David Cooper (psychiatrist)

For other people known by this name see the David Cooper disambiguation page.

South African psychiatrist Dr. David Cooper (b. 1931) is a noted anti-psychiatry movement figure, along with R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault. Cooper graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1955. He moved to London, where he worked at several hospitals and directed an experimental unit for young schizophrenics called Villa 21.

His major essays include:

• Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry,
• The Death of the Family,
• Grammar of Living, and
• The Language of Madness.

He coordinated the 1967 London-based "Dialectics of Liberation" congress which saw the participation of R. D. Laing and a number of political activists including Herbert Marcuse and Black Panthers' Stokely Carmichael while Jean-Paul Sartre, scheduled to appear, cancelled at the last moment. The term "anti-psychiatry" was first used by David Cooper in 1967.

He is a founding member of the Phildelphia Association, London, and director of the Institute of Phenomenological Studies.

References

• Brother Beast: the David Cooper Anti-Page