David Cooper (psychiatrist)

David Graham Cooper ( born 1931 in Cape Town, † 1986 in Paris) was a South African psychiatrist who was known as a theorist and a leading figure of the anti - psychiatry movement - together with or parallel to Ronald D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault. Cooper was director of the Institute of Phenomenological Studies.

Life

David Cooper received his medical degree at the University of Cape Town in 1955 and moved to London. There he worked in various hospitals and conducted a research station for young schizophrenics, Villa 21, 1965, he was - involved in the construction of the Philadelphia Association - with Laing and others. Cooper described himself as a Marxist and existentialist separated logically in the 1970s turn of the Philadelphia Association, which he accused towards the political working Spirituality give the preference.

Cooper was convinced that madness and psychosis are social products and in need it for their solution a revolution. For this reason, he stayed a few years in Argentina, because he thought the revolutionary potential there was ripe. Disillusioned, he returned to England and eventually settled in France, where he spent his last years of life.

He coined the term in 1967 anti - psychiatry, which should describe the opposition to orthodox psychiatry of his time, see Classical German psychiatry. Cooper planned the same year, held at London's Roundhouse Congress Dialectics of Liberation, which was attended by, among others, RD Laing, Paul Goodman, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Marcuse and Stokely Carmichael of the Black Panthers. Jean -Paul Sartre said his participation at the last minute.

Important works

In English

  • ( RD Laing together ): Reason and Violence: a decade of Sartre 's philosophy. Tavistock, 1964.
  • Psychiatry and Anti- Psychiatry. Tavistock / Paladin, London 1967.
  • (Ed.): 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

  • Dialectics of liberation. 2nd edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek b. Hamburg 1970.
  • Psychiatry and anti - psychiatry. 1st to 6th edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1971, 1984.
  • The death of the family. 1st to 10th edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972-1981, 1989.
  • Reason and violence. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1973.
  • From the necessity of freedom. 1st and 2nd edition. Publisher Red Star, Frankfurt am Main 1976.
  • The language of madness. Red Book -Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • Who's dissident. Red Book -Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • The circled madness. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • From the necessity of freedom. 3rd edition. Stroemfeld, Basel 1980.
Anti-psychiatry Existentialism Marxism Roundhouse (venue) R. D. Laing Paul Goodman (writer) Integrated Authority File
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