Books

Clinical psychologist Jay Joseph details medical science’s 30-year failed quest to find any link between genetics and diagnoses of mental disorders, and debunks widely held beliefs in the psychiatric profession, including the idea of “genetic predispositions” for mental illness.

Jay is the author of The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes and The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope.

http://www.jayjoseph.net

Harvard University faculty Paula Caplan, author of They Say You’re Crazy: How The World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal and editor of Bias In Psychiatric Diagnosis.

Paula was on one of the writing committees for the DSM and offers an insightful perspective on the politics behind psychiatric pseudo-science. She discusses mental disorder labeling, including bipolar and post-trauma stress disorder, from a feminist perspective.

http://www.psychdiagnosis.net
http://paulajcaplan.net

Counselor and researcher Joe Goodbread discusses his more than 25 years experience working with madness and extreme states using Process Oriented Psychology, an innovative approach based in the work of Carl Jung and developed by Arnold Mindell.

Joe describes listening to the meaning in experience, helping people unfold their states, taoism, dreams, rank differences, and working with the body. Joe is a senior faculty at the Process Work Institute and author of The Dreambody Toolkit and Radical Intercourse.

http://www.aamindell.net
http://www.processwork.org

Visionary writer and thought-provoking environmentalist Derrick Jensen talks about the human-caused ecological collapse of the natural world, family trauma, technological brainwashing, indigenous societies, Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, and the importance of rage in an undeniably insane world.

http://www.derrickjensen.org

Author Charles Barber talks about his new book Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, a history of the rise of psychiatric drug marketing from “mother’s little helper” to today’s 200 million plus anti-depressant prescriptions.

http://www.charlesbarberwriting.com

UK psychiatrist Philip Thomas discusses the globalization of psychiatry and pharmaceutical company expansion world-wide, including how community empowerment and traditional ways of care can challenge western individualism based medical model of mental health.

Check out Phil’s book Post-Psychiatry: Mental Health in a Postmodern World, and his essay “Challenging the Globalization of Psychiatry”, both written with Irish psychiatrist Pat Bracken.

John Horgan, who has written for Scientific American, Discover, and the New York Times, talks about neuroscience, genetics, the placebo effect psychedelic drugs, and more.

John is the author of The Undiscovered Mind: How The Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, Rational Mysticism, and The End of Science. He also hosts a video blog at http://www.bloggingheads.tv

http://www.johnhorgan.org

Paul Levy, who went through psych hospitalizations as part of a spiritual emergence process and became a Buddhist teacher, discusses his book The Madness Of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis.

http://www.awakeninthedream.com

Violence and Madness with Robert Whitaker, Pulitzer-nominated author of “Mad In America,” discussing the role of psychiatric drugs in causing violence, the history of coercive psychiatric treatments, and responses to the recent murder of prominent psychiatrist Wayne Fenton by his patient.

Commonsense Rebellion with Bruce Levine, dissident psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy, discusses the social forces that drive people to depression, anxiety, and mental breakdown, and how community and caring are the way to a healthier self and world.

Transsexual writer and activist Kate Bornstein on her book Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws. Kate overturns the orthodox either-or labels of male / female and straight/gay/bi with her postmodern sexuality of self-definition and fluid identity.

Kate is the author of the highly successful books My Gender Workbook and Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us, and her new book takes a transgressive and honest approach to what it takes to stay alive in a crazy world.

http://www.katebornstein.com

Harvard University faculty Paula Caplan, author of They Say You’re Crazy: How The World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal and editor of Bias In Psychiatric Diagnosis.

Paula was on one of the writing committees for the DSM and offers an insightful perspective on the politics behind psychiatric pseudo-science. She discusses mental disorder labeling, including bipolar and post-trauma stress disorder, from a feminist perspective.

http://www.psychdiagnosis.net
http://paulajcaplan.net

Judi Chamberlin is a leading organizer with the psychiatric survivors’ movement and one of its earliest initiators. She is author of On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System and staff with the National Empowerment Center. Show is co-hosted by Cheryl Alexander.

http://www.power2u.org