50 Years of Radical Psychiatry

im sitting in a bar eating some low quality sweet potato fries hot off of a day of researching the origins of Radical Psychiatry, today a little known discipline that emerged out of the work of the Bay Area Radical Psychiatry Collective (BARP) who organized to support the vast emotional needs of the huge influx of poor (white) hippie youth in Berkeley in the 1970s. their approach of redefining mental illness as alienation of which addressing oppressive power dynamics is the only "treatment" blew up, until the BARP essentially became an institution – and chose to dismantle itself.

i came into contact with radical psychiatry in 2020, just after rereading "The Three Ecologies" by Félix Guattari – a really fucking complicated philosophical essay that still deeply touches me in how it names the problems of a society thats less and less orients towards creation and more focuses on production of experiences. but Guattari left me feeling awash in complex language that was difficult to share with my friends...

feeling the constipation of theory and a lack of ability to communicate it, i was also in a tumultuous polyamorous triad. seeking advice, i posted in the Relationship Anarchy facebook group where i encountered a woman named Nancy Shanteau. i don't remember exaaactly what she said but it was basically: "i don't think you understand what your partners want. in my work, we think of cooperation as 'asking for 100% of what you want 100% of the time and negotiating to agreement,' so if you don't know what they want, that means you can't cooperate with them, and if you can't cooperate with them then you're likely going to keep being coercive with each other." my mind was blown... how had no one told me that i needed to understand what other people wanted to be able to negotiate with them ethically? how could this possibly be new information to me? i decided to learn more and went on to read a book she helped write (Access to Power).

i found Access to Power to be an incredibly simple and pragmatic description of how culture shapes our perceptions and relationships – it was like all this complex philosophy in my head about how systems overtake human agency was condensed into really simple language, that i felt like i could just start telling people and we could fix the world! lol fresh naive energy. Nancy eventually convinced me (after working through significant hesitation on my part) to join her practitioner training. 6 months later, i quit my job to focus on developing my practice.

now, after four years of working with clients, i'm sitting in this overpriced bar revisiting the origins of the lineage. the 60s and 70s – a time when prominent Marxists weren't so uncommon and there were massive efforts to deconstruct power dynamics within the institution of psychiatry and therapy due to how effective it was in adjusting people back into an extractive economic system (and how homosexuality was in the DSM).

in many ways, things haven't changed much. therapy is still highly individualistic, in part this is an inherent structural problem of working in 1:1's. and the common mantras of: "maintain your boundaries" / "stay regulated" / "heal your trauma" are of no help. indeed, in some ways, things have gotten worse. the new fad of "somatics," is mostly based on bad science, and beyond that focuses people internally on their nervous systems, rather than understanding the power dynamics that cause the situation they experience. how convenient. and unsatisfying – of course, unless you succeed in regulating yourself into bliss (momentarily). even worse, somatic disciplines think of themselves as new and cutting edge, when in reality, these kind of expressive therapies have been around for decades (and longer in indigenous time). just one example: co-counseling, started in the 60s, is very very similar to the way many contemporary somatic healers think about doing somatics for trauma work.

while many, many radical practitioners exist that are indeed developing an analysis of power and pointing people towards healing outside of 1:1 dyads, the vast majority of therapists still clock in, listen, and clock out. the clients i see often refer to work with me as completely unlike anything they have ever experienced – because i actually get in the weeds with them and problem solve, pointing them towards collective solutions that aren't just "maintain your boundaries." all the while influencers get rich on the concept of nervous system regulation – itself a very problematic construction that centers a nebulous idea of a "nervous system state." i dislike the language of nervous system "states" – because it focuses us on our "state" as the important site of change. to me, its much more important to witness the (often oppressive) ideas we use to understand our experience (and real lack of safety) enough to choose how we want to feel. i disagree with the common idea that we can't pick our feelings – there's truth in that of course, but its also disempowering to say that our feelings are completely at the whim of our environment. it is actually proven science that our feelings are highly conceptual, and based on ideas of what "angry" and "fear" means in the culture we inhabit. which then become the water we swim in and breathe. all things i will write more about later. but i digress... the point is: while therapy has reformed, the root problems are still gaping. healing is so often centered on individual change.

the Bay Area Radical Psychiatry Collective was formed within a contradiction: that therapy means change, not adjustment – meaning the inequalities in access to satisfaction in the world are the driving factor in a lack of satisfaction in our lives. an almost obvious and yet profound discernment. contextual factors that seem invisible (because they are normalized) are profoundly felt – many black children learn they are different not because of overt racism, but because of slight differences in attention from teachers, classmates, and other authority figures. no one tells them they are different outright, yet they often self-select into a protective segregation because their differences are feared rather than embraced (as described in beverly tatum's "why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?"). our feelings are cultural and historical – not universal and justified. then influencers' soundbytes portray this as a "nervous system" problem and not a cultural-structural problem. a problem of lacking curiosity for difference.

the difficulty in naming these seeming invisible cultural and historical forces that impact how we feel at the most basic levels is what makes these misdirections attractive. healing propaganda has evolved with new appeal and shrouds the power dynamics that produce the trauma they "treat" (because how can you treat something when you're adjusting people to tolerate it, or just feel good anyway in the face of inequality – without naming the inequality). don't get me wrong, i personally have been immensely helped by Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing (TM) based on Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory (which is disproven) – but a tool is a tool and if it works for an end that means something – i use these tools with my clients too. however, i contextualize these tools with a power analysis. i "regulate" (and we have to find another word) – not as a destination unto itself, but as a means to an end: revolution. because the problem is not me, nor my trauma, but a culture of individualistic competitive extraction. a culture that turns our bodies into businesses and treats our problems as our fault rather than a product of an environment.

in the face of all that bullshit: blessings to the fellow radicals that know better than to consider ourselves as woeful victims (of which we are), that need to wait for the world to apologize to us for fucking us up or must do everything to change ourselves to meet the world where its at. blessings to the radicals that know the true medicine is to find our agency to make the changes we need in ourselves that support us to change the world for all, not just to manifest destiny of the good life. blessing to the radicals who know changing the world is a returning to old ways and old rhythms that we will have to find anew, except in those rare cases where the old knowledge has survived, because it has been stewarded through numerous genocides that enabled the expansion of the American culture of placeless whiteness. blessings to the radical therapists who address the isolated, mystified, and oppressed conditions of their clients.

however there remains a structural limitation of the profession: we are working with individuals (whether 1:1 or in groups) and yet our mandate is to change what is beyond the individual.

we must face that there are always inadequacies of power, particularly between helpers and those being helped – this makes for particularly fraught and weird interactions when our very mission is to support people to overcome power inequalities. it is our mandate to name these and work together to change them. to organize against the power of the healing practitioner is a central component of the healing that lives within Radical Psychiatry.

whenever radical healers accumulate of power through successful work, they will always face these contradictions. the Bay Area Radical Psychiatry Collective in the 80s decided to deconstruct itself rather than risk the hypocrisy of radical-institutional power. they felt their own overblown sense of responsibility – at least in part the result of so many people at the time looking to them for leadership (rather than looking internally) – another cultural dynamic that plagues radical movements.

but to me its less about being pure and more about making a dent. what is the right container for the next action that is needed? this is the question i am in right now. how to do the work in an extractive economic system without selling out? and without thinking we're being "correct."

in my sense, the theory and practice of Radical Psychiatry is a profound gift that must be stewarded – truly nothing has given me personally more grounding to understand the world and help people. its an applied practice that can't be captured 100% in words – you have to see and feel it to get it.

and yet, there will always be constant updates needed: to address new propaganda and to integrate the wisdom of other cultures more grounded in place, as it has been mostly a white lineage and suffers a bit from analytical headiness.

a key challenge is also: who trains us? i have worked HARD to get access to quality training. there is no Radical Psychiatry institute, only apprenticeships. while this is in many ways, the best way to learn an applied practice, its also very limiting of a movement... innovation in this area is of primary importance in the next decade of this work as the original practitioners leave this plane of existence and leave a new generation to steward these ways.

i ask myself: did the BARP achieve its aim before disbanding? who is to say? as a group they have mostly faded into relative obscurity compared to other healing movements at the time. seasoned Radical Psychiatry practitioners remain relatively few (perhaps 15-20 in the US, many more of a different flavor in the netherlands and germany). its tempting to be frustrated. yet, the BARP did succeed in creating an incredibly potent practice of understanding how power operates in everyday interactions so that it can be negotiated – a practice that is useful in nearly any realm: from 1:1 and group mediations, to releasing habitual muscular/fascial tension and "trauma," to organizing within the fight against race and class domination. power must be negotiated directly.

the challenge in the left has always been pluralism – to allow for differences in ideas, unless they get in the way of action. this is no accident – the CIA has been murdering key proponents of socialist pluralism (see MLK, Fred Hampton) and promoting counter-revolutionary "leftist" ideas for decades. my hope is that the understanding and negotiation of power that Radical Psychiatry offers can contribute to a pragmatic pluralism – where ideology becomes less about right and wrong and more about experimentation, together, towards a radical vision where everyone has a right to satisfaction. where everyone feels in their body a right to ask for 100% of what they want 100% of the time and truly negotiate to find the best path forward for all.

thats my guiding light. whats yours?