The anti-psychiatric perspective on the "family, schizophrenia, and society"
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Abstract
This thesis has investigated the nature of the family, so-called "schizophrenia", and society as viewed by the major anti-psychiatric theorists and radical psychologists/psychiatrists. Particular emphasis was placed on the works of R. D. Laing, D. G. Cooper, and M. Schatzman. The family was investigated as the primary tool of induction of the individual into socially "acceptable" (i.e. conformist) roles via abdication of self, as well as the basic context in which particular individuals are labeled as "mad". The diagnostic category of "schizophrenia" was studied as a false abstraction applied to some individuals by others in a particular social situation in which the diagnosed individual's behavior has been removed from its social context and viewed wrongly as the result of a pathological process. Society was investigated as the meta-context within which these phenomena occur and their appearance of irrationality is to be understood.