Klement, Janina; (2025) The European Psychiatric Avantgardes: Mapping Psychiatry Critique, c. 1950-1979. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London.

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Abstract

This thesis provides a transnational examination of post-World War II avantgarde psychiatry in Europe, analysing how diverse, regionally specific critiques of psychiatric practices converged into a global antipsychiatry movement. Through systematic analysis of previously unexplored archival materials dispersed across Europe and the United States, rare multilingual sources, and original oral history interviews with contemporary witnesses and practitioners, it reveals networks of exchange and influence hitherto unexplored by published accounts. The thesis argues that these psychiatric avantgardes were characterised by a dual dynamic: they maintained strong continuities with their national psychiatric traditions while simultaneously transcending local and national boundaries through international reception, cooperation, and a global self-understanding. The first part of the thesis focuses on specific psychiatric practices associated with this movement, including institutional psychotherapy developed by François Tosquelles and his successors in France, psychiatric deinstitutionalisation led by Franco Basaglia and his teams in Italy, and family and network therapies promoted by R. D. Laing and his collaborators in Britain. It offers a historical analysis of these practices, investigating their relationship with the psychiatric traditions from which they emerged, and the extent to which they continued, critiqued, or transgressed these traditions. While emphasising regional continuities and differences in the first part, the second part shifts to consider the avantgardes as part of a broader network. It examines two key instances of transnational collaboration: the International Congress Dialectics of Liberation in London in 1967 and the European Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry founded in Brussels in 1975, which later expanded to the United States and several Latin American countries. These collaborations illustrate that, despite methodological differences and disagreements, avantgarde psychiatrists worked together to advance common key aspects of their practices. This thesis contends that the most significant legacies of the psychiatric avantgardes can be accounted for through their network practices, which transcended national and disciplinary boundaries, questioned medical authority and highlighted the relationship between mental health disparities and politics on a global scale.

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