On his book Break On Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture
Cover Interview of February 12, 2020
In a nutshell
A half century ago a “radical caucus” formed in the American
Psychiatric Association. The group, while somewhat small, felt that mental
medicine needed to change in the US. The caucus also worried about the country as
a whole. Racism. Sexism. Poverty. Dislocation. The Environment. Militarism.
Political divides. Corruption. Sound familiar?
These radicals weren’t alone, though. Nor were they the
first to use the term “radical.” Through research I discovered that radicalism
in mental medicine is far from new, whether it’s in the field of psychology or
psychiatry.
The major swings and struggles in modern mental health care
have often been accompanied by the term “radical.” The introduction of Freud’s
ideas into psychiatry, for instance, was described as a “radical act,” and one
that bestowed “radical gifts” to contemporary culture and social life. The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 was called
radical and revolutionary for the way it transformed the evaluation and
treatment of mental illness.
The book offers a fresh view of the difficult struggles
within psychiatry in the turbulent 1960-1970s. While radicalism in the
psy-disciplines during the late 1960s has been mostly overlooked, for whatever
reason, a lot has been done on Sigmund Freud and on the fight over the
biological basis of mental illness. And while there is a great deal of research
on the coercive and overreaching power of the psychiatric profession and the
pharmaceutical industry, there is limited work about radical unrest within
psychiatry. Break on Through adds to our understanding of health
activism in American culture. As it happens, some pretty interesting
developments occurred.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
A half century ago a “radical caucus” formed in the American Psychiatric Association. The group, while somewhat small, felt that mental medicine needed to change in the US. The caucus also worried about the country as a whole. Racism. Sexism. Poverty. Dislocation. The Environment. Militarism. Political divides. Corruption. Sound familiar?
These radicals weren’t alone, though. Nor were they the first to use the term “radical.” Through research I discovered that radicalism in mental medicine is far from new, whether it’s in the field of psychology or psychiatry.
The major swings and struggles in modern mental health care have often been accompanied by the term “radical.” The introduction of Freud’s ideas into psychiatry, for instance, was described as a “radical act,” and one that bestowed “radical gifts” to contemporary culture and social life. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 was called radical and revolutionary for the way it transformed the evaluation and treatment of mental illness.
The book offers a fresh view of the difficult struggles within psychiatry in the turbulent 1960-1970s. While radicalism in the psy-disciplines during the late 1960s has been mostly overlooked, for whatever reason, a lot has been done on Sigmund Freud and on the fight over the biological basis of mental illness. And while there is a great deal of research on the coercive and overreaching power of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry, there is limited work about radical unrest within psychiatry. Break on Through adds to our understanding of health activism in American culture. As it happens, some pretty interesting developments occurred.