Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society : An A to Z Guide to Rehumanizingour Lives

by Bruce E. Levine

In recent years the mental health industry has been attacked for the invalidity of its illnesses, the unreliability of its diagnoses, the dangers of its treatments, and its corruption by drug companies. Commonsense Rebellion integrates those critiques and goes further.Nearly 1 in 4 American adults take psychiatric drugs, and Ritalin production has increased 800 percent since 1990. Yet the mental health industry laments the fact that two-thirds of us with diagnosable mental disorders do not seek treatment. This book argues that "institutional mental health's" ever-increasing diseases, disorders, and drugs have diverted us from examining an important rebellion against an increasingly impersonal and coercive "institutional society" which worships speed, power, and technology. This has created fantastic wealth - at least for some - but its disregard for human autonomy, community, and diversity has come with a cost. Depression has reportedly increased tenfold since 1900, and suicide levels for teenage boys have tripled since 1960. Have human genetics and serotonin levels changed that much, or has society?>

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychiatry, Psychology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Bruce E. Levine writes and speaks widely on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (2011). Earlier books include Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (2007) and Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy (2003).

A practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and Z Magazine. His articles and interviews have been published in Adbusters, Truthout, The Ecologist, High Times, and numerous other magazines, and he has contributed chapters to Writing without Formula (2009), Perspectives on Diseases and Disorders: Depression (2009), and Alternatives beyond Psychiatry (2007).

Dr. Levine is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and he is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs. A longtime activist in the mental health treatment reform movement, he is a member of the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry as well as MindFreedom. Dr. Levine has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America.

Bruce E. Levine was born in 1956, grew up in Rockaway in New York City, graduated from Queens College of the City University, and received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati. He currently lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Bon.

Reviews

[Justin Podur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until I found Bruce E. Levine, I suspected that much of psychology had to do with making people feel better about a society that wasn't working well for them. Levine, a psychologist himself, shows how to go about doing a 'people's psychology', using real psychological insights to understand why we suffer such pain and how to go about trying to make things better. This book has a dictionary or encyclopedia type of structure, and it has the amazing effect of making the reader feel less and less crazy the more you read. If that is not a great psychology book, I don't know what is. I like his other books a lot as well, but this was my first.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very interesting in that the author took on the mental health industry and crossed chapters such as "ADHD" and "Addiction" with critiques of cultural and societal issues such as "Education" and "Incarceration". The author uses this format to both debunk much of the current psychiatric and mental health philosophies by instead pointing out how institutionalized oppression and disparities are driving people to depression, addiction, and other "popular" psychiatric labels.
A thought provoking read!

[chubs]

Haven't read it yet but here are some choice quotes so far: "Parents, just as you shouldn't spike a drink for purposes of date rape, don't give your children drugs to make them meet your needs" and "Recognize that with institutional society's dismissal of much of the human experience, one of the few things left to stimulate is power."

[Flat]

Haven't read it yet but here are some choice quotes so far: "Parents, just as you shouldn't spike a drink for purposes of date rape, don't give your children drugs to make them meet your needs" and "Recognize that with institutional society's dismissal of much of the human experience, one of the few things left to stimulate is power."

[Kameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not read the entire book. It had great ideas, but the structure caused the themes to repeat from chapter to chapter. I probably read 2/3 of it.