While far from all books that touch on the topic of psychiatry (see, by way of contrast , Burstow 2015, Szasz 1970, Whitaker 2010), most books which invite us to think about psychiatry pose âonsideâ questions like: How do we treat the mentally ill? When do we use electroshock? And when are psychiatric drugs the better choice? Those are hegemonic booksâbooks which accept the validity of psychiatry. This, by contrast, is a counterhegemonic book. It begins from what is more or less the opposite premises, has a very different purpose, and asks very different questions. What follows are some of those questionsâto wit:
What pressures might we bring to bear to loosen the grip of psychiatry? We habitually seem to be losing the battle; so as thinkers, activists, radical practitioners, parents, and concerned members of society, how do we turn the situation around? What new challenges are we facing in organizing against psychiatry? How best might we contribute to a paradigm shift in what is erroneously known as âthe mental health areaâ? How might we best articulate, describe, or explain a new and more promising paradigm? What models for prefigurative politics exist (you are engaging in the prefigurative when you incorporate into current practice aspects of the new society that you are trying to build)? What promising ventures are happening in different parts of the world? How might we bring together antipsychiatry with mad activism, with critical psychiatry, with critical disability, with radical neurodiversity? How do we counter the sexism, racism, and transphobia not only in psychiatry but in the movement(s) to counter psychiatry? How might we understand the disagreement between the players in the movement itself? What does this fight actually mean to people? Of all the pressing social struggles in which they might become involved, exactly why did they end up taking on this one? And what keeps them involved year after year? Such are among the key questions addressed in this book.
As should be abundantly clear by this point, the general context in which this book is written is the reality of institutional psychiatry. As articulated in Burstow (2015, 2016), despite the high esteem in which it is held, and despite how unusual this claim may at the moment sound to you, psychiatry is a pseudo-medical profession; it is granted enormous power by the state; and it operates as a regime of ruling, in the process, as the United Nations (UN) itself has clarified (see Chap. 12), routinely infringing on peopleâs human rightsâall in the name of âhelpâ and âprotectionâ. What adds insult to injury, despite the widespread societal belief in it, is the fact that it is a profession whose very foundational tenets have been repeatedly shown to be unscientific and lacking in validity, whose thinking is muddled, which is blatantly self-serving, and, moreover, whose âtreatmentsâ have been demonstrated again and again to do far more harm than good (see, in this regard , Burstow 2015, 2016; Breggin 1991, 2008; Healey 2012; Kirk and Kutchins 1992; Moncrieff 2008; Woolfolk 2001; Whitaker 2002, 2010; Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015; Szasz 1970; Foucault 1980). The very real injury done to vulnerable human beings is particularly alarming and is what unites the people featured in this book. Indeed, I suspect, every last one of us would nod in agreement with Robert Whitaker when he says, âThe point is: I donât give a shit about psychiatryâ, that it is the individuals whose lives that they ravage that motivate him (see Chap. 4).
If the general context of the book is the harm wreaked by psychiatry itself, the bookâs focus is the people who challenge the institution. This book, to be clear, is first and foremost a book about a social justice movement and the counter-initiatives, counter-discourses, and individual journeys accompanying it. âSocial movementâ here is broadly defined so as to include anyone who is consciously part of what they see as a collective challenge to psychiatry, whether these be activists, theorists, teachers, researchers, parents, or radical practitioners. While inevitably such issues as the horror that is psychiatry is frequently touched on in the book, the primary focus is not the problems that psychiatry presents but the attempt to counter them. As the title suggests, it is about, rather, the ârevolt against psychiatryâ.
Revolts, of course, are waged by real people. As such, what we witness in this book are not only strategies and counterstrategiesâthough these for sure are front and centerâbut also profoundly meaningful and highly personal journeys.
If the title of this book is key to what you find here, I would add, equally important is the subtitleââA Counterhegemonic Dialogueâ. My project was to seek out major and otherwise important counterhegemonic theorists and players in the movement(s) and enter into dialogue with them. With care being taken to preserve the actual wording used verbatim, a shortened or abridged version of each of the dialogues that made it through the selection process subsequently became its own separate chapter in the book.
To give you a further sense of the process involved and the manuscript which emerged, what follows is an excerpt from the initial letter that I as interviewer and editor sent to prospective participants:
While this was optional, interviewees were additionally given an opportunity to provide a written comment afterward either on the general topic or the dialogue itself and to include a list of their representative publications, which was subsequently included in the chapter. Correspondingly, at the end of the process each interviewee was given a copy of the edited-down interviewânow about a quarter of the original sizeâfor their approval with slight corrections made as needed.I am writing to invite you to participate in an interview for an intended new book, whose provisional title is âThe Revolt Against Psychiatry: In Dialogue with Bonnie Burstow â. To be clear from the outset, I myself am 100 per cent antipsychiatry . You are being invited because you are an important figure in this conversation, and it is anticipated that readers will benefit from your words as well as from the exchange between us. As author/editor, I will be conducting the interviews and constructing the book. In the case of each chapter, a balance will be struck between trying to help the interviewee articulate their position, digging into/co-exploring together, focusing on unique meanings and unique paths, inviting reflection, and where the need arises, actively challenging, with the emphasis varying from chapter to chapter. The attempt is to both understand you in your uniqueness and at the same time enter into an engaged dialogue , even at times rethinking together. (Burstow , private correspondence, 2015)
No hard or fast rules were used in deciding which part of the interview to use. General selection criteria, however, included:
- 1.The part sheds a particularly informative light on the interviewee themselves or on some aspect of either the revolt in general or the revolt in their part of the world.
- 2.Events of historical significance were being discussed and assessments made that might be useful in guiding future activism.
- 3.Light was cast on changes in the activist scene, what the new opportunities are, and what the special challenges are.
- 4.A formidable contribution to theory was being made.
- 5.Bottom lines were spelled out and activist principles were clarified.
- 6.Something original was being said or emerged.
- 7.Differences in perspectives were clarified.
- 8.In this section of the dialogue, something unexpected happened between interviewee and interviewer.
Significantly, two different, albeit related, understandings of dialogue underpin the invitation to participate and this book more generally. The first is existentialist Martin Buberâs (1970), where dialogue is construed as an attempt to encounter the âotherâ and to understand the other in their particularity and, in turn, to be so encountered by them. A visual way of capturing the Buberian concept of dialogue is to imagine two people facing each other. The second understanding of dialogue is Paolo Freireâs (1970), where dialogue is defined as an encounter between human beings mediated by the world in order to change the world. To encapsulate this second understanding, imagine two people not facing one another but jointly facing the world as...