The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 04.12.18

I open this show with a manifesto:  That the actions of people helping people can and should lie outside the conventional designations of psychiatrist, psychologist, or even counselor and therapist, and these activities should not be subjected to government control and licensing.  I believe that humans and humanity have survived throughout our evolution with helping relationships, including helping each other with all kinds and degrees of emotional struggles.  I briefly describe my new course that will be available early 2019 in which I will focus on people learning to help each other, whether they are psychiatrists or former psychiatric patients, or people who are functioning well or barely at all.  We are all the same in that we struggle to have a good life, and all of us can do our best to help one another.  Today’s guest Daniel R. Berger illustrates my manifesto.  He has training  in counseling and he knows more about conventional psychiatry that most psychiatrists do; but he has not been captured by professionalism. He acts on his Christian beliefs by being his own kind helper, a man who breathes his Christian faith into everything he does, from his trenchant and highly informed critique of modern psychiatry to his Biblical approach to helping people with even the most serious emotional overwhelms, including psychosis.  I hope this hour with me and Daniel Berger will further open your mind and heart toward a better a life, and to a vision of how much better off the world will be without mental health authorities and professionals capturing the field people helping people.