David Cooper (psychiatrist)

David Cooper
David Cooper in 1977
Born
David Graham Cooper

1931 (1931)
Cape Town, South Africa
Died29 July 1986 (aged 54–55)
Paris, France
Known forAnti-psychiatry
Scientific career
FieldsPsychiatry

David Graham Cooper (1931 in Cape Town, South Africa – 29 July 1986 in Paris, France)[1][unreliable source?] was a South African-born psychiatrist and theorist who was prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement.

Cooper graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1955. R.D. Laing 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 the Bureau of State Security would eliminate him. He moved to London, where he worked at several hospitals. From 1961 to 1965 he ran an experimental unit for young people with schizophrenia called Villa 21, which he saw as a revolutionary 'anti-hospital' and a prototype for the later Kingsley Hall Community.[2] In 1965, he was involved with Laing and others in establishing the Philadelphia Association. An "existential Marxist," he left the Philadelphia Association in the 1970s in a disagreement over its lack of political orientation. Cooper coined the term "anti-psychiatry" in 1967, and wrote the book Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry in 1971.[3] He also co-founded the Antiuniversity of London in February 1968.[4]

  1. ^ Stadlen, Anthony (7 January 2006). "Daseinsanalysis, Existential Psychotherapy, Inner Circle Seminars: Anthony Stadlen, London W1, N22: David Cooper: Anti-Psychiatry and Non-Psychiatry. Inner Circle Seminar 104 (23 July 2006)". Retrieved 14 September 2016 – via blogspot.com.
  2. ^ Oisín Wall, "The Birth and Death of Villa 21", History of Psychiatry, Vol.24 (3), pp.326-340.
  3. ^ Mervat Nasser (1995). "The rise and fall of anti-psychiatry" (PDF). Psychiatric Bulletin. 19 (12): 743–746. doi:10.1192/pb.19.12.743.
  4. ^ Jakobsen, Jakob. "The Antiuniversity of London - an Introduction to Deinstitutionalisation". Tumblr. Retrieved 6 November 2023.