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seth...@aol.com

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Apr 24, 2014, 2:36:19 AM4/24/14
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Lauren Tenney PhD(Just got the PHD
I'm speaking at Left Forum with Seth Farber and others (May 30 - June 1) at John Jay College - Check it out! http://www.leftforum.org/content/antipsychiatrys-challenge-left-szasz-laing-and-mad-movement
Antipsychiatry's Challenge to the Left: Szasz, Laing and the Mad Movement | Left Forum
www.leftforum.org

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:

William Kaufman

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Apr 24, 2014, 3:33:29 AM4/24/14
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Seth—

This is great news. Please update us on the time and day when that info. becomes available.

 

Bill

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seth...@aol.com

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Apr 27, 2014, 2:15:21 AM4/27/14
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Thanks. I cd have done it last yr since my book came out June 2012 but I forgot.
Originally I got Bradley Lewis Prof at NYU, psychiatrist Foucauldianupid as anyone else  rto spek butr
he had to drop out. So some other guy who is critical of addiction modwl.
And fortunately Lauren Tenney is the kind of person who will recruit a lot of people to see it.
I'm going to substitute Marcuse for Aurobindo;-) and say pretty much the same thing.
BUT the left does not kjnow it. THey are just as stupid as anyone welse when it comes to medical model.
Bill do you know why it's FoucaulDian instead of Foucaultian.?
I always wondered.
SF
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