Can't Psychiatry easily be used as a tool for social control and conformity?

Samuel A. Cartwright (1793-1863) was an American Physician who worked in the states of Mississippi and Louisiana. He worked to find out what was "wrong" with Slaves who wanted freedom, and claimed that they had a disease known as "Drapetomania". While his work on this matter is obviously recognized as Pseudo Science today, in his time he was the leading Authority on the subject in the South.

"If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away." [7]

In Diseases and Pecularities of the Negro Race, Cartwright writes that the Bible calls for a slave to be submissive to his master, and by doing so, the slave will have no desire to run away.[8]

In addition to identifying drapetomania, Cartwright prescribed a remedy. His feeling was that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented."[4] In the case of slaves "sulky and dissatisfied without cause" — a warning sign of imminent flight — Cartwright prescribed "whipping the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure."[9][10][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

Today, I see many other things within Psychiatry that make my stomach churn. That what is normal or even right is relative is of no concern to me-what matters to me is the answer to the question, "Can we trust Psychiatry to be truly objective and non-political in today and in the future?"

Can’t Psychiatry easily be used as a tool for social control and conformity?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html
Menard K

It’s like you know me-
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AguoXqSiWCkHax4n.AUrkHLty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100712055332AA4nfV1
Drunk-

I never advocated releasing them all from asylums.

I simply want to know how, given it’s history-can we honestly expect Psychiatry to be objective when it’s so easily able to be used as a tool of control?

"Don’t you love your government? Dear God, you must have the ‘Unpatriotic Disorder!’ Someone lock him away!"

Is this really that far fetched? I don’t think so.
Trout-

If they cure a disease they’re out of a job, remember? Not a lot of incentive to fix the problem in our society is there?

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