About this item
The capacity to comply with abusive authority is humanity's fatal flaw. Fortunately, within the human family there are anti-authoritarians - people comfortable questioning the legitimacy of authority and challenging and resisting its illegitimate forms. However, as Resisting Illegitimate Authority reveals, authoritarians attempt to marginalize anti-authoritarians, who are scorned, shunned, financially punished, psychopathologized, criminalized, and even assassinated. Profiling a diverse group of U.S. anti-authoritarians - including Thomas Paine, Ralph Nader, Malcolm X, and Lenny Bruce - in order to glean useful lessons from their lives, Resisting Illegitmate Authority is the first self-help manual for anti-authoritarians. Discussing anti-authoritarian approaches to depression, relationships, and parenting, it provides political, spiritual, philosophical, and psychological tools to help those suffering violence and marginalization in a society whose most ardent cheerleaders for "freedom" are often its most obedient and docile citizens.
About the Author
Bruce E. Levine writes and speaks widely on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (2011) . Earlier books include Surviving America??s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (2007) and Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy (2003) .A practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and Z Magazine. His articles and interviews have been published in Adbusters, Truthout, The Ecologist, High Times, and numerous other magazines, and he has contributed chapters to Writing without Formula (2009) , Perspectives on Diseases and Disorders: Depression (2009) , and Alternatives beyond Psychiatry (2007) .Dr. Levine is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and he is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs. A longtime activist in the mental health treatment reform movement, he is a member of the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry as well as MindFreedom. Dr. Levine has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America. Bruce E. Levine was born in 1956, grew up in Rockaway in New York City, graduated from Queens College of the City University, and received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati. He currently lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Bon.
