printThank you, Stanton Peele, PhD., for an inspired LinkedIn review. We represent an era of intellectuals in which left and right had so much in common, Stanton being a 1960s liberal; myself a 19th Century classical liberal.
“Ilana Mercer is the most independent thinker of the 21st century — she was that in the 20th. She saw a path that we didn’t follow away from myths of mental illness and incorrigible international conflict. But we have instead followed the roads she eschewed while she, the Cheshire Cat watched grimacing and catcalling our missteps. Need I say we require her insights more than ever?”~ STANTON PEELE, PhD., J.D., best-selling author, addiction expert (review on LinkedIn)
Dr. Peele is the only theorist and clinician I’ve ever respected on the vexing matter of addiction–now a thriving industry with poor outcomes, increasingly, if reflexively, vested in maintaining dysfunction.
I recognized Stanton for the outstanding thinker he is when I read and wrote about his seminal and best work, “Diseasing of America: How We Allowed Recovery Zealots and the Treatment Industry to Convince Us We Are Out of Control .”
Calgary Herald readers were irate, at the time. The same readers (whom I loved) were as annoyed when I wrote about ADHD, in 1999. Boy, are people vested in a medical diagnosis for legitimizing and authenticating all aspects of The Self. I continue to hold Dr. Peele as the best thinker on the subject. Like myself, he has mentored (knowingly and unknowingly) followers who have adopted his thinking.
Some mentions are here:
“Addictions Are About Behavior, Not Disease” (June 22, 2000)
“Medical Mumbo Jumbo Does Not Explain Addiction” (June 29, 2000)
“Charlie Sheen’s Out of the AA ‘Troll Hole’” (March 4, 2011)
“Addicted To The Drug War” is a wide-ranging libertarian think piece written originally for the Mises Institute in 2001. A section, “ADDICTION: VICE OR DISEASE?” is inspired by Stanton Peele’s work.
MORE on the drug war.
MORE on the Therapeutic State and Industry (almost indistinguishable).
UPDATE (7/10): In reply to the Comment: I do not know any thinker, other than those who followed the pioneers I’m citing here, who questioned philosophical fundamentals of mental disease and addiction, as Dr. Peele does and as my sweet, kind friend, the genius Thomas Szasz (RIP) did in his monumental works. (R.D Laing was a loon):
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2012/09/im-sad-not-libya-israel-9-11/
I’ve not looking for exposes; I’m looking for analytical truth to bolster the empirical. That’s my method; it’s theirs. Dr. Szasz was the pioneering genius. His books were prescribed at my South African alma mater. Now it has reverted to the anti-intellectual American drek, namely that of diseasing all aspects of behavior.
“Broken Brains” (2002)
Dr. Anthony Daniels, psychiatrist, whose pen name is Theodore Dalrymple, has done great work on the addiction industry, as well as on the failures of psychiatry.
“Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy”
“Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality”
I do not know any thinker, other than those who followed the pioneers I’m citing, who questioned philosophical fundamentals of mental disease and addiction, as Dr. Peele does and as my sweet, kind friend, the genius Thomas Szasz (RIP) did in his monumental works (R.D Laing was a loon):
“Why I A So Sad (& It’s Not Because Of Libya, Israel Or 9/11)”
I’m not looking for exposes; I’m looking for analytical truth to bolster the empirical. That’s my method; it’s theirs.
The therapeutic world of psychiatry and psychology, being different than the scientific research world of both disciplines, contemplated their navels and the lint they saw within and found enlightenment and meaning. Others heard their words, looked down and they too saw their navels and marveled at the words of wisdom and insight provided by the learned academy as to the meanings now revealed that they had heretofore not known. As both groups gorged themselves on expanding insight, and dollars, their bellies grew and their navels revealed even more lint, er, insight and meaning. One great big co-dependent party mightily invested in maintaining their dysfunction.