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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 that 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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