The following quote is a brief excerpt from the book”The Death of the Family” written by the world famous psychiatrist,Dr.David G.Cooper(1931-1986),who was one of the founders of the anti-psychiatry movement in the West during the 60s and 70s.

“One of the main functions of the teacher,then,is to progressively break down the pervading illusion of impotence.Not only in academic institutions but in every institution in our society.People must be helped to realize how the power of the ruling elite and its bureaucracy is nothing,nothing but their refused and externalized power.Then it is a matter of recuperation of that power,and the recuperative strategy is quite simple:act against the “rules”and the act itself converts the illusory power in them into real power in us”

Dr.David G.Cooper(1931-1986)was born in South Africa where he graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1955,studying the psychiatric sciences.He then moved to England,working in London for several hospitals,directing experimental units for young schizophrenics.He was one of the leaders in the anti-psychiatry movement along with R.D.Laing,Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault.He was an”existential Marxist” theoretician, and maintained in his analyses that insanity and psychosis in human beings were results of an unnatural society whose institutions do not respect the creative complexities of human nature.Therefore the first responsibility of a psychiatrist is to question and neutralize society΄s basic social structure.