Editing Anti-psychiatry (section)

=== 1960s ===
Coming to the fore in the 1960s, "anti-psychiatry" (a term first used by [[David Cooper (psychiatrist)|David Cooper]] in 1967) defined a movement that vocally challenged the fundamental claims and practices of mainstream psychiatry. While most of its elements had precedents in earlier decades and centuries, in the 1960s it took on a national and international character, with access to the mass media and incorporating a wide mixture of grassroots activist organizations and prestigious professional bodies.<ref name="MicalePorter" />

Cooper was a South African psychiatrist working in Britain. A trained Marxist revolutionary, he argued that the political context of psychiatry and its patients had to be highlighted and radically challenged, and warned that the fog of individualized therapeutic language could take away people's ability to see and challenge the bigger social picture. He spoke of having a goal of "non-psychiatry" as well as anti-psychiatry.<ref name="MicalePorter">{{cite book|first1=Mark S. |last1=Micale |first2=Roy |last2=Porter |year=1994 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h52sUVA3i20C |title=Discovering the History of Psychiatry |place=Oxford |publisher=University Press US |isbn=978-0-19-507739-1}}{{page needed|date=January 2014}}</ref>

::In the 1960s fresh voices mounted a new challenge to the pretensions of psychiatry as a science and the mental health system as a successful humanitarian enterprise. These voices included: Ernest Becker, Erving Goffman, R.D. Laing; Laing and Aaron Esterson, Thomas Scheff, and Thomas Szasz. Their writings, along with others such as articles in the journal ''[[The Radical Therapist]]'', were given the umbrella label "antipsychiatry" despite wide divergences in philosophy. This critical literature, in concert with an activist movement, emphasized the hegemony of medical model psychiatry, its spurious sources of authority, its mystification of human problems, and the more oppressive practices of the mental health system, such as involuntary hospitalisation, drugging, and electroshock.<ref>Ken Barney, [http://www.brown.uk.com/brownlibrary/BARNEY.htm Limitations of the Critique of the Medical Model] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170318075731/http://www.brown.uk.com/brownlibrary/BARNEY.htm |date=2017-03-18 }}, ''The Journal of Mind and Behaviour'', Winter and Spring 1994. Volume 15. Numbers 1 and 2, Pages 19-34.</ref>

The psychiatrists [[R D Laing]] (from Scotland), [[Theodore Lidz]] (from America), [[Silvano Arieti]] (from Italy) and others, argued that "schizophrenia" and [[psychosis]] were understandable, and resulted from injuries to the inner-self-inflicted by psychologically invasive "schizophrenogenic" parents or others.  It was sometimes seen as a transformative state involving an attempt to cope with a sick society. Laing, however, partially dissociated himself from his colleague Cooper's term "anti-psychiatry". Laing had already become a media icon through bestselling books (such as ''The Divided Self'' and ''[[The Politics of Experience]]'') discussing mental distress in an interpersonal [[Existentialism|existential]] context; Laing was somewhat less focused than his colleague Cooper on wider social structures and radical left wing politics, and went on to develop more romanticized or mystical views (as well as equivocating over the use of diagnosis, drugs and commitment). Although the movement originally described as anti-psychiatry became associated with the general [[counter-culture]] movement of the 1960s, Lidz and Arieti never became involved in the latter. [[Franco Basaglia]] promoted anti-psychiatry in Italy and secured reforms to mental health law there.

Laing, through the [[Philadelphia Association]] founded with Cooper in 1965, set up over 20 [[therapeutic communities]] including [[Kingsley Hall]], where staff and residents theoretically assumed equal status and any medication used was voluntary. Non-psychiatric [[Soteria (psychiatric treatment)|Soteria]] houses, starting in the United States, were also developed<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Calton |first1=T |last2=Ferriter |first2=M |last3=Huband |first3=N |last4=Spandler |first4=H |date=Jan 2008 |title=A systematic review of the Soteria paradigm for the treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia |journal=Schizophrenia Bulletin |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=181–92 |doi=10.1093/schbul/sbm047 |pmid=17573357 |pmc=2632384}}</ref> as were various ex-patient-led services.

Psychiatrist [[Thomas Szasz]] argued that "[[mental illness]]" is an inherently incoherent combination of a medical and a psychological concept. He opposed the use of psychiatry to forcibly detain, treat, or excuse what he saw as mere deviance from societal norms or moral conduct. As a [[Libertarianism|libertarian]], Szasz was concerned that such usage undermined personal rights and moral responsibility. Adherents of his views referred to "the myth of mental illness", after Szasz's controversial 1961 book of that name (based on a paper of the same name that Szasz had written in 1957 that, following repeated rejections from psychiatric journals, had been published in the American Psychologist in 1960<ref>{{cite journal |last=Szasz |first=T. |year=1960 |title=The Myth of Mental Illness |url=http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm |journal=American Psychologist |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages=113–118 |doi=10.1037/h0046535 |access-date=2011-08-31 |archive-date=2011-09-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110902063433/http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>). Although widely described as part of the main anti-psychiatry movement, Szasz actively rejected the term and its adherents; instead, in 1969, he collaborated with [[Scientology]] to form the [[Citizens Commission on Human Rights]].<ref name="Desai 2005 185–187"/> It was later noted that the view that insanity was not in most or even in any instances a "medical" entity, but a moral issue, was also held by [[Christian Scientists]] and certain [[Protestant]] [[fundamentalists]], as well as Szasz.<ref name="Dain1989" /> Szasz was not a Scientologist himself and was non-religious; he commented frequently on the parallels between religion and psychiatry.

[[Erving Goffman]], [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Félix Guattari]] and others criticized the power and role of psychiatry in society, including the use of "[[total institution]]s" and the use of models and terms that were seen as [[Social stigma|stigmatizing]].<ref>{{cite journal|title=Does psychiatry stigmatize? |journal=J R Soc Med |date=March 2001 |volume=94 |issue=3 |pages=148–149 |author=D Summerfield|pmid=11285802 |pmc=1297937 |doi=10.1177/014107680109400316 }}</ref> The French [[sociologist]] and philosopher Foucault, in his 1961 publication ''[[Madness and Civilization]]: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason'', analyzed how attitudes towards those deemed "insane" had changed as a result of changes in social values. He argued that psychiatry was primarily a tool of social control, based historically on a "great confinement" of the insane and physical punishment and chains, later exchanged in the moral treatment era for psychological oppression and internalized restraint. American sociologist Thomas Scheff applied [[labeling theory]] to psychiatry in 1966 in "Being Mentally Ill". Scheff argued that society views certain actions as deviant and, in order to come to terms with and understand these actions, often places the label of mental illness on those who exhibit them. Certain expectations are then placed on these individuals and, over time, they unconsciously change their behavior to fulfill them.{{citation needed|date=September 2013}}

Observation of the abuses of psychiatry in the [[Soviet Union]] in the so-called [[Psikhushka]] hospitals also led to questioning the validity of the practice of psychiatry in the West.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2003/1212reich.shtml |title=AAAS – AAAS News Release |publisher=American Association for the Advancement of Science |access-date=2006-03-15 |archive-date=2010-01-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100131215023/http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2003/1212reich.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref> In particular, the diagnosis of many [[political dissident]]s with schizophrenia led some to question the general diagnosis and punitive usage of the label [[schizophrenia]]. This raised questions as to whether the schizophrenia label and resulting involuntary psychiatric treatment could not have been similarly used in the West to subdue rebellious young people during family conflicts.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.antipsychiatry.org/kendra-c.htm |title=Why Outpatient Commitment Laws Change (Almost) Nothing |author=Douglas A. Smith |website=Antipsychiatry.org |date=December 19, 1999 |access-date=March 14, 2007 |archive-date=April 4, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070404124750/http://www.antipsychiatry.org/kendra-c.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>{{unreliable source?|date=January 2014}}