The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement by Seth Farber
Author:Seth Farber [Farber, Seth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594777035
Google: MFwoDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0082CXELU
Barnesnoble: B0082CXELU
Goodreads: 19005629
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2012-04-17T05:00:00+00:00
The Revolt against the Monoculture
In 2007 I had first discovered The Icarus Project and was fascinated by what I read on the websiteâscintillating, highly intelligent, and often brilliantly perceptive online conversations between many psychiatric survivors regarding madness and spirituality, corporate capitalism, and the soullessness of modern society, to name just a few topics. I had been particularly impressed by some of the online articles written by the cofounder of The Icarus Project, McNamara. I wrote DuBrul that I was planning to write a book on the Mad Pride movement and would like to meet him sometime since he was located in New York. Since he had not read my first book, I wanted to give him a copy.
We met a few weeks later at a local coffee shop. I was impressed by his maturity (he was twenty-nine) and his personable manner. He was thin, pleasant looking, casually attired, with an appealing air of self-confidence and enthusiasm. (I should add that he did not conform to the stereotype of the ex-mental patientâdisplaying a bizarre manner created by high dosages of psychiatric drugsâbut in appearance and manner seemed like other social activists I knew in the various antiwar movements over the years.) I told him I was impressed by The Icarus Projectâs exploration of the connection between madness and spirituality, but I wondered why he did not more explicitly repudiate the mental illness construct.
He responded that he thought it was irrelevant. I was disappointed when I discovered that DuBrul had not read any of my favorite critics of âthe myth of mental illnessâ: not Szasz, not Laing, not Peter Breggin. At this time I had not read his 2002 article in The San Francisco Chronicle, so I was taken aback when he told me that he was âgratefulâ to lithium since it had âsaved his life.â âBut why do you feel a need to take lithium now?â I asked. He responded, ââWhat if I told you I take it to control my superpowers, which otherwise could overwhelm me?â I was baffled. I asked him if he was aware of the harmful âside effectsâ of lithium. He was. He said he had been on the radio with David Oaks, and he suspected my ideas were similar to Oaksâs; nonetheless, he had not read Oaksâs mentor, Dr. Breggin, whose writings had steeled Oaksâs resolve to stay off psychiatric drugs. He shrugged when I wondered how it is that one of the leaders in the Mad Pride movement, an intellectual who reads many books, avoids reading the critics of mainstream Psychiatry!
I took out a copy of my book Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels, quickly inscribed it to him as a comrade in the movement, and then gave it to him. (I discovered later that he never read my book eitherâat least not a couple years after our meeting.) Before we parted he warmly invited me to not just visit the Icarus website but to introduce myself and post on it. I said I would.
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