On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik, a Right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya island. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the Left, and its impending destruction through […]
10 Jan
I’m putting up a link here to my review of two books on the crisis in psychiatry — which has just appeared in the latest International Socialism journal in the UK — so that people can write comments and I can reply. The books are: Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (Free Press, 2010) Gary […]
05 Jun
When the pressures of modern society become too great for a person, when one’s chemical dynamic becomes such that they are unbalanced, that they cease painting within the lines, they come to us. These are the people that society would prefer just go away — the shadow people. The shadow people that project upon us […]
04 May
In a couple of weeks I will be in San Francisco for the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, at which the latest edition of the APA’s diagnostic “bible”, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, will be released. From the look of the program, you’d think this is much like when previous […]
17 Jun
Comments Off on Allen Frances speaking on psychiatric overdiagnosis this Tuesday in Sydney
Professor Allen Frances, head of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV project in the 1990s, has become the most prominent psychiatric critic of the DSM-5. He has written for a wide range of mainstream publications on this topic (including The New York Times) and has a regular blog at Psychology Today called DSM-5 In Distress, to […]
10 May
Comments Off on A Dangerous Method: Cronenberg, psychoanalysis and science
Film review cross-posted from our Overland blog. A lot has been written about David Cronenberg’s masterful A Dangerous Method (2011) in terms of what it tells us about the strengths and weaknesses of the psychoanalytic movement, about the growing conflict and eventual rupture between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), and about […]
08 Dec
Comments Off on Breivik update: Politics, terrorism and psychiatry
Candle-lit vigil in Oslo, soon after the 22 July massacre Since my last piece for The Drum, the IPA’s Chris Berg has produced an attack on our book, On Utøya: Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism and Europe. We haven’t formally responded, but many of the comments below his article deal with his frankly desperate and unconvincing attempt to […]
03 Dec
Comments Off on The Breivik diagnosis: Fascist ideology wrapped in a straitjacket, political implications denied
Comments now closed on this article at The Drum, so reposting here for your commenting pleasure! Two court-appointed psychiatrists have found confessed Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik legally insane and unfit to stand trial. The full text of their 243 page report is yet to be released, but if public statements are representative of its contents, […]
30 Nov
Comments Off on Rewind: Depoliticising Utoya — Anders Breivik as ‘madman’
It was not entirely unexpected that two prosecution-appointed psychiatrists would find Norwegian fascist mass murderer Anders Breivik insane and unfit to stand trial, diagnosing him with Paranoid Schizophrenia. The diagnosis — so far only backed by a few, unconvincing details from their as-yet unreleased report — runs counter to the voluminous information, available in the public […]
07 Nov
Comments Off on Left Flank in London
Tad and Elizabeth are both presenting conference papers at this year’s Historical Materialism conference, held in Central London later this week. UK readers can register for the conference here.
12 Jul
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