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DR.
JEKYLL AND THE
PATIENT, MR. HYDE
The physician, patient death dance
by Fintan Dunne
Editor, SickofDoctors.com
8th March 2002
 It
is the stuff of 'B' movies. Late into the night, the mad doctor
is shut away in his laboratory; bent over strange instruments;
concocting bizarre potions and giving life to monstrous creations.
Eventually his insatiable preoccupation overcomes him, and his
mind unhinges.
Local citizens call to question him, but he pooh-poohs their concerns
with a mask of glib assurance. Until, at last, the abomination
escapes the lab. Screams echo in the night as it wreaks havoc
on the defenseless populace. They don't make movies like that
anymore.
They don't have to. Death by doctor is now the third leading cause
of death in the US health system. According to the Journal of
the American Medical Association, iatrocide is running at around
250,000 deaths per annum. That figure is likely somewhat short
of the truth and is surely the wreaking of havoc on a defenseless
population. With doctoring like this, who needs monsters?
But, why is the profession as a whole largely in denial of the
scale of the iatrocide being inflicted on patients? Why are doctors
not marching in the street with Hippocratic fervor to demand reform?
Why do they remain largely complicit in the mass slaughter of
patients? After all, in the last ten years, doctors have probably
killed well in excess of three million patients and seriously
injured perhaps thirty million more.
For an answer we must delve into the subterranean levels of the
medical mind. The key to understanding this catastrophe is to
examine the socio-psychological motivations of doctors; and, indeed
of patients. Let's consult an expert in the psychology of medics.
Let's begin by recalling Robert Louis Stevenson's delineation
of the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
THE MIND OF
THE PURITAN
In
Stevenson's classic novel, Dr. Jekyll speaks of his difficulties
reconciling his natural exuberance with the demands of his chosen
role in life. Society expects practitioners to have literally
clinical levels of self control and self-denial. It is a burden
that must be resonate with any doctor.
 JEKYLL:
"The worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of
disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such
as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry
my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance
before the public. I stood committed to a profound duplicity of
life."
His uncomfortable position was similar to that of a priest or other
religious. Indeed the modern profession of doctor is rooted in the
Christian period when so-called 'church doctors' replaced the herbalists
of middle-age society. Medicine's rigid hierarchical structure and
the use of Latin in medicine, are the legacies of it's roots in
religion. Jekyll himself is aware of this religious dimension:
JEKYLL:
"I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that
hard law of life which lies at the root of religion, and is one
of the most plentiful springs of distress."
Distress not only for the religious mind- but for those caught in
the maw of it's practitioner's attempts at a severe self-denial
that is the apotheosis of self-awareness. Religion can create it's
own devils; born of a puritanical repression of the sensual aspect
of life. The puritan mind equates sensual chaos with death, and
hopes that intellectualism, formalism and ritual will ensure immortality.
Jekyll tries to escape this puritan prison by using a drug to create
Hyde and liberate his repressed sensuality:
 JEKYLL:
"I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious
of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images
running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds
of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul."
Though he feels both happier and lighter, the puritanical Jekyll
characterizes his newfound freedom of soul to be "not
innocent." In fact, the whole thrust of Jekyll's
macabre drug experiment is to try to cleave his psyche apart so
that he can forever discard his discomforting sensual and lighter
side:
 JEKYLL:
"If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate
identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable;
the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and
remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly
and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which
he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence
by the hands of this extraneous evil."
Clearly, this is the social and personal psychology behind the Inquisitions,
the witch-hunts and even the modern leper-ization of AIDS victims.
The accuser seeks to punish, banish or separate those who manifest
the hidden aspects of himself, in order to all the more "walk
steadfastly and securely on his upward path." This
purging has to take place periodically to relieve the internal pressures
in the psyche of the puritan. The longer it is delayed the more
forceful the manifestation:
JEKYLL:
"For two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never
before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving
conscience. At last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again
compounded and swallowed the transforming draught. My devil had
been long caged, he came out roaring."
But, what happens if the puritan complex refrains altogether from
liberating the sensual Hyde within? The devil eventually comes out
roaring anyway- not through Hyde- but instead through Jekyll himself.
What follows is a witch-hunt of everything that reminds Jekyll of
the nature of Hyde. That repressed devil came out roaring in the
Inquisition. It came out too in Hitler and Mengele. Indeed doctors
were to the forefront in joining the Nazi party, and were the architects
of it's genocidal programs.
MENGELE
AND DEAD RINGERS
 The
theme of the divided medical self is also explored by David Cronenberg
in his chilling film 'Dead Ringers,' based on a true story. Jeremy
Irons plays both Elliot and Beverly Mantle: interdependent identical
twin gynecologists.
 Elliot
is the consummate clinical professional and an able seducer. The
less socially adept Beverly becomes addicted to amphetamines; has
a mental breakdown and begins to hurt his female patients with self-designed,
monstrous gynecological instruments. In these phallic instruments,
the professional repression inherent in the medical role, reappears
as a sadistic, morbid sexual fascination. Finally, a drugged Beverly
operates on his brother- disemboweling him; then commits suicide.
The film ends with a shot of the two in a death embrace.
This 'twins' theme also pervades both the psychology and the sadistic
activities of the notorious Dr. Mengele. Robert Jay Lifton, in "The
Nazi Doctors," describes a phenomenon called "doubling":
LIFTON:
"The key to understanding the Nazi doctors is the psychological
principle I call "doubling": the division of the self into two
functioning wholes, so that a part-self acts as an entire self.
An Auschwitz doctor could, through doubling, not only kill and
contribute to the killing, but also organize silently, an entire
self-structure encompassing virtually all aspects of his behavior."
 Mengele
could act in a caring, concerned manner when dealing with newly-arriving
exhausted women and children, yet soon thereafter send them to the
gas chambers. Some surviving children would remember him as a gentle
man who showered love and attention on children. The very children
he would later subject to gruesome experiments in search of genetic
purity.
How appropriate that his twin nature should be fascinated with twins.
He injected blood samples from one twin into another twin of a different
blood type. He had dye injected into the eyes of twin subjects.
He even attempted to conjoin twins in a bizarre attempt to replicate
the Siamese twin condition.
 As
to his sadism --whether conscious or unconscious, psychoanalyst,
Dr. Tobias Brocher, postulates that:
BROCHER: "He didn't take pleasure in inflicting pain, but
in the power he exerted by being the man who had to decide between
life and death within the ideology of a concentration camp doctor."
Here we get to the nub of the matter. The primary challenge to our
human consciousness is to cope with the concept of our own mortality
- as soon as we are old enough to comprehend that reality. Partly,
the culture offers us an answer through the hoped-for immortal heaven
of religion or the modern physical immortality attempted by religion's
successor: medicine.
But we also make an individual choices as to how to position ourselves
in relation to death. Many choose to supplicate themselves to human
power structures that offer a tenuous antidote to death. In particular,
some elect to place themselves on the very cusp of death itself
by entering the field of religion or medicine. Thus, the psyche
fancies itself as a Peter at the pearly gates, adjudicating in religious
life the fate of others as to heaven or hell; in medicine adjudicating
matters of life or death. Taken to excess, this dynamic produces
a Mengele.
All this is, of course, the common lot of humanity. Admittedly,
aberrations of the psyche are not restricted to the mind of the
physician. They surely exist in greater or lesser measure in all.
Furthermore, there are legions of noble individuals in science and
medicine whose psychological integration enables them to do naught
but good.
Yet it is clear that in some practitioners, and currently in the
profession as a whole, the modern medical persona is a flawed jewel.
Subject to concealed psychological motivations and susceptible to
the socially determined cyclic ebb and flow of the fascist dynamic.
Indeed, history shows that the Anglo-Saxon psyche which founded
medicine, and today dominates internationally the politics of science
and medicine, is more vulnerable than most to these death-motivated
fascistic tendencies.
To critics, it seems that medical training dangerously accentuates
this tendency, is over-dogmatic, and sets out to dehumanize it's
practitioners and destroy their empathy. After all, the term 'clinical'
also means 'cold.' Those 'B' movie themes that depict 'mad scientists,'
are not without valid foundation. The lesson of history is undeniable:
medical science, through eugenics and genocide, has been the tool
of homicidal and genocidal fascism in the past.
KILL OR CURE?
 In
1939, Hitler's Germany instituted a state euthanasia program, in
which doctors examined hospital records. Those deemed "incurable,"
had their records marked with a '+' sign. This positive mark designated
them to die. The use of a '+' in the assignation of HIV-positive
status is chillingly similar.
History is repeating in the current AIDS syndrome. More subtly hidden
from conscious view, but just as destructive of 'undesirable"
homosexuals as was the elimination of undesirables targeted by the
Nazi regime.
In the light of this analysis it is far too coincidental that the
medications such as AZT --prescribed to 'cure' patients of AIDS,
have side-effects capable of producing symptoms identical to those
of the posited HIV virus.
In fact, Glaxo's Retrovir (AZT) drug packaging carries a warning
that AZT causes dementia (AIDS defining), certain lymphomas (AIDS
defining) muscle wasting (AIDS defining), severe immune deficiency
(AIDS defining), diarrhea (AIDS defining) and life-threatening anemia.
And this warning:
 "PROLONGED
USE OF RETROVIR HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY
SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS."
Throughout this essay we have been delineating the duality of twins.
In a world composed of dualities such as left-right, good-bad or
life-death it is axiomatic that AIDS contains a duality. Indeed
we may posit that the reason the primary AIDS medication causes
AIDS symptoms is not in the least coincidental. Rather it is an
inevitable consequence of the dualistic counteracting mechanisms
of reality itself. These counteracting realities are mirror image
twins that betray the dualistic and psycho-social underpinnings
of the AIDS diagnosis.
This is 'kill you or cure you' medication at it's most bizarre:
Jekyll wants to heal AIDS. But Hyde is killing by causing AIDS symptoms.
The benevolent impetus of medicine is here negated because the "sex-virus-death"
themes of AIDS push powerful psychological buttons that allow Hyde
to emerge unconsciously through the good Dr. Jekyll.
THE
PATIENT, MR. HYDE
Unfortunately,
the patient is equally vulnerable to the cultural hysteria and sublimated
death fears that surround life-threatening conditions such as heart
disease, cancer and especially AIDS.
 There
is too much child-parent interaction in the patient-doctor relationship.
Unnerved by a hysterical fear of death, the patient cross-identifies
Death and the doctor as ultimate authority figures; then attempts
to appease Death's authority by accepting the punishment inherent
in the medications --in the hope of escaping the ultimate punishment
of loss of his life. This is socially-induced patient suicide married
to iatrocide.
Like a penitent approaching a confessor, the patient is preconditioned
to accept the paradigm within which he is sinful. Guilty in the
case of AIDS of either homosexuality, heterosexual promiscuity or
drug use. Guilty in heart disease of sinful diet or sloth. Guilty
in cancer of repressing emotion, or hiding anger or other faddish
explanations. His penance will be toxic AIDS medication, toxic chemotherapy
and if unlucky --death.
For the doctor there is the challenge of coping with this unwarranted
faith in his abilities and destabilizing appeal to his power complex;
luring him into the temptations of the satisfaction derived by wielding
the life-death power in this psycho-social miasma, thus assuaging
his own death fears.
Again let us turn to AIDS because it is such a rich source of dramatic
illustration. Here we can see the patient playing Hyde to the doctor's
Jekyll. The patient is by definition of the HIV/AIDS diagnosis paying
the ultimate price for sensual, sinful behavior.
When the patient and the doctor meet they each bring a pair of their
own dualities to the situation. Classically, when dualities meet
they beget a third --as in man and woman begetting a child. In this
case, the child is victimhood. In iatrocide, it is the patient,
Mr. Hyde who becomes the victim of the doctor-patient relationship.
DEBUNKING
THE DEATH DANCE
 The
physician-patient relationship in serious illness is a death dance.
It is the death dance of Jekyll and Hyde; the death dance of Elliot
and Beverly Mantle. But in this dance there will be only one death:
that of the patient.
Jekyll will temporarily achieve his objective: he cleaves off Hyde.
It is Hyde alone who will die. But Hyde cannot be killed off that
easily. He cries out for integration with Jekyll and will come back
to haunt him again and again. Each time demanding more deaths.
The good Dr. Jekyll is operating from the best motives. But unconsciously,
the Hyde factor is working through Jekyll to destroy in phobia those
who manifest aspects of sexuality that society and Jekyll cannot
face; or to relieve the death fears of the doctor by wielding the
power to administer death by fatal medication; to impose a ritual
ordered death on the unordered chaos of life.
Allopathic medicine is tending to a mental virus that undermines
psychological health, feeds hysteria and diverts the battle against
the real diseases. It is infecting societies around the world. The
Christian missionaries once spread an old-time message of heaven
and hell in the Third World. The World Health Organization spreads
a neocolonialist medicalized version of the same message. Most doctors
are conditioned not to buck the system, or are themselves trapped
by the psycho-social dynamics.
The cure will come from psychological understanding of this mechanism
- not from within medicine. We have to apply psychological insights
to restore the mental health of society and resolve the death-dance
complex.
Medicine is increasingly becoming homicide posing as treatment.
Administered by doctors who are reduced to being the distribution
channel of market-driven pharmaceutical corporations wherein the
victim is not a patient --merely a market. This is the intersection
of profit and power with murder and trance-induced death.
Our understanding of human psychology shows that this catastrophe
can be stopped by exposing the unconscious game to conscious review.
The Internet is nonhierarchical and antifascist. If we can bypass
a compliant and complacent media and name the game by Internet,
we may stop this mental virus and inhibit iatrocide.
Contact
the Author at mail@sickofdoctors.com
REFERENCES
1. Text
of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde
2. Doctors in
Auschwitz
3. AZT and Genocide
4. Lifton
Quote on Nazi Doctors
5. Brocher
Quote on Mengele
6. Euthanasia
Program and the '+' sign
Fishkoff, S. ('96, April 12).
"They Called It Mercy Killing." Jerusalem
Post, p.8.
7. Mengele
& Twins
8. Nazi Euthanasia
Program
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