Socialist Patients' Collective

Socialist Patients' Collective
FounderWolfgang Huber (born 1935)
Dates of operation1968 – June 1971, 1973–present
Motives'Liberation from Iatrocapitalism'
Active regionsHeidelberg University, West Germany
Ideology
StatusSelf-dissolved in 1971; continued as Patientenfront from 1973, currently SPK/PF(H)

The Socialist Patients' Collective (German: Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, and known as the SPK) is a patients' collective founded in Heidelberg, West Germany, in February 1970 by Wolfgang Huber. The kernel of the SPK's ideological program is summated in the slogan, "Turn illness into a weapon", which is representative of an ethos that is continually and actively practiced under the new title, Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, PF/SPK(H). The first collective, SPK, declared its self-dissolution in July 1971 as a strategic withdrawal but in 1973 Huber proclaimed the continuity of SPK as Patients' Front.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

The SPK assumes that illness exists as an undeniable fact and believe that it is caused by the capitalist system. The SPK promotes illness as the protest against capitalism and considers illness as the foundation on which to create the human species.[4][7] The SPK is opposed to doctors, considering them to be the ruling class of capitalism and responsible for poisoning the human species. The most widely recognized text of the PF/SPK(H) is the communique, SPK – Turn illness into a weapon, which has prefaces by both the founder of the SPK, Wolfgang Huber, and Jean-Paul Sartre.[3][4][8][1][9][6][10][11][12]

Rejecting the roles and ideology associated with the notion of the revolutionary as scientific explainer, they stated in Turn Illness into a Weapon that whoever claims they want to "observe the bare facts dispassionately" is either an "idiot" or a "dangerous criminal."[13]

  1. ^ a b SPK; Huber, Wolfgang (1993). SPK Turn illness into a Weapon. KRRIM - PF-Verlag für Krankheit. pp. XVIII–XXIV. ISBN 3-926491-17-5.
  2. ^ SPK; Huber, Wolfgang (1995). SPK - Aus der Krankheit eine Waffe machen (in German) (6th ed.). KRRIM - PF-Verlag für Krankheit. ISBN 978-3-926491-25-1.
  3. ^ a b "SPK/PF(H), Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (SPK), Patientenfront (PF), List of Dates". SPK/PF(H). Retrieved 14 December 2018.
  4. ^ a b c "PF/SPK(H), : SPK. Gossipcide in the case of print media, TV & Co. Text for entries on the SPK in the Encyclopedias of Brockhaus, Duden, etc". SPK/PF(H). Retrieved 14 December 2018.
  5. ^ Quensel, Stephan (1995). Irre, Anstalt, Therapie: Der Psychiatrie-Komplex (in German). Springer Verlag. p. 285. ISBN 978-3-658-16210-8.
  6. ^ a b Parker, Ian (1995). Deconstructing Psychopathology. Sage Publications Ltd. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-8039-7481-4.
  7. ^ "The secret of illness is human species. How to apply the concept of illness". SPK/PF(H). Retrieved 18 June 2012.
  8. ^ "Proposal for a text for international use concerning SPK. Overview". SPK/PF(H). Retrieved 2 December 2011.
  9. ^ Blake, Trevor (1995). SPK – Krankheit Im Recht. KRRIM - PF - Verlag für Krankheit. p. 159. ISBN 3-926491-26-4.
  10. ^ Spandler, Helen (1992). "To Make an army out of Illness: a history of the Socialist Patients Collective Heidelberg 1970/72" (PDF). Asylum. 6 (4): 3–16.
  11. ^ Guattari, Felix (1984). Molecular revolution: psychiatry and politics (PDF). New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin. pp. 67–68. ISBN 0-14-055160-3.
  12. ^ Genosko, Gary (2001). "Introduction". Deleuze and Guattari: critical assessments of leading philosophers. Vol. 2. London: Routledge. pp. 480–481, 798 of 1503. ISBN 0-415-18678-1.
  13. ^ Cryzine. "About Cry". Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 21 November 2017.