With the first unified theory of guilt, shame, and anxiety, this pioneering psychiatrist and critic of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs examines the causes and effects of psychological and emotional suffering from the perspective of biological evolution, child development, and mature adult decision-making. Drawing on evolution, neuroscience, and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Breggin analyzes what he calls our negative legacy emotions the painful emotional heritage that encumbers all human beings. The author marshals evidence that we evolved as the most violent and yet most empathic...

At a time when biological psychiatry claims that drugs and electroshock are the best methods for helping deeply disturbed persons, mental health professionals need to be reminded that psychological and social approaches to mental illnesses remain more effective, less harmful, and much more able to address the real needs of recovery, growth, and development for affected persons. Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons empowers counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to trust their intuitive and clinical understanding of how to help seriously disturbed people...