Antipsychiatric activism and feminism: the use of film and text to question biomedicine This article examines the relationships between antipsychiatric activism and feminism, paying particular attention to the civil liberties of mental health consumers/survivors/expatients (c/s/x ANTIPSYCHIATRY individuals) in relation to mental health practices. It argues that a continually rigorous exploration of the complex (and at times uneasy) relationships between antipsychiatric activism, feminism and Diane R Wiener mental health practice is necessary and useful for pursuing social justice by working toward the Assistant professor of social work diminishment of mental health inequalities. The article includes an overview of the ‘spectrum’ of Binghamton University antipsychiatric stances and a review of some of the literature covering the relationship between Correspondence to: antipsychiatry and feminism, and uses cinematic and literary examples to highlight the complexity of Diane R Wiener Assistant professor of addressing issues like medication ‘compliance’ and ‘non-compliance’ among mental health users and social work Binghamton University consumers in biomedical contexts. School of education and human development Division of social work PO Box 6000 Binghamton, NY 13902- 6000 USA e [email protected] he influence of the antipsychiatry stances, for a variety of purposes, and these labels are movement in the US and western Europe deployed by speakers and writers in ways that are – especially in the UK, whence several of sometimes coalitional and sometimes divisive. For the founders hailed and/or worked – is due example, on its website The Antipsychiatry Coalition Tin large part to the efforts of RD Laing employs the term ‘democratic’ to serve its potent Keywords: (1971), Thomas Szasz (1973; 1984; 1994; 2003), David politicised ends. The coalition describes itself online as antipsychiatry feminism Cooper (1970), and Peter Breggin (1992; 1994; 1995; a: biomedicine 1999). (One should, of course, add the proviso that psychiatric survivors disability rights many of those associated with antipsychiatry did not or ‘… non-profit volunteer group consisting of people do not embrace the term antipsychiatry itself.) In the who feel we have been harmed by psychiatry – and late 1960s and early to mid-1970s, these individuals of our supporters. We created this website to warn argued from a variety of political and theoretical you of the harm routinely inflicted on those who positions that psychiatry is a form of social control. receive psychiatric ‘treatment’ and to promote the Importantly, these thinkers promoted their critiques as democratic ideal of liberty for all law-abiding people practising psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Szasz that has been abandoned in the USA, Canada, and famously maintained that mental illness is a societal other supposedly democratic nations.’ ‘myth’ (Szasz, 1960), and indeed both he and Breggin (www.antipsychiatry.org accessed 1 July 2005) continue to speak publicly and write works on antipsychiatry (see www.szasz.com and In my view, any invocation of an antipsychiatric trend www.breggin.com). For these activists, psychiatric in the mid to late 20th century and since, and references medication and mental health treatment are to the perceived diminution, cessation, or shifts of such manipulative tools used skillfully by what Szasz (2003) a trend, cannot and should not be expected to describe calls the ‘pharmacracy’ of the nation state to dictate ‘antipsychiatry’ as a singular stance, because ideas and human behavior and to manage deviance. practices that may be understood to index an Various monikers – among them ‘liberal,’ antipsychiatric perspective are historically, culturally, ‘progressive,’ ‘feminist,’ ‘leftist,’ ‘Libertarian,’ and and personally situated, and include an enormous range ‘Marxist’ – are frequently tacked on to antipsychiatric of points of view. Put differently, what is constituted as journal of public mental health 42 vol 4 • issue 3 © Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd Antipsychiatry activism and feminism: the use of film and text to question biomedicine an antipsychiatric stance today might not have been by exploring the conceptual and political underpinnings considered an antipsychiatric stance in the past (and of various antipsychiatric positions, it is possible to vice versa, since definitions can obviously change arrive at a rich understanding of the far-reaching effects meaning over time): defining what constitutes an that biomedical approaches to mental illness can have antipsychiatric stance is always a matter of debate. A on both individuals and on society. It is my contention partial summary of what I see as a ‘spectrum’ of that textual and visual works provide us with contemporary antipsychiatric stances follows: particularly creative opportunities to explore both the practices and ideologies promulgated by biomedicine l a keen suspicion of psychiatry and medicine’s and the wide array of antipsychiatric responses to them. efficacy to properly treat symptoms and/or cure But before turning to cinematic and literary examples, experiences deemed to be or labeled as mental it is important to consider the intricate relationships illnesses that have existed and continue to exist between l a disbelief in or a refuting of a biological basis or antipsychiatry and feminism. cause for mental illnesses l an assertive quest for proof of the allegedly Antipsychiatry and feminism biological basis for mental illnesses Ussher (1991) and Showalter (1987) have discussed l a view – notably held by some medical and extensively the complicated relationship between psychological anthropologists – that sees mental antipsychiatry and feminism. Hubert (2002) and illnesses as social ills that are ‘culture bound Caminero-Santangelo (1998) have, in turn, differently syndromes’ with attendant culturally and temporally elaborated Ussher’s and Showalter’s analyses in their specific meanings, ranging from acceptance to own works on ‘women’s madness narratives.’ Hubert stigmatization notes: l a statement that mental illnesses are more than merely culturally specific, or socially constructed, or ‘Showalter has criticised antipsychiatry on the basis not trans-historical, but are also partly or even of sexual bias. For all the “feminist” promise of entirely the fault of a toxic or ill society that Laing’s theories, she writes, “antipsychiatry had no produces these conditions among some of its coherent analysis to offer to women”. Moreover, members Showalter describes unethical forms of treatment. l an argument that psychiatric medications are niche- According to Showalter, David Cooper “advocates marketed and over-prescribed, in part to support an sex with patients”… [a] practice of sexual exploitative pharmaceutical and mental health exploitation.’ (Hubert, 2002) industry l a strong opinion that individuals should not be Similarly, Ussher (1991) powerfully remarks: forcibly committed, medicated, or otherwise treated against their will or without their expressed ‘The antipsychiatrists and dissenters were not the understanding and consent knights in shining armour they have sometimes l a contestation questioning the existence of mental been depicted as, ready to transform the institution illnesses into a haven, by breaking down the nosological l a belief that mental illnesses are the inventions of a battlements and spiriting the misdiagnosed to capitalist society for the purposes of state-sanctioned freedom. There are many weaknesses and social control and discriminatory enactments of limitations within their analysis… one major acceptable violence against those deemed mentally omission in their work is the analysis of the specific ill or otherwise deviant within that society. problems and oppression experienced by women. Gender, patriarchy and misogyny were not high on This diverse set of antipsychiatric platforms has the the agenda of the so-called radicals – if on their potential to teach us a great deal about public mental agenda at all. To read their work one would health and mental health practice today. Because some imagine that the mad person was gender-neutral, antipsychiatric activists directly challenge the common when we know that women make up a large presupposition that ‘mental illness’ is genetic or percentage of those who are positioned within the otherwise biological, taking seriously the critical value discourse of madness. For, since the Victorian era, of these politicised stances – especially when espoused madness has been synonymous with femininity, and by psychiatric survivors speaking on their own behalf women predominate in both the “official statistics” and on behalf of other consumers/survivors/expatients and popular discourse… It was the feminist critics (c/s/x) individuals – can help advance a deep inquiry who redressed the balance.’ into the implications that current practices of and ideologies around biomedicine have for public mental Although several feminist scholars have strongly health and for mental health practices. In other words, denounced antipsychiatry, it is important to recognise journal of public mental health vol 4 • issue 3 43 © Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd Antipsychiatry activism and feminism: the use of film and text to question biomedicine that, in many ways, antipsychiatry and feminism have the internet, in memoirs, and in autobiographical shared common goals. For example, Caminero- documentary film narratives), versus how those Santangelo addresses the point