Episode 08 Part I: When Treatment Becomes the Problem - How modern psychiatry lost the human being

psychophobia* podcast · Jun 9, 2026 · 56m · transcript

"These are not the side effects of the medication. These are the effects of the medication." — R.D. Laing

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The former head of the American Psychiatric Association once called Robert Whitaker "a menace to society." Bob says he'd put it on his gravestone. In this conversation, Michael traces the through-line from the unlikely apprenticeships that taught Bob to take seriously the people most of the world had discounted - driving a New York cab with no partition in the late 1970s, working the overnight desk at an SRO hotel, running a tutoring program inside Attica prison after the riots - to…