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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anti-psychiatry | 3/13 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:08:59.919288+00:00 | kb-cron |
Various 19th-century critiques of the newly emerging field of psychiatry overlap thematically with 20th-century anti-psychiatry, for example in their questioning of the medicalization of "madness". Those critiques occurred at a time when physicians had not yet achieved hegemony through psychiatry, however, so there was no single, unified force to oppose. Nevertheless, there was increasing concern at the ease with which people could be confined, with frequent reports of abuse and illegal confinement. For example, Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, had previously argued for more government oversight of "madhouses" and for due process prior to involuntary internment. He later argued that husbands used asylum hospitals to incarcerate their disobedient wives, and in a subsequent pamphlet that wives even did the same to their husbands. It was also proposed that the role of asylum keeper be separated from doctor, to discourage exploitation of patients. There was general concern that physicians were undermining personhood by medicalizing problems, by claiming they alone had the expertise to judge, and by arguing that mental disorder was physical and hereditary. The Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society arose in England in the mid-19th century to challenge the system and campaign for rights and reforms. In the United States, Elizabeth Packard published a series of books and pamphlets describing her experiences in the Illinois insane asylum, to which she had been committed at the request of her husband. Throughout, the class nature of mental hospitals and their role as agencies of control were well recognized. The new psychiatry was partially challenged by two powerful social institutions—the church and the legal system. These trends have been thematically linked to the later-20th-century anti-psychiatry movement. As psychiatry became more professionally established during the 19th century (the term itself was coined in 1808 in Germany by Johann Christian Reil, as "Psychiaterie") and developed allegedly more invasive treatments, opposition increased. In the Southern US, black slaves and abolitionists encountered drapetomania, a pseudo-scientific diagnosis that presented the desire of slaves to run away from their masters as a symptom of pathology. There was some organized challenge to psychiatry in the late 1870s from the new speciality of neurology, largely centered around control of state insane asylums in New York. Practitioners criticized mental hospitals for failure to conduct scientific research and adopt the modern therapeutic methods such as nonrestraint. Together with lay reformers and social workers, neurologists formed the National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity. However, when the lay members questioned the competence of asylum physicians to even provide proper care at all, the neurologists withdrew their support and the association floundered.
=== Early 1900s === It has been noted that "the most persistent critics of psychiatry have always been former mental hospital patients", but that very few were able to tell their stories publicly or to confront the psychiatric establishment openly, and those who did so were commonly considered so extreme in their charges that they could seldom gain credibility. In the early 20th century, ex-patient Clifford W. Beers campaigned to improve the plight of individuals receiving public psychiatric care, particularly those committed to state institutions, publicizing the issues in his book, A Mind that Found Itself (1908). While Beers initially condemned psychiatrists for tolerating mistreatment of patients, and envisioned more ex-patient involvement in the movement, he was influenced by Adolf Meyer and the psychiatric establishment, and toned down his hostility since he needed their support for reforms. In Germany during this time were similar efforts which used the term "Antipsychiatrie". Beers' reliance on rich donors and his need for approval from experts led him to hand over to psychiatrists the organization he helped found, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which eventually became the National Mental Health Association. In the UK, the National Society for Lunacy Law Reform was established in 1920 by angry ex-patients who sought justice for abuses committed in psychiatric custody, and were aggrieved that their complaints were patronizingly discounted by the authorities, who were seen to value the availability of medicalized internment as a 'whitewashed' extrajudicial custodial and punitive process. In 1922, ex-patient Rachel Grant-Smith added to calls for reform of the system of neglect and abuse she had suffered by publishing "The Experiences of an Asylum Patient". In the US, We Are Not Alone (WANA) was founded by a group of patients at Rockland State Hospital in New York, and continued to meet as an ex-patient group. French surrealist Antonin Artaud would also openly criticize that no patient should be labeled as "mentally ill" as an exterior identification, as he notes in his 1925 L'Ombilic des limbes, as well as arguing against narcotic's restriction laws in France. Much influenced by the Dada and surrealist enthusiasms of the day, he considered dreams, thoughts and visions no less real than the "outside" world. In this era before penicillin was discovered, eugenics was popular. People believed diseases of the mind could be passed on so compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill was enacted in many countries.