The impetus for this article is an exciting
new scholarship endowed in perpetuity which has just been launched at
University of Toronto. It is a “matching scholarship” in which I personally match
up to $50, 000 of contributions by other donors. Called “The Dr. Bonnie Burstow
Scholarship in Antipsychiatry”, the scholarship is to be awarded annually to a
thesis student at OISE/UT conducting antipsychiatry research. An award of this
nature is historically unprecedented, and as such, is itself something to
celebrate. It is also part of a larger phenomenon of using academia in the
battle against psychiatry. Shedding light on that larger phenomenon as well as
on the scholarship per se, such are the purposes of this article.
Why have I dubbed this article “Turning the
Tables”? Because what is involved here
is precisely taking a leaf from psychiatry’s book. In this regard, not unlike
other hegemonic disciplines, albeit far more aggressively than most, as shown
by Foucault (1963/1973) and Burstow (2015), psychiatry has long used academia
to legitimate its claims and further what it regards as “knowledge”. Not only does
academic psychiatry train people to think/act in ways that serve it, its sheer
existence serves as a primary source of legitimation.
Albeit we do not have the potential to make
the same kind of inroads, let me suggest, it behooves those of us who oppose
psychiatry to likewise use academia. Herein we have the opportunity to
challenge, to educate, moreover to lend a hand to what Michel Foucault (1980) calls
“the insurrection of subjugated knowledge.” In the process, we can at once
further antipsychiatry knowledge and add to its perceived legitimacy.
The rise and growing acceptance of Mad Studies
is an example which elucidates this principle (see http://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/mad-studies/).
Mad views have gained unprecedented legitimacy of late not simply because they
provide important perspectives, note, but because courses dubbed Mad History have
become a standard part of curriculum in such areas as Critical Disability
Studies in several universities. Of course, not being inherently abolitionist, Mad
Studies is, as it were, an “easier sell” than antipsychiatry.
Examples of what
can realistically be done at this point—and to varying degrees some of us have
been doing this for decades—is to rigorously integrate an antipsychiatry
analysis into our classes, involve students in our antipsychiatry research, and
mount conferences in which antipsychiatry is highlighted—e.g., the historical
PsychOut conference (see http://individual.utoronto.ca/psychout/).
Via such routes, very real reframing happens.
Some students (both ones new to antipsychiatry and old hands at it) go on
to conduct their own research into some aspect of psychiatry, thereby contributing
to this growing area of scholarship. At the same time, academia puts the stamp
of credibility on such “knowledge”, in essence, legitimates it in the public
eye.
Now there are “onside” faculty who
intentionally water down their critique of psychiatry, perhaps because they have
been attacked by colleagues, as to a fair extent all of us are, perhaps out of
fear for their jobs. Given the difficulty of standing one’s ground in the face
of this particular power nexus, that is totally understandable. Let me invite such
colleagues nonetheless not to automatically to pull back, for the fight is a
vital one; we are slowly but surely winning this battle. Moreover, there are other
ways for us to protect ourselves. Which brings me to my own extensive history as
the one of the sole academics who publically identifies as an antipsychiatry
professor.
Since the early 1980s, in every university
in which I have taught, I have invariably integrated an unapologetic and hard-hitting
antipsychiatry analysis into my work and in every case, the results were
positive. That is, despite some students having profound misgivings at least
initially, most students quickly found themselves intrigued. Soon even those who began by dismissing my
position or declaring it “extreme” found themselves seriously entertaining
vantagepoints that would once have been unthinkable. Telling in this regard is
a student who felt she had to be in the wrong class because the perspective utterly
alarmed her. By the third class of the course, she vowed never again to set
foot in any of my classes. She proceeded
to skip the next class, pretty sure she would not come back. Not only did she
soon return and not only did she stick with this class, but she went on to take
every single course that I offered. By the same token, over the years a high
percentage of my students have ended up abandoning the concept of “mental
illness”—something initially unimaginable. Correspondingly many have become antipsychiatry
activists and researchers in their own right and gone on to influence others.
This is precisely the beauty of what can be achieved in academia.
In this respect, though it may often seem
as if no one wants the knowledge which antipsychiatry scholars/activists offer—and
on one level this is true—on another, people, especially the young, are virtually hungering for
a radically different vantage point.
Which brings me to the question of direct opposition—a
problem that leads many privately highly critical colleagues to “soft peddle”
their message. Of course there is opposition, just as there has always been
opposition to anything which challenges accepted orthodoxies and runs counter
to vested interests. And indeed, I have commonly encountered over-the-top opposition
myself as well as more subtle obstruction. More generally, inevitably in every
single university in which I have taught, because I am uncompromisingly antipsychiatry
and known to be so, at some point or other, there have been efforts to derail both
me and my agenda. What is significant here, however, is that none of it ever came
from students. Moreover, the opposition has been monumentally unsuccessful. Indeed,
if anything, it has but added to my credibility and detracted from the
credibility of those out to silence my analysis. The point is that academic
freedom is a principle that universities hold dear. And strange though this may
seem, it offers very real protection.
Am I in any way suggesting that faculty who
introduce new counterhegemonic knowledge are equally rewarded for their efforts
as those who replicate traditional (and inherently oppressive) “knowledge”? Not
remotely, and especially not in an area like antipsychiatry, which is at odds
with disciplinary fields which academia actively supports and whose related
industries (e.g., Big Pharma) channel substantial money into university coffers.
Am I denying that their work may be trivialized or looked down upon? Of course
not. As we all know, that commonly happens, especially to faculty who are
psychiatric survivors and known to be so.
Nor would I in any way want to minimize the very serious plight of excellent
scholars whose repeated attempts to land a permanent university job have come
to naught because of their personal history, their identity (mad, racialized,
etc.) or their antipsychiatry stance. This problem is only too real, and this
too we need to fight. Nonetheless, it is a mistake to minimize the value of academic
freedom as a safeguard.
To clarify the distinction that I am making
here, antipsychiatry faculty may be overlooked in all sorts of ways, may be
relegated to dead-end positions, may never have their work spotlighted, may even
be actively disrespected (all of which, without question, is highly serious and
is in its own way a violation of academic freedom). This notwithstanding, if
someone obviously and overtly tried
to interfere with a faculty member educating from an antipsychiatry perspective,
for the most part, even if unenthusiastically, the university will side with
the faculty member under attack. Why? Precisely because even in the eyes of the conventionally minded, such interference violates
the university’s commitment to academic freedom. The point here is that the
commitment to academic freedom has genuine substance, this, despite the ongoing
violations of the commitment.
Factor in this commitment and have your
wits about you, if your employment is relatively secure, and even in a
surprising number of cases where it is not, as an antipsychiatry academic, when
it comes to teaching as you wish, you can generally easily win most fights. Whereupon, in a very effective way, you begin
to turn the tables. Some examples from my own history:
In my first year teaching social work in a
university in western Canada (and yes, I was junior, and no, I did not remotely
have tenure), members of the psychiatry department were distressed upon
learning of a ten-minute talk which I gave in one of my classes on the circular
nature of psychiatry’s use of language. Their response was to write the head of
social work to request that psychiatric faculty be allowed to enter my
classroom and in essence teach their own perspective. The rationale given was
that this way my students would benefit from having more than one perspective.
Well aware that my freedom to teach as I wished (translation: academic freedom)
was at stake here, the head of social work handed me the letter and asked me to
respond. I wrote back stating, “In the interest of my students having access to
more than one perspective, I am more than happy to allow your faculty time in
my classes –but only if in the interest of your
students likewise gaining additional perspective, I similarly be invited into
your classes.” (Burstow
correspondence, November 15, 1987).
Given the ostensible “sensibleness” of my
response, given what would be seen as its “even-handedness”, realistically, only
one of two things could have happened at that point: 1) they take up the
challenge, in which case, as most of us are aware, a solid antipsychiatry critique
can beat psychiatric propaganda handily –and so I win (indeed, I win doubly for
my message has now gained access to an otherwise unreachable audience) or 2)
they decline the challenge, in which case I would have exposed their claim to
believe in multiple perspectives as a ruse, moreover, begun to demonstrate that
even in their own eyes, they cannot hold their own against an antipsychiatry
analysis—in which case once again, I win.
So what happened? The second. We never heard back from them.
Another example: Shortly after I was
offered and accepted a position in social work at a university in eastern Ontario,
a credentializing body wrote the President of the university threatening that
if this offer of employment was not rescinded, the department’s social work credentialization
was in jeopardy. Once again, the attempt to block me backfired, and it did so
in part because the university would not tolerate such blatant interference
with academic freedom.
A third example: When Coalition Against
Psychiatric Assault, OISE’s Adult Education and Community Development program,
and I mounted the historic PsychOut Conference at University of Toronto, flexing
their muscles, as it were, higher-ups in the psychiatric faculty wrote the President
of the university, protesting the existence of such a conference and more
significantly, its association with University of Toronto. Similarly one faculty
member in psychology wrote, stating that the conference should be canceled in
the interests of avoiding confusion.
Otherwise the psychology students who would inevitably attend, she
argued, would end up unnecessarily baffled, for they would be bombarded with
messages at odds with what they were being taught in psychology classes.
The objections were forthwith forwarded to
the OISE dean, who was asked to respond. The dean passed them onto the Chair of
my department. The chair passed the onus to respond onto me. To hone in on just
one of these, to the applause of the psychology students who began excitedly flocking
to meetings of the organizing committee responsible for planning the conference,
my response to one outraged colleague went as follows:
In
the end, we all have to accept that it is part of academic freedom that
scholars bring different and often incompatible claims to knowledge to the
table. The hope is that students are enriched by gaining exposure to the very
different worldviews and agendas. It falls to them as intelligent human beings
and budding scholars to sort out where they themselves stand, having listened
to the different positions—and I trust in their ability to do so.” (letter from Burstow, April 25, 2010).
We never heard back from the irate
colleague again. And for all intents and purposes, the Conference proceeded as
planned—except now a growing excitement had been sparked.
The point is, if handed in the manner which
Gandhi followers have dubbed “moral jiu jitsu” (see http://civilresistance.info/sites/default/files/thepowerofnonviolence0206.pdf)
opposition to us can actually serve our own
ends of exposing and in the process winning hearts and minds. Again, a turning
of the tables.
My encouragement to fellow academics,
accordingly, is not to make soft peddling your antipsychiatry message your
default mode. While for sure there are times when “lying low” makes sense, there
are other and generally better ways for us to protect ourselves. And never
forget that the liberal value of academic value is highly serviceable,
irrespective of the fact that we are not liberals but radicals.
More generally, master the skill of moral
jiu jitsu necessary. Whereupon, the university becomes an important and viable
site for our antipsychiatry work—something accomplishable, note, in lectures,
in class discussions, in the framing of assignments, in the activist/survivor
speakers we are now able to bring in, in special events, in the actual norms of
our classes (e.g., one of my class norms is “no mentalistic or psychiatric
jargon”), even, as shown above, in fighting the very opposition which initially
looks like it will derail us. The point is, paradoxically, both despite and because of the elitism of the venue, and both despite and because of
the manifest opposition, there are niches in the academy which are potential antipsychiatry
strongholds—we have but to have courage and do the strategic work needed.
Which brings us to this article’s second
objective.
A particularly fruitful way that faculty members
can use academia to both further antipsychiatry and to add to its perceived
legitimacy is to encourage, supervise, and support antipsychiatry theses. Conducting
such research affords students the opportunity to contribute in a major way to
antipsychiatry knowledge creation.
Now it goes without saying that such
knowledge creation will continue to happen irrespective of whether or not students
conducting such research receive awards. This notwithstanding, given the
economic straights of oh-so-many graduate students, the financial is hardly
irrelevant. Correspondingly, one added measure that antipsychiatry faculty can
take is to both nominate their antipsychiatry students for awards and help
sponsor antipsychiatry-specific awards. The latter, I would add, is particularly
important for the reality is that given the hegemony of psychiatry and the privileged
place which psychiatry holds within academia, budding young antipsychiatry
scholars have appreciably less chance of winning awards than those involved in
more traditional areas of knowledge-building.
More generally, the very creation of one or
more antipsychiatry scholarships is a game-changer. Obviously a university
cannot have a scholarship in this area without
at the same time “recognizing” the area. And insofar as universities “recognize”
the area, so does the world at large.
By the same token, while it goes without saying that we understandably all have
different priorities, anything, however little, that any of us can do to make
such scholarships a reality, irrespective of whether or not we are academics or
even particularly value academia, is an effort well spent, for it announces to
the world that antipsychiatry has legitimacy and it paves the way for ever greater
forays into it. In the process, I would add, it helps put a stop to the ongoing
harassment of antipsychiatry professors, thereby making it easier for
antipsychiatry faculty and would-be faculty to do the job that we in the movement
so desperately need them to.
Understanding all this, after a nine month
stint of negotiating with University of Toronto officials, who began
transparently uneasy with the subject matter, several years ago I arranged for
the vast majority of my estate upon my death to go into setting up huge
scholarships in this area. And it is with this understanding that likewise, with
help from allies –institutional and otherwise—I proceeded to set up the far
smaller Dr. Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychiatry, outlined at the
beginning of this article. My thought here was that besides that the time is
ripe, this smaller scholarship could, as it were, prepare the ground for the
far larger ones that will materialize later. And a very good thing it was too
that I took this measure, for the current scholarship came close to not be
approved, and without it, the tentative
agreement about the scholarships set up in my will would surely have been in
jeopardy.
The resistance to this scholarship that inevitably
materialized, I would add, is itself an indicator of its importance. Moreover,
and what is not unrelated, the transparency of the resistance led several institutional
players whose support, while real, had begun as relatively modest—including
from within the university—to strongly come onside. Whether this was mainly because the need to
uphold academic freedom became increasingly obvious or because they noticed
that—lo and behold—they were smack in the middle of a David-and-Goliath story,
or because the very struggle itself led them to look at the substantive issues
more closely, herein once again we see a “turning of the tables”.
I would add here, I thank these fellow
institutional warriors with all my heart—for you did no less than fight your
hearts out—and you did so skillfully, with integrity, and with perseverance!
What a force of nature you are!
To end where we began—by honing in on the
current scholarship, already this scholarship initiative has a growing
momentum. Besides that several donors have already contributed to it or made
pledges, the scholarship has been endorsed by as formidable a figure as the member
of the Ontario Provincial Parliament Reverend Cheri DiNovo.
Moreover it has been endorsed by absolute giants
in the field like Dr. Peter Breggin, Don Weitz, and Dr. Lauren Tenney, all of
whom are very clear about its importance. In this regard, Peter writes:
I am Peter R. Breggin, MD and I am a psychiatrist. As a
professional long heralded as the conscience of psychiatry, it is my pleasure
to endorse the newly formed Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychiatry.
Science is demonstrating that psychiatric diagnosis and drugs, electroshock,
and involuntary treatment are doing much more harm than good. We
desperately need critical scholarship aimed at stopping this epidemic of
demoralization, dehumanization, and brain damage. –Dr. Peter Breggin
By the same token, survivor and activist Don
Weitz writes:
As a psychiatric survivor, antipsychiatry and social justice activist
for over 30 years, I strongly support the Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in
Antipsychiatry at the University of Toronto. Dr. Burstow’s recent
book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness (2015) is a masterful
work and brilliant breakthrough. I feel sure the Scholarship will attract and
empower many survivors, students, and scholars. It's time antipsychiatry
is officially and widely recognized as a legitimate and growing international
movement. This Scholarship will help make it happen. —Don Weitz.
Correspondingly, the indefatigable Lauren
Tenney writes:
As a psychiatric survivor and a mad
environmental social scientist/psychologist, I am honored to endorse the Bonnie
Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychiatry. How radical! How timely! We
are so fortunate to have in Bonnie Burstow, a visionary with a commitment to
exposing psychiatry, and assisting people making their way into the field, to
not have to fight for a right to hold an antipsychiatry position. State-sponsored
organized psychiatric industries target children, women, people of color,
seniors, and people from oppressed groups. The opportunities such a scholarship
program present are enormous for the growth of research that will hold
psychiatry accountable. The important feminist, anti-racist work that can
be accomplished from an antipsychiatry framework is significant, not only for
those awarded this new scholarship, but for those working with and near those
in slated positions designed to allow people to honestly speak out about the
damages psychiatry creates. This brilliant move by Burstow is a game-changer that will further solidify the
growing field of antipsychiatry in North America, and around the world. If you
are able to support this effort, please do so, today. –Lauren Tenney,
PhD, MPhil, MPA, Psychiatric Survivor
The overly generous depiction of me aside, I
am grateful for the words of these remarkable and steadfast allies. How
reassuring that they instantly recognized the significance of this moment! And
how wonderful that they have so enthusiastically become involved!
In ending, I would invite readers who are
able and so inclined to consider also becoming involved—in any way that feels
right to you. Simply helping spread the word about the scholarship would be terrific. Perhaps email people about it or post a
description on your website. If you are able and wish to make a financial
contribution (all donations, whatever the size, are welcome), the method is: Everyone
other than Americans, write a cheque payable to University of Toronto and send
it to Sim Kapoor at: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor St.
West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1V6. By contrast, Americans, make the
cheque out to: The Associates of the University of Toronto, Inc., and send it
to: Dr. Gary Kaufman, Treasurer, The Associates of the University of Toronto,
Inc., 58 West 84th St., # 2F, New York, New York, USA, 10024. In all cases, insert on the memo line: For The Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in
Antipsychiatry. And yes, with Canadians and Americans the charitable
receipt that will be duly issued can be used for tax purposes for they are
recognized respectively by Revenue Canada and US Internal Revenue.
For more
information on the scholarship, see http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/About_OISE/Bonnie_Burstow_Scholarship.html.
See also https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/10/bonnie-burstow-scholarship-antipsychiatry-campaign-launched/To
contribute online (an alternative route), write: https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/271.
Correspondingly, for answers to other questions that you may have, write to: burstowscholarshipcommittee@gmail.com.
Finally, one
parting invitation: For those of you who are likewise antipsychiatry, whether
you do so in relationship to this scholarship or otherwise, whether via
academia or the far larger world beyond, whether you operate in the streets, in
the classroom, on the internet, or in the boardroom, before you go to bed
tonight –and the next night, and the next—think of ways that you too can be
involved in "turning the tables" –for, make no mistake about it: Such—and
no less—is the nature of the challenge facing us.
References
Burstow, B. (2015). Psychiatry
and the business of madness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (1963/1973). The
birth of the clinic. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge.
New York: Pantheon.
