Libertarian Psychiatry:
an introduction to
existential analysis
PETER FORD
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This article aims to draw attention to the work of a group of British psychiatrists of whom the best known are
R. D. Laing and
David Cooper. They have achieved some notoriety in this country because of the extent of their divergence, both in theory and practice, from current psychiatric orthodoxy—
and particularly as a consequence of their references to the prevalent “treatment” of the mentally ill as “violence”. As a teacher, I am not qualified to attempt more than an outline of their ideas as understood by me, after reading their books and articles and some related studies. But the implications of the work of the British existentialist group extend beyond the limits of psychiatry—
and the very generality of their assertions invites a response from the layman. Writing of the process which in their view results in the ultimate invalidation of persons through the labelling of them as “mad”, Laing asks: “… what function does this procedure serve for the civic order? These questions are only beginning to be asked, much less answered. … Socially, this work must now move to further understanding … of the meaning of all this within the larger context of the civic order of society—
that is, of the
political order, of the ways persons exercise control and power over one another.” (
New Left Review, No. 28.) Anarchism is about just this, and any theory, from whatever discipline, which leads to a questioning of the political order of society should have relevance for us—
and we should know something about it.
Dr. Laing has written that his main intellectual indebtedness is to “the existential tradition”—Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Binswanger, Tillich and Sartre—and of these there is no doubt that Sartre’s influence has been the greatest. The British analysts have clearly worked out their own theoretical basis and in many instances have developed Sartre’s ideas rather than merely adopted them as they stand. I am not certain, for example how completely Laing and Cooper share Sartre’s total rejection of the concept of “the unconscious”. However, their book Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre’s Philosophy 1950-1960 (Tavistock, 1964) opens with a complimentary prefatory note from the French philosopher—I believe this is an unusual honour for a book about his ideas—and this imprimatur suggests that whatever their divergencies, they cannot be basic.
In anarchy 44 J.-P. Sartre is referred to as “one of the foremost anarchist moralists” (Ian Vine: “The Morality of Anarchism”). This description compares intriguingly with another, made by the socialist Alasdair MacIntyre, reviewing Sartre’s book The Problem of Method in Peace News. He refers to Sartre as a newly found “spokesman of genius” for “ersatz bolsheviks” and “imitation anarchists”. Not knowing MacIntyre’s idea of the genuine article, this does not exactly rule the Frenchman out and I believe his work may well justify a place on an anarchist’s book list. Writing with particular reference to Sartre’s recent work, MacIntyre notes that Sartre can offer no bonds, other than reciprocally threatened violence and terror, of sufficient strength to maintain the cohesion of human groups in a world of “impossibly individualist individuals”. Perhaps a spokesman for Stirnerites? Nevertheless, the potentialities of Sartre’s philosophy as a basis for anarchism are incidental to my purpose here.
The first of four episodes of this essay are intended to create a setting against which existential analysis may be viewed.
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EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM
“Man cannot be sometimes slave and sometimes free; he is wholly and forever free, or he is not free at all.”
