Has American Society Gone Insane?

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet. Posted September 11, 2008.

America's mental health problems may be more than a matter of some
"unadjusted" individuals. The entire culture might well need
adjusting.

For many Americans who gain their information solely from television,
all critics of psychiatry are Scientologists, exemplified by Tom
Cruise spewing at Matt Lauer, "You don't know the history of
psychiatry. ... Matt, you're so glib." The mass media has been highly
successful in convincing Americans to associate criticism of
psychiatry with anti-drug zealots from the Church of Scientology, the
lucrative invention of science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

However, Americans who gain their information outside of television
and beyond the mass media may be aware of a secular, progressive
tradition that is critical of how psychiatry has diverted us from
examining societal sources of our malaise. This secular, humanistic
concern was articulated, perhaps most famously, by the psychoanalyst
Erich Fromm (1900-1980).

zstone@nospamusa.com (Zaroc Stone) wrote in news:48cb2826.7133203
@news.altopia.com:

... Well at lest for the left. They whine, they cry, They throw tisssie
fits and walk out of congress when they don't get thier way.