The pathology of normalcy. Fromm, Erich. American Mental Health Foundation Books, 2010 152 p. $25.00 978-1-59056-184-3 At the beginning of the 1950s, German-born US psychologist and social theorist Fromm (1900-80) began investigating whether people were psychically healthy in industrial society, and developed a new social psychology approach that allowed the psychoanalysis of the normal, socially […]
Happy Birthday today to long-time AMHF board member and Secretary, Mrs. Thea Lucas! We hope you have a perfect day and many more. Trained and certified as an attorney in Europe, in an era when few young women were, Mrs. Lucas has served AMHF tirelessly for many years. Her philosophical, keen, and common-sense assessments of […]
AMHF mourns the death of David Castronovo. A steadfast supporter of AMHF, Dr. Castronovo was the author or editor of eleven books of literary criticism on subjects ranging from Edmund Wilson and Thornton Wilder to popular classics of the 1950s to “The American Gentleman” to “Blokes: The Bad Boys of British Literature.” Dr. Castronovo was […]
Below is from the New York Times of November 10, 2010: “The agencies that run prisons and mental health facilities also employ the largest number of state workers of any departments of government under direct control of the governor, part of a work force that Mr. Cuomo may be forced to trim, or demand significant […]
Congratulations to American Mental Health Books author Dr. Raymond B. Flannery Jr., for the stellar notice of his book The Violent Person in New England Psychologist. This review, by Dr. James K. Luiselli, in the November 2010 issue (volume 18, number 9), is reproduced in full on our Web site.
On this final day of the 86th year of The American Mental Health Foundation, October 31, 2010, the Board of Directors also wishes a Happy twenty-sixth birthday to Mr. William Van Ornum. William has been an inspiration and a tremendous help to AMHF as one of our guiding spirits over the past three years. Happy […]
This video makes my skin crawl. It shows one of the most pernicious forms of bullying. (The video almost makes me want to stop rooting for the Yankees, which I have been doing for more years than I can count. Fortunately, they have no part in this horror.) Homophobia and Sports Fans on YouTube
The New York Times weighs in on “the quantifying of consciousness” along with the possible benefits of successfully doing so: for example, to facilitate certain surgical procedures, making them less invasive, or to understand the nature of a class of brain malfunctions like seizures. It seems improbable that consciousness could be “digitized.” The very phenomenon […]
Next to Normal is the bravest and one of the most talked-about Broadway musicals in years. It is recently the subject of an American Theatre Wing “Working in the Theatre” seminar. We highly recommend this landmark musical as a way, along with the efforts of AMHF, to raise public awareness about bipolar disorder and other […]
The New York Times weighs in with a thoughtful article on more than a child-rearing question: Are we doing right by the next generation when early signs of emotional distress are expressed? This is an issue of national concern. Even though AMHF is concentrating its efforts more toward “the other end” of the population spectrum, […]
A fascinating case was tried in 1993 in the state of Connecticut involving an est session, an est trainer named David Norris (among others on the scene), and the death of an est participant. How much stress is too much? How much of our own lives, including one’s own death (excepting by suicide), could be […]
In founding AMHF Books, the book-publishing arm of The American Mental Health Foundation, I along with our board sought two things. (1) To disseminate our knowledge in a way that also would preserve the lifework of the late Stefan de Schill. This would include books written in the spirit of Dr. de Schill’s work but […]
New York Times continues on the subject of Bullying through the Life Cycle.
American Mental Health Foundation published its first book, featuring state-of-the-art research, on The Violent Person. Today’s New York Times reviews a book of especial interest on violence as visited upon women, specifically one woman who is an expert herself in the field, and the shameful stigma of silence associated with it. The book is called […]
Does brain chemistry equate with emotional welfare or mental illness? We recommend respectful consideration of Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, recently published by Crown Publishers. As a reporter who is not on the front lines of severe mental illness and emotional trauma, Whitaker, of course, could not have all the answers.
Have you heard of “Freudy-cats”? One of our AMHF board members, the distinguished publisher Jack Fowler, filled me in. These are people afraid of going into therapy. Why? And do you know any Freudy-cats?
In 1953, the year the Rosenbergs were convicted in the electric chair, Esther Greenwood (a.k.a. Elly Higginbottom), poet Sylvia Plath’s alter ego (further complicating the picture, Plath wrote under the pen name “Victoria Lucas”), underwent electroshock therapy. Electricity, neurological connections, high-strung emotion, madness, suicide (which the real-life Plath committed ten years after the setting of […]
I highly recommend Louis Menand in the March 1, 2010, issue of The New Yorker. In part, Menand writes: “Progress in medical science is made by lurching around. The best that can be hoped is that we are lurching in an overall good direction….The goal of biological psychiatry is to identify the organic conditions underlying […]
DR VAN ORNUM MEETS WITH NYS GOVERNOR PATERSON For the past two months, AMHF Board Member and Director of Publications, Dr. William Van Ornum, has worked to provide feedback to New York State Governor David Paterson regarding the devastating effect of budget cuts on people with disabilities and the programs that provide services to them. […]
“The Violent Person is a masterpiece. It is must reading for anyone in risk management or hospital administration. Dr. Flannery is without question the leading authority on the violent patient. His insights and recommendations on the management of this increasing challenge in health care are not only welcomed, but essential as the face of American […]
Today’s lingering economic recession affects citizens in a number of ways as anxiety is heaped on anxiety, especially at this pressure-packed time of year. One might call this phenomenon “The Depression of Depression.” New York Times
The Midwest Book Service gives a 5-Star review to The Violent Person the first book issued by the American Mental Health Foundation. See this review on amazon by clicking below. amazon
I had the distinct honor to receive an invitation to the Fall Harvest Festival presented by Suicide Prevention International. Suicide is now recognized by the World Health Organization and the United States government as a global health problem. Suicide Prevention International has developed four distinctive projects: – Youth Suicide Prevention – Recognition of an Individual […]
The presentation of the Stefan de Schill Award was noted by Reverend Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of NY.
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