Black Power and the "Anti-Psychiatrists"

The blossoming of anti-psychiatry in the 1960s did not occur in isolation: its arrival was very much a part of the decade’s countercultural, anti-war, and liberatory spirit. As a result, anti-psychiatry and its leaders were frequently in conversation with other contemporaneous movements against oppression.

In July 1967, the Institute of Phenomenology held a two-week long conference at the Camden Roundhouse in London. Orchestrated by R.D. Laing and David Cooper, the Dialectics of Liberation focused on understanding the nature of human violence and liberatory possibilities. While notably lacking women in its impressive roster, the event brought together several radical thinkers that included the poet Allen Ginsburg, journalist Paul Goodman, and of course, its psychiatrist organizers. 

One of the most controversial speakers at the congress was leading American Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael. To rapt audiences, Carmichael delivered a number of historic speeches at the congress. He spoke inspiringly about Black Power while condemning Western imperialism and calling for solidarity across Black communities globally. Black British civil rights activism was already underway, yet Carmichael’s rousing orations still proved pivotal. In framing Blackness as revolutionary, empowering, and confrontational, Carmichael’s words were inspirational. Indeed, Carmichael’s appearance at the Congress has been remembered as a galvanizing moment for the nascent Black Power movement in Britain (Knight, 2020).