Editing Anti-psychiatry (section)

=== 1940s and 1950s ===
The post-World War II decades saw an enormous growth in psychiatry; many Americans were persuaded that psychiatry and psychology, particularly [[psychoanalysis]], were a key to happiness. Meanwhile, most hospitalized mental patients received at best decent custodial care, and at worst, abuse and neglect.

The psychoanalyst [[Jacques Lacan]] has been identified as an influence on later anti-psychiatry theory in the UK, and as being the first, in the 1940s and 50s, to professionally challenge psychoanalysis to reexamine its concepts and to appreciate psychosis as understandable. Other influences on Lacan included poetry and the surrealist movement, including the poetic power of patients' experiences. Critics disputed this and questioned how his descriptions linked to his practical work. The names that came to be associated with the anti-psychiatry movement knew of Lacan and acknowledged his contribution even if they did not entirely agree.<ref name="Nasser1995">{{cite journal |first=Mervat |last=Nasser |url=http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/12/743 |title=The rise and fall of anti-psychiatry |journal=Psychiatric Bulletin |year=1995 |volume=19 |pages=743–746 |doi=10.1192/pb.19.12.743 |issue=12 |access-date=2011-08-31 |archive-date=2011-07-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717000132/http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/12/743 |url-status=live }}</ref> The psychoanalyst [[Erich Fromm]] is also said to have articulated, in the 1950s, the secular humanistic concern of the coming anti-psychiatry movement. In ''The Sane Society'' (1955), Fromm wrote "An unhealthy society is one which creates mutual hostility [and] distrust, which transforms man into an instrument of use and exploitation for others, which deprives him of a sense of self, except inasmuch as he submits to others or becomes an automaton"..."Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself".<ref>{{cite news |last=Levine |first=B. |date=10 September 2008 |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/thinking-critically-about_b_125019.html |title=Thinking Critically About Scientology, Psychiatry, and Their Feud |newspaper=Huffington Post |access-date=31 August 2011 |archive-date=14 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121114140250/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/thinking-critically-about_b_125019.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
[[File:St Thomas Thurstonland 014.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Graveyard attached to the Church of St. Thomas in West Yorkshire, England, where thousands of internees from [[Storthes Hall Hospital]] are buried in unmarked graves]]
In the 1950s new psychiatric drugs, notably the antipsychotic [[chlorpromazine]], slowly came into use. Although often accepted as an advance in some ways, there was opposition, partly due to serious adverse effects such as [[tardive dyskinesia]], and partly due their "chemical straitjacket" effect and their alleged use to control and intimidate patients.<ref name="Whitaker" /> Patients often opposed psychiatry and refused or stopped taking the drugs when not subject to psychiatric control.<ref name="Whitaker" /> There was also increasing opposition to the large-scale use of psychiatric hospitals and institutions, and attempts were made to develop [[Community mental health services|services in the community]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2017}}

[[File:Royal Earlswood Park - geograph.org.uk - 1214701.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Royal Earlswood Hospital|The Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots]] was the first hospital for people with learning disabilities, led by Lord Palmerston, Baron Rothschild and Lord Ashley in the 1850s.]]
According to the Encyclopedia of Theory and Practice in Psychotherapy and Counseling, "In the 1950s in the United States, a [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]] anti-mental health movement opposed psychiatry, seeing it as [[Liberalism in the United States|liberal]], [[Left-wing politics|left-wing]], subversive and [[Anti-Americanism|anti-American]] or pro-Communist. There were widespread fears that it threatened individual rights and undermined moral responsibility. An early skirmish was over the [[Alaska Mental Health Bill]], where the right wing protestors were joined by the emerging [[Scientology]] movement."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chapter 4 {{!}} Madness Outside In |url=https://morningside.uoregon.edu/chapter-4/ |access-date=2024-06-23 |website=morningside.uoregon.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Encyclopedia of Theory and Practice in Psychotherapy and Counseling |publisher=Lulu Press, Inc. |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-312-34920-9 |editor-last=Fadul |editor-first=Jose A. |location=Raleigh |page=34 |chapter=Anti-Psychiatry}}</ref>

The field of [[psychology]] sometimes came into opposition with psychiatry. [[Behaviorists]] argued that mental disorder was a matter of [[learning]] not medicine; for example, [[Hans Eysenck]] argued that psychiatry "really has no role to play". The developing field of [[clinical psychology]] in particular came into close contact with psychiatry, often in opposition to its methods, theories and territories.<ref name="MicalePorter" />