Peter Lehmann
The Chemical Gag: Why Psychiatrists Administer Neuroleptics
(= Der chemische Knebel – Warum Psychiater Neuroleptika verabreichen)
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Soft
cover, XVIII + 428 pages, 14,8 x 21 cm, ISBN 978-3-925931-31-4.
Berlin / Eugene / Shrewsbury: Peter Lehmann Antipsychiatrieverlag,
6th edition 2010 (based on the first edition of 1986 with a new
foreword by Peter Lehmann). Published in
the German language! € 24.90 / Preface by Jeffrey M. Masson, reprint of the first edition of 1986 with an updated preface by Peter Lehmann
Publisher's information about the 2nd edition of 1990
In all psychiatry-critical circles the book, 1986 been published primarily, has made a stir. The book preoccupies mainly with the modern psychiatric antipsychotic drugs and is called yet now a standardwork of psychiatry-critics. In 1988, American psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin praised it "the best book about the danger of those drugs".
From asthma to schizophrenia, from bed-wetting to neurosis, from skin-irritation to depression, there is scarcely a diagnosis that cannot result in the application of neuroleptics. In doing so, the side-effects of these psychiatric drugs consist in hard physical, mental, and psychic damages (f.e. shaking palsy, tardive dyskinesia (chronic St. Vitus' dance-form movement-disorder), disorders of the heart-rhythm, impotence, mammary gland neoplasias (tumors), falling out of the teeth, and desperation). In the "Chemical Gag", Peter Lehmann uncovers what psychiatrists are hiding to the treated persons, to their relatives and to the public. In the preface to the 2nd edition the former director of the Sigmund-Freud-Archives und psychoanalyst Jeffrey M. Masson (Berkeley/California) writes:
"I have learned more from this book about the secret inner workings of psychiatry than I was able to piece together in 10 years of analytic training. After a personal analysis and various other psychotherapies the best therapy I ever had was reading this book."
Jeffrey Masson got famous as editor and translator of the complete edition of the correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fliess. In his book "The Assault on Truth. Freud's Supression of the Seduction Theory" (1984) he disproved Freud's theory of seduction, which dismissed the sexual abuse of a lot of children as pure products of phantasy. In the preface to "The Chemical Gag" again he supports the victims of supression, now the victims of psychiatric treatment.