“Live Like an American” Radio Report #1 on the Savage Nation
January 19. 2009
Audio available on www.breggin.com
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the author and the source are identified.
Not an exact transcript.

This is Dr. Peter R. Breggin. I am a psychiatrist and I want to help you to “Live Like an American!”

Today’s Subject: The Two Keys to Life

I am a very optimistic psychiatrist. I find that almost everyone who seeks help can be helped through encouragement and self-understanding. I believe that a good therapist is part inspirational and part guide, helping people to untangle their lives and especially helping them to live by better values and principles.

But as optimistic as I am, I’ve had to face one big limitation in how much I can help. People cannot be helped until they become ready to take responsibility for their lives.

This is true of all of us: To improve our lives, we have to be determined to look at our mistakes and to take charge of improving ourselves and our relationships.

Responsibility is the key to life. When we realize that we have to take responsibility all the time in every aspect of our lives, no exceptions, we will make the most of every opportunity.

There’s an old joke: How many psychiatrists does it take change a light bulb? The answer is, “One, but first the bulb has to want to change.” So apparently someone else has noticed this truth, if only to make fun of it.

But modern psychiatry doesn’t seem to believe in people taking responsibility. Psychiatrists routinely tell patients that they are disabled by biochemical imbalances and therefore cannot get better without drugs. These psychiatrists try to convince people that they need a change in their brains rather than a change in their attitudes. It gets even worse when these psychiatrists prescribe mind-numbing chemicals that make it harder if not impossible to take responsibility.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Pursuit? Most psychiatrists have no idea that people must pursue what they want in life—that they must have ideals and values and take responsibility for making them come true.

Genuine help encourages responsibility. By responsibility, I mean a determination to give up feeling helpless and instead to take charge of our lives. It may not happen overnight, and caring guidance may prove valuable; but the individual must desire to become independent and self-determined.

I also came to the conclusion as a psychiatrist that people need freedom in order to exercise responsibility. When patients are locked up against their will for what’s called “treatment,” they are discouraged from taking responsibility for their lives. They commonly get worse. I had to give up on the idea that I could force someone to get better.

As a psychiatrist on the frontlines of helping people, I learned this basic lesson: To improve their emotional lives people need freedom and they need to take responsibility. That’s the starting point.

I realized that freedom and responsibility are the twin keys to life, except of course when it came to thinking about politics and government. That was different. I still hoped that people of good intentions in government could plan the lives of other people and take responsibility for other people without making them dependent and more helpless.

Eventually it dawned on me that there is no difference between what people need in a psychiatrist’s office and what people need in the larger office of life and politics. I realized that the same principles—freedom and responsibility—apply everywhere.

It does not matter where human beings live and act—at home, in the office, in society as a citizen—we bring along our basic human nature. We human beings thrive on freedom and responsibility. And we go to pot when we give up demanding freedom and stop exercising responsibility.

This was a revelation to me: The same principles apply to our individual lives and to political lives. Only later would I discover that the Founding Fathers had known this all along. More than two hundred years ago men like George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison wanted the new government of the United States to provide individuals with the freedom to take responsibility for their own lives.

And what do “healthy” people do with freedom and responsibility? They tend to work hard, to play hard and to love a lot. They are usually very productive and very generous. That’s why I call myself an American psychiatrist—I believe in defending freedom and I believe in exercising responsibility, all the time, everywhere, in all aspects of our lives. When we take responsibility for ourselves, we become more fulfilled, more productive, and more loving to the people in our lives.

That brings us to what I call The Primary Principles—the refrain of my weekly report:

This is Dr. Peter Breggin urging you to “Live Like an American!”
You can find me at Breggin.com.