Personal Pick Book List

Which Have Validated My Own Personal Experience Within the Mental Illness System

By Patricia Lefave, Labelled, D.D.(P)

Journey into Madness: Medical Torture and the Mind Controllers
By Gordon Thomas
For Canadian readers there is another mention in this one of Ewen Cameron and the CIA experiments at Montreal ’s Allan Memorial Insitute.

Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward, PhD.
This book spells out the concrete experience of many of us who get labelled in many different ways for talking about what ACTUALLY has happened to us in concrete reality. I especially identified with the chapter titled “Tools of the Trade” (Chapter 4)
I think that many of you will see your own experiences in the metaphysical concepts of the group experience there.
This is the sort of thing I believe we experience on a collective level and I also think it goes back centuries. The difference in outcome often seems to be directly related to whether or not we get a mental health professional (usually a psychologist) requested by us or not, who takes us seriously and believes us or we get a psychiatrist who believes he hears ‘symptoms’ instead of the reality of our experience. This psychologist sees and hears what many others cannot.

A Social History of Madness: The World Through the Eyes of the Insane
By Roy Porter
If you read this one, what will likely strike you is the fact that we have been telling them this for literally hundreds of years and it has NEVER penetrated the minds of the psychiatrists as truth. If you want to hear your own experience with them validated, read this one.

Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health
by William Glasser, M.D.

Though I actually don't agree with all of Glasser's ideas (for example he dismisses the psychospiritual approach as irrelevent) I do think this book is worth reading for his discussion on the mental illness system and to hear what he has to say about his OWN experience. The other thing that bothers me about this is something I see quite frequently which is the suggestion that labelled people should NOT be included in this point of view so that they have no representation as themselves and others continue to 'interpret' them according to their own perceptions. I believe it is these labelled people (like myself) who should be the FIRST ones to be included in any discussions about ''us,'' not the ones excluded. I believe this commonly accepted exclusion as a norm is a major part of most labelled people's problems in the first place. It is still reductionistic no matter how well intentioned anyone is while doing it.

''In The Sleep Room: The Story Of The C.I.A. Brainwashing Experiments In Canada" by Anne Collins

September 2006
More reasons why I believe in the reality of the collective unconscious which when we are ‘altered’ is the collective consciousness to ‘us.’ If you want to see the same elements of your own experience, often including the concrete details within that experience, read: The Holotropic Mind: (The three levels of Human Consciousness) By Stanislav Grof, M.D.

Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality
By Dean Radin, 2006 publication

Your connection to others may not be as 'crazy' as you have been led to believe it is!

Mind Control
By Peter Schrag
Published in 1978, it reveals the use of government agencies (like public housing for example) involved by the Psychiatric Faith in the notion of watching for abstract signs and symbols of ''mental illness,'' apart from concrete facts, in those who come to them as clients, even those without psychiatric labels. Reads like a present day account of the machinations of the mental illness system.
As always, the ''defective'' under growing public scrutiny, is all but left out of the equation as anything other than an ''object'' of observation.

The Disappearance of God: a Divine Mystery
By Richard Elliott Friedman:
It is not quote what you may first think. It needs to be read to be appreciated.

Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst and Also , The Assault On Truth: Freud's Suppresion of the Seduction Theory By Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill

By Robert Whitaker: Highly Recommended to the Psychiatrized, as well as to the "normal" people who have convinced themselves they are not at risk of being "helped" like we are, and especially to any psychiatrists or bio-ethicists left in the world who still care about REAL ethics and integrity rather than just giving lipservice to it: This gives you a view of the history of psychiatry and opens the door to the ''secret'' side of treatment; psychiatry's knowledge, understanding, and attitudes. It lets those who have not YET shared the experience of being a ''patient'' get a closer look at the reality from the "non compliant, resistant" patient perpective. If you really WANT to know why we ''nuts'' don't want to take these drugs, nor get this brand of "help" open your minds and read carefully.

A suggestion for you as you read this book by someone who is NOT "just seeking attention/fame": Read the treatments given to mental patients. Then, replace the words like "mental patient, schizophrenic, disorder, subject, case," etc with the words "human being."

Now read the same acount again. Is there a difference between how YOU perceive the same reality when you do? Are you shocked to discover that what you perceived as ''good'' or even acceptable treatment for others, now seems like torture or abuse? Ask yourself an important question. Why didn't you see that in the first place?

And They Call It Help: Psychiatric Policing Of America's Children
By Louise Armstrong

Highly recommended.; for labelled people, family members who really care about the reality of the situation, friends, the system mavericks and to all the police officers who are now being required by the law to wrestle us to the ground and place us under psychiatric arrest. It speaks directly to me of my own experience and perception of it as an adult brought into the system, validates my own reality, tells it like it really is, and demonstrates (by a non labelled person) the confusion we all feel when getting the kind of ''help'' that does not help anyone.

The work of R. D. Laing, M.D.
Hard to find, but look around second hand book stores and libraries.
"The Voice Of Experience, Sanity Madness and the Family,
The Divided Self, The Politics of Experience, The Families of Schizophrenics, Self and Others, etc"

The work of Alice Miller;
an ex psychoanalyst: "For Your Own Good", Thou Shalt Not be Aware,
The Drama of the Gifted Child, The Truth Will Set You Free" etc.

Peter Breggin, M.D.
Toxic Psychiatry, Your Drug May Be Your Problem, " etc.

The Power To Harm: mind, medicine, and murder on trial
By John Cornwell
Despite the obvious, judgement remained focused on blaming either the patient, or the drug, and was NOT seen as a group event exacerbated by the denial of the reality of it's whole. A good example of the absence of the patient's perspective.

The Peter Pyramid
By Laurence J. Peter
Showing Group Structures

John Bradshaw :
Series of books regarding the dynamic of group dysfunction:On The Family etc. Though he later backed off from this, stating he now believed it was more complicated than he previously thought, I believe it is actually less complicated, and that many well meaning people are stopped by the fear of upsetting others and risking being rejected by their families. Many families fear being blamed for things, more than getting past some of our group errors. Very legitimate fears as these things happen all the time.

Melody Beatty on Co-Dependency:
Co-Dependent No More


The works of M.Scott Peck, M.D.
The Road Less Travelled etc.
Especially the Title: People of the Lie

Al Siebert, PhD.: A Schizophrenia Breakthrough
can be ordered at his Website www.successfulschizophrenia.com


The Work of Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Insanity: The Idea And It's Consequences.
The Myth of Mental Illness
Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry etc.

The Family Unconscious by E. Bruce Taub-Bynum

Battle For The Mind by William Sargant, M.D.
Though this also may be difficult to find as I read it a very long time ago.

Toward A New Brain
By Stuart Litvak and A. Wayne Senzee

The Bully, The Bullied, and The Bystander
by Barbara Colorosso

When Bad Things Happen to Good People
by Rabbi Harold Kushner

The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose
Edited by Stephen Mitchell
I include this one because it shows that regardless of the period in which our temporal bodies exist, we all understand the same psychospiritual meaning behind things, simply expressed in slightly different ways.

The Rights Revolution
By Michael Ignatieff

They Say You're Crazy
By Paula Caplan

The Family Shadow: Sources of Suicide and Schizophrenia
David K. Reynolds, Norman L. Farberow
University of California Press 1981
ISBN 0-520-04213-1

Madness, Heresy and the Rumor of Angels: The Revolt Against the Mental Health System.
By Seth Farber, Phd.

The Death of Psychiatry by E. Fuller Torrey

I find this one especially interesting since it was much more on target before the Torrey's full conversion to the Psychiatric Faith. It makes an interesting read for comparison. Perhaps we could assess his fascinating case later.