The Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry--Untangled and Solved by Spinoza, Freethinking, and Radical Enlightenment
English language
Published Dec. 31, 2022 by AK Press.
There is today a crisis in psychiatry. Even the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health has said: “Whatever we’ve been doing for five decades, it ain’t working.” The field of psychiatry requires a completely fresh look, and Bruce E. Levine finds that needed perspective in the seventeenth-century works of Baruch Spinoza. Readers unfamiliar with Spinoza will be intrigued by his life and the modern relevance of his radical philosophical, psychological, and political ideas. With the help of Spinoza, freethinking, and radical enlightenment, A Profession Without Reason untangles and solves the crisis of contemporary psychiatry.
This is one of those books that added a bunch more books to my to read list. Fascinating. Disturbing. Psychiatrists are cops. Full stop. I can see why the author chose to use Spinoza as an anchor, but it sometimes felt a little clumsy and distracted. Still worth reading.
