Dr. Bruce Levine

Bernie Sanders has routinely called Trump a “pathological liar.” The term pathological liar, a controversial one for psychiatrists, in common usage coveys someone who is an extraordinarily unrestrained liar. And so, Bernie knows that it is in no way radical to use this term to describe the...

Taking US national politics too seriously can make you hopelessly stupid, hopelessly cynical, or hopelessly suicidal.

Let’s see. We had a former Black Panther, Congressman Bobby Rush, endorsing search-and-frisk Bloomberg; while Mike Will Get It Done was making AP headlines: “Bloomberg...

When the state becomes chillingly evil—enacting a Fugitive Slave Act to criminalize those helping to free slaves, or financing prisons and wars for the benefit of sociopathic profiteers—and when dissent is impotent and defiance is required, we need the sublimely mad. For his 2013 piece “A Time...

Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “shit-life syndrome”—and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.

My state of Ohio is home to many shit-life syndrome sufferers. In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton...

The Cincinnati Bengals, no longer simply a local frustration, are now a national laughingstock. Bengals rulers are blatantly inept, making decisions so obviously wrong that young children can predict negative consequences. The Bengals disaster would not have surprised the great American...

No matter how clearly the scientific case is made that psychiatry is a pseudoscientific institution meriting no scientific authority, do you have that sinking feeling that psychiatry will continue to retain power and even grow in influence?

It doesn’t seem to matter that psychiatry’s “...

For most of us—excepting possibly Mussolini, Trump, and other bully boasters—the word authoritarian is a pejorative. In contrast, many of us want to define ourselves and our heroes as anti-authoritarians, and this has resulted in some curious definitions of that term.

The American...

In April, journalist Robert Whitaker wrote an article titled, “The New YorkerPeers into the Psychiatric Abyss… And Loses Its Nerve.” Whitaker, who personally knows the woman featured in a recent New Yorker article about her psychiatric treatment, was bothered because the publication omitted the...

What variable is associated with a 12 times greater likelihood of a suicide attempt—and also doubles the likelihood of cancer, heart disease, or stroke?

In the late 1990s, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study revealed a stunningly powerful relationship between childhood trauma...

Beyond Common Sense, most Americans know little about Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Few know that at the end of Paine’s life, he had become a pariah in U.S. society, and for many years after his death, he was either ignored or excoriated—the price he paid for The Age of Reason and its disparagement...

While not as well-known as “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Perfect Day,” and not one of the classics he wrote for the Velvet Underground (such as “Heroin” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror”), Lou Reed’s “Kill Your Sons,” about his electroconvulsive “therapy” (ECT) as a 17-year-old, gives voice to an event...

I just can’t take seriously anyone who presumes that the middle ground is always the voice of reason and the path to truth and justice. Thus, for quite some time, I’ve thought that it not worth my time to react to psychotherapist Gary Greenberg, psychiatrist Allen Frances, and others who try to...

“In every American community you have varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.”

—...

Lyndon Johnson famously proclaimed his requirements for an appointee: “I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.” Johnson and his ass-kissers were authoritarians.

Authoritarian is routinely defined as “favoring blind submission to authority...

For several years, I have thought it important to illuminate the authoritarian nature of mental health professionals—especially those who have not rebelled in any way against their professional socialization. In this article, I will summarize a compelling analysis from the Journal of Medical...

Toward the end of 2018, the New York Times published a lengthy obituary with the headline: “Herbert Fingarette, Contrarian Philosopher on Alcoholism, Dies at 97.” By labeling Fingarette as a mere contrarian philosopher and by otherwise subtly demeaning him, the NYT cozied up to the $35 billion...

Dr. Bruce Levine joins us to discuss his book Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian―Strategies, Tools, and Models. We talk about authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism, how dissent has been pathologized by power structures in the past, how...

At the time, toward the end of 2018, it didn’t seem completely irrational to submit an op-ed to the New York Times. I had felt compelled to respond to a lengthy NYT op-ed “Can We Stop Suicides?” authored by Moises Velasquez-Manoff, who had offered what I considered to be a fairly insane solution...

The 1919 misfortune of Woodrow Wilson and good fortune of Scott Nearing are nowhere near enough evidence for the existence of God or for even karma, but these 1919 events do provide some therapy for me—a reminder that life, occasionally, is not completely unjust.

In 1919, Wilson—who...

Bruce Levine argues in his newest book, Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian for the essential value of anti-authoritarians in a democracy, and questions their treatment by the medical establishment. He also dishes a few pro-tips on how...

The drumbeat for ketamine as a way to halt the rising suicide rate is upon us, as the New York Times has now joined the chorus. This is encouraging news unless of course you recall a couple of things: how recent enthusiasm from the medical-industrial complex for increased opioid use for pain...

“The person who claims the legitimacy of the authority always bears the burden of justifying it. And if they can’t justify it, it’s illegitimate and should be dismantled. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand anarchism as being much more than that.”—Noam Chomsky

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Psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) was deeply affected by Nazi atrocities, so when his early 1960s research on Americans revealed an unexpectedly high rate of obedience to authority commanding subjects to commit cruel actions, this very much troubled him. Milgram’s studies revealed other...