Seth Farber, Ph.D.

Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers:Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel (Common Courage Press, 2005)

This is an important book. ... In these shameful days, when black turns white, when the most brutal leader Israeli militarism has produced is hailed as a man of peace and when standing for justice is silenced as anti-Semitism, this book is a breath of fresh air. The many voices in this book, each different, but all taking basic human values as their point of departure, reminds us that being a Jew today can mean adhering to higher principles than those dictated by the Israeli generals. --Tanya Reinhart, Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Author of Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Permit me to thank you with all my heart for your book. It is a ray of piercing truth, amid the darkness that lays claim to our world, from Tel Aviv to Washington, For me, indebted as I am to the prophets from Isaiah to Jesus, you have illumined the human vocation (whether of unbeliever. Jewish. Muslim, Christian); to labor on behalf of justice and peace, to stand with the victimised; 'the widow and orphan and stranger at the gate', to oppose war and its vile tactics--occupation, bombing, sanctions, slaughter of innocents - war, the creator of widows and orphans, of generational hatreds, of a ruined creation - untended wounds on the planet and the body of the human family.The book is simply indispensable, given the welter of outright lies, slants, omissions that sum up our 'unmediating media' regarding the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian people. To you and the noble minority who people this book, thanks are due from those who seek the truth, ever endangered and dishonored by the mandarins of untruth. "
-- Rev Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
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URL for more information:
http:/​/​www.commoncouragepress.com/​index.cfm?action=book&bookid=326

Selected Works

Nonfiction
Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels: The Revolt Against the Mental Health System
A work in the tradition of Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman, a challenge to the delusional belief-system known as psychiatry; and a protest against its appalling crimes. Foreword by Thomas Szasz
Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers:Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel (Common Courage Press, 2005)
The contributors are among the leading American Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians: Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Marc Ellis, Adam Shapiro, Phyllis Bennis, Rabbi Weiss and 6 others.
Eternal Day: The Christian Alternative to Secularism and Modern Psychology (Regina Press, 1998)
A critique of psychoanalysis and the medical model model of psychology as a form of secularized Augustinianism. Augustinianism, with its insistence on predestination and eternal damnation, was an inversion of the original Christian teaching of human freedom to respond to infinite grace and the promise of universal salvation.
Unholy Madness: The Church's Surrender to Psychiatry (InterVarsity Press,1999)
"An important book."
--Thomas Szasz, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center; author of The Myth of Mental Illness
(Click on title above to read excerpt from book.)
Psychiatry Today (2001)
Excerpt (slightly altered) from essay in Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry (2001, 25th Anniversary Issue) "Against Psychotherapy and Biological Psychiatry"
Articles
Tennessee Justice -- The Scapegoating of Teresa Deion Harris
(Published by Free Deion Harris Association -- see article for contact information.)
Pending memoir. Non-fiction.
Lunching with Lunatics:Adventures of a Renegade Psychologist.
After years of practicing therapy,Dr Farber-- a psychologist in the tradition of his hero, radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing-- concludes that mental illness is a myth and that "schizophrenics," although often troubled, are the vanguard of a cultural revolution. Farber falls in love with Carla, and a few years later with Lily, both "schizophrenics." (Neither were patients of his.) These two crazy women are so intelligent and charismatic that their personalities burst through the stereotype of "mental illness." Farber talks to crazy people in their own language. Psychiatrists call it "schizophrenese" but Farber calls it the language of dreams, of poetry, of magic. Farber's dogged romantic persistence makes us wonder whether he is a brilliant visionary or a crackpot himself--or both. This is an inspiring story, profound in its implications--it is an affirmation of a vision of life beyond the dichotomies of sanity and insanity as we know them.
Organization
Network Against Coercive Psychiatry
Network Against Coercive Psychiatry is an organization comprised of psychotherapists (including psychiatrists), survivors of psychiatric incarceration (commonly known as "mental patients"), scholars and other concerned citizens.