The postmoderns view all human problems through the prism of this struggle for domination and its resulting imbalances in power. When postmodernism was confined to deconstructing literature, all we got was bizarre literary theory. Now, postmodernism is moving into the real world, where it can harm people directly. Fortunately, Satel goes beyond the manifest silliness to show us the real dangers that medical ideologues pose to patients when their prescriptions are taken seriously in such diverse fields as public health, psychiatry, and nursing practice. The schools of public health are the institutions tied most closely to the postmodern university, and community health was the first target of these ideas.
Some people are sick, because others are healthy.
There is no evidence for that whatsoever. Ever since Hans Selye wrote his famous book on the physiology of stress in the mid-1950s, determining the role that stress plays in disease has been an elusive goal, and even after forty years no definitive answer has been found. Intact family-structures, personal responsibility, and avoidance of drugs during pregnancy may help explain this, but postmodernist assertions of power imbalance clarify nothing. A real psychiatrist is too much part of the power structure to be trusted. These people have it together enough to proselytize, lobby politicians, hassle hospitals, and raise money, though they are too ill to hold a job.