Psychiatry-skepticism-social justice reading list: user-friendly edition

I thought it might be helpful to provide the list without the distractions of links or commentary. I’ve provided links only to those materials available free online.

• Lisa Cosgrove and Robert Whitaker, Psychiatry Under the Influence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform (2015)

• Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2002)

• James Davies, Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry (2013)

• Irving Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth (2009)

• Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman (1992) (see also “How Psychiatry Went Crazy” (2013) and “Psychiatry and Its Discontents” (2015))

• Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (2010)

• Brett J. Deacon, “The biomedical model of mental disorder: A critical analysis of its validity, utility, and effects on psychotherapy research” (2013), Clinical Psychology Review 33, 846-861

• Marcia Angell, “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?”, “The Illusions of Psychiatry,” and “‘The Illusions of Psychiatry’: An Exchange” (2011)

• Jeffrey R. Lacasse and Jonathan Leo, “Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature” (2005), PLoS Medicine 2(12): e392.

• Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (2008)

• Paula J. Caplan, When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans (2011)

• Stuart A. Kirk, Tomi Gomory, and David Cohen, Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs

• Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (2010)

• Christopher Lane, Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (2007)

• Jonathan Leo and Jeffrey R. Lacasse, “The Media and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression” (2008), Society 45(1): 35-45

• Glen I. Spielmans and Peter I. Parry, “From Evidence-based Medicine to Marketing-based Medicine: Evidence from Internal Industry Documents” (2010), Bioethical Inquiry 7: 13-29 (I don’t link to PDFs, but you can find it free online)

• Caroline Gage, “Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist” (play) (available for purchase here)

• Jeffrey Lacasse, “After DSM-5: A Critical Mental Health Research Agenda for the 21st Century” (2014), Research on Social Work Practice 24(1): 5-10

• The Behavior Therapist, special issue on the biomedical model, October 2015

• Will Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (2015)

• Jessica Grogan, Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self (2012)

• Pat Barker, Regeneration (novel, 1991)

• Sam Kriss, “Book of Lamentations” (2013), The New Inquiry, October 18

• Ben Goldacre, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks (2008)

• Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (2012)

• Paul Moloney, The Therapy Industry: The Irresistible Rise of the Talking Cure, and Why It Doesn’t Work (2013)

• Erich Fromm, various

• Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth and New Ways in Psychoanalysis

• Valentin Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (1926)

• Marcia Westkott, The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney (1986)

• Bernard Paris, ed., The Unknown Karen Horney: Essays on Gender, Culture, and Psychoanalysis (2000)

• Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child, For Your Own Good, The Untouched Key

• Ignacio Martín-Baró, Writings for a Liberation Psychiatry

• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

• Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (1983/2009)

• Joy Damousi and Mariano Ben Plotkin, eds., Psychoanalysis and Politics: Histories of Psychoanalysis under Conditions of Restricted Political Freedom (2012) (except the chapter by Eli Zaretsky)


I’ve updated the list with one new item, and will probably just continue to update it over time. I’ve reviewed several of the books and provided supplementary materials on this blog, so if you’re interested you can find the link-annotated version of the list here. As I said there, “I’ll note that recommending these books doesn’t mean that I endorse each and every argument they contain, which would be impossible in any case as they often disagree amongst themselves.”