Gary Greenberg is a practicing psychotherapist and author of Manufacturing Depression and The Noble Lie. He has written about the intersection of science, politics, and ethics for many publications, including The New Yorker, Wired, Discover, and Rolling Stone. He is a contributor at Mother Jones, and a contributing editor at Harper's, as well as the recipient of the Erik Erikson Award for mental health reporting. Dr. Greenberg lives with his family in Connecticut.
“[I]ndustrious and perfervid... Mr. Greenberg [argues] that the
[DSM] and its authors, the American Psychiatric Association, wield
their power arbitrarily and often unwisely, encouraging the
diagnosis of too many bogus mental illnesses in patients (binge
eating disorder, for example) and too much medication to treat
them....Mr. Greenberg argues that psychiatry needs to become more
humble, not more certain and aggressive....Greenberg is a fresher,
funnier writer. He paces the psychiatric stage as if he were part
George Carlin, part Gregory House.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Greenberg’s documentation of the DSM-5 revision process is an
essential read for practicing and in-training psychotherapists and
psychiatrists and is an important contribution to the history of
psychiatry.”
—Library Journal
“The rewriting of the bible of psychiatry shakes the field to its
foundations in this savvy, searching exposé. Deploying
wised-up, droll reportage from the trenches of psychiatric
policy-making and caustic profiles of the discipline’s luminaries,
Greenberg subjects the practices of the mental health industry—his
own included—to a withering critique. The result is a compelling
insider’s challenge to psychiatry’s scientific pretensions—and a
plea to return it to its humanistic roots.”—Publisher’s Weekly,
starred review
“Greenberg is an entertaining guide through the treacheries and
valuable instances of the DSM, interviewing members on
both sides of the divide and keeping the proceedings conversational
even when discussing the manual’s pretensions toward epistemic
iteration. He also brings his own practice into [The Book of Woe],
with examples of the DSM falling woefully short in
capturing the complexity of personality. Bright, humorous and
seriously thoroughgoing, Greenberg takes all the DSMs for a
spin as revealing as the emperor’s new clothes.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] brilliant look at the making of DSM-5...entertaining, biting
and essential...Greenberg builds a splendid and horrifying
read....[he] shows us vividly that psychiatry’s biggest problem may
be a stubborn reluctance to admit its immaturity.”
—David Dobbs, Nature.com
“Gary Greenberg is a thoughtful comedian and a cranky philosopher
and a humble pest of a reporter, equal parts Woody Allen,
Kierkegaard, and Columbo. The Book of Woe is a profound, and
profoundly entertaining, riff on malady, power, and truth. This
book is for those of us (i.e., all of us) who've ever wondered what
it means, and what's at stake, when we try to distinguish the
suffering of the ill from the suffering of the human.”
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction
“This could be titled The Book of ... Whoa! An eye-popping look at
the unnerving, often tawdry politics of psychiatry.”
—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author of The
Fiddler in the Subway
“Bringing the full force of his wit, warmth, and
tenacity to this accessible inside account of the latest
revision of psychiatry’s diagnostic bible, Gary Greenberg
has written a book to rival the importance of its
subject. Keenly researched and vividly reported, The Book
of Woe is frank, impassioned, on fire for the truth—and best
of all, vigorously, beautifully alive to its story’s human
stakes.”
—Michelle Orange, author of This Is Running for Your Life
“Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and
the DSM-5 is his Inferno. He guides us through the not-so-divine
comedy that results when psychiatrists attempt to reduce our
hopelessly complex inner worlds to an arbitrary taxonomy that
provides a disorder for everybody. Greenberg leads us into depths
that Dante never dreamed of. The Book of Woe is a mad chronicle of
so-called madness.”
—Errol Morris, Academy Award–winning director, and author of A
Wilderness of Error
“In this gripping, devastating account of psychiatric hubris, Gary
Greenberg shows that the process of revising the DSM remains as
haphazard and chaotic as ever. His meticulous research into the
many failures of DSM-5 will spark concern, even alarm, but in doing
so will rule out complacency. The Book of Woe deserves a very
wide readership.”
—Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a
Sickness
“Gary Greenberg’s The Book of Woe is about the DSM in the way that
Moby-Dick is about a whale—big-time, but only in part. An engaging
history of a profession’s virtual bible, The Book of Woe is also a
probing consideration of those psychic depths we cannot know and
those social realities we pretend not to know, memorably rendered
by a seasoned journalist who parses the complexities with a
pickpocket’s eye and a mensch’s heart. If I wanted a
therapist, and especially if I wanted to clear my mind of cant, I’d
make an appointment with Dr. Greenberg as soon as he could fit me
in.”
—Garret Keizer, author of Privacy and The Unwanted Sound of
Everything We Want
“The Book of Woe is a brilliant, ballsy excursion into the
minefield of modern psychiatry. Greenberg has wit, energy, and a
wonderfully skeptical mind. If you want to understand how we think
of mental suffering today—and why, and to what effect—read this
book.”
—Daniel Smith, author of Monkey Mind
“[Greenberg’s] fascinating history of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM)...show[s] just how
muddled the boundaries of mental health truly are.”
—Chloë Schama, Smithsonian
“Greenberg argues persuasively that the current DSM encourages
psychiatrists to reach beyond their competence....I’m impressed by
Greenberg’s reporting, his subtlety of thought, his dedication to
honesty, and his literacy....a very good book.”
—Benjamin Nugent, Slate.com
“The process of assembling [DSM-5] has been anything but smooth, as
The Book of Woe relates....Greenberg argues—persuasively—that this
fifth edition of the DSM arises not out of any new scientific
understanding but from one of the periodic crises of
psychiatry....invaluable.”
—Laura Miller, Salon.com
“In The Book of Woe, Greenberg takes the lay reader through a
history of the DSM, which is really a history of psychiatry....[a]
fascinating and well-researched account.”
—Suzanne Koven, The Boston Globe
“[E]ngaging, radical and generally delectable...Greenberg is a
practicing psychotherapist who writes with the insight of a
professional and the panache of a literary journalist....[a]
brilliant take-down of the psychiatric profession...The Book of Woe
offers a lucid and useful history.”
—Julia M. Klein, The Chicago Tribune
“This is a landmark book about a landmark book....Greenberg paints
a picture so compelling and bleak that it could easily send the
vulnerable reader into therapy....takes the reader deep inside the
secretive world of the panels and personalities that have spent
years arguing about which disorders and symptoms they would keep
and which they would discard in the new DSM.”
—Robert Epstein, Scientific American
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