Ivan Illich on Medicalization and the Lifelong Patient

"Competition forces the development of new markets. The goal must be to turn all healthy people into sick people, i.e., people who consider themselves to be in need of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventive manipulation by experts, both chemically and psychologically, for as long as possible in order to be able to “live healthily.” This is already working quite well in the area of physical illness, but even better in the area of mental disorders, especially since there is no shortage of theories according to which almost all people are unhealthy. What is questionable is the analogous transfer of the concept of illness from the physical to the psychological. Some examples: a) The sensory organ of fear, responsible for signaling as yet unclear threats, is unpleasant but vitally necessary and therefore perfectly healthy; only the wrong way of dealing with fear (e.g., defense, repression) can make you ill. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, fear was recognized as a market niche and a number of new, independent disease entities were constructed – with many wonderful healing possibilities for grateful patients." Klaus Dörner

"There is so much that the average person doesn't know about the medical profession, that if they did, they would probably never again go for any treatment, test or check- up, because the profession has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical industry, & geared simply to create lifetime customers." Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn