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Title: Psychicatric Madness
Review: Elliot Valenstein's book is at the same time informative, provocative and disturbing. He has analyzed a dense literature and distilled from it key ideas that run counter to the current dogma of psychiatry and other "helping professions," the currently fashionable view that so-called mental illnesses of many types are brain disorders. Valenstein prepares the reader with a well-crafted history of biological psychiatry, followed by a knoweldgable and intelligent critical analysis of the literature. This is a book that deserves a wide readership but, alas, will probably not receive it. The juggernaut of the brain psychiatrists and their sympathizers is just too overwhelming to give Valenstein's book the careful reading it deserves. I look forward to his next work, which I hope would examine the related claims for a biological basis of ADHD, homosexuality, alcoholism, and the like.
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