ANTIPSYCHIATRY

an international movement founded in the 1960s under the leadership of a conglomeration of experts: British psychiatrist Ronnie 1). Laing (1927-1989), South African psychiatrist David Cooper (1931- ), Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, and U.S. psychoanalyst Thomas Szasz (1920-). Antipsychiatrists contest the scientific and practical validity of psychiatry in general. Specifically, this group are radically opposed to the hospital-centered medical specialty legally empowered to treat and institutionalize individuals with mental disorders and psychopathology. Taking this concept one step further, believers in this school of thought view psychopathology as extensions of normal behavior that are not really pathological, but simply behaviors that alarm others. This group view psychiatry as a form of social repression, a method of controlling deviance, and an inherent punishment.

ANTIPSYCHIATRY: “The person who believed in antipsychiatry did not believe the patient was mentally ill – rather, he or she believed that the behaviors the person exhibited were alarming to others. “
 

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