Voices from Within and Voices from Below. What Role for Anti-Psychiatry in Times of Lived Experience Movements?
di Giulia Bergamaschi
While anti-psychiatry historically advocated for patient participation in shaping psychiatric knowledge, contemporary movements and associations comprising psychiatrized individuals are increasingly critiquing anti-psychiatry. What are the reasons for this upheaval? To understand it, we will analyze how the anti-psychiatric approach, made famous in the world especially by the provocative positions of the U.S.-based Hungarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, has collided with the situated knowledge of psychiatrized people. After a general illustration of these movements, we will look at the critique of anti-psychiatry brought forth by Robert Chapman, prominent philosopher and activist of the Neurodiversity Movement, who analyzes the anti-psychiatric approach, criticizing what he sees as reactionary and outdated aspects, which end up maintaining the status quo rather than challenging it. Keeping the broader anti-psychiatric thought in the background, I will mainly use Franco Basaglia’s thought to shore up Chapman’s reflection and bring the two positions into dialogue. I will analyze the complicated relation that these movements have with the construct of psychiatric diagnosis, oscillating between the rejection of diagnostic essentialism on the one hand and the needs for somatic recognition and identification on the other, which risk moving essentialism to a different plane rather than eliminating it. This oscillation shows how Basaglia’s and the anti-psychiatric legacy can still be crucial in bringing the needs of today’s society into dialogue with the struggles of yesterday, this will allow us to understand what did not work about the anti-psychiatric movement and what we can hold onto today to achieve, over time, a more just psychiatric knowledge, capable of thinking against itself and never submitting to its own tools.
INTERNO POI - 1-2024_finale-76-100