The Revolution in Psychiatry: The New Understanding of Man Paperback – November 1, 1974

This well written book is ambitious, broad, and encompassing. It is the effort by Ernest Becker, a well-known intellectual in the 1970s, to compose a theory of psychopathology. Becker incorporates dimensions of cognitive style and personality in his notion of illness, with ideas as much from philosophy as psychology. In particular, he cites the work of John Dewey, using Dewey's "active-passive" dichotomy to distinguish between people who have retreated into either (1) a passive depressive mindset where they think to much and develop their own symbol systems versus or (2) people whose whose activity level leads to a broad but superficial style of life. This book is hard to find, and unfamiliar to most psychologists. But despite the book's abstruse content, the ideas help as a shorthand for understanding human differences and psychopathology. His ideas mesh with commonly understood ideas about the emotional and social retreat in depression. The book may also be of historical interest in understanding Becker's ideas, popular in the 70s, which still are visible pop culture. Damon LaBarbera