Customer Reviews

Rape of the Soul

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Along with other courageous authors such as Peter Breggin, Bert Karon, and David Cohen, Ty Colbert provides guidance for the true path toward healing. "Rape of the Soul" discerns truth about the causes and cures for people in emotional pain. It is clear that making these truths known is fundamentally a spiritual battle.

Dr. Colbert has written a most understandable and practical text critical of the biopsychiatric model. In painstaking detail he explains the distortions and misdirection of that system which would have us believe human strife is largely due genetic and biochemical deficiencies or imbalances. In exceptionally clear fashion he details research findings and clarifies how many psychiatric explanations for "mental illness" are distorted and flawed.

In a very interesting fashion, Dr. Colbert examines various instances where drugs "appear" to work. He details this from both a theoretical and practical standpoint which greatly helps to de-confuse the mental health professional and layperson alike. Indeed, countless clients/ patients have experienced "relief" following consumption of various psycho tropic medications. Consequently, it is often very difficult for them to comprehend how one can challenge the helpfulness and apparent efficacy of drugs. Dr. Colbert offers cogent reasons for the experience of relief and explains why that is often a seductive outcome. But, that outcome so often fails to address fundamental personal and interpersonal issues that ultimately must be dealt with in order to achieve a true healing process.

In addition to the clear and in-depth examination of the issues under scrutiny, the author offers humane alternatives to medicating of human beings who are passionately struggling with life's meaning. Here, the rich humanistic, psycho dynamic, and systems perspectives that impact living are examined via examples from case studies.

As a psychotherapist and educator with a great many years of experience, I fully intend to make Dr. Colbert's work a required text in my classroom. In my opinion, it is one of the most significant books written in the field of mental health in the past 10 years.

Sincerely, Tom Mabee, Ph.D.

I don't think I've ever read an entire book without blinking, but I came close with Colbert's masterpiece. I didn't want to miss a word. My own soul welled up with hope and passion as the simple understanding that emotional and spiritual pain cannot and should not be healed with drugs became crystal clear. This had always been my intuitive belief, but it is now buoyed by Colbert's thorough knowledge of the relevant research and his keen critique of the philosophy of the medical model of mental illness. In the past, whenever I read some new research "breakthrough" that screamed that biopscychiatry now knows the biological marker or cause for mental illness, my faith wavered. But it no longer does, thanks to Dr. Colbert's clear, passionate thinking.

My opinion is similar to most of the other reviewers - this book is great. For far too long, the unproven biochemical account of people's problematic behaviour has been the dominant view. And also, for that reviewer who says he has depression and scolds the book, just be aware, that having 'depression' symptoms does not make you an expert any more than a man who bashes his partner is an expert on wife-bashing disorder. This book was easy to read. I hope the author plans to write more. By the way, if you go to the website listed on the back cover of the book, you will be in for a big, big surprise.

In the past two years I have ordered numerous copies and recommended this book to others to read. Everyone has the same remark on the significant benefit of this book. In layman terms the author very effectively outlines how the chemical imbalance theory has risen to dominance in this country. It then shows why drugs are a dangerous and often debilitating result for many. Far from creating "dry-mouth" these drugs often cause the very behaviors they are supposedly designed to solve. Increased suicidal thinking, akathesia, increased hostility from these drugs are not minor side-effects. Our society has paid the price for trusting in unscientific studies put out by the pharmaceutical establishment. By the way sedating or masking symptoms as this author shows makes it much harder for the person to become truly functional emotionally as further evidenced by the angry reviewer here who supposedly was "helped" by these drugs. If that's healthy a growing concensus is now saying "no thanks".

I am so tired of these therapists writing books attacking medications for mental illnesses. I am so utterly revolted. Did this author ever even get close to experiencing depression, or any other mental illness, himself? Do any of these authors even bother to read any research studies, at all? How can they so deeply sink their heads into the sand? I mean, it should be a crime. Or at least the publishers should have enough wherewithall and integrity to refuse to publish this absurd, ill-informed trash.

Look, the IGNORANCE of these authors rapes MY soul and my mind. I am also a psychotherapist. I suffer from depression. A sister suffers from schizophrenia. She was homeless for 10 years my friends! That was because she wasn't taking her medication. When she finally started taking meds, she got better! Then she got a job and her own apartment! My lord in heaven, look at the research on schizophrenia, you foolish "colleagues" of mine! There is no doubt! There is brain damage when schizophrenia is untreated! Medication helps psychotic people to live a life, and even can prevent further brain damage. Hello! Anyone home? (As my sister would say, "Duh-eeee!")

Same deal with depression. Please look at the research. Who is to say that people who take medication for depression can't also do other things to discover meaning in life, heal, and feel better? Prayer, meditation, yoga, Jungian therapy, depth psychotherapy, bodywork/therapy, acupuncture, etc. I believe in it all, all of it has helped me. So has medication. Why are these therapists so black and white? Why are they trying so desperately to divide the functioning of the mind and the emotions from the functioning of the body? That is not holistic, oh colleagues. It is sheer ignorance. And it is dangerous to your clients. Frankly, denying them medication when they need it is what is raping their minds, bodies and their souls!

Absolute disgust. Perhaps they would tell a person who just had an amputation of their leg that their pain was "all in their head". That tylenol or, god forbid, motrin, or (shudder) vicodin would not only cause life-threatening side effects, but would inevitably cause a dangerous addiction, and that none of these medications was warranted in the first place! Or the same to a heart patient. The group of people that writes these books seem themselves to be suffering from a collective delusion of some sort, probably paranoid.

Like because you might suffer from dry mouth or some other thoroughly manageable side effect, you should never take antidepressants, oh no! Like the benefit of taking the antidepressant (more energy, a life, not killing yourself, etc.) does not outweigh the dry mouth. No--The dry mouth is evil! And like, depression is something we can just magically get rid of! Like we can just will ourselves out of any depression, even a suicidal one, or the florid psychotic hallucinations of schizophrenia! Oh yeah. Or maybe a cup of herb tea will cure us. And like, for some strange and obscure twist of these author's logic, the fact that anyone might take a psychotropic drug automatically precludes them from doing anything holistic as well. How about this: how about the drug helping people to even get to the "place" where they can meditate? That is more the reality, my friends. But you wouldn't know, because you have not experienced any of the mental or emotional challenges that you write about, have you?

The sane ones are those who take medication when they need it, whether it is to help to alleviate a physical or a mental or emotional problem. The really crazy ones, like the ones who write these books, think that we can rise above our mental pain, even though they would never suggest the same to someone with a physical condition. They think that because it is mental or emotional problem that there is no physical correlate, or if there is one, then our mind can magically and automatically control and cure the physical problem (as well as the mental or emotional one!). Some kind of God complex, what? And DE Nial is a river in Egypt. Who has the real problem here? I could psychoanalyze these writer's fascinating and uh, "eccentric" belief systems more, but I'll spare you.