Book reviews and Articles
Doctoring the Mind
The Guardian, Observer, 21 June 2009, Richard Bentall
Richard Bentall, a clinical psychologist, is a controversial figure in the field of mental health. An example of the hostility that his conclusions provoke among those practising conventional (that is, drug-based) psychiatry is given in the preface to this book, which raises serious questions about the treatment of mental illness.
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Mad, Bad and Sad
The Guardian, 23 February 2008, Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi has a notable track record as a novelist and a sophisticated commentator on ideas. Freud's Women, which she wrote with John Forrester, engaged with the theme that is explored more deeply and fully in this book: the puzzling and often disquieting place of women in the understanding and treatment of mental affliction.
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Intimacies
Financial Times, 18 August 2008, Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips
One of our civilisation’s founding myths is the Old Testament story of the expulsion from Paradise of Adam and Eve, the progenitors of the human race. Their crime is pillage of the tree of knowledge and it has been fashionable to understand this “original sin” of humankind as the felix culpa, the happy crime, since it seemed the necessary means to furthering human understanding and, ultimately, consciousness.
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