Intellectual Foundations
Before it had a name, critique and condemnation from previous eras gave precedence to the 20th century emergence of “anti-psychiatry.” The term originates from South African psychiatrist David Cooper, who coined it in his 1971 book Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry. As an intellectual current, however, “anti-psychiatry” is affiliated with several thinkers well known for their contributions to psychiatry and philosophy. In the 1960s and early 1970s, they produced a body of thought that in effect challenged the validity of psychiatry at the time. Attention grabbing and impactful, this intellectual current questioned the interpretation of mental conditions as medical disorders, and thus, challenged the validity of prevailing treatment approaches. Advocates in patient-led liberation movements and radical psychiatrists alike referred to these theories as foundational to their activities.
Work from the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing constituted a significant attack from within the field. Skeptical of the illness model of madness, Laing “regard[ed] madness as the product of a struggle between the repressive society and the individual who is seeking to escape its repression” (Nasser, 1995, p. 744).
Historian and theorist Michel Foucault made a notable contribution to anti-psychiatry thought with his 1961 book, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Analyzing the treatment of insane people from the Renaissance, Age of Reason, and the Modern era, he argued madness had been shaped by social structures and that psychiatry was a means of social control.
A professor at the State Univeristy of New York at Syracuse, Thomas Szasz also exerted a great deal of influence with the publication of his 1960 paper “The Myth of Mental Illness,” and later a book of the same title.