Alert 79: Dr. Peter Breggin’s Inspired Interview about his Lifelong Reform Work (Part I)
This is the beginning segment of Dr. Peter R. Breggin’s interview with film makers Aaron and Melissa Dykes in the making of The Minds of Men, a documentary in which Dr. Breggin is featured. This new YouTube series, which includes the whole unedited interview, presents some of Peter Breggin’s most inspired and engaging discussions about his life’s work and shows what motivated him to become such an avid lifetime reformer. You will know him and understand his work much better after viewing this.
The documentary examines government-supported mind and behavioral control experimentation, including psychosurgery, electroshock treatment, and sensory deprivation. The documentarians generously gave permission for Dr. Breggin to publish his entire uncut interview, most of which is being seen for the first time. The documentary is an extraordinary success, quickly reaching nearly one million viewers, and rising.
Dr. Breggin shares his feelings, thoughts and actions surrounding one of the most important accomplishments of his career: his successful international campaign to stop the world-wide resurgence of brain-mutilating lobotomy and psychosurgery. In the several segments, he describes his response to learning the truth about the hidden, devastating impact on children and adults and his discovery of the racist and political ambitions of leading psychiatrists and neurosurgeons.
At various points through the entire interview, Dr. Breggin describes harrowing and sometimes triumphant confrontations with powerful professional and political leaders, including Senator Ted Kennedy and top officials at the American Psychiatric Association, who did their best to stop his reform work.
For detailed descriptions of Peter and Ginger Breggin’s successful campaigns to stop federally-funded psychosurgical, eugenic and racist programs of behavioral control, see Psychiatry as an Instrument of Social and Political Control.
See also the full documentary for which this interview was conducted: The Minds of Men.
