Dr. Breggin - my invite is still open.

Dear readers,

It seems that Dr. Breggin won’t accept my invitation to have a proper conversation with me. After I wrote my substack article ‘Dear Dr. Breggin: let’s talk’ I sent him an email in which I invited him to talk with me. He didn’t answer it.

This was not the first time I reached out to Dr. Breggin. In September 2022, after he published a series of offensive articles, I also invited him to have a public conversation with me. He refused.

On this occasion, I refer to an earlier substack article titled ‘Am I an expert in mass formation or a trojan horse?’ in which I reacted to the criticism of Dr. Breggin. It seems a bit strange to me that he continues to repeat the same allegations while this article refuted them so clearly.

The only thing I can say is that my invitation to have a conversation is still open. I think this is an excellent opportunity to show that people can be on speaking terms when they have different opinions. Below, I repost a few paragraphs from my substack ‘Some notes on the tragicomic attempts to burn me at the stake’. I believe they are relevant in this context.

‘I recommend that everyone read the excellent book by David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. The authors describe how, in Indigenous tribes of northeastern North America, no one had power over another. How were the problems of coexistence solved? By only one means: talking to each other (see p. 56). An enormous amount of time was spent in public debates. And it never occurred to anyone to exclude even one person from those conversations.

Missionaries and other Westerners who engaged in dialogue with the Native Americans were also impressed by their eloquence and skill in reasoning. They noted that these “savages” attained a degree of competence throughout the tribe against which Europe’s highly educated elite paled in comparison (see p. 57). Indigenous orators such as Huron-Wendat Chief Kondiaronk were invited to Europe for a seat at the table so that nobility and clergy might enjoy their extraordinary rhetoric and reasoning. (Many such Indigenous leaders also mastered European languages.)

Western culture is going in the opposite direction: the register of linguistic exchange is increasingly being replaced by the register of power. Those who do not subscribe to the prevailing ideology are branded and regarded as someone with whom a decent person is not allowed to speak (‘conspiracy theorist’, ‘antivaxxer’, ‘far right’, and so on). I often emphasize that in the current era we need to rediscover and rearticulate the timeless ethical principles of humanity. This is the first one: see in every other human being an individual who has the right to speak and be heard.

That was a principle of mine long before the corona crisis, a principle that I maintained in my psychotherapeutic practice, among other places. I worked in my practice as a psychologist with cases where many people would rather not burn their fingers. In 2018, I made the front pages of the newspapers and appeared on national television after I was called as a witness in the assize trial of a nurse who, in the past, had killed terminally ill patients with insulin and air embolisms. At that trial, I refused to hand over my patient file to the judge for seven hours. My motivation was clear: if I tell someone that I will keep their words in confidence, I will do so. And from a legal-deontological point of view, I think that’s completely justified: past offenses or crimes are never a valid reason to breach professional confidences. My point is this: we must put the act of speaking at the center of society.’

Mattias