Nationality: American Personal
Education
Career
Private practice of psychiatry, 1968--; licensed in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland; diplomate of National Board of Medical Examiners. Founder of Men Who Care: United against the Abuse of Women and Children, 1990. Member of advisory board, Libertarian International and International Directory of Distinguished Psychotherapists; member of advisory council, Libertarian Alliance (London); member of fellowship advisory committee, Center for Libertarian Studies. Guest on television and radio programs in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Military
Memberships
Sidelights
Breggin sees the possibility for totalitarianism as one danger in the psychiatric use of behavior modification techniques. He has pointed out that the psychiatrists of Nazi Germany were the first to organize and use extermination camps. Before the Nazi Party seized control of these camps, they were used to kill over two hundred thousand mental patients diagnosed as "incurably diseased" or "useless eaters." German psychiatrists even trained the Nazi SS troops in the use of the camps' gas extermination ovens. "The 1930s in psychiatry," Trotter quotes Breggin as stating, "were very similar to what we are getting into again. The notion that there was such a thing as mental illness, that it was biological and genetic and that people should be castrated and given lobotomies.... The move goes from drugs to electroshock to psychosurgery and castration to extermination.... Psychiatry cannot be left alone to police itself." On the same historical aspect, Breggin told CA: "The destructive impact of psychiatry upon our civilization has been given far too little attention, and the role of psychiatry in Nazi Germany almost no attention. It is entirely possible that without psychiatry the holocaust could never have taken place." About his own psychiatric work, Breggin explained to CA: "The Center for the Study of Psychiatry is a non-profit research and educational foundation devoted to examining psychiatry against the values of personal freedom, civil liberties, and the well-being of the individual. The board of directors includes congressmen, noted lawyers, psychiatrists, and individuals from across the political spectrum. Our main achievement has been drawing attention to the psychiatric abuse of individuals subjected to involuntary drug therapy, psychosurgery, electroshock, and other oppressive techniques. In my private practice of psychotherapy I rarely use drugs and refuse to participate in involuntary treatment. My emphasis is upon the individual's personal responsibility for overcoming his failures and for learning to fulfill his dreams and aspirations." Breggin continues: "Starting with my Psychology of Freedom, I have [been] concerned with relating psychological concepts to political and economic models for human conduct. Now as a professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University, these larger issues are taking center stage in my life. I am currently working on a book tentatively entitled Human Progress through Conflict Resolution: From Oppression through Liberty to Love in Our Professional and Political Lives. I create a model for understanding conflict resolution and progress applicable to all forms of human relationship, from couples to institutions and societies. At the same time, my wife Virginia Ross-Breggin is working on a book identifying the common values in contemporary progressive movements from feminism and the prevention of wife abuse to the peace, environmental, and deep ecology movements. Our work is dovetailing and inspiring us both." Breggin adds that his forthcoming as-yet-untitled mass market book for St. Martin's Press will explore "both the dangers of technological psychiatry (drugs, electroshock, genetic, and biochemical theories) and the value of psychological, social, spiritual, and political approaches to these same problems. One chapter will deal with the 'psycho-pharmaceutical complex' - the billion dollar interlocking relationship between the drug companies, organized psychiatry, and the federal government. Other chapters deal with the psychiatric abuse of women and children. The concluding chapter describes alternatives and principles that rely on human caring and understanding." See the entire catalog of books by Peter Breggin.
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