David Cooper (psychiatrist)

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David Graham Cooper (* 1931 in Cape Town ; † July 29, 1986 in Paris ) was a South African psychiatrist who became known as the theorist and leading head of the antipsychiatry movement - together with or in parallel with Ronald D. Laing , Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault . Cooper was the director of the Institute of Phenomenological Studies .

Life

David Cooper - son of a pharmacist - finished his medical studies at the South African University of Cape Town in 1955 . He then moved to London . There he worked in various hospitals and headed a research station for young schizophrenics , "Villa 21" at Shenley Hospital in Hertfordshire . From 1962 until his discharge and the stop of the experiment in 1966 he pushed through his ideas of an anti-authoritarian psychiatry - the patients could largely determine their own treatment. In 1965 he was involved - with Laing and others - in building the Philadelphia Association . Cooper described himself as an existentialist Marxist and consequently split up again in the 1970s from the Philadelphia Association , which he accused of giving preference to spirituality over political work.

Cooper believed that madness and psychosis were social products and that a revolution was needed to resolve them . In his review of the book The Language of Reason , the German scholar Uwe Schweikert writes: Cooper sees the cause of repression in the ideological function and preparation of the family as a social control and instrument for conditioning individuals. Cooper stayed in Argentina for a few years because of a supposed revolutionary potential . Disaffected, he returned to England and finally settled in France , where he spent the last years of his life.

In 1967 he coined the term antipsychiatry , which was intended to describe the opposition to the orthodox psychiatry of his time, cf. Classic German psychiatry . Cooper planned the Dialectics of Liberation Congress, held in the London Roundhouse that same year , attended by RD Laing , Paul Goodman , Allen Ginsberg , Herbert Marcuse and Stokely Carmichael of the Black Panthers , among others . Jean-Paul Sartre canceled his participation at the last minute.

Important works

In English

  • with RD Laing: Reason and Violence: a decade of Sartre's philosophy . Tavistock, 1964.
  • Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry . Tavistock / Paladin, London 1967.
  • as editor: The Dialectics of Liberation . Penguin, 1968.
  • The Death of the Family . Penguin, 1971.
  • Grammar of Living . Penguin, 1974.
  • The Language of Madness . Penguin, 1978.

In German language

  • Dialectic of Liberation . 2nd Edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1970.
  • Psychiatry and anti-psychiatry . 6th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • The death of the family . 10th edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1989.
  • Reason and violence . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973.
  • Of the need for freedom . 2nd Edition. Roter Stern publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • The language of madness . Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • Who is dissident . Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • The circled madness . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • Of the need for freedom . 3. Edition. Stroemfeld, Basel 1980.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Died: David Cooper. In: Der Spiegel. No. 32/1986.
  2. ^ Oisin Wall: The birth and death of Villa 21. In: History of Psychiatry. Volume 24, No. 3, 2013, pp. 326-340. (Abstract)
  3. ^ Frank Thadeusz: Commune of the mad. In: Der Spiegel. No. 33, 2014, p. 124.
  4. ↑ Uwe Schweikert: Beyond the words. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. No. 269, November 17, 1979, p. III.
personal data
SURNAME Cooper, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cooper, David Graham; Cooper, David G.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African psychiatrist and a head of the anti-psychiatry movement
DATE OF BIRTH 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Cape Town
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1986
Place of death Paris