Dan Latner
2 min readMar 20, 2021

--

Dear Lauren, M.A.,

Thank you for your tender, loving response, for clarifying once and for all that the DSM-5 is the “only appropriate criterion used in all the many professions that make up the entire field of mental health care”, and for your illuminating comparison between being forcibly detained in a psychiatric institution and not having cake provided at one’s place of employment.

I wonder – as a professional therapist responding to an involuntarily committed individual such as myself, would you categorize your lighthearted lobotomy zinger as a trauma-informed joke or not a trauma-informed joke?

Despite your groundless assertions, the point of this article is not to promote spiritual practice, claim that enlightenment can cure psychosis, or demonize “therapists, the wholeness of mental health care, the DSM, and residential facilities entirely”.

While I am grateful for your list of some books that are tangentially related to the subject at hand, their authors and dates of publication do not serve my stated intention of spotlighting contemporary scientists who validate the oft-ignored existence of the category of cognitive events for which 'spiritual' or 'mystical' are the most fitting descriptors.

Perhaps you would enjoy some of these other books that exist. There sure are a lot of opinions about the nature of consciousness!

The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry – Gary Greenberg

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness – Robert Whitaker

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche – Ethan Watters

Thank you once again for your thoughtfully articulated insights.

--

--