Essay Sample on Radical Psychiatry, Social Movements and 1968

Introduction

In the late 1960s, a lot of issues were revolving around definitions concerning madness and the role of psychiatry in controlling several health problems. From time to time, many people around the world would go against the policies of psychiatric systems in the society since they thought they were against the very values of being human. Many health sectors in the world opted to create patient led systems that were meant to build a therapeutic community. This means that psychiatric hospitals allowed patients to come and go at their own will in some cases. Later, as values in society changed, many mental hospitals faced rejection and hostility from several institutions in society (Doyle, 2016). In this time in history, many people viewed such health areas as prisons or concentration camps. In Italy, one of the social movements led by Franco Basaglia published a booked named "L'istituzione negate" (The institution denied). This book described the life of people in asylums and from this many other powerful social movements emerged to try and reform psychiatric theories and practices. Such movements used books, films, and documentaries to pass their messages across. Through photographers, many of the social movements were able to put across images of people in asylums and how they were treated by the psychiatric system. In this manner, all of the photographs taken were given to the public for their review and critique. The definitions about madness and those that control the way that psychiatric theories are perceived in the society were significantly changed. Over 5o years after the changes in 1968, events in this period have shaped the view of several psychological terms. In this manner, it can be described as a period filled with euphoric experiences of collectively giving thoughts of disappointments and depressions that accompany defeat.

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Psychology was a significant area of concern for many people that were undergoing shifts in subjectivity in the period between 1960 and 1978. Several upheavals of politics and culture in the form of social movements meant that people would routinely discuss antipsychiatry and direct resources into thoughts on their accounts of the way that the system related to psychology in asylums and psychiatric hospitals. (Kotowicz, 1997). This makes it hard to explain some of the issues that they were putting across. The presence of radical psychiatry in ideas and practices was pervasive yet imprecise. This unclear nature of the objectives of the movements meant that some of the activities they did were not by the way that the society saw their objectives. In this manner, some of the movements picked up some enemies in the wake of their activities against some concepts of psychiatry. Comparing social movements in North America and Western Europe some distinct radical psychiatric approaches are clear. Radical psychiatry had an extensive influence that exceeds the view of physical sites, and in turn, several new ways of psychiatric care were developed. At this time, the movements were flooded by old white men who were merely not famous in the eye of the society. The members' names were graced from time to time for their work for reform in the psychology sector. In this manner, many bestselling books themed with radical antipsychiatry topics became more popular in North America and Western Europe. Carefully reviewing the specificities in different lineages, approaches, and trajectories, the social movements were imprecise in their unique ways. The social movements failed to capture the contradictory and chaotic nature of the mic of ideas that were involved in the creation of the social movements.

R.D Laing, in this book "the divided self," intoned about the way a man who preferred to be dead than red is normal. He continued to explain that a man who says that Negros are an inferior race may be widely respected. This book can be considered as one of the most influential books in the 1960s. This is attributed to the fact that it set the pace to the crazy hinge of the decade. In the preface of the book, Laing explains how basic psychiatric vocabularies created a base for which new challenges to the definitions and norms of the world would be defined as reasonable. He related this concept to the murdering of children in Vietnam using napalm and shooting unarmed black men in the streets of the United States. He tried to use concepts to show that some of the harmful acts in society can be justified by radical psychiatry and hence prove them to be okay in some areas in the world. In July 1967, Laing together with Joseph Berke, Leon Redler and David Cooper held a dialectics of liberation congress. This event attracted over 5000 people. In the event, the organizers talked about definitions of madness and presented concepts that challenged the society's view of psychiatric institutions (Kotowicz, 1997). They used terms such as "madman in the nuthouse" to represent police oppression at the Congress. At the same time, madness was defined as "insane reasonableness." Additionally, the organizers made it clear that the black man is not the problem instead the white man is the cause of all problems in the society. Setting all these concepts into a psychological view, the event was able to set concepts which could describe the relationship between insanity and sanity.

By defining ideas that would define madness in the society, the subjective thoughts of the people would affect the way that insanity is perceived. This meant that the word sane could be used to justify underlying violence and irrationality that existed in the structures of the society. However, insane could be used to equally function to affirm some of the activities in the society. This means that the two words functioned differently bout could have the same effect in some cases. Liang described that the only way to get out of the endless feedback loop between people that were regarded as made and the dangerous, mad world that produced certain structures was to change the world and do away with both madness and all antonyms in the process. He later denied any affiliations in destructive policies. He, however, used a lot of ideas revolving around political militancy and decolonization. His work indicated the looseness with which concepts involving definitions of several psychological terms were accepted to be normal or obvious in the society. At the time, the lives of people that were diagnosed with psychological conditions were far from what was discussed in the Congress. Conditions such as schizophrenia were remotely unrelated to the concepts and ideas described by Liang. This was caused by the lack of proper definition of the way that internal experience and external labels were understood by the society. It was often unclear of the time where metaphors ended, and reality began. Laing described this problem as a problem of scale. He explained that the large size of social insanity necessitated the working outwards towards an understanding of medical diagnostics to help comprehend the relationship between social totality and meditating layers in patients.

The role of individual psychology in choices of politics and social activities justifies some of the ways that the society views some activities as morally indefensible. However, this did not explain the reasons as to why the pathologization and incarceration of politicized black men in asylums in the United States were not seen as a real phenomenon in the eye of the society. A film shot in Paris in March and April of 1968 called "Destroy Yourselves" describes the experience of two young women walking beside a high wall while running their hands on its surface (Kotowicz, 1997). One of the women remembers a conversation with an American man who described to her that the real place of freedom for anyone is behind the walls of the prison. This idea is supported by the other woman who says that those people in prison are the ones that fail to act by the laws that imprison a society. Behind the walls are two people that transgress the same thoughts. As the conversation continues, radical psychiatrists frequently went after the asylum and engaged in deinstitutionalization movements that were meant to cripple the society's view of asylums. This scene describes the way that the asylum was seen as a metonym in the society.

Jean Jacques, a journalist, remarks a discussion with Felix Guattari who worked with the psychiatric clinic. Felix was a major player in many political issue discussions and groups that were affiliated with radical antipsychiatry. Felix describes events in May of 1968 that was essentially an attack on institutions. Institutions such as prisons, asylums, universities, courts, factories and the family were well under attack by some social movements in the society. These movements described such institutions as concentration camps what were often linked to violent extremes for which all oppression in the society should be ended. Such ideas prevailed in western Germany and some parts of Western Europe (Mitchell, 2001). Under the Nazi rule, this thought was neither metaphorical nor hyperbolic. Nazi leaders continued to hold prominent positions in health institutions and within families. It was, therefore, difficult to describe specific ideas to such people since their thoughts revolved around the institutions in which they worked. The only way in which the issue could be curbed is by treating asylums as a microcosm. At the same time, steps to create alternative psychiatric institutions would mean that the society was leaning towards a non-hierarchical approach to work towards problems. At the time, the rate at which alternative steps to institutions in the society were created was relatively acceptable compared to the rate of strikes and demonstrations. Concrete radical psychiatric processes preceded 1968 and went on to become notions embedded into political and social struggles in the society. The work of Frank Basaglia is described as one that instigated a series of reforms in a bid to create a mecca for the generation in 1968. At the same time, Frank hoped to attack journalists that would describe how the asylums could be managed for the better of the mad. Kingsley Hall in east London drew a lot of countercultural celebrities and curious people who had interested in the study of communal living. At the same time, those who sought alternatives to the way that the psychiatric health sector worked came to the same place. Even after the abolition of structures and hierarchies in the society, there were still many problems in practices. Additionally, the society was faced with a problem of failing to dismantle routines, reorganizing spaces, redistributing activities and redefining roles. This meant that movements in the community did not automatically relate to the destruction of structures that led to inequality among the people.

In France, analysis of psychological notions remained central to the need for reforms. Theories that related to subjectivity were expressed in fragmented forms that were appropriate to the understanding of decentered subjects of psychosis. In this manner, the sought to identify the source of fraught tensions that were linked to a radical psychiatric process in the society. Sherry Turkle's psychoanalytic politics suggests that some of the political views on the gauchistes and communists members were linked to aspects relating to radical psychiatry in 1968. The ideas about radical antipsychiatry played a significant role in debates over community health services in mental issues (Mitchell, 2001). The discussions were characterized as a division in thoughts between political intellectuals and nurses that organized activities in psychiatric hospitals. Several theorists have p...