MUDr. Zdeněk Bašný

"In the case of Augustin Navratil, professionally, if one reads the reports that I had the opportunity to read and knows the atmosphere in the professional society at the time, one can see that there may have been an abuse of psychiatry, that there is a misdiagnosis. That may be one of the important points. There were a number of assessments made of Augustin Navratil. The initial ones actually resulted in a diagnosis of procedural mental disorder, which was paranoia querulans, which would be a delusional disorder today. He was diagnosed as delusional. In one of the later assessments, when a vote was made as a constitutional assessment, some votes said it was paranoia querulans but others said that delusional disorder had not been established. Indeed, when one reads it, it is true that there was no basis for a diagnosis of psychotic illness. There was a consideration that it was not normal for a person to be so clinging to his truth and asserting it in such a way, because a normal person does not assert himself like that and repeatedly. But he had this inner sense of justice set up like that. Then there was a group of Brno psychiatrists within the Geneva Initiative who wrote that he did not suffer from any disorder at al, and there is no psychopathological analysis there. I would say that this is a shift because some of Augustin Navratil's personality traits, his determination and [sense of] justice, simply justified it [the diagnosis]. They said he suffered from nothing at all, and that was not adequately supported; they did not discuss how those previous assessments arrived at the diagnosis although the psychopathology is well described in those assessments. So, there is no conclusion in a number of cases. A delusion means that one starts from a faulty premise and then can react normally. But there was no faulty premise here. Augustin Navratil had his land taken away or not returned once, the second time he signed something he stood for. So he was clinging to a real issue [not a delusion]. But his defense was already outside the norm at the time."

"The most significant abuse of psychiatry and psychiatric facilities occurred, quite surprisingly, in 1987 and 1988 when it was decreed - albeit not in writing - that, at the time of major events such as party congresses or visit by Brezhnev and Gorbachev and the like, people who with their mental disorder might disrupt these events, should be accommodated if their doctor referred them for hospitalization or the police brought them in. They were to be hospitalized for the duration of these events, which is a basic violation [of human rights]. I found it interesting that when I investigated this to find out who issued it, all these instructions were only passed on verbally from the ministerial meetings through the regional offices to psychiatric facilities. They were never served in writing. Also, there was an instruction to the effect that this must never be justified as a preventive hospitalization based on this oral decree. Interestingly, these flagrant cases of misusing psychiatry occurred quite shortly before the Velvet Revolution."

"The Bohnice hospital included a special hospital ward of the Pankrác prison, a psychiatric ward for people serving sentences or in detention. This ward was created in 1950 when [Minister Alexej] Čepička took over almost the entire hospital, planning to set up Prague's air defence site there. Then he only took half of the hospital. This pavilion was set up at that time, it answered to the Ministry of the Interior, and the State Security was allowed to enter it. In fact, Bohnice was often mistaken for that ward and it bothered me: there was this ward that held people in pre-trial detention or serving their sentences. But at the same time, it was a prison facility with a prison mode of operation. The problem was that the doctors were subordinated to the director of the hospital. They were vetted, but they worked there. I found this union not only unfortunate but basically unacceptable. And it was possible, after three years [during his tenure as director of Bohnice], after very difficult negotiations and accusations of me and the psychiatrists did evaluations there, to build a new facility in Brno, where it still is today."

"They called me to Bartolomějská, and I was there just twice. The interesting thing was that the first time they pretended they hardly knew who I was, and then they knew almost everything about me. I was there twice, twelve hours or so each time. The second time they were pressing me and saying, 'You have a lot of passports.' We had to have them because of the visas and exit permits. I said, 'If you take them away from me, I'll be relieved because it's causing me problems at home. I can't get rid of that.'" - "What?" - "I had about five passports. When we went to competitions, like to Morocco, I had to have a Moroccan visa. That took some time to sort out. Anyone who travelled a lot had to have multiple passports, for which different visas were obtained. I was like, 'If you take them away from me, that's fine.' And they said, 'What do you enjoy?' I said, 'You know, I enjoy the chronic psychiatric patients. I'm at ease with them.' They were pushing me. Interestingly, they didn't have anything on me the second time, and then they said, 'Okay, sign this to certify you weren't here.' I said, 'I'm not signing that because that's not true. I was here twice and I'm sick of it. I didn't do anything wrong, I told you things as they are.' And that was the end of it, and it's interesting that this guy came to me about six years later. I think his name was Mr. Svoboda. He came to me saying that he was a convert, that he was religious. He came to tell me that I would certainly remember him - which I didn't - and that he hadn't hurt anybody and was solid. I told him that he certainly didn't hurt me. He felt the need to get it out of his system, so I let him do that. I told him, 'Well, you were an officer there,' but it wasn't confrontational. It was interesting to meet him years later."

"It was a paradoxical situation when I was applying from medical school to medical school. Everybody was rooting for me, and even said I should do it. I was required to obtain a stamp of approval from the Socialist Youth Union, as the organisation was called at that time: a stamp from them as a recommendation. But I wasn't a member of the Socialist Youth Union. I came and said, give me the stamp. They said that they couldn't give it to me since I wasn't a member, and they couldn't even recommend me, and without that recommendation I couldn't apply. To me, the Socialist Youth Union was not the Communist Party, it wasn't the main barrier. I said, if you say so, I'll join. They called me up to a committee here in Prague 8 and asked me why I wanted to join, and I said, 'Because you won't give me a stamp.' They sent me away and said, this is not how it works. In the end, as it sometimes happens in life, one of the representatives of the Socialist Youth Union who had the stamp with her held a part-time job in the subway. I came to her and I said, 'Hey, give me the stamp here,' and she didn't dare to not give me the stamp, so she gave me the stamp and withdrew. In the meantime a professor came to me, a very nice lady, and she said, 'Zdeněk, if they don't want you in the Youth Union, we'll admit you to the party.' But I said, 'Well, I'm not joining the party.'"