Psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, and anti-anti-psychiatry: Rhetoric and reality

Abstract

The term “anti-psychiatry” was coined in 1912 by Dr. Bernhard Beyer, and popularized by David Cooper and his critics in 1967 in the midst of a widespread cultural revolt against involuntary hospitalization and in-patient psychiatry. However, with the demise of the old-fashioned mental hospital, and the rise of Big Pharma (with all its attendant evils), the term “anti-psychiatry” has survived as a term of abuse or a badge of honor, depending on the user and what rhetorical work the term is expected to perform. Those who still use the term generally have a polemical axe to grind, and seldom understand either the term's origins or its contemporary implications. It is time to retire this term, or to restrict its use (as much as possible) to R. D. Laing's followers in the Philadelphia Associates and kindred groups that sprang up in the late 1960s and 1970s.