Is Democracy Therapeutic? a Deweyan Reading of the Institutions of Antipsychiatry

Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-021-09639-3 REGULAR ARTICLE Is Democracy Therapeutic? A Deweyan Reading of the Institutions of Antipsychiatry Luis S. Villacañas de Castro1 Accepted: 7 August 2021 © The Author(s) 2021 Abstract This article presents a Deweyan reading of the processes of critique, experimentation, and reform that took hold of a minority of psychiatric institutions in Western Europe during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, under the infuence of the so-called Italian and British antipsychiatry movements. Framed within a specifc understanding of the sixties, the article examines these complex theoretical and institutional operations against the background of John Dewey’s idea of democracy, which it interprets, above all else, as the constant provision of material, intellectual, and human resources for the people to directly transform their environment and themselves in increasingly complex and creative ways. After acknowledging the historical and conceptual discontinuities that exist between these two autonomous bodies of knowledge, the frst section presents a summary of Dewey’s philosophy. Next the article sheds light on Basaglia’s and Laing’s antipsychiatric projects by interpreting them as a sustained efort to distinguish between schizophrenia as a frst and a second disease, an epistemological search in the midst of which each of them ended up creating new institutions that necessarily embarked their inmates on a radical process of Deweyan growth. The key role of the sixties counterculture is emphasized at this point, and examples from Gorizia’s and Trieste’s asylums, as well as British community households, are read in terms of Basaglia’s and Laing’s negative and afrmative dialectics, respectively. Finally, in the last two sections, the article argues that antipsychiatry’s analysis of psychotic behavior signifcantly enlarges Dewey’s understanding of the circuit of growth and experience, and that Dewey’s ideas of growth and experience provided, in turn, a missing criterion for defning mental health and deriving coherent therapeutic and institutional concretions. Keywords John Dewey · Democracy · Antipsychiatry · Institutions · Dialectics * Luis S. Villacañas de Castro [email protected] 1 Department of Language and Literature Education, Facultat de Magisteri, Universitat de València, Ave. Tarongers 4, 46022 València, Spain Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science Introduction This article presents a Deweyan reading of the intense processes of critique, experimentation, and reform that took hold of a minority of psychiatric institutions in Western Europe during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, under the infuence of the so-called antipsychiatry movement (Burns, 2020; Double, 2002; Foot, 2015; Wall, 2019). It is framed within a larger interpretation of the sixties which looks at the events of the decade from the standpoint of John Dewey’s philosophy. Through a close analysis of socio-economic, political, and cultural phenomena of the period—radical ones included, like the upsurge of hippie com- munes in North America (Villacañas de Castro, forthcoming), or the institutions of antipsychiatry examined in this case—this historical interpretation takes the view that the aspirations and forms of life displayed by the sixties counterculture were not peripheral manifestations from radicalized, eccentric minorities. Rather, they were organic expressions emerging from vibrant societies, parts of whose youth were striving to meet society’s full democratic potential in ways that were strikingly similar to how Dewey conceived the widening of the democratic spiral. Dewey was a towering fgure in American philosophy, at least until the late nineteen thirties; if justifed, the idea that his account of democracy became incarnated in the counterculture of the sixties would involve two things. First, that these countercultural manifestations were legitimate expressions of how democracy expands and revitalizes itself in history. And second, that Dewey’s philosophy (hailed by Sidney Hook as the paragon of North American thought) was more radical that it was and is widely presumed to be. The present article develops this argument in relation to antipsychiatry and its institutions, of which it presents a Deweyan reading. Like Foot (2015), I use this term in a restricted way, to identify the radical and critical approaches to mental illness developed by Ronald D. Laing in England and Franco Basaglia in Italy. For context, I will briefy summarize the main ideas of these radical thinkers and the movements they spearheaded. A unifying trait of their contributions was their efort to analyze, criticize, and modify theoretical and practical concepts which seemed to owe their existence not to proper scientifc theory, but rather were manifestations of societal biases which inhered in medical and psychiatric institutions. From this perspective, psychiatry “was regarded as part of the problem” (Double, 2002: 235), to the extent that it formed part of what Laing and Basa- glia considered to be a highly problematic society. In accordance with the zeit- geist of the late sixties, in their Introduction to the Spanish edition of Basaglia’s L’istituzione negata (which I have used, in the absence of an English translation) García et al. (1970: 17) emphasized that “in a repressive, oppressive, and police system, psychiatry must also be repression, oppression, and police.” This article examines these operations of conceptual and institutional critique, reform, and experimentation against the background of Dewey’s philosophy, especially against his idea of democracy—possibly the one central concept in his work and guiding thread of his multidisciplinary oeuvre. In line with Westbrook’s (1992) intellectual biography of the Vermont philosopher, this article interprets 1 3 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science Dewey’s idea of democracy, above all else, as the constant provision of material, intellectual, and human resources for people to directly intervene in and transform their environment and themselves. By reading this notion side by side with the main tenets of antipsychiatry, I intend to force these two conceptual realities into a dialogue through which each can shine its light on the other’s strengths and frailties. This dialogue will unfold in the following way: After acknowledging the historical and conceptual discontinuities that exist between these fully autonomous bodies of theoretical and practical knowledge, the next section presents a summary of Dewey’s philosophy, with a special focus on his psychology and how he believed his democratic project could be realized in and through the institutions of society. Next, in section three, the article will shed light on Basa- glia’s and Laing’s projects by interpreting them as sustained eforts to distinguish between schizophrenia as a frst (biological) and a second (institutional) disease, an epistemological search in the midst of which each of them ended up creating new institutions that necessarily embarked their inmates on a radical process of Deweyan growth. At that point the article will bring to the fore the strong ties that both the Italian and British strands of antipsychiatry shared with the sixties and seventies counterculture, which I interpret as instrumental to their break- throughs. By reading these authors, works, concepts, and realities together, I wish to argue that antipsychiatry was, in fact, essentially Deweyan—and that likewise, had Dewey ofered his own systematic psychiatry, it would have been one aligned with the fundamental tenets of antipsychiatry. The article brings this reciprocal relationship to bear on the question of democratic institutions and their therapeutic quality, as understood in a broad sense. As is shown in the last two sections, antipsychiatry’s take on psychotic behavior signifcantly enlarged Dewey’s interpretation of the circuit of growth and experience, and thus increased the concepts and tools required for democracy to address mental illness. On the other hand, to the extent that Dewey’s ideas of growth and experience were founded on robust democratic principles which anchored in the ontological plane, I believe they can provide a missing criterion for defning mental health and deriving coherent therapeutic and institutional concretions. This is exactly what the title of this article wishes to convey by reformulating one of the main mottoes of the Italian Psiqui- atria Democratica—“freedom is therapeutic” (see Fioritti, 2018)—in terms of Deweyan democracy being therapeutic. Is democracy therapeutic? The arguments presented in this article conclude that both Dewey and the antipsychiatrists would have agreed and afrmed that it is. Dewey and Democratic Institutions The article frst needs to confront the wide historical and conceptual discontinuities that separate the two bodies of theoretical and practical knowledge being compared. While full of rich insights into the processes of human thought, Dewey’s psychology was subservient to his interests in democracy, ethics, and logic; he remained more attentive to mental health than to exploring the roots of mental illness, although illu- minating remarks regarded said roots can still be found in his work. At no point 1 3 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science was Dewey’s philosophy an infuence on any of the theoretical and experimental endeavors of antipsychiatry, neither on

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