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Turning the Tables: Using the Academy in the Battle Against Psychiatry
da Mad in America: https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/10/turning-tables-using-academy-battle-psychiatry/
12 ottobre 2016
The impetus for this article is an exciting new scholarship endowed
in perpetuity which has just been launched at University of Toronto. It
is a “matching scholarship” in which I personally match up to $50,000
of contributions by other donors. Called “The Dr. Bonnie Burstow
Scholarship in Antipsychiatry,” the scholarship is to be awarded
annually to a thesis student at OISE/UT conducting antipsychiatry
research. An award of this nature is historically unprecedented, and as
such, is itself something to celebrate. It is also part of a larger
phenomenon of using academia in the battle against psychiatry. Shedding
light on that larger phenomenon as well as on the scholarship per se,
such are the purposes of this article.
Why have I dubbed this article “Turning the Tables”? Because what is
involved here is precisely taking a leaf from psychiatry’s book. In this
regard, not unlike other hegemonic disciplines, albeit far more
aggressively than most, as shown by Foucault (1963/1973) and Burstow
(2015), psychiatry has long used academia to legitimate its claims and
further what it regards as “knowledge”. Not only does academic
psychiatry train people to think/act in ways that serve it, its sheer
existence serves as a primary source of legitimation.
Albeit we do not have the potential to make the same kind of inroads,
let me suggest, it behooves those of us who oppose psychiatry to
likewise use academia. Herein we have the opportunity to challenge, to
educate, moreover to lend a hand to what Michel Foucault (1980) calls
“the insurrection of subjugated knowledge.” In the process, we can at
once further antipsychiatry knowledge and add to its perceived
legitimacy.
The rise and growing acceptance of Mad Studies is an example which elucidates this principle (see http://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/mad-studies/).
Mad views have gained unprecedented legitimacy of late not simply
because they provide important perspectives, note, but because courses
dubbed Mad History have become a standard part of curriculum in such
areas as Critical Disability Studies in several universities. Of course,
not being inherently abolitionist, Mad Studies is, as it were, an
“easier sell” than antipsychiatry.
Examples of what can realistically be done at this point—and to
varying degrees some of us have been doing this for decades—is to
rigorously integrate an antipsychiatry analysis into our classes,
involve students in our antipsychiatry research, and mount conferences
in which antipsychiatry is highlighted—e.g., the historical PsychOut
conference (see http://individual.utoronto.ca/psychout/).
Via such routes, very real reframing happens. Some students (both ones
new to antipsychiatry and old hands at it) go on to conduct their own
research into some aspect of psychiatry, thereby contributing to this
growing area of scholarship. At the same time, academia puts the stamp
of credibility on such “knowledge”, in essence, legitimates it in the
public eye.
Now there are “onside” faculty who intentionally water down their
critique of psychiatry, perhaps because they have been attacked by
colleagues, as to a fair extent all of us are, perhaps out of fear for
their jobs. Given the difficulty of standing one’s ground in the face of
this particular power nexus, that is totally understandable. Let me
invite such colleagues nonetheless not to automatically to pull back,
for the fight is a vital one; we are slowly but surely winning this
battle. Moreover, there are other ways for us to protect ourselves.
Which brings me to my own extensive history as the one of the sole
academics who publically identifies as an antipsychiatry professor.
Since the early 1980s, in every university in which I have taught, I
have invariably integrated an unapologetic and hard-hitting
antipsychiatry analysis into my work and in every case, the results were
positive. That is, despite some students having profound misgivings at
least initially, most students quickly found themselves intrigued. Soon
even those who began by dismissing my position or declaring it
“extreme” found themselves seriously entertaining vantagepoints that
would once have been unthinkable. Telling in this regard is a student
who felt she had to be in the wrong class because the perspective
utterly alarmed her. By the third class of the course, she vowed never
again to set foot in any of my classes. She proceeded to skip the next
class, pretty sure she would not come back. Not only did she soon return
and not only did she stick with this class, but she went on to take
every single course that I offered. By the same token, over the years a
high percentage of my students have ended up abandoning the concept of
“mental illness”—something initially unimaginable. Correspondingly many
have become antipsychiatry activists and researchers in their own right
and gone on to influence others. This is precisely the beauty of what
can be achieved in academia.
In this respect, though it may often seem as if no one wants the
knowledge which antipsychiatry scholars/activists offer—and on one level
this is true—on another, people, especially the young, are virtually
hungering for a radically different vantage point.
Which brings me to the question of direct opposition—a problem that
leads many privately highly critical colleagues to “soft peddle” their
message. Of course there is opposition, just as there has always been
opposition to anything which challenges accepted orthodoxies and runs
counter to vested interests. And indeed, I have commonly encountered
over-the-top opposition myself as well as more subtle obstruction. More
generally, inevitably in every single university in which I have taught,
because I am uncompromisingly antipsychiatry and known to be so, at
some point or other, there have been efforts to derail both me and my
agenda. What is significant here, however, is that none of it ever came
from students. Moreover, the opposition has been monumentally
unsuccessful. Indeed, if anything, it has but added to my credibility
and detracted from the credibility of those out to silence my analysis.
The point is that academic freedom is a principle that universities hold
dear. And strange though this may seem, it offers very real protection.
Am I in any way suggesting that faculty who introduce new
counterhegemonic knowledge are equally rewarded for their efforts as
those who replicate traditional (and inherently oppressive) “knowledge”?
Not remotely, and especially not in an area like antipsychiatry, which
is at odds with disciplinary fields which academia actively supports and
whose related industries (e.g., Big Pharma) channel substantial money
into university coffers. Am I denying that their work may be trivialized
or looked down upon? Of course not. As we all know, that commonly
happens, especially to faculty who are psychiatric survivors and known
to be so. Nor would I in any way want to minimize the very serious
plight of excellent scholars whose repeated attempts to land a permanent
university job have come to naught because of their personal history,
their identity (mad, racialized, etc.) or their antipsychiatry stance.
This problem is only too real, and this too we need to fight.
Nonetheless, it is a mistake to minimize the value of academic freedom
as a safeguard.
To clarify the distinction that I am making here, antipsychiatry
faculty may be overlooked in all sorts of ways, may be relegated to
dead-end positions, may never have their work spotlighted, may even be
actively disrespected (all of which, without question, is highly serious
and is in its own way a violation of academic freedom). This
notwithstanding, if someone obviously and overtly tried to
interfere with a faculty member educating from an antipsychiatry
perspective, for the most part, even if unenthusiastically, the
university will side with the faculty member under attack. Why?
Precisely because even in the eyes of the conventionally minded,
such interference violates the university’s commitment to academic
freedom. The point here is that the commitment to academic freedom has
genuine substance, this, despite the ongoing violations of the
commitment.
Factor in this commitment and have your wits about you, if your
employment is relatively secure, and even in a surprising number of
cases where it is not, as an antipsychiatry academic, when it comes to
teaching as you wish, you can generally easily win most fights.
Whereupon, in a very effective way, you begin to turn the tables. Some
examples from my own history:
In my first year teaching social work in a university in western
Canada (and yes, I was junior, and no, I did not remotely have tenure),
members of the psychiatry department were distressed upon learning of a
ten-minute talk which I gave in one of my classes on the circular nature
of psychiatry’s use of language. Their response was to write the head
of social work to request that psychiatric faculty be allowed to enter
my classroom and in essence teach their own perspective. The rationale
given was that this way my students would benefit from having more than
one perspective. Well aware that my freedom to teach as I wished
(translation: academic freedom) was at stake here, the head of social
work handed me the letter and asked me to respond. I wrote back stating,
“In the interest of my students having access to more than one
perspective, I am more than happy to allow your faculty time in my
classes –but only if in the interest of your students likewise gaining additional perspective, I similarly be invited into your classes.” (Burstow correspondence, November 15, 1987).
Given the ostensible “sensibleness” of my response, given what would
be seen as its “even-handedness”, realistically, only one of two things
could have happened at that point: 1) they take up the challenge, in
which case, as most of us are aware, a solid antipsychiatry critique can
beat psychiatric propaganda handily –and so I win (indeed, I win doubly
for my message has now gained access to an otherwise unreachable
audience) or 2) they decline the challenge, in which case I would have
exposed their claim to believe in multiple perspectives as a ruse,
moreover, begun to demonstrate that even in their own eyes, they cannot
hold their own against an antipsychiatry analysis—in which case once
again, I win. So what happened? The second. We never heard back from
them.
Another example: Shortly after I was offered and accepted a position
in social work at a university in eastern Ontario, a credentializing
body wrote the President of the university threatening that if this
offer of employment was not rescinded, the department’s social work
credentialization was in jeopardy. Once again, the attempt to block me
backfired, and it did so in part because the university would not
tolerate such blatant interference with academic freedom.
A third example: When Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, OISE’s
Adult Education and Community Development program, and I mounted the
historic PsychOut Conference at University of Toronto, flexing their
muscles, as it were, higher-ups in the psychiatric faculty wrote the
President of the university, protesting the existence of such a
conference and more significantly, its association with University of
Toronto. Similarly one faculty member in psychology wrote, stating that
the conference should be canceled in the interests of avoiding
confusion. Otherwise the psychology students who would inevitably
attend, she argued, would end up unnecessarily baffled, for they would
be bombarded with messages at odds with what they were being taught in
psychology classes.
The objections were forthwith forwarded to the OISE dean, who was
asked to respond. The dean passed them onto the Chair of my department.
The chair passed the onus to respond onto me. To hone in on just one of
these, to the applause of the psychology students who began excitedly
flocking to meetings of the organizing committee responsible for
planning the conference, my response to one outraged colleague went as
follows:
In the end, we all have to accept that it is part of academic
freedom that scholars bring different and often incompatible claims to
knowledge to the table. The hope is that students are enriched by
gaining exposure to the very different worldviews and agendas. It falls
to them as intelligent human beings and budding scholars to sort out
where they themselves stand, having listened to the different
positions—and I trust in their ability to do so.” (letter from Burstow, April 25, 2010).
We never heard back from the irate colleague again. And for all
intents and purposes, the Conference proceeded as planned—except now a
growing excitement had been sparked.
The point is, if handled in the manner which Gandhi followers have dubbed “moral jiu jitsu” (see http://civilresistance.info/sites/default/files/thepowerofnonviolence0206.pdf),
opposition to us can actually serve our own ends of exposing and in the
process winning hearts and minds. Again, a turning of the tables.
My encouragement to fellow academics, accordingly, is not to make
soft peddling your antipsychiatry message your default mode. While for
sure there are times when “lying low” makes sense, there are other and
generally better ways for us to protect ourselves. And never forget that
the liberal value of academic value is highly serviceable, irrespective
of the fact that we are not liberals but radicals.
More generally, mastering the skill of moral jiu jitsu is necessary.
Whereupon, the university becomes an important and viable site for our
antipsychiatry work—something accomplishable, note, in lectures, in
class discussions, in the framing of assignments, in the
activist/survivor speakers we are now able to bring in, in special
events, in the actual norms of our classes (e.g., one of my class norms
is “no mentalistic or psychiatric jargon”), even, as shown above, in
fighting the very opposition which initially looks like it will derail
us. The point is, paradoxically, both despite and because of the elitism of the venue, and both despite and because of
the manifest opposition, there are niches in the academy which are
potential antipsychiatry strongholds—we have but to have courage and do
the strategic work needed.
Which brings us to this article’s second objective.
A particularly fruitful way that faculty members can use academia to
both further antipsychiatry and to add to its perceived legitimacy is to
encourage, supervise, and support antipsychiatry theses. Conducting
such research affords students the opportunity to contribute in a major
way to antipsychiatry knowledge creation.
Now it goes without saying that such knowledge creation will continue
to happen irrespective of whether or not students conducting such
research receive awards. This notwithstanding, given the economic
straits of oh-so-many graduate students, the financial is hardly
irrelevant. Correspondingly, one added measure that antipsychiatry
faculty can take is to both nominate their antipsychiatry students for
awards and help sponsor antipsychiatry-specific awards. The latter, I
would add, is particularly important for the reality is that given the
hegemony of psychiatry and the privileged place which psychiatry holds
within academia, budding young antipsychiatry scholars have appreciably
less chance of winning awards than those involved in more traditional
areas of knowledge-building.
More generally, the very creation of one or more antipsychiatry
scholarships is a game-changer. Obviously a university cannot have a
scholarship in this area without at the same time “recognizing” the area. And insofar as universities “recognize” the area, so does the world at large.
By the same token, while it goes without saying that we understandably
all have different priorities, anything, however little, that any of us
can do to make such scholarships a reality, irrespective of whether or
not we are academics or even particularly value academia, is an effort
well spent, for it announces to the world that antipsychiatry has
legitimacy and it paves the way for ever greater forays into it. In the
process, I would add, it helps put a stop to the ongoing harassment of
antipsychiatry professors, thereby making it easier for antipsychiatry
faculty and would-be faculty to do the job that we in the movement so
desperately need them to.
Understanding all this, after a nine month stint of negotiating with
University of Toronto officials, who began transparently uneasy with the
subject matter, several years ago I arranged for the vast majority of
my estate upon my death to go into setting up huge scholarships in this
area. And it is with this understanding that likewise, with help from
allies –institutional and otherwise—I proceeded to set up the far
smaller Dr. Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychiatry, outlined at
the beginning of this article. My thought here was that besides that the
time is ripe, this smaller scholarship could, as it were, prepare the
ground for the far larger ones that will materialize later. And a very
good thing it was too that I took this measure, for the current
scholarship came close to not be approved, and without it, the
tentative agreement about the scholarships set up in my will would
surely have been in jeopardy.
The resistance to this scholarship that inevitably materialized, I
would add, is itself an indicator of its importance. Moreover, and what
is not unrelated, the transparency of the resistance led several
institutional players whose support, while real, had begun as relatively
modest—including from within the university—to strongly come onside.
Whether this was mainly because the need to uphold academic freedom
became increasingly obvious or because they noticed that—lo and
behold—they were smack in the middle of a David-and-Goliath story, or
because the very struggle itself led them to look at the substantive
issues more closely, herein once again we see a “turning of the tables”.
I would add here, I thank these fellow institutional warriors with
all my heart—for you did no less than fight your hearts out—and you did
so skillfully, with integrity, and with perseverance! What a force of
nature you are!
To end where we began—by honing in on the current scholarship,
already this scholarship initiative has a growing momentum. Besides that
several donors have already contributed to it or made pledges, the
scholarship has been endorsed by as formidable a figure as the member of
the Ontario Provincial Parliament Reverend Cheri DiNovo.
Moreover it has been endorsed by absolute giants in the field like
Dr. Peter Breggin, Don Weitz, and Dr. Lauren Tenney, all of whom are
very clear about its importance. In this regard, Peter writes:
I am Peter R. Breggin, MD and I am a psychiatrist. As a
professional long heralded as the conscience of psychiatry, it is my
pleasure to endorse the newly formed Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in
Antipsychiatry. Science is demonstrating that psychiatric diagnosis and
drugs, electroshock, and involuntary treatment are doing much more harm
than good. We desperately need critical scholarship aimed at stopping
this epidemic of demoralization, dehumanization, and brain damage. –Dr. Peter Breggin
By the same token, survivor and activist Don Weitz writes:
As a psychiatric survivor, antipsychiatry and social justice
activist for over 30 years, I strongly support the Bonnie Burstow
Scholarship in Antipsychiatry at the University of Toronto. Dr.
Burstow’s recent book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness (2015) is a
masterful work and brilliant breakthrough. I feel sure the Scholarship
will attract and empower many survivors, students, and scholars. It's
time antipsychiatry is officially and widely recognized as a legitimate
and growing international movement. This Scholarship will help make it
happen. —Don Weitz.
Correspondingly, the indefatigable Lauren Tenney writes:
As a psychiatric survivor and a mad environmental social
scientist/psychologist, I am honored to endorse the Bonnie Burstow
Scholarship in Antipsychiatry. How radical! How timely! We are so
fortunate to have in Bonnie Burstow, a visionary with a commitment to
exposing psychiatry, and assisting people making their way into the
field, to not have to fight for a right to hold an antipsychiatry
position. State-sponsored organized psychiatric industries target
children, women, people of color, seniors, and people from oppressed
groups. The opportunities such a scholarship program present are
enormous for the growth of research that will hold psychiatry
accountable. The important feminist, anti-racist work that can be
accomplished from an antipsychiatry framework is significant, not only
for those awarded this new scholarship, but for those working with and
near those in slated positions designed to allow people to honestly
speak out about the damages psychiatry creates. This brilliant move by
Burstow is a game-changer that will further solidify the growing
field of antipsychiatry in North America, and around the world. If you
are able to support this effort, please do so, today. –Lauren Tenney,
PhD, MPhil, MPA, Psychiatric Survivor
The overly generous depiction of me aside, I am grateful for the
words of these remarkable and steadfast allies. How reassuring that they
instantly recognized the significance of this moment! And how wonderful
that they have so enthusiastically become involved!
In ending, I would invite readers who are able and so inclined to
consider also becoming involved—in any way that feels right to you.
Simply helping spread the word about the scholarship would be terrific.
Perhaps email people about it or post a description on your website. If
you are able and wish to make a financial contribution (all donations,
whatever the size, are welcome), the method is: Everyone other than
Americans, write a cheque payable to University of Toronto and send it
to Sim Kapoor at: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor
St. West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1V6. By contrast, Americans,
make the cheque out to: The Associates of the University of Toronto,
Inc., and send it to: Dr. Gary Kaufman, Treasurer, The Associates of the
University of Toronto, Inc., 58 West 84th St., # 2F, New York, New York, USA, 10024. In all cases, insert on the memo line: For The Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychiatry.
And yes, with Canadians and Americans the charitable receipt that will
be duly issued can be used for tax purposes for they are recognized
respectively by Revenue Canada and US Internal Revenue.
For more information on the scholarship, see this page on the University of Toronto website, and this post on Mad in America. To contribute online (an alternative route), go to this donation page. Correspondingly, for answers to other questions that you may have, write to: burstowscholarshipcommittee@gmail.com.
Finally, one parting invitation: For those of you who are likewise
antipsychiatry, whether you do so in relationship to this scholarship or
otherwise, whether via academia or the far larger world beyond, whether
you operate in the streets, in the classroom, on the internet, or in
the boardroom, before you go to bed tonight –and the next night, and the
next—think of ways that you too can be involved in "turning the tables"
–for, make no mistake about it: Such—and no less—is the nature of the
challenge facing us.
ReferencesBurstow, B. (2015). Psychiatry and the business of madness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (1963/1973). The birth of the clinic. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon.
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