ABSTRACT
In July 1967, four psychiatrists, one of whom, at least, described himself as an antipsychiatrist (Cooper 1967), organised a two week long international congress at London’s Roundhouse (the venue was taken over for the fortnight, with many of the younger participants electing to squat there for the duration). The congress was entitled The Dialectics of Liberation and its headline speakers included some of the key radical political thinkers and activists of the 1960s. Two of the conference organisers themselves fell into this category but other headline speakers included Herbert Marcuse, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Goldmann, Paul Sweezy, Gregory Bateson and the leading voice of the US black power movement, Stokely Carmichael. Psychiatry and the political issues it raises were amongst the topics discussed at the congress but, as the line up suggests, there was also a much wider focus, incorporating a variety of what were perceived to be deep rooted structural problems of society and radical proposals for their resolution. Psychiatry had found itself on the agenda of the contentious politics of the 1960s. Indeed, in this particular case, psychiatry and psychiatrists or rather ‘anti-psychiatrists’ were at the centre of the contention; organising and agitating.
