From Anti-psychiatry to Critical Psychiatry

Abstract

As described by Duncan Double in the previous chapter, the term ‘anti-psychiatry’ was coined in the 1960’s probably by David Cooper in his books Psychiatry and anti-psychiatry (1967) and The dialectics of liberation (1968). Laing, Szasz and others were associated with it but many were uncomfortable with this label, notably Laing who rejected it (Mullan, 1995: 356). However it was a provocative title and for some years stuck to a motley group of critics of psychiatry. To David Cooper and some others it meant a psychiatrist who thought psychiatry had become a tool of capitalist imperialism; they were dedicated to creating a revolutionary role for psychiatric patients so that they would throw off their oppressors and be in the vanguard of a revolution. At the other extreme is Szasz, a libertarian whose primary value is personal responsibility. He argues that most contemporary psychiatry and psychoanalysis is based on an ideology of medical-therapeutic paternalism. He advocates that psychotherapy be recognised as a secular ‘cure of souls’ and that it be freed from state control and be recognised as a confidential, secular, and trustworthy setting for people, if they so wish, to look into their hearts and souls and, perhaps, make themselves better persons.

There is a crack in everything.That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen Anthem