The survivor movement can be considered as the means through which those who have been defined as Mad have organised to resist psychiatric oppression. This is particularly the case when it has involved self-organised, grass-roots initiatives which can form as learning opportunities and inspiration for further movements against the cultural dominance of the current psychiatric system.
A Brief History
People have been critical of asylums since their inception, however collective and organised resistance in the form of survivor involvement only have evidence from the 20th century onwards. That is, original movements in the 19th century were drawn from social elites who looked to draw attention to the processes through which people were deemed clinically insane and their improper treatment once inside. This was prevalent between around 1845 and the 1860s but then burnt out for around a century.
The 1960s and 1970s saw near-simultaneous formation of self-organised campaigns among psychiatric patients and ex-patients. Some of these groups coalesced around radical professionals of the time (such as R.D. Laing and David Cooper) whilst some distanced themselves. The most significant group to form in Britain was the Mental Patients Union (MPU), which was started by social workers. MPU, representing patients and rejecting medical orthodoxy, was defined by an ethos of self organisation.
Other groups that came before included the short-lived Scottish Union of Mental Patients and the looser network of People Not Psychiatry. Building on other autonomous movements at the time, one organisation CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression), which formed in 1985, was known for adopting a punk ethos and the direct-action tactics of radical political groups. It is from the actions of all these groups that a growing advocacy movement developed and language was altered to begin to reflect ‘service users’ and ‘survivors’ instead of ‘patients’. Activism continues in the current guise of Mad Pride and Mad Studies.
Activist sources and the history of psychiatry
Researching the survivor movement can be a way of uncovering an alternative history of psychiatry, which places those at its heart at the core of analysis. This promotes agency of the psychiatric subject and undermines narratives which construct them as a by-product of a clinical gaze. The problem however arises in uncovering source material, due to the ephemeral and temporal nature of movements. This means stories often come from the privileged type of story teller in the form of middle or upper class biographies, instead of conceptualising the survivor movement as a whole and situating it in the lived histories of ordinary people.
Activism and the practice of history
It is important for activists to assert their own histories so they are not lost in the footprints of the dominant cultural narrative. They can show the impacts activist involvement can have and how rights now enjoyed are not an inevitable consequence of history but needed to be fought for. Furthermore, this contributes to a recalibration of the kinds of knowledges which are seen as credible in wider discussions around Madness. History is rarely the telling of facts but serves to culturally construct our understanding of the present by shaping our understanding of the past.