Unshrunk: A Memoir That Upsets the NYT and Which Freethinkers Will Love

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Bruce E Levine writes a rebuttal to the New York Times review of Laura Delano’s book Unshrunk in Counter Punch.

“Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, the newly published book by Laura Delano, is scaring the hell out of establishment psychiatry and its Big Pharma partners, who in recent years could count on the mainstream media to ignore books and films that cost them status and business. However, the mainstream media, including the New York Times, cannot simply ignore a book published by Viking, owned by Penguin Random House, especially a book authored by an articulate Harvard graduate and relative of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So, the NYT has attempted to marginalize Delano and Unshrunk in another way.

In reaction to Delano’s challenging the authority of establishment psychiatry, NYT reporter Ellen Barry, in a lengthy feature story, attempted to marginalize her (shortly after, the NYT published a tamer brief review of Unshrunk, written by non-NYT book author, which only accuses Delano of being “reductionist”). The job of the NYT, long made clear by Noam Chomsky, is to protect the status quo and the ruling class by marginalizing anyone who seriously challenges it and its enabling institutions. Barry does her job, insidiously demeaning Delano’s discoveries, her independence from professional authorities, and her valuing mutual aid; and Barry distorts the radical thrust of Unshrunk.”

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for this Bruce. You untangled the Gordon knot. And a lot of the problem is no good solid systems just her and there efforts that work or sometimes don’t work. The show The Pitt in the last episode an almost throwaway line. Seeing the actual carnage after a maker shooting both parties at and all levels of staff traumatized one person asks a fix well isn’t psych here and the doc said no. This represents the folly of the years after WWII to divide the human psyche from the body and visa versa. It’s a terrible mess and very few people able to understand and or talk about. And barriers and obstacles and just more hurt and harm and few professionals able to do the 12 step A A framework for taking responsibility, admitting one’s errors and making amends.

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  2. I enjoy reading this rebuttal by Bruce Levine a lot! Thank you!

    “Bruce E Levine writes a rebuttal to the New York Times review of Laura Delano’s book Unshrunk in Counter Punch.”

    New York Times published two pieces about Laura’s book Unschrunk, one by Ellen Barry on March 17, 2025 being a feature story, and the other by Casey Schwartz on March 20, 2025, being a book review. Bruce’s rebuttal here is to the Ellen Barry’s feature story article, not to Casey Schwartz’s book review.

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    • I’ve been following this story closely. It strikes me that Delano has a great command of the facts and speaks succinctly about the problem as she sees it. Given the harm that psychiatry has caused me, I can’t bring myself to turn the other cheek as she does. As a result, she comes across as a kind and gentle person. I think her haters would really look stupid if Delano found herself in a debate with one of them.

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      • As one who has met Laura in real life, I will say Deleno is a kind and generous person, and agree “her haters would really look stupid if Delano found herself in a debate with one of them.”

        But that may be because, I too, am a truth telling psychopharmacology researcher … who found the medical evidence that the antipsychotics can create both the positive and negative symptoms of “schizophrenia,” via both anticholinergic toxidrome and neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome.

        But I do understand the big Pharma funded mainstream media is now starting to behave, seemingly, as bad as the scientific fraud based, big Pharma deluded, “mental health professions.”

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  4. Hey, if free thinkers would love reading any book at all, memoir or otherwise, then I’d hate to see what an enslaved thinker would look like. Anyway, as Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, “There is no such thing as freedom of thought. It’s pure nonsense.” We can confirm this for ourselves by noticing that all thought is socially conditioned. True imagination, that fire or magma of imaginative images, is pre-linguistic but because language and concepts condition the brain they increasingly condition imagination by the same sense of reality and the laws of movement. Radical, free imagination implies a thought-free mind, and is the origin of all that is truly creative. It is natures way and that of the whole cosmos. Anyways, stop picking cat fights with the NYT because they have more puff in them then you and will never concede until all their dug in trenches of defensive conclusions have been exposed and exploded away, and who can be bothered to do that eh? Those who are so boring they read books. Books are for when you’ve run out of ashtrays or toilet rolls, not for reading or even less ‘killing time’ (which is in the same class as committing suicide because committing suicide is the supreme form of killing time).

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    • Books are alive in the same way that you and I are alive, and by accessing the writings of “dead” thinkers we act on the past simultaneously by allowing them to act on us presently when we re-create their original discoveries in our own thinking processes. It is literally a method of resurrection. Reading is a door of access to time travel outside the ordinary (habitual) passage of seemingly discrete chronologically-‘arranged’ moments; reading is a dharma door just as much as entheogens or sleep deprivation can be depending on set and setting.

      Imagery is only one form of imagination, anyone can have pre-conscious sensory experiences or extra-sensory experiences of any type because the doors of consciousness are infinite. You might want to read up on synesthesia, which it surprises me you don’t know about considering how often you blubber on about “hallucinogens,” which is a misnomer because the real hallucination is the before/after dualism in relation to the entheogenic catalyst of relatively unusual “states” of consciousness. (Discussing states of consciousness is improper terminology because it implies a static existence of a discrete alteration to a singular dialectical process so it’s meta-redundant.) Terrence McKenna agreed with you that words are like water which doesn’t wet the ducks’ feathers.

      I think you’re more right than wrong about the natures of thinking and imagination but still guilty of errorism, bhagavante.

      By the way, completing suicide won’t kill time; only your body’s relationship to time as you know it. Read the Katha Upanishad if you want a guide that will teach you how to destroy time.

      Who can be bothered to do that… you and I both, apparently. Your panoramic perspective has a few blind spots.

      You’re a skillful writer and if you read more books it will help you cultivate your talents.

      As Alan Watts said, the teeth can’t bite themselves o mahasattva, great unconditioned one.

      Pax

      Disclaimer: This comment is a bunch of horseshit. I stand by every word.

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      • Actually, all your comment is based on the assumption that thought has value. It does, but it has a negative and destructive value, destructive of natural freedom. This is definitely a fact. Nothing you write here is a fact at all I’m afraid, and that is a fact. I wish it were otherwise.

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  5. Thank you, MIA! I very much enjoyed reading Bruce’s finely tuned rebuttal to Ellen Barry’s passive-aggressive attempt at discrediting Laura’s hard-won knowledge born of her own equally hard-won LIVED EXPERIENCE.

    I have to admit I found myself more amused than angry at Barry’s particular brand of seemingly erudite clownshit. It must be because I’ve learned to expect as much from seemingly erudite clownshit publications.

    The fact of the matter is it really doesn’t matter how or what some “journalist” writes in some publication (no matter how well-known) because Laura’s the one who wrote a book WHOSE TIME HAS COME even though there’s no shortage of “journalists” more than willing to undermine and belittle her personally just for having the courage to tell a story that NEEDS TO BE TOLD.

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  7. To be honest, I didn’t know the “NEW YORK TIMES” was so bad. I had gotten from my fathers books by Harold C Schonberg about the classic composers, and thought heh…… But reading this article, what they said about a whole list of things, and then other stuff not even mentioned that I know aren’t going to be reported correctly just about anywhere…….

    I wouldn’t read the New York Times about ANYTHING political or scientific or medical, unless I wanted to read just one viewpoint, to see what THAT was, and would never find it having perspective… wouldn’t read it but for that one viewpoint ideology etc. Just to see what those people are saying, but I wouldn’t believe that I then knew in general…….

    But that’s the way in general with such publications. Has been for years and for years. History itself. What’s in the books.

    Most people are SO filled with fear thinking they have to know, have an opinion, have filled their brain with set input, or they aren’t safe, they wouldn’t know what’s going on to begin with, only see what they are told to believe.

    In general it’s not believed that sacrificing a goat or a virgin is going to bring safety, that this will appease God, and yet why was this ever going on. I don’t think it was even about “God,” it was a means to traumatize people, to put fear in their lives and gain control. On the other side it was that they think they need these “authorities.” So and such is powerful because it will terrorize people into behaving. etc. etc…..

    Now it’s more ideas like a “chemical imbalance,” or “terrorism,” or other “enemies,” and how much are such things produced in order to brainwash people? Mind control 101, make people think they are under attack and you can control them.

    Watch the News. Read the New York Times. And you have both factions of enemy and hero changing places on the other side so both can profit off of the gullibility of people.

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      • Birdsong, I have an “important” message. Apparently, the Universe agrees with us regarding fear. Because when I clicked on this story, the listed number of views was 666. NOW it is 667. BIG CHANGE to let go of fear…… JUST IMAGINE had I not agreed with you?

        That said. It remains unbelievable to me, not only how people behave, worshiping fear as a necessary tool for getting what they want, as if that doesn’t separate them from their “enemy” and in doing so limits their concepts from even knowing what they are aiming for. From not seeing themselves in their enemy, and how they invest in fear to keep that going, and kill themselves, potential, harmony and piece to keep such :justice” going to creating incredibly corrupt dark pockets in this “discipline” they say they think they need to implement this fear. You can NOT tell them they don’t know what they are doing, and you can’t tell them about the dark pockets controlling everything consequently. They would say those are conspiracy theories…

        As I said: “Watch the News. Read the New York Times. And you have both factions of enemy and hero changing places on the other side so both can profit off of the gullibility of people.”

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        • Just to make sure you know I was completely joking regarding 666. Me and a really good friend were at one time making a whole book, like you would have on a coffee table, with jokes about 666. For example, put three sixes sequentially down three steps, and I called it “the descent of the beast,” and we had one in a perambulator. Still have it around here somewhere.

          Unfortunately, my friend at one time was put on some sort of neuroleptic. She had moved into a new place, and thought she was being a bit florid, and unfortunately went you know where and got a you know what, and you know what. I think the only affect it had was that in the long run she couldn’t sleep did she not take it. She then had a heart attack just before covid. I think she was then already 78. I didn’t even know because her family did nothing but send her body for cadaver use at the local University’s medical department. I had been having really deep dreams, then heard she had passed on, and then heard her voice rather funny: “I guess I’m dead now,” or so. When we had talked about this she was an adamant atheist. She would say that she would become part of the earth, the sun etc. She is someone I had no sorrow for, because I knew she had a good life, despite everything, and she always did things her own way, completely. And she was a really really good friend… actually I have seen her since, I forgot.

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          • Birdsong, I had to laugh. There seem to be a lot of people that think there’s harm in seeing there’s more to physical life and death than meets the eye when it actually does meet the eye. I mean it’s one thing when it remains invisible but when it actually starts animating itself in the physical as well then people really start having problems don’t they? Then it’s schizophrenic or conspiracy theories or whatever…… They especially have problems wheln it shows to exist but they can’t control it to their money ambitions or territorial disputes or need to dominate and control people. And even worse than that, when it’s not going to control people with fear to their morals and limitations, people have big problems. Can’t exist. As if miracles are from the devil or something…..

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          • Birdsong, since we’ve had Easter now. And supposedly this was the “ONE” occurrence of “resurrection.” Textbook case. Institutional example.

            The friend I was talking about, I had forgotten that after her “death,” I had run into her, as I wrote in the second comment back: “And she was a really really good friend… actually I have seen her since, I forgot.”

            It has been happening quite a bit, lately. Another thing that’s supposed to be crazy. If you know Quantum physics, the double slit experiment and how wave patterns that are at all times moving all throughout the Universe actually became particles when observed, and take in what that might mean (regarding wave patterns that move at a speed where time has stopped), then such phenomenon become something much more simple. What’s the difference between thought and what you see, and whether this becomes physical, or ever materializes to begin with? Does time have any meaning at all, regarding what comes our way in the physical, and where does it come from? If it does have meaning how can there be a limit on energy, also, which THAT rule of thermodynamics says is only in limited form? What does it have to do with our thoughts? And WHAT are all these things, these feelings these experiences, these thoughts beyond what we’re supposed to be thinking or be crowned insane, what is all of that in contrast to such connections between the mind and what one can even record because of physical perceptions?

            She was the one person who when I heard she had moved on, it didn’t ruffle me because I KNEW she had always done things her way, and had had a good life. What do we take with us when we move on to the other dimension? What do we add to forever? She told me she wouldn’t want to go to Russia with the Russian language teacher we were both taking classes from because: “That would be like going there with Jesus and all of his disciples.” She actually went regardless, and had said something akin to what I can’t remember, but was like: “last time I was going to do something that I couldn’t afford it (or was it that it was possible at all) I did it anyhow.” There then of course were stories about her behavior. It might be that she then started drinking again, because that is almost enforced with social norms. But I knew she was the composer Rossini, and had mentioned this to her (we often were at each other’s necks like some opera) but I also knew she was John the Baptist’s, what I thought father, but could have been mother……

            I had heard she moved on, at first had really deep resonant sleep, I would go to her place often, when I needed some place quiet, as she had a subsidized apartment. But after hearing she had moved on, I heard her say: “I guess I’m “dead” now,” or such as one would say after you’ve been told who knows what regarding WHAT that is…… It’s like you end up one place which is a reward or the other which is a punishment, and it can’t be either if it’s real……. Children have to deal with such nonsense all the time, don’t they?

            So, there she was sitting there, in an area where such had happened before. Just sitting there enjoying the sun, the sound of the birds, the people at the market. It seems like it used to be that extra terrestrials from more developed communities could show up, such as would have helped to build what to this day we can’t, all of the pyramids all over the planet. Stone work we really don’t have the ability as yet, in what’s deemed possible, although there are hints like the Coral Castle in Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle that are more recent. And more. But maybe, since they are destroying so much of the earth, which does have a history, and the good stuff remains in forever, you can’t flush it down the wishing well of what everyone wishes wouldn’t happen because it interfere’s with their controls. So, it’s not “good,” it’s what one really enjoys, shows life has meaning, and isn’t about guilt, debt or ideas of loss, or any of that……

            That history isn’t history anymore, it’s alive…. there she was

            As Emily Dickinson said about “little John’s….” playmate

            He strained my faith—
            Did he find it supple?
            Shook my strong trust—
            Did it then—yield?

            Hurled my belief—
            But—did he shatter—it?
            Racked—with suspense—
            Not a nerve failed!

            Wrung me—with Anguish—
            But I never doubted him—
            ‘Tho’ for what wrong
            He did never say—

            Stabbed—while I sued
            His sweet forgiveness—
            Jesus—it’s your little “John”!
            Don’t you know—me?

            It’s a big problem for people, Jesus was supposed to be dead, their brand of discipline using trauma, coercion, threat, fear, torture etc. it was supposed to maintain whatever they thought was the profit from it…….

            Things are getting worse for them it seems…….

            Not just Jesus, but his playmate’s parent (not having to totally go for the mainstream brand of it), after a few other rounds, and more……

            I hadn’t cried when I heard she moved on, and at the time I ran into her it was simple normal, like it would be for any “schizophrenic.” Then it’s all integrated, I remember, and somehow start to express the “memory,” as if remembering what was there the whole time is memory, but I started to give it a place in my mind. THEN, I cried, because of the love there, and how she was such a good friend, such a blessing, and how life really is love, and how EVERYTHING we encounter is good, is love, and what we take with use to forever makes it all more than worth while, beyond any idea of whether it is or not. And it makes me want to LIVE life…… Just to do those things, like she always did. Just “something” and enjoy it, and refresh myself…..

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        • Very interesting comments and I totally get the same number experiences as do so many, and the meanings are made obvious in context. And I totally agree with your sober observation that you wouldn’t ever believe anything they wrote about science, politics or society or medicine or anything else. Do we see that Robert Whittaker is beginning to understand the broader social problems that frustrates progress in psychiatry? Because he’s not blindly informing the mental health community about the facts – he is at least now realizing the broader structural problems that prevent reform in the field, in this case the media, but I say he needs to step back and consider these problems in relation to the state of society and humanity and the world right now. Because it is only in seeing these problems as one whole that our action can be intelligent and effective in relation to it, because psychiatry is not an isolable entity or thing: psychiatry, psychopharmacology, psychological services and so forth are all structures within social and economic and intellectual reality and these structures are like the sinews in our body – they only make sense in relation to the whole body, and any dysfunction is only truly grasped as part of the whole dysfunction we call society or the social-historical process which incudes our socially conditioned intellectual life. And implicitly I see that you are examining these problems in relation to the problems of the whole of life, hence immediately negate the validity of a fight with the NYT because this very fighting is indicative of the undue credibility you gave to them in the first place. Perhaps intellectually shaming them would have value in the context of a social reality which merely required reform, if such a social reality has ever existed, but I’m afraid it is destroying itself and must destroy itself, otherwise there is nothing left of the Earth let alone our lives which have become petty, superficial, confusing, insecure and destructive precisely because of all these problems in our social and intellectual reality and consciousness.

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    • You’ve asked some fascinating questions, Nijinski. What little I know of quantum physics only reinforces what I’ve felt for as long as I can remember—that the spirit of people is more real than anything we can see or imagine.

      Eastertime always feels strangely transcendent to me… and reading about your friend made me reflect on that even more. Maybe there’s something about love and presence that isn’t bound by time the way we think.

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