Ethan Watters

Ethan Watters is an author and journalist who has spent the last two decades writing about psychiatry and social psychology. Most recently, he is the author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. The book suggests that America is homogenizing not just the categorization and treatment of the mentally ill but the subjective experience of being mentally ill as well. He began his career writing about daycare abuse scares, satanic cult conspiracies, and other urban hysterias of the early 1990s. He was the first national magazine writer to expose therapists who lead their patients to uncover "recovered memories" of early childhood abuse. That work culminated in a co-authorship of Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hyseria, a groundbreaking indictment of the recovered memory movement. Watters is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men's Journal, Details, Wired, and This American Life. His writing on the new research surrounding epigenetics was featured in 2003's Best American Science and Nature Writing series. Watters is co-founder of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a workspace for journalists, novelists, poets and filmmakers. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.