The political misuse of psychiatry: an African-Caribbean perspective.

Capitalist democracy in the West is predicated on the belief that Western European democracy is the only correct and just form, and that Western civilization represents the highest form of human social development. This belief is driven by a conviction that highlights the individual’s “right to freedom.” This concept of liberty originates in the Western overvalued idea that all goods and services that exist can be bought and sold—can be individually owned. Thus, any social formation that posits an alternate concept of “freedom” based on a set of social propositions would be seen by Western ideologues as incorrect, immoral, and lacking in legitimacy. The Western ideologues enlist professional custodians of their ideology to attack and discredit all the legal and definitional principles of the opposing ideology. The Western ideologues see no contradiction in their own abuse of individual freedoms within the disciplines of criminology and psychiatry if these acts of political misuse and abuse are perpetrated against individuals or racial groups who are outside their own preferred purview.