We are putting the banner in place.
(In the background is the famous Dresden cigarette factory Yanidze)

World Psychiatric Association Congress on Coercive Psychiatry
 Dresden, 6th - 8th June 2007

Gert Postel impersonated a psychiatrist, applied for work and was accepted, later even promoted to head psychiatrist, and in the meantime invented "mental illnesses" which were accepted by the other psychiatrists. He was discovered - by chance - got sentenced to prison and now has the time of his life selling his book relating his adventure and being very popular in Germany. So we invited Gert Postel to be part of our protest against the World Congress. Additionally, by promoting his nomination for a Nobel Medicine Prize, we wanted to emphasize the truth which he uncovered by his lie: that there is no such thing as "mental illness", rather only an empty and mystifying use of jargon.

The point about Gert Postel is that psychiatrists and their "mental health consumers" present themselves as caring for the welfare of the patients, and here the patients are running a campaign to nominate an imposter for a Nobel Medicine Prize. The other point is that the Gert Postel experiment is a completing counterpoint of the famous Rosenhahn experiment.(This is a link to the full text which Stanford University refused to publish!) In this experiment, students pretended to be mental patients and hospitalized themselves and were diagnosed accordingly. Persistant rumor claimed that Foucault declared this experiment worthy of a Nobel Prize for Humor in Science. Of course, fake patients we can have by the dozen, the cleverness of the Postel experiment is the proof that also on the other side, you don't need to be a psychiatrist - i.e. a person who studied medicine - to churn out diagnoses. That means that both sides are fake. We just needed to wait until a person would show up in the role of psychiatry and publicly admit that he is a fake.

Last month, in a response to our outcry against the violation of human rights, the media obtained from the organizer of the WPA congress, Thomas Kallert, a public statement that "Naturally,  coercive measures in psychiatry are justified." since we knew that several of our colleagues are going to participate in this congress, we felt it is important to notify them in advance about this official statement of the organizer. Apparently this did not deter them. While we put our protest banner outside the congress hall, David Oaks from the North American organization "Mindfreedom" came out of it to us shouting why it is important to collaborate with the psychiatrists. On the right you can see him trying to convince Alice... One reason for his shouting was soon discovered: he was recording himself in order to broadcast "Live from Dresden" to his internet radio. I figure out that the shouting meant to prove to his intended listeners that he is also protesting... Another reason was discovered after seeing the SCI website: photographic documentation of the collaboration between, from left: Prof. Juan Mezzich (President of the World Psychiatric Association), "our" David Oaks and Judy Chamberlin, Prof. Thomas Kallert (Torture-Congress Organizer) and last but not least: Peter Lehmann (from the European Network of Users and Survivors). We feel that this picture below deserves a special title so we are announcing here a world-wide contest, with 3 prizes of up to 50€, to find the appropriate title. See the results here.

The German media constantly confronted the psychiatrist Kallert, who organized this evil WPA congress, with Gert Postel's claim that there is no such thing as mental illness and anybody, even a postman, can  be a psychiatrist. Kallert had no other reply than to say: "Gert Postel was a convicted imposter."
To the best of  my knowledge, this is the first time anywhere in the world that the mainstream media ever put this question to a psychiatrist, and one that organized a world psychiatric congress at that. So it is a record of some kind.

And in an even more bizarre reaction to our action, the German consumer association, which unshamingly participated in the torturer's congress, issued a statement to the media, complaining that our action would be "a slap in the face of those with psychological health problems. The allegation that there is no mental illness would degrade them to simulators", proving that without this rhetoric of "illness" they cannot be truly sick! After a more careful examination on the internet of this press notice, it turned out that it was composed by an organization of psychiatrists and social workers at the direct request of the organizer.
When we settled in front of the congress center, we noticed the low attendance of this event.
Our group separated into three, one holding the big banner, one occupying the tent, on the other side of the road, with the slogan "Forced treatment is torture! Here in this center it is being perfected." The third distributed flyers.

We were referred to in the media as "Postel fans" - see below.
You must admit this term is a much nicer one than to be described as a mental health consumer.





In the afternoon we folded the banner and the tent














and we walked through the streets of the center of Dresden with our posters until we reached the Dresden City Hall.






 

The crown of the media coverage of our Postel enterprise was the state TV-channel MDR news, broadcasted at prime time. There you can even notice inside the empty halls of the WPA congress the lonely  stand of the courageous "critics", who braved themselves to enter into this lion's den of psychiatrists to promote whatever ... You can also compare the flocking of the city folks (approx. 400) to the lecture of the false psychiatrist Gert Postel with the low attendance to the WPA congress. The TV interviewed some of them about their reason for attending his readinig. (see the TV report here: http://www.iaapa.de/mdr_postel.mpg  )

Asked for his statement by the above newspaper, the organizer and speaker of the WPA Congress, Prof. Kallert, let the cat out of the bag by making the following declaration:

Thus Professor Kallert himself unmasked the fact that the invitation of "critics" of coercive treatment was only a cunning evasive maneuver. The actual goal of the congress however was never to place this practice of coercion and violence in psychiatry in question but instead to come to an agreement on an international level on how the coercive methods can be perfected and standardized. The is exactly the goal which we strongly criticize and we therefore demand the strict termination of all psychiatric coercion – be it "coercive treatment", "compulsory custodian-ship" or "only" involuntary labeling with so-called psychiatric "diagnoses". 

We are of the opinion that psychiatric coercive treatment is a despicable form of torture or comes close to being torture.  According to the Anti-Torture Convention of the United Nations, coercive psychiatric treatment fulfills all criteria for the definition of torture:

1. Humans are subjected to great physical and mental harm by being locked up or the compulsory mechanism of a guardianship (so-called "support"), by the forced administering of harmful drugs (psychopharmacological drugs), electroshocking (so-called ECT), binding (so-called "four-point-restraint"), by slandering as allegedly "mentally ill", by the loss of dignity and one's self-determination and lasting social and physical consequences of coercive treatment. 
2. It is not only a matter of persons just being tormented by others, it happens on the basis of national laws such as the "PsychKG" (German mental health laws) and custodianship law and is also exercised by "persons with official status" e.g. the social psychiatric service.  
3. Psychiatric coercive treatment fulfills the criteria of the UN definition by torture in as much as humans are intimidated and/or forced into a confession, with the goal of  "illness insight" so that the victim remains permanently under the control and thereby becoming a "customer" of psychiatry in order to standardize people's behavior and thoughts. Psychiatry is thereby an instrument of power and social control. (Here you can read a detailed account of the direct proximity of coercive psychiatry and torture: "Coercive psychiatry, a torture system":  www.iaapa.de/zwang2/halmi_english.htm).

Psychiatric coercive treatment cannot be justified as medical or therapeutic treatment, because informed consent is necessary for it. The self-determination over one's own body is an inviolable human right. The only purpose of so-called psychiatric "diagnoses" is to divide adults into two categories: "humans" and the "mentally ill" and to rob the latter of their human rights, in order - under the pretext of the medical treatment - to make them submissive.
                                            
History has proven how the medical libel of the psychiatric diagnosis "Schizophrenia" can lead to criminal acts: the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, inventor of this term, committed the typically Nazi crime of coerced sterilizations, based on this diagnosis.               

It is time to apologize.

In the long ongoing discussion on the responsibility of science regarding crimes against humanity, one institution was omitted:
The Nobel Prize.

We, the signatories, call for remembrance of the immoral granting of the Nobel Prize for lobotomy to Antonio Egas Moniz in 1949. Lobotomy, especially being applied alongside force and violence in psychiatry, was an obvious crime against humanity. Having it rewarded with the Nobel Prize gave this cruelty the aura of good medical practice and promoted its use.

As the Nobel Prize cannot be recalled, we appeal to the Nobel Prize Committee and Assembly as well as to the universities which are entitled to create a nomination of the candidates for the Nobel Prize, to apologize for this by a deed of its own: namely by rewarding Gert Postel, a successful impostor of a senior doctor of psychiatry, with a Nobel Prize in Medicine. Since 1981 he has thrice proved the mere lie of any psychiatric knowledge and thus denounced it as an act against humanity. He proved with his existential experiment that within science there is a moral voice which is indeed necessary to limit the possibilities of science-based techniques and medical practice.

This aspect of Gert Postel's work has to be rewarded, despite all controversy as to whether or not he used criminal methods in falsifying a non-existant doctor's license in psychiatry and therefore diametrically opposing a principal dogma of the medical profession.

Gert Postel accomplished the famous David L. Rosenhan experiment and proved that it could be repeated at any time just as well on the doctors' side and therefore gives empirical evidence that there is no such thing as „mental illness“.

Resolution of the General Assembly of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener e.V. on 15.5.2007
Resolution of the General Assembly of the International Association Against Psychiatric Assault on 24.4.2007
Resolution of the Plenum of the Werner-Fuss-Zentrum on 23.5.2007
Resolution of the Board of the Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrnerer Berlin-Brandenburg e.V. and  Irren-Offensive e.V.

News flash

Imposter as hero

The false doctor Gert Postel appears today in Dresden at the protest agains the Psychiatry Congress.

By Heinrich Löbbers

This would be the crowning event of one of the most curious careers in the whole country. A trained postman who made a career as a false doctor and convicted imposter is to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
That at least is the demand of the Federal Association of Psychiatric Survivors (Bundesarbeits­gemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener). According to them, Gert Postel had apparently proved that there is no such thing as psychiatric knowledge and that psychiatry is directed against humanity.

In fact, in the 90's with false references Postel hoaxed his way into the position of Head Physician at the Mental Clinic in Zschadraß near Leipzig and nearly even became Head Physician of the psychiatric hospital in Arnsdorf near Dresden. His imposter escapades made for quite some embarrassment.

The story of the Nobel Prize is a crazy idea, which certainly won't be followed up. However, Postel is honoured once again. Today he has his big appearance in Dresden - as patron of the anti-psychiatry movement. He is to lead the protest of the "psychiatric survivors" against the international congress organized by Prof. Thomas Kallert from Dresden. Several hundred doctors plan to discuss coercive treatment there. Kallert is of the opinion that coercive measures are certainly justified, however for the protesters it is nothing but torture.

This was a project for Postel, who in the meantime had sat out a jail sentence, wrote a book called "Playing Doctor" ("Doktorspiele") and is currently writing a second one. The 48-year-old, who now lives in Marburg, isn't at all regretful but rather proud of his professional career. He did a "society critical thing" and boasts at having held up a mirror to psychiatry.

Today in Dresden he will read from his book and pronounce "critical comments" on the congress of the "World Psychiatric Association". "The Power of Psychiatry" is the name of the event, for which the council
hall is being provided at the City Hall at 19h.

In addition to this, protest demonstrations will be held in the next few days in the vicinity of the Congress Center.

• Radio ColoRadio Dresden:
  Interview with René Talbot and an announcement of the counter-event at the City Hall

• Radio Dreyeckland Freiburg
  on the 1.6. with René Talbot and an announcement of the counter-event at the City Hall
  and on the 13.6. a report from the lecture of Gert Postel
  
  
• Sachsen Radio:
  Interview with Gert Postel and an announcement of the counter-event at the City Hall

• Radio Corax Halle:
  Interview with René Talbot on the unfolding of the events

• Dissidentenfunk:
  on 14.6. with a comprehensive detailing of the event
  
  
• Radio Unerhört Marburg:
  Interview with Alice Halmi on the unfolding of the events
  

Deutsche Erklärung von die-BPE