Industrialized Systems Build and Collapse Empires

The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) levels a trenchant and comprehensive critique against what it terms “Industrialized” systems—referencing the established psychological, medical (psychiatry), legal, and governmental structures—by diagnosing them with profound moral, legal, and developmental pathologies. This systemic analysis posits that these institutions are not merely flawed but are actively detrimental to genuine healing due to their dedication to reductionist logic, rigid adherence to flawed hierarchies, and underlying patterns of addiction and dissociation.

I. Moral and Ethical Critiques: The Pathology of Professionalism

The foundational moral critique advanced by the WHI centers on the systemic failure to uphold true moral integrity, particularly through the prioritization of technical compliance over genuine compassion.

A. The Primacy of Moral-Ethics Over Legal-Ethics

The prevailing systems operate under a framework of “Legal-Ethics,” defined by adherence to external rules, licensure mandates, and the avoidance of liability (“Do no harm, follow the law”). The WHI contrasts this with “Moral-Ethics,” which represents a superior, conscience-driven commitment to authentic action and universal principles (“Do what is right”). The moral dilemma is rooted in the conflict where licensed professionals are compelled to “obey their ethics but not their morals,” resulting in practitioners who are “technically compliant but morally compromised”. This moral stagnation is explicitly viewed as preventing healing, growth, and revolution, whereas morality demands all of these.

B. Systemic Addiction and Denial

The critique asserts that the industrialized systems exhibit the very pathologies they fail to define or treat in individuals. The structures are diagnosed as being “addicted to living dissociated” from reality, moral purpose, and the lived suffering of the citizenry.

1. Undiagnosed Universal Addictions: The systems are structurally compromised by “unconsciously chosen” and universally applied compulsions, specifically perfectionism (rigid adherence to quantitative metrics and standardization), altruism (used to rationalize professional dominance and moral hypocrisy), and ambition (an insatiable drive for increased control and power). These traits, while often lauded, become pathological drivers of systemic dysfunction, enabling the maintenance of the status quo and preventing necessary change.
2. The Business of Suffering: The system is implicated in fostering an “Economy of Denial” where professional self-interest and financial certainty (money dependence) drive dysfunction. The failure of professional organizations like the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) to challenge illegal government actions or scientifically unsound laws is an “active defense mechanism” designed to protect their professional and financial dependence on state-sanctioned systems. This pursuit of “more diagnoses, more regulation, more security, more power, more documentation, and more data” is categorized as a “quantitative addiction” that traps clients in learned helplessness and perpetuates the business of suffering.

C. Pathologizing Humanity and Disembodied Care

Industrialized psychiatry is criticized for reducing complex human suffering to surface symptoms through a reductionist paradigm, such as the widely debunked “chemical imbalance” theory. This approach is fundamentally dehumanizing, fostering chemical dependency and bypassing genuine relational care.

1. Devaluation of Qualitative Wisdom: The quantitative dominance of industrialized research systematically devalues lived experience and emotional truth (“qualitative wisdom”), creating a system that is judged as “qualitatively cold, desperate, and psychopathically applied” when divorced from embodied reality.
2. Diagnostic Stigma: The act of diagnosing is inherently viewed as contributing to “stigma, separation, classism, and elitism”. Healers advocate for undiagnosing to address the deeper, unresolved spiritual, existential, and moral betrayal wounds that underlie symptoms, recognizing them instead as normative responses to trauma.

II. Legal Critiques: Systemic Abuse and Unjust Laws

The legal critiques focus on how the rule of law, interpreted and enforced by developmentally immature and addicted professions, acts as a mechanism of systemic abuse and coercive control.

A. The War on Drugs and Healing

The legal system is accused of perpetrating a “War on Drugs” which is explicitly defined as a “war on healing”.

1. Crime Against Humanity: The policy is labeled a “crime against humanity” for actively impeding human well-being and denying citizens their inalienable right to heal. The system has caused devastating social consequences and created a “prison pipeline” by criminalizing natural psychedelics, which are categorized as “superfoods” or agents of spiritual healing.
2. Scientific Betrayal: The legal system criminalized psychedelics by claiming they had “no medical value” despite historical and scientific evidence to the contrary, particularly the fact that a study in 1994 showed DMT had medical value. The formal discovery of the endocannabinoid system (the body’s central healing system) was delayed for decades due to the illegalization of cannabis, constituting institutional betrayal trauma against the public’s right to natural healing.

B. Bureaucratic Overreach and Coercion

Governmental and professional mandates are viewed as tools of control that violate bodily autonomy and civil liberties.

1. Mandates and Denial of Freedom: The system is criticized for enforcing mandates (such as COVID-19 related restrictions, the use of experimental vaccines, and the removal of religious exemptions) that deny medical freedom and are driven by a desperate “addictive grip on control”. Compliance with the illegal COVID-19 shutdowns by professional organizations like the APA and AMA is deemed a professional failing, prioritizing self-preservation over moral duty.
2. Unconstitutional Hierarchies: The creation of “separate but not equal” professions (e.g., in NYS licensure) is seen as a pathology where the law maintains a hierarchy that actively hinders effective practice and equal standing. Licenses are dismissed as “nothing more than a tollbooth that is funded by taxes,” serving liability rather than reflecting genuine expertise.

C. Incomplete Legal Standards

The legal system relies on scientifically immature standards, resulting in the betrayal of citizen trust.

1. Flawed Psychological Constructs: Legal and insurance practices, such as the use of Medical Necessity (MN) for reimbursement, are exposed as political and financial barriers rather than scientific standards. The law’s processes fail to adhere to self-imposed protocols meant to reduce implicit bias, confirming a profound dissociation from the principles they claim to enforce.
2. Violation of Unconscious Informed Consent: Legal consent procedures are inadequate because they rely solely on conscious, cognitive assent, neglecting the necessity of “unconscious informed consent” which involves the body’s implicit wisdom. This is viewed as a systemic breach of human rights, perpetuating dependency and trauma.

III. Developmental Critiques: Cognitive Immaturity of Governing Systems

The most provocative psychological critique diagnoses the industrialized systems themselves as exhibiting developmental delays, which explains their rigid and flawed decision-making processes.

A. Arrested Moral and Cognitive Development

Drawing on established psychological developmental theories (Piaget, Kohlberg), the logic governing legal, governmental, and psychiatric professions is assessed to be at the concrete cognitive stage, similar to a child aged 7 to 12 years old.

1. Rigid Logic (1+1=2): This developmental arrest manifests as rigid, literal, and concrete reasoning, symbolized by the insistence that “1+1 must equal 2”. This binary thinking is deemed a dissociative defense mechanism used by the traumatized system to impose an illusory sense of order and control over the complexity of lived reality.
2. Inability to Grasp Multiplicity (1+1=3): This immature logic prevents the systems from comprehending non-linear psychological realities, specifically the concept that “one plus one can also equals three”. The result (the “three”) represents the emergence of complexity, such as the relationship system formed by two people, or the dissociative defense mechanism formed when a person encounters trauma (You + Trauma = Traumatized Self + Dissociative Defense Mechanism).
3. Moral Stagnation: The prioritization of adherence to laws (Legal-Ethics) over higher moral principles keeps the system stuck in lower stages of moral development, limiting its capacity for judgment and evolution.

B. The Divide Between Training and Education

The prevailing system prioritizes “training,” which focuses on technical skills, compliance, and adhering to predetermined protocols to execute a specific job. In contrast, the WHI champions “education,” defined as an intensely experiential and transformative process rooted in lived experience that results in qualitative wisdom and moral fortitude.

1. Lived Experience as Epistemological Authority: A Healer’s authority stems from having “been there and comeback” from suffering, embodying wisdom deemed “more valuable in the real world” than institutional degrees.
2. The Body as the Unconscious: The most profound developmental concept is the assertion that the physical body is the psychological unconscious. This provides a material basis for implicit bias (as lived experience/memory stored in the body) and dictates that somatic approaches are the direct path to healing, challenging the mental health system’s historically mind-centric view.

The collective consequence of these moral, legal, and developmental failures is the mandate for systemic recovery, requiring the industrialized professions to undergo the difficult process of confronting their addictions and admitting their institutional flaws, much like an individual in recovery.

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References

O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/

O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/

O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

*This is for informational and educational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.