Gary Greenberg on Depression, Addiction, and the Brain

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2010

⏱️ 73 minutes

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Summary

Gary Greenberg, psychologist and author of The Noble Lie and Manufacturing Depression, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the nature of addiction, depression and mental illness. Drawing on ideas in the two books, Greenberg argues that there are strong monetary incentives to define various problems as illnesses that psychiatrists "cure" with drugs. Greenberg argues that this distorts science and has strong impacts, good and bad, on how we view ourselves and the challenges of life. The conversation looks at the scientific basis for addiction and the role brain chemistry in depression. The conversation closes with a discussion of Greenberg's correspondence with the Unabomber.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is September 16, 2010, and my guest is Gary Greenberg, psychologist and author. Today
0:46.2	we'll be talking about the ideas in two of his books, The Noble Lie and Manufacturing Depression.
0:52.6	Gary, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:54.6	Well, thanks. Glad to be here.
0:56.2	The book The Noble Lie suggests that our use of medicine is not always as scientific as we'd
1:03.6	like it to be, but it's sometimes convenient even though it may not always be quite true.
1:09.2	What's your argument there? What do you give us the general argument?
1:11.8	Well, I think you just did a pretty good job of it. I think what happens is that science,
1:17.8	especially in the post-religion age, science has become our most reliable source of truth,
1:29.5	and truth underlies our determinations of value. So people try to make decisions about
1:35.7	how to live their lives or how to treat each other based on what they think the truth
1:43.5	is about the way the world works. If I decide to drive my car, if I decide not to drive
1:51.2	my car, but rather to ride my bicycle, because I don't want to contribute to the greenhouse
1:56.2	effect, then I do that because I have some kind of value, I play some kind of value on preserving
2:04.2	the environment. I come to think that that's something that's truly important. And I think
2:09.7	that once we aren't all united by the same religion or the same belief in God, then the
2:17.3	question of what makes life worth living and why, that's the question of what the good
	...

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