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 best for them.
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?
Since I interviewed Robert Whitaker for AlterNet in 2010, after the publication of Anatomy of an Epidemic, the psychiatry establishment has pivoted from first ignoring him, to then debating him and attempting to discredit him, to currently agreeing with many of his conclusions.
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).
New York Times “Room for Debate Question”: “Why We Like to Watch Rich People: Why do American television and movie audiences like to watch the antics and questionable behavior of the 1 percent?”
The lives of the outlandishly rich are so unreal and so bizarre for most of us that watching their self-indulgence, careless spending, and decadence can be an escape from the unpleasant reality of our own constant money worries.
Decreasing suffering often means “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” However, AlterNet’s recently republished Psychotherapy Networker article, “The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People,” authored by psychotherapist Cloe Madanes, instead appears to have afflicted many of the afflicted.
William Kurelek (1927-1977) is one of Canada’s most celebrated artists, and his paintings hang in prestigious museums all over the world. Nick Young and Zack Young’s William Kurelek’s The Maze is a beautiful film about this talented artist, profound thinker, and saintly, sweet soul, who as a young man became disconnected from himself and others, displayed frightening behaviors, and was hospitalized in London, diagnosed as schizophrenic.
The historic divide between the “respectable” vs. the “renegades” is the subject of historian Thaddeus Russell’s 2011 book A Renegade History of the United States, which argues that when renegade groups gain civil rights and social acceptability, they lose their renegade culture.
It is an amazing victory for mental health treatment reform activists and one investigative reporter. On August 28, 2013, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director, Thomas Insel, announced that psychiatry’s standard treatment for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses needs to change.
