Why an Assassinated Psychologist – Ignored by US Psychologists – Is Being Honored
On November 16, 1989 in El Salvador, liberation psychologist Ignacio Martin-Baró was murdered by a Salvadoran government’s “counter-insurgency unit” created at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. This year, 25 years after his assassination, peace and justice activists around the world will honor Martin-Baró. Embarrassingly, the vast majority of U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists know […]
Truths and Falsehoods About Ralph Nader’s New Book
Have progressives made a mistake lumping all conservatives together and fueling their political energies into hating them? Or are there what Ralph Nader calls “anti-corporatist conservatives,” who loathe undeclared, endless wars as much as progressives? And should progressives seek alliances with these anti-corporatist conservatives to oppose unnecessary wars, corporate welfare, NSA violations of our privacy, and […]
Illegal-Psychiatric Drug Hypocrisy and Why Michael Pollan Is Smarter Than I Am
Before Michael Pollan gained well-deserved respect and influence authoring five bestselling books about food, he got my attention in the late 1990s writing articles about American illegal-legal psychotropic drug hypocrisy. For those of us who appreciate what Pollan later accomplished for the local food and real food movements, it’s probably been a good idea that […]
Psychiatry Keeps Anti-Authoritarians Off Democracy Battlefields
Many young people labeled with psychiatric diagnoses are essentially anti-authoritarians who are pained and angered by coercion, unnecessary rules, and illegitimate authority. Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is legitimate before taking that authority seriously. When they assess an authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that authority—sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes wisely and […]
Psychiatry’s Manufacture of Consent
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book title Manufacturing Consent derives from presidential advisor and journalist Walter Lippmann’s phrase “the manufacture of consent”—a necessity for Lippmann, who believed that the general public is incompetent in discerning what’s truly best for them, and so their opinion must be molded by a benevolent elite who does know what’s […]
Some Psychiatrists Distancing Themselves from Profession as Drug Company Dominance Makes Some Shrinks Very Rich, and Many Patients Over Drugged
What does it tell us about the state of psychiatry when some of the biggest names in the psychiatric establishment are distancing themselves from psychiatry’s diagnostic system and its treatments? In 2013, National Institute Mental Health (NIMH) director Thomas Insel, citing the lack of scientific validity of psychiatry’s official diagnostic manual, the DSM, stated that […]
Meeting the Needs of the Power Structure
In the history of authoritarian governance, there have always been ruling power structures that use professionals to meet its needs, and today’s corporatocracies claim the profession of mental health as a powerful means to maintain the status quo.
Psychiatry Now Admits It’s Been Wrong in Big Ways — But Can It Change?
When I interviewed investigative reporter Robert Whitaker in 2010 after the publication of his book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, he was not exactly a beloved figure within the psychiatry establishment. Whitaker had documented evidence that standard drug treatments were making many patients worse over […]
DAILY KOS Interview: Case Studies in Activism #67: Battling Big Pharma and Rehumanizing Mental Health Treatment
Why Do Some Americans Speak So Confidently When They Have No Clue What They’re Talking About?
The Harvard Business School (HBS) information session on how to be a good class participant instructs, “Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as if you believe it a hundred percent,” reports Susan Cain in her best-selling book Quiet (2013). At HBS, Cain noticed, “If a student talks often and […]
