David G. Cooper, the first anti-psychiatrist

David G. Cooper is considered, along with R.D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Michel Foucault, one of the founders of the movement known as "anti-psychiatry." This movement emerged in the 1960s, and its main focus was, and is, to denounce the gaps, theoretical problems and abuses in the practice of psychiatry.

David G. Cooper himself studied psychiatry. He worked in various mental hospitals in London and was in direct contact with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Based on his experience and thanks to the influence of other thinkers, He wrote several works that are considered central to the movement. antipsychiatric.

"In reality, what is primarily taught to the child is not how to survive in society, but how to submit to it.".

-David Cooper-

It was precisely David G. Cooper who first used the term “antipsychiatry” or “counterpsychiatry” to refer to that group of intellectuals who found serious theoretical and practical deficiencies in psychiatry. Cooper is credited with several postulates that question psychiatry and that have not been invalidated to date.

The Story of David G. Cooper

David G. Cooper was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1932. He held British nationality. According to his own words, his family was "ordinary," so he had no major problems during his childhood and adolescence. Cooper studied The music , but later discovered that his true calling was medicineSo he studied that degree and graduated in 1955.

At that time, South Africa was in full swing apartheidCooper, who was against segregation, He practiced medicine, treating black people in medical centers events for thisHe then moved to London, where he worked as a psychiatrist in several hospitals.

David G. Cooper married a French woman, with whom he had three children. Later He had as a sporadic romantic partner Juliet Mitchell, a leader of the movement feminist Anglo-Saxon. She was also a specialist in Lacanian psychoanalysis.This relationship had a great influence on Cooper.

The experience at Villa 21

David G. Cooper worked in a hospital London mental hospital where a famous program was created, in Hall 21, which was called "Villa 21." There he treated a large number of schizophrenic patients, and it was this practice that led him to completely abandon psychiatry.

Cooper began to question the ideas of Eugen Bleuter, the main inspiration behind the psychiatric treatments in vogue at the time. He promoted the idea that Schizophrenia or "madness" as it is generically known, is not a mental illness, but an experience, or a passageIn other words, a kind of "journey" outside of reality, from which one can always return.

David G. Cooper indicated that there were three types of “madness”. These are:

• Dementia. This is what he called the “schizophrenia” that originates in the disastrous social conditions in which some people have to live.
• inner journeyThis is what he called the process of breaking away from previous alienated experiences and restructuring a personal life project.
• Social dementia. It corresponds to a disorganized response to "sick" environments, such as family, work, etc. Madness would be the only possible solution.

Antipsychiatry

David G. Cooper conducted daring “experiments” at Villa 21. In fact, he stopped medicating many patients. He also allowed the inmates to accumulate waste and interact with it. He said they “went to hell” and came back. It was a “passage to the act.” Cooper believed that if they returned to those archaic areas of their being, they would improve. It generated great controversy, but at the same time it proved that schizophrenia could be cured, something that until then was considered impossible.

From then on, David G. Cooper became a world leader in anti-psychiatry. He began a difficult and arduous task defending his theses around the world. He was accompanied by RD Laing and Herbert Marcuse.  Later he settled in Paris, where he worked shoulder to shoulder with figures such as Michel Foucault and Guillem Deleuze. and Robert Castel in support of human rights, in different areas of the medical and social fields.

Little by little, he became a sort of icon for the underprivileged. His figure transformed, sporting a gigantic beard and wearing exotic outfits. He shocked and fascinated at the same time. He never ceased in his efforts to break the molds of traditional thought.He died at the age of 55, leaving a lasting mark.