December 21st, 2012
The Spiritual Gift of Madness
an interview with Seth Farber
Dr. Seth Farber is a writer, social critic, dissident psychologist (he received his doctorate in 1984),visionary, activist (in the human rights, Green and anti-war movements — and a supporter of animal rights) and co-founder of the Network Against Coercive Psychiatry (1988). His newest and most important book is “The Spiritual Gift of Madness:The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement”.
Seth speaks with Joanna about the “mad pride” movement; the relevance of psychiatrist R. D Laing; exploring the inner time/space of consciousness; the creatively maladjusted to a insane society; “madness” as a glimpse of a new society; breakdown/breakthrough; “prophets of a new world coming into existence”; the Great Awakening; “Earth was created for joy, not for sorrow”; suppressed mystics-in-training; Aurobindo’s integral evolutionary mysticism…
original music by Evarusnik
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Hello and thank you for your recent post which I heard at FAR (on facebook) ~~~ many, many of us wish to halt that DSM-V from getting published. It is a very detrimental experience to be labeled/misdiagnosed while in bereavement and then have psychiatry play their games of changing diagnoses and drugs w/side effects~~~ not to mention having to try and explain incorrect information in one’s medical records. I do not want to see parents who are grieving or widows/widowers or teens who have lost a friend or friends be harmed in the inappropriate m h system. It is just common sense to leave people alone in grieving/mourning or to honor them with presence and listening. To call a person mentally ill following loss, is idiotic, among other things. And the system divides families through their ‘ways’ ! They do nothing at all to facilitate understanding and communication within families. //
Thank you for this interview. I believe also that what is called mental illness is only a different view and experience from what is considered “normal” which of course today is anything but. I dream that someday all viewpoints that are in harmony with the earth and all that is will be welcomed and will all add to the richness of the experience. That we will speak with animals and plants and minerals and all will be in harmony. So may it be someday!