LEFT FORUM ANTI-PSYCHIATRY's CHALLENGE TO THE LEFT SEth FARBER PhD ET AL

[seth...@aol.com]

Antipsychiatry's Challenge to the Left: Szasz, Laing and the Mad Movement

Panelists, SEth Farber, PhD, Lauren Tennedy PhD and psychiatriuc survivor Kerwin Kaye, PhD, Lynne Elton sujrvivor

Submitted by seth17279 on Fri, 01/17/2014 - 6:14am

Schedule Info

Session	Room	Time

Session	Room	Time
Session 3	1.99	Sat 03:10pm - 04:50pm

Panel Proposal/Workshop Information

Panel/Workshop Year: 

2014

Abstract: 

The first volley in the battle against institutional Psychiatry was fired by Libertarian Thomas Szasz in his 1961 book, The Myth of Mental Illness. The left ignored him until he was joined in 1967 when counter-cultural leftist psychiatrist R D Laing wrote his best seller, The Politics of Experience. Both of these thinkers made a powerful critique of the reification of psychiatric categories. This contrasted with the liberal position--usually Freudian-- toward mental illness which did not question but tacitly accepted the normative basis of psychiatric diagnosis. For example a typical left-wing critique of capitalism espoused by Marxists as well as liberals was that it increased the incidence of “mental illness. In the early 1970s a popular movement influenced by Szasz sprang up all over the country--the mental patients' liberation movement–later called the psychiatric survivors’movement. The second wave of the movement was called the Mad Pride movement. Seth Farber in his new book on this movement argued that at first its emphasis was different than its predecessors– it affirmed madness and looked for new norms and values within madness itself. Why are these anti-psychiatric perspectives and movements important to the Left? Does the Mad Pride movement or perspective have a distinctive contribution to make to left-wing activism, to the effort to envision and create a new society?

Sponsoring Journal: 

The Journal of Mind and Behavior

More Panel/Workshop Information