"Insistimos” (“We Insist”)
*Editor’s note:
What follows is a (surely lacking and amateurish) translation of a text from a volume called Manicomios y Prisiones, edited by Sylvia Marcos. The book collects speeches, roundups, and introductory texts pertaining to the first conference for the Latin American branch of the Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry that met in Cuernavaca, Mexico on October 2—6, 1981. The volume is of special interest to those of us in America, since it’s the largest compilation of texts from participants in the American wings of the Network. Look out for longer texts translated from this volume in the near future.
“Insistimos” appears right after the first, shorter introduction, and before the general introduction. It is anonymously authored, but the similarity of the style and content to other statements by Sylvia Marcos and other Mexican participants collected in the volume and the use of the first person plural makes me think it was likely a statement written by (at least) the Mexican collective that put on the conference.
In terms of its content, I believe this text mostly speaks for itself. All I will add is that antipsychiatry is a notoriously slippery term. In this context, it refers to two specific tendencies in the 60s and 70s: 1) Thomas Szasz’ denial of mental illness and proposition to contain all deviance under a juridical umbrella and, 2) the attempt by segments of the New Left (mostly R.D. Laing, but also David Cooper) to create isolated units (for Laing, Kingsley Hall; for Cooper, Villa 21) where madness was imagined to be a liberating experience when appropriately nurtured “outside” society.—Sasha
“We Insist”
We insist on separating our movement from so-called “antipsychiatry” without denying that we emerged from it and that it is part of our past. However, we want to emphasize that our position does not pretend to avoid the political connotations of “mental illness”; mental illness occurs in a historical-social context and we do not intend to “cure it” as a subjective individual phenomenon. We do not pretend that the journey towards madness is a solution nor that the existence of small cells—therapeutic communities—elitist, economically and culturally, outside the macro structure, are our answer.
Antipsychiatry was the beginning of a critical movement; it was a way of saying no to the expropriation of mental health by its technicians, no to the idiotic massification of drugs, no to the brutal repression in asylums, no to electroshocks, no to the normalization of the values of a capitalist (bourgeois) society, no to the interpretation of madness as intrinsically bad, no to an alienated “normality.”
Our movement of alternatives to psychiatry still aligns itself with these negations, but, after saying no, we ask ourselves: What now? The search for alternatives is our political project. Can alternatives happen without radical social change? What are their limitations? Can a political project be achieved from within our anti-institutional psychological and psychiatric positions? The experiences of the Italian, Brazilian, Colombian, Mexican, French, North American, Cuban, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Chilean, Uruguayan and Argentine colleagues provide contributions, perspectives, criticisms and concrete proposals.
In reaffirming our differences with respect to anti-psychiatry, our interest is not to coin a new term. We hope to ensure that our movement is recognized for grounding our questions in our social and political conditions.