Bruce E. Levine Quotes

Bruce E. Levine is an American clinical psychologist, often at odds with the mainstream of his profession , in private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been in practice for nearly three decades. Levine writes and speaks widely on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect.

Levine's most recent book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite . It calls for a new kind of politics to help Americans overcome what Levine sees as political demoralization.

Published in 2007, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy argues that by not seriously confronting posited societal sources of depression, American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The book provides an alternate approach that encompasses what Levine describes as the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformation more likely.

Levine is also the author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations and a World Gone Crazy , a protest book. The 26 alphabetically ordered chapters of Commonsense Rebellion detail Levine's contention that the high national rates of mental illness in the United States are really just natural reactions to the oppression of what he terms an "institutional society," which he argues causes many to break down psychologically. An earlier edition was released in 2001 with the subtitle Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society — An A to Z Guide to Rehumanizing Our Lives.

Levine is a regular contributor to AlterNet, CounterPunch, Z Magazine, Truthout, and The Huffington Post, and his articles have appeared in Adbusters, The Ecologist and many other publications.

Levine is a member of MindFreedom International, a group opposed to what they describe as coercive mental health treatment, and on the Advisory Council of the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry .

Bruce E. Levine: 3 quotes 0 likes

Famous Bruce E. Levine Quotes

“Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities.”

Bruce E. Levine

"Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill," Mad In America, February 26, 2012 http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/

“Ayn Rand helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.”

Bruce E. Levine

“A sane society would be asking questions about the very nature of a society and culture that creates so much trauma for children.... We live in a society that prioritizes profits for large corporations and power for large institutions. We live in a society in which, for example, the cause of depression and suicide has been, for decades, falsely attributed by psychiatry and Big Pharma to a chemical imbalance theory long known to be untrue—an untruth that has made billions of dollars for drug companies and increased power for psychiatry through increased use of antidepressants which are known to actually increase suicide... just one of many examples that we do not live in a sane society.”

Bruce E. Levine

The Groundbreaking Public Health Study That Should Change U.S. Society—But Won’t https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/19/the-groundbreaking-public-health-study-that-should-change-u-s-society-but-wont/, (19 July 2019)