Being a graduate from 3 years of studying psych and with an active experience of mental illness, I can say that no amount of studying theory and doing therapy+ taking meds for years helped me realize the root of my problems and my worth as a human. more than Marxist analysis. I live to be a part of the revolution, and as long as psychotherapy reinforces the client to believe in themselves and to accept the realities of it is what it is, it will never achieve its job of liberating the person. There is a need for psychology to gain a Marxist perspective, more so from modern day leftists in the mental health field.
Richard Wolff’s partner, Harriet Fraad is a psychiatrist and has similar ideas and made a podcast with a therapist, Max Golding, called It’s Not Just in Your Head. Libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz wrote extensively on the limitations of his field.
Historically psychiatry has been used to control runaway slaves, suffering drapetomia. Complaining women had hysteria. You are gay? That was diagnosable.
Racial bias in psych treatment is well documented, with people of color more likely to be perceived as aggressive and a threat to others than white presenting people with similar behaviour.
Psychiatry is most often practiced on an individual and fails to take into account the societal problems around an individual. If you’re boss abuses you or the system as a whole alienates you there is little a psych can do.
I used to consider myself antipsychiatry, I have personally had negative experiences with involuntary psychiatric “treatment”
While going through an anarchist phase there was seemingly little contradiction between my antipsych and ideological beliefs - it’s just another unjust hierarchy. You can only be diagnosed if your function within this capitalist system is impaired.
As I embraced Marxist-Leninist ideas, contradictions became evident. Liberalism is an infantile disorder, the psychopathic accumulation of wealth by the richest endangers our survival as a species, the insecurities of those who hold on to the patriarchy and supremacist ideas should be remedied, one way or another.
I defended the right of self identifying neurodiverse people to reclaim labels such as autism while maintaining their criticism of psychiatry as it was inflicted upon themselves - within antipsychiatry communities such sentiment was not welcome. I was subjected to antisemitic attacks for refusing to endorse the labelling of psychiatry as a “holocaust”
I have much sympathy for the people who call themselves antipsychiatry, most of them have suffered immensely and they have legitimate criticisms of the field. But I can’t call them comrades, for most - their understanding of the systems of oppression is too narrow - their hatred of psychiatry is bordering on reactionary. Seeing well meaning people with legitimate criticism of psychiatry, who were rejected by such communities for daring to identify as autistic or ND was quite disappointing. Seeing entirely antimedical communities come into being from antipsychiatry ones, even worse.
I still have serious doubts about the long term efficacy of psychiatric treatment but I’m willing to accept that there maybe some situations where it is appropriate. I am an administrator on a discord server that describes itself as psych abolitionist and is mostly populated by anarchists that I helped start while I still considered myself antipsych that at least doesn’t allow for bigotry or hate speech, though I am not very comfortable with my role there and would prefer to just be a visitor - I don’t enforce my ideology there and try not to be heavy handed with the rules, I’ve asked to have my admin/mod powers removed but my anarchist friend, who created the server, lives in a different timezone, isn’t very active online and seems to have faith in my ability to be fair.