Psychopolitics today: a response to Tad Tietze

Social Theory & Health, 2016

Social Theory & Health, 2009

This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick’s Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. Psychopolitics offered an indictment of ‘antipsychiatry’ the failure of which, Sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of ‘mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. ‘The radical who is only a radical nihilist’, Sedgwick observed, ‘is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. Sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of ‘mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed ‘to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. The paper contextualizes Psychopolitics within the ‘crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside Sedgwick’s continuing relevance. It considers the dilemma that the discourse of ‘mental illness’ – Sedgwick’s critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental health movements yet remains paradigmatic within psychiatry itself. Finally, the paper endorses a contemporary perspective that, while necessarily updating Psychopolitics, remains nonetheless ‘Sedgwickian’

Social Theory & Health

This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick’s Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. Psychopolitics offered an indictment of ‘antipsychiatry’ the failure of which, Sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of ‘mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. ‘The radical who is only a radical nihilist’, Sedgwick observed, ‘is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. Sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of ‘mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed ‘to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. The paper contextualizes Psychopolitics within the ‘crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside Sedgwick’s continuing relevance. It considers the dilemma that the discourse of ‘mental illness’ – Sedgwick’s critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental healt...

2016

This special issue was inspired by our long standing interest in Sedgwick's work and our own – individual and collective – struggle with the questions he posed for a left-inspired politics of mental health. Specifically, it arose out of a national conference we collectively organized in June 2015 at Liverpool Hope University - PsychoPolitics in the Twenty First Century: Peter Sedgwick and radical movements in mental health. We do not necessarily agree, even amongst ourselves, about what constitutes his enduring legacy for a mental health politics. However, we do share the belief that his work offers a crucial starting point for discussion and debate. In the rest of this editorial we summarise the contents of this issue, and then outline some key areas that we think require further attention

This editorial serves as an introduction to a special issue of Critical & Radical Social Work journal which explores the legacy of Marxist theorist and activist Peter Sedgwick for a radical politics of mental health in the twenty first century.

There has recently been a re-emergence of interest in non-reductive historical materialist modes for analysing social movements. A precursor of this is found in the work of mental health activist and Marxist theorist Peter Sedgwick. We contend that Sedgwick's work retains utility for theorising radical mental health movements in the twenty-first century, though we argue his framework needs extension in light of intervening debates regarding the interaction of material (distributive) and post-material (recognition) concerns. Having established this we will turn to an overview of recent neoliberal work, welfare and mental health policy reforms as a basis for consideration of strategic implications and challenges for resistance and coalition building amongst survivor and worker activists. We will propose a contemporary Sedgwickian strategy that identifies transitional organizing goals combining concrete material demands with imaginative, prefigurative means oriented towards ruptural change. In conclusion we argue that tools for promoting this strategy such as the Social Work Action Network's (SWAN) Mental Health Charter may assist in binding together diverse constituencies to strengthen alliances of resistance and deepen a politics of solidarity.

Critical and Radical Social Work, 2016

We now have a new kind of psycho-politics; a brutal and destructive alliance between neoliberalism and an expanding psychiatric empire. This article will explore how mental health service users/survivors and other mental health campaigners can connect with the critical analysis and action embodied in the work and values of Peter Sedgwick at a time of crisis and reaction. They have seen ideas like ‘user involvement’ and ‘recovery’ co-opted and undermined, and both their experiences and aspirations individualised and devalued. Emerging interest in mad studies, it is suggested, offers a way forward that challenges both the marketisation and medicalisation of people’s distress. This discussion will explore the continuities and discontinuities with Peter Sedgwick’s pioneering work and highlight, as he did, the importance of making explicit the political and ideological relations of survivors’ struggles within and against the psychiatric system.

Psychoanalytic Review, The, 2006

Social Science & Medicine, 1998

ÐIn this paper I present a socio±historical analysis of the rise of the British anti-psychiatry movement. I have three aims. Firstly, to establish what anti-psychiatry was. Secondly, to investigate and explain its emergence. Thirdly, to consider its relationship to other``new social movements''. This analysis is important because criticism and opposition, such as that of the anti-psychiatrists, has been an integral element of the psychiatric ®eld since its earliest developments but has seldom been studied by social scientists, particularly in relation to the postwar period. Power and dominant discourses have been the key focus of analysis, to the detriment of a proper consideration of resistance and counter-discourses. This omission is problematic and should be corrected as social movements introduce plurality, dynamism and the potential for change into the psychiatric ®eld, thus contributing quite centrally to its constitution. Anti-psychiatry is, of course, only one of many movements which require analysis in this connection but it was an important movement and we must begin somewhere. In addition, an analysis of anti-psychiatry serves as an important case study for the sociology of social movements, and particularly for the concern with``new social movements'' (NSMs). An analysis of it necessarily makes a contribution to our understanding of NSMs.