psychologist - someone who is trained to understand the mind - than from a psychiatrist - someone who is only trained to understand the brain (and, even then, only in terms of what, I am certain, constitutes a very poor model of the psyche).

I spent some hours in my attempt to prove to Dr Chan-Pensley that I was sane and in full command of my faculties - with no hint from him as to whether I was succeeding or failing at my task. The man that Dr Chan-Pensley saw before him displayed a very high level of excitement (and why not? I was very excited about the way my model of the psyche was panning out). He observed pressure of speech and flight of ideas (where one idea trips off another one at high speed - symptoms of both excitement and hypermania). He was already predisposed to think that I may be ill by the insistence of my wife, if he had spoken to her, and of our family doctor - who must, surely, have justified the request that I be assessed. It is not difficult to see how Dr Chan-Pensley arrived at the conclusion that I was ill. But that does not make him right.

So what prejudiced Dr Chan-Pensley's view? I don't know what he was told by the family doctor nor do I know what the family doctor was told by my wife. What I do know for certain is that my wife was very, very afraid of me. Understandably so - I had hit her. Now, hitting a woman is seen as inexcusable despite the fact that it is very common in many marriages. My own view is that it is nearly indefensible. I say "nearly" because I believed that it was necessary at the time. When I admitted that I hit Sarah I was confirming her story - a story which I was given no opportunity to defend myself against because nobody would tell me what she had been saying.

Our system of justice always informs the accused precisely what it is that they stand accused of. Not so with the Mental Health system. Our justice system is a fair system because it assumes innocence until guilt has been proven - that is good science. You can see that the same scientific method is employed by the justice system that is employed in science: An hypothesis is presented - that subject A is innocent of a crime - and the arguments, pro and con, are put forward until a better case has been argued for one side or the other. And, again, the first step is a leap of faith.

I put forward to you the hypothesis that I am a reasonable man and that I have good reason for all of my actions. I ask you to have faith; to assume innocence until the case has been argued; to think the best of me until I prove to be any less than the best.

My view regarding psychotropic drugs is that they control the patient's mood and that this obviates any need for the patients to learn to do this for themselves. It will be argued that drugs are necessary because the patients are unable to control their moods and this is the very assumption that I wish to bring into question. I believe that the speed with which I recovered from this illness is due to some excellent psychological skills which I developed prior to suffering hypomania and through learning about the illness. Others will counter the above with the observation that a certain percentage of patients recover quickly anyway, that I was treated with Melleril and that the medication may have proved particularly efficacious in my case or that my illness was not severe so a quick recovery is not surprising.

Any of the above arguments may be true, as may my contention that psychological skills and education helped. Let me examine each of these arguments more carefully:

I was forced to take Melleril (a tranquilliser) despite my insistence that my manic symptoms were abating. That makes it impossible for me to prove that the tranquilliser was not responsible for the remission in my symptoms. I am still very angry that my psychiatrist insisted on medicating me in the face of all of my protests since that denied me the opportunity to prove that I had my illness under control. In order to convince me that I needed to be medicated she would have had to prove to me that my symptoms were getting worse and it is my contention that she could not do so based on observations of my behaviour. Or she could have pointed out how my behaviour was a danger to myself or to others - but she was unwilling or unable to do so.

In order to section someone under the Mental Health Act 1983 two doctors have to agree that the person's condition will deteriorate without treatment, that they are a danger to themselves or that they are a danger to others. One of those doctors has to be a psychiatrist and their view must be supported by a social worker. Once someone has been sectioned psychiatrists can, by force of the act, prescribe treatment. I do not believe that my illness had got to the stage where I was a danger to anyone - least of all myself - but it was certainly possible that my condition was continuing to deteriorate. Sectioning, then, was not such a bad idea - to give me a break from everything that was exacerbating my condition.

I would like to give you some insight into the horrifying effect that sectioning has on someone suffering from a mood disorder but first you will need to understand the effect that such a disorder has on the subjective experience of the patient. The references I provided earlier will help some in explaining this but I will attempt to describe the symptoms from a subjective view that should give you a fuller picture.

Let's begin by examining the symptoms of hypomania and depression. These symptoms are not so strange as they might appear; being exaggerations of thinking and behaviour that is normal in the rest of society. If we think of mood as being a continuum between severe depression and mania with normal being at some point in the middle then we can begin to see how the symptoms are connected to mood and how their severity increases as mood swings away from the norm. Everybody experiences mood swings and those with mood disorders simply experience greater swings than normal.

Memory is associative with mood, as is perception. See Daniel Goleman on this. When you are in a good mood you tend to think happy thoughts and when you are in a bad mood you tend to think bad thoughts. When you are happy and secure and excited you can easily find evidence in the real world support and justify your mood. When you feel down or insecure everything seems to confirm your view that there is much wrong with the world. And it is often difficult to distinguish cause from effect; does a bad mood originate from becoming aware of injustice in the world or is mood just the result of a chemical imbalance? Who knows?

The mistake we tend to make in trying to deal with such moods is to deny the experience of those who are subject to the mood. When they say, "The world is all bad" we reply "No it's not - you are just in a bad mood". The real truth is that there are bad things in the world and good things in the world but that someone who is elated notices the good things and someone who is depressed concentrates on the bad things. A better way to communicate with someone who is in a bad mood is to begun by recognising what they are experiencing. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP - a new branch of psychology) refers to this as "pacing" and it involves rather more than simply hearing what someone is saying.

To pace someone who is depressed you must change your posture to a depressed state (shoulders hunched, slumped, apathetic) and you must change your way of speaking by lowering your voice, taking the energy out of it and using a sympathetic tone. This is a little like method acting and the more convincing you can be the more likely you will be to make contact and so continue to the next stage. To pace someone who is elated you must become elated yourself (eyes open and bright, upright posture, more active and changing your tone to one of excitement). You can see that it requires much less effort to pace someone who is depressed than someone who is excited. Pacing a hypomanic can seem like an impossible task since they are so "high" and their mind is working at such speed.

Once you have paced someone you may then be able to "lead" them; that is, to bring their energy level (and mood) up if they are depressed or to calm them if they are manic. Leading is, again, a delicate task because you have to remain in communication with your subject throughout, sensitive to the speed that they can adjust their mood.

Unless you can communicate with someone you cannot help them. I have a simple definition of psychology: A psychologist is someone who can make friends with someone and can lead them to a better understanding of themselves. It is also true that some people in the acute stages of mental illness are unable to respond to even the most skilful pacing and leading and this is where I know of no other option than to medicate - to artificially modify a patient's mood using psychiatric drugs.

I believe that psychiatrists hold a different view on this: they are trained that the symptoms of mood disorders can only be treated effectively with drugs and that psychology is only really useful in helping patients to develop coping skills once their mood has been stabilised with drugs. Such a view would explain my psychiatrist's insistence on medicating me regardless of whether or not I was a danger to anyone or whether my condition was improving. She justified her treatment by saying "Phil, you are still hypomanic" but I have not been convinced that simply being hypomanic justifies medication. The 1983 Act seems to support my view since it insists that before sectioning doctors must be convinced that someone is a danger or that their condition will deteriorate without medication.

The 1983 Act is designed to protect the human rights of someone who is suspected of being mentally ill and the patient's rights do not cease to be protected after a patient has been sectioned. But these rights become significantly more difficult to protect in light of the mandate afforded to psychiatrists. Psychiatrists are not taught to medicate only under the conditions specified under the act but to do so in all cases where mental illness is diagnosed. This is the discrepancy into which I hope to drive a large wedge.

To be continued...

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