Andrew Roberts, the man at the middle, was one of the founding members of the Mental Patients' Union...
A crusade for dignity
Andrew Roberts recalls his involvement in the foundation of the Mental Patients Union
The idea of a Mental Patients Union was first developed by a small group of mental patients and supporters back in December 1972. A pamphlet was produced — which came to be known as the Fish Pamphlet (it had a picture of a fish struggling on a hook on the cover) — that was strongly Marxist in its analysis. Its argument was that psychiatry was a form of social control of the working classes in a capitalist state, and that the psychiatrist was the "high priest" of technological society, exorcising the "devils" of social distress through electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), lobotomy and medication. The thinking was that, in the same way that workers formed trade unions, mental patients also needed a union to fight for their rights against political oppression and social control.
Continue reading the story by Andrew Roberts on The Guardian below:
The Mental Patients' Union Demands
We Demand
Learn more about the history of the Mental Patients' Union below:
Inspired by the homonymous book by Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega, this timespace presents the authors' genealogy of the cerebral subject and the influence of the neurological discourse in human sciences, mental health and culture.