Toxic Psychiatry

Library Journal

Breggin, director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and author of Psychi atric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain (Springer Pub., 1983), describes his latest book as ``the culmination of a lifetime of scientific, educational, and reform work.'' Breggin is anything but dispassionate: the ``new psychiatry,'' he claims, is a return to the bad old days when a person enduring a ``psychospiritual crisis'' (a term Breggin favors over ``mental illness'') might be sent to a state hospital, where he or she would receive treatment that was degrading and harmful. Nowadays, he says, psychiatrists are in thrall to the pharmaceutical industry; they have lost or never learned the art of the loving, caring, humanistic ``talking cure,'' and are doing more harm than good. Written in an anecdotal style, with case examples, a hefty notes section, and supportive evidence from various sources for his point of view, the book is best suited for the sophisticated general reader. Psychotherapy Book Club selection.-- Marlene Charnizon, formerly with ``Library Journal''