PsychoPolitics

PsychoPolitics is a powerful and impassioned defence of psychiatry, urging the Left to confront the harsh realities of mental illness. - William Davis, author of The Happiness Industry

This new edition presents one of the most significant and credible critiques of the anti-psychiatry movement. Originally published in 1982, the book remains as relevant today as it changed the conversation on mental health and illness, demanding an assessment of its relationship to the wider decay of social institutions.

Peter Sedgwick dissects the work of prominent anti-psychiatric thinkers such as Erving Goffman, R.D. Laing, Michel Foucault, and Thomas Szasz. He exposes the conservative undercurrents and false hopes of the alternative psychiatry movement of the sixties and seventies, challenging its impact on our collective responsibility to care for the mentally ill.

With a new introduction highlighting the ongoing relevance of Sedgwick's demands for modern mental health movements, the practice of psychiatry, and for left-wing activists, this edition further cements PsychoPolitics as a cult classic.