A Profession Without Reason

The Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry - Untangled and Solved by Spinoza, Freethinking and Radical Enlightenment

By: Bruce E. Levine

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Paperback | 5 July 2022

At a Glance

Paperback
270 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.3 x 22.8 x 2.5

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There is today a crisis in psychiatry. Even the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Thomas Insel, has said: "Whatever we've been doing for five decades, it ain't working." The field requires a completely fresh look, and clinical psychologist Bruce Levine--a man often at odds with his profession--enlists the early Enlightenment philosopher Baruch de Spinoza to help work through the problem. Readers unfamiliar with Spinoza will be intrigued by the modern relevance of his radical philosophical, psychological, and political ideas. Levine compares the radical/moderate divide among Enlightenment thinkers to a similar divergence between contemporary critics of psychiatry, siding historically with Spinoza in order to bring an equivalent intellectual force to bear upon our modern crisis and calling for new forms of free and enlightened thinking.

Industry Reviews

"Using Spinoza as a foil for exploring contemporary psychiatry is a stroke of genius, and Bruce Levine carries it off with aplomb. His text is clear, brilliant, and utterly original--a critique of contemporary psychiatry like no other. At the same time, it explores a much grander theme: what does it mean to be a 'free thinker?' And the final reward for readers is this: by book's end, they will have 'fallen in love' with Baruch Spinoza."
--Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America "Deep into the twenty-first century, philosophizing about the power of psychiatry remains arduous, because the doublespeak of mental health suffocates clear thinking. What an exhilarating antidote therefore does Bruce Levine deliver to our weary minding, stimulating it with the ideas and examples of the great freethinker Baruch Spinoza. While many good books assault the fortress of dogmas protecting organized psychiatry, this unique work, by illustrating with wit, graciousness and erudition the power of reason that each of us might employ to dispel obfuscation, inspires."
--David Cohen, co-author of Mad Science "This ingenious book uses the insights of Spinoza to address some of the tangled issues in mental health. Spinoza's wisdom or 'Reason' reveals how our modern, medicalised approach to mental health problems is riddled with misconceptions and ethical conflicts and points the way to more effective and humane ways of helping people."
--Joanna Moncrieff, author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure

"We find ourselves living in a world in which our healthcare systems, our political systems, and our mainstream media have become heavily dominated by corporate power and corruption; and we find those daring to challenge the mainstream narratives becoming increasingly censored, vilified, or otherwise silenced. The psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry has played a particularly pernicious role in all of this, contributing greatly to an increasingly tangled web of controversy, confusion and suffering. In this book, we follow freethinkers Dr. Bruce Levine and seventeenth-century Baruch Spinoza as they partner up to bravely face this tangle head-on--and what an insightful and enjoyable journey it is! This delightful duo not only succeeds in untangling much of this mess, but they leave us feeling much more confident and inspired as we continue to untangle the knots of this troubled world on our own."
--Paris Williams, author of Rethinking Madness

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