Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels
The Revolt Against the Mental Health System
Some people see visions, express disturbing views in a disturbing way, believe that they have intimations of a spiritual reality, are confused and unhappy, talk too much, and annoy their relatives. Are these people medically sick, and if so, is the appropriate treatment to impison them,demean them, and disable them with stupefying drugs and electrically-induced brain damage?
Dr Seth Farber does not think so. He has collected 7 true stories of individuals insulted and injured by the mental health system, individuals who then fought back, broke free, and rebuilt their lives.Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels is a work in the tradition of Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, and Erving Goffman, a challenge to the delusional belief-system known as psychiatry, and a protest against its appalling crimes.
“Farber is a first-rate scholar who has written an outstanding book which makes an important argument accessible to the general public. He is in a line of dissidents who have the courage to rock the boat in a profession largely reluctant to engage in the critical task of self-reflection.”
–RAYMOND C. RUSS, University of Maine
Editor, The Journal of Mind and Behavior
“Every now and then a small group of individuals dares to challenge a well-entrenched presumption of the dominant culture. Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels speaks with compelling eloquence for the few who have questioned the premises and powers of those who have defined for us the nature, care, and cure of our minds.”
–PROFESSOR GEORGE ECONOMOU
University of Oklahoma
“Farber’s book is a passionate,pointed and powerful castigation of psychiatric ‘treatment’ and a heartily welcomed invitation to re-envision our conception of ‘mental illness.’”
— Dr KENNETH GERGEN
Swarthmore College
“Farber shows us there is method in madness. He not only deconstructs the idea of mental illness but he provides a reconstructive narrative account of the individual’s descent into madness, her experience of the dark night of the soul, and the recreation of a new self following her spiritual death.” – Dr MYCHAEL GLEESON in The Journal of Mind and Behavior,Winter, 1995.