David Graham Cooper (1931 in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

– 29 July 1986 in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

) was a South African-born

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

and theorist who was prominent in the

anti-psychiatry Anti-psychiatry is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections include the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis, the questionabl ...

movement. Cooper graduated from the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

in 1955.

R.D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of ...

claimed that Cooper underwent Soviet training to prepare him as an Anti Apartheid communist revolutionary, but after completing his course he never returned to South Africa out of fear that B.O.S.S. would eliminate him. He moved to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, where he worked at several hospitals. From 1961 to 1965 he ran an experimental unit for young people with

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...

called ''Villa 21'', which he saw as a revolutionary 'anti-hospital' and a prototype for the later

Kingsley Hall Kingsley Hall is a community centre, in Powis Road, Bromley-by-Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, East End of London. It dates back to the work of Doris and Muriel Lester, who had a nursery school in nearby Bruce Road. Their brother, ...

Community. In 1965, he was involved with Laing and others in establishing the

Philadelphia Association The Philadelphia Association is a UK charity concerned with the understanding and relief of mental suffering. It was founded in 1965 by the radical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst R. D. Laing along with fellow psychiatrists David Cooper, Joseph B ...

. An "

existential Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

" he left the Philadelphia Association in the 1970s in a disagreement over its lack of political orientation. Cooper coined the term "

" in 1967, and wrote the book ''Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry'' in 1971.

Leading concepts

Cooper believed that madness and

psychosis Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...

are the manifestation of a disparity between one's own 'true' identity and our

social identity Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or group.Compare ''Collins Dictionary of Sociology'', quoted in In sociology, emphasis is placed on collective identity, in which ...

(the identity others give us and we internalise). Cooper's ultimate solution was through

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

. To this end, Cooper travelled to Argentina as he felt the country was rife with revolutionary potential. He later returned to England before moving to

where he spent the last years of his life. Cooper coined the term

(see below) to describe opposition and opposing methods to the orthodox psychiatry of the time, although the term could easily describe the anti-psychiatrists' view of orthodox psychiatry, i.e., anti-psychic healing. He coordinated the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, held in London at

The Roundhouse The Roundhouse is a performing arts and concert venue situated at the Grade II* listed former railway engine shed in Chalk Farm, London, England. The building was erected in 1846–1847 by the London & North Western Railway as a roundhouse, ...

in Chalk Farm from 15 July to 30 July 1967. Participants included

R. D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment o ...

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...

and the Black Panthers'

Stokely Carmichael Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...

was scheduled to appear but cancelled at the last moment. The term "anti-psychiatry" was first used by David Cooper in 1967. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Association, London.

Family and ''The Death of the Family''

Cooper describes how 'during the end of the writing of this book against the family, I went through a profound spiritual and bodily crisis....The people who sat with me and tended to me with immense kindliness and concern during the worst of this crisis were my brother Peter and sister-in-law Carol...a true family'. He had earlier described the need to break free from 'one's whole family past...in a way that is more personally effective than a simple aggressive rupture or crude acts of geographical separation'; as well as the kind of false

autonomy In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ...

which occurs when 'people are still very much in the net of the internal family (and often the external family too) and compulsively search for rather less restricting replica family systems'. The book may thus be seen as a self-reflexive attempt 'to illustrate the power of the internal family, the family that one can separate from over thousands of miles and yet still remain in its clutches and be strangled by those clutches'.

''The Language of Madness''

In 1967, 'David Cooper provided an introduction to Foucault's ''

Madness and Civilization ''Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason'' (French: ''Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique'', 1961) is an examination by Michel Foucault of the evolution of the meaning of madness in the cultu ...

'' which began "Madness has in our age become some sort of lost truth"' - a statement not atypical of 'a time which posterity now readily regards as half-crazed'. Continuing the same line of thought, by the end of the following decade, 'he elevated madness to the status of a liberatory force' in his last publication. Here are a few typical utterances from ''The Language of Madness'' (Cooper 1980): "Madness is permanent revolution in the life of a person...a deconstitution of oneself with the implicit promise of return to a more fully realized world"'.Kotowicz, ''Laing'' p. 116

Notes

Major works

*''Reason and Violence: a decade of Sartre's philosophy'', Tavistock (1964) – co-authored with R. D. Laing *''Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry'' (Ed.), Paladin (1967) *''The Dialectics of Liberation'' (Ed.), Penguin (1968) – Cooper's introduction can be read at th
Herbert Marcuse
website. *''The Death of the Family'', Penguin (1971) *''Grammar of Living'', Penguin (1974) *''The Language of Madness'', Penguin (1978)

External links