Of Unsound Mind

01/03/2024

MPLS, save the date: March 30th I'll be hosting my book release event at Cloudland Theater, with an opening set by members of Spaceport, then I'll do a reading, and the night will close with a set by In*******se. You don't wanna miss it!

04/02/2024

For us, the social challenge of madness is not a question of how to integrate outsiders into a machine that produces marginalization and social death, but of concocting strategies capable of undermining and circumventing market imperatives as a necessary condition for recovery. In other words, creating a psychiatry worthy of the name is not possible without the transformation of society.

Mel B and I are proud to officially announce the launch of our new website for the North American Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry, a branch of an international collective research-action project that was originally started in 1975. Also known as Réseau-Alternative à la psychiatrie, the initial European branch included minds such as Franco Basaglia, Felix Guattari, Giles Deleuze, and Mony Elkaim, and it quickly extended into the Americas as the group’s ideas began to proliferate and militant movements relating to psychiatry made major advances in Italy, the US, Brazil and elsewhere. In 2021, Chaosmosemedia revitalized interest in the Network, and we aim to follow in their footsteps, working to continue to expand a “militant practice of psychiatry that is not closed in upon itself, but that connects the problems of mental illness to broader social struggles, to social and political alienation”.

The current website includes the original statement of purpose from the first iteration of the Network, the histories and timelines from Sasha’s former website, his new blog, and a section for archival text about madness that we will continue to update with newly translated works and texts from international alternative psychiatric movements throughout history. We’ll also be updating the site with more information about Sasha’s upcoming book, Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt, as well as other upcoming publications and projects. To learn more about our work or to get connected to the network, check out the website, send us an email, and keep an eye out for future posts!

Go to: Altpsy.net

18/12/2023

I've been off of Facebook for a while, but big update: the website is down!

The short story is that I saw a BDS flier recently and saw the web development tool I used, Wix, on it. Did some research and I cannot give business to a company supportive of and complicit in genocide. It's always free Palestine. I encourage anyone else who uses Wix to get off.

If you're worried about any of the stuff on there, no worries: the best resources will be re-housed on a new collective website in the new year and the blogs are all moving to Substack.

I explain more in this substack post: https://ofunsoundmind.substack.com/p/of-unsound-mind.

Subscribe to the Substack if you want new posts!

why the site is gone

13/09/2023

https://www.unsoundmind.org/post/the-choking-angel

A new post on this incredible art piece by Prinzhorn collection artist Franz Bühler, Walter Benjamin's concept of mythic violence, and N**i psychiatry.

Franz Karl Bühler, "Der Würgengel" (The Choking Angel), 1909. "Established and circumscribed boundaries remain, at least in primeval times, unwritten laws. A human being can transgress them unawares and thereby succumb to expiation [der Sühne verfallen]. For this encroachment of law, summoned by ...

01/09/2023

Some new writing on Emma Hauck's letters from the Prinzhorn Collection in Germany

Emma Hauck, "Briefe an den Ehemann," 1909. "No one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to live well, unless one at the same time desires to be, to act, and to live, that is, to actually exist." Spinoza, Ethics IV, P21. Once, at 15, I was broken up with immediately before a show I was scheduled...

31/07/2023

Officially announcing Storming Bedlam by yours truly! Out in March 2024 with Common Notions. You can check it out and preorder now! https://www.commonnotions.org/storming-bedlam

"The contemporary world is oversaturated with new psychiatric programs, methods, and reforms promising to address any number of "crises" in mental health care. When they fail, alternatives to the alternatives simply pile up and seem to lead nowhere. In Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt, Sasha Warren suggests that the intense contradictions that animate psychiatric care can only be conceptualized by situating its technical composition in its actual social, political, and economic conditions.

In a radical rereading of the history, theory, and practice of psychiatry, Storming Bedlam emphasizes the utopian origins of the psychiatric revolution and its roots in the political and economic revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. Warren traces a double movement in the global development of mental health services from its origins through the 20th century: a radical current pushing totalizing and idealistic visions of care to their practical limits and a reactionary one content with managing or eliminating chronically idle surplus populations. In an original and compelling account of radical experimentation in psychiatry, moral treatment is read in the light of the utopian socialist movement; the theory of communication in the French Institutional Psychotherapy of Félix Guattari is put into conversation with the Brazilian art therapy of Nise da Silveira; the Mexican anti-psychiatry movement’s reflections on violence are thought together with theories of violence developed in Argentinian psychoanalysis and Frantz Fanon’s anticolonial therapeutic practice; while the social form of the Italian Democratic Psychiatry and Brazilian anti-institutional movements are contrasted with the anti-psychiatry factions of the 1960s–70s North American counterculture.

Chronicling and comparing these movements, Storming Bedlam argues that long standing divisions between social and biological approaches or between psychiatry and anti-psychiatry as discrete positions are tenuous and circular. Instead of avoiding these binaries, Warren travels through them, using their own internal logics to expose their hidden presuppositions in search of an approach to mental health care grounded in common struggles against conditions of scarcity, poverty, isolation, and exploitation."

Storming Bedlam reimagines mental health care and its radical possibilities in the context of its global development under capitalism— by Sasha Warren

18/07/2023

The next film in the Legacies of Deinstitutionalization series with is next Thursday, July 27! We will be viewing part 1 of Imagens do inconsciente, Images of the Unconscious, by Brazilian director Leon Hirszman.

If last time we looked at big, broad social transformations, with this one we move into the interior with a quiet study of the artist Fernando Diniz at a psychiatric hospital in Rio (pictured with his art in slides 2-5). The film tells of his life and how he used artistic creation as a means of expression and connecting with the world. The film also tells the story of the art therapy practice of the revolutionary psychiatrist Nise da Silveira (image 6), a pioneering art therapist, psychoanalytic thinker and communist imprisoned by the Vargas dictatorship some years before this film. Silveira’s art practice has been a massive inspiration on the character of Brazilian deinstitutionalization up until today. The film also features a lovely original jazz score.

Join us at 830 pm at 3028 Minnehaha Ave s, in the open lot next to Moon Palace for a little intro and to get a handout. Film is at 9 pm and is roughly 80 min long.

There is a solid amount of seating available, but bring a blanket or chair if you want. There is no bathroom directly on site but there are porta potties in the area and businesses open during the event with bathrooms on the block.

11/07/2023

I've posted a new article on Marx's few writings on madness and psychiatry. It's not just interesting to see what he thought about asylums in the 1850s and how they compare with his contemporaries, but I believe his texts still serve as a useful intervention into the debates around social provisions for the mad.

We are currently living through a small renaissance of applications of Karl Marx’s work to the history and future development of mental health fields. But, as far as I know, no mention has been made of the fact that Marx himself wrote an article about English asylum psychiatry for the New York Tri...

02/07/2023

What a great turnout and evening for Trieste racconta Basaglia! A few people approached me in awe saying they had no idea any of this happened. It’s one thing to just tell people about it, it’s another to see such events arranged and presented so powerfully as in Erika Rossi’s film. Thanks so much to everyone that came.

There will be more coming in the future!

19/06/2023

On July 1 in Minneapolis, I will be screening Trieste racconta Basaglia by Erika Rossi as part of a series called "Legacies of Deinstitutionalization", which will explore global movements to close down psychiatric hospitals and the outcomes of those processes.

The description of Trieste racconta Basaglia reads:

'a documentary by Erika Rossi
52', HD, super 8 mm.

Between 1971 and 1978, Trieste was the set for an unprecedented scientific and cultural revolution. The charismatic leader of this revolution was a Venetian psychiatrist, Franco Basaglia.
Around him was a city that watched what was happening, incredulously, anxiously, swept forward by the enthusiasm of a group of recently qualified doctors, who transformed the city into an open-air laboratory, doing away with the mental hospital, guided by Basaglia's conviction that the thing was to "tackle life, because health and illness are life, and if a person lived life without living health and sickness, than that person is always totally within the grips of death".'

07/04/2023

The next in the pre-psychiatric madness series on Gheel, the "free colony of the mad"

This is a part of a series on the treatment of madness before psychiatry. You can read my introduction here. I have added an ongoing list of the posts to that page. This series will be sub-divided into parts dedicated to a specific place, model, or theme. This post is the first on family-boarding sy...

22/03/2023

https://www.unsoundmind.org/post/the-trans-body-as-liberty-s-limit-in-szasz-critique-of-psychiatry

A new post on the position of transphobia in Thomas Szasz' critique of psychiatry.

Thomas Szasz is easily among the most famous and infamous critics of psychiatry. His thesis that “mental illness is a myth” used to describe what are in truth “problems of living” is a standard anti-psychiatric position (Myth, 262). In its simplicity, it both consolidated a number of preexis...

17/03/2023

I was invited back on to the lovely Unseen Book Club podcast to talk about the proto-communist Georg Büchner (https://unseenbookclub.buzzsprout.com/) and I had a great time! Such a good time I couldn't get enough of Büchner and wrote up a little post about the theme of the "madness of history" in his work: https://www.unsoundmind.org/post/madness-between-revolution-and-failure-georg-b%C3%BCchner-and-the-vorm%C3%A4rz-generation

This was written after I talked with Dan and Max about Büchner's play Dantons Tod on The Unseen Book Club podcast found here. We had a great time. Go listen! The following is intended to be readable on its own. Georg Büchner completed his entire literary output in less than three years (1834–183...

09/03/2023

The second post of my “before psychiatry” series is up. This one is a critical appraisal of Foucault’s presentation of madness in the Renaissance and the legacy of his take. This will be the last of the methodological introductions before I jump into case examples. First up after this is the Geel colony for the mad in Belgium! Heads up: It will take longer than this did.

This is a part of a series on the treatment of madness before psychiatry. You can read my introduction here. As I stated there, Foucault’s influence on this question is so massive, I felt obliged to make some remarks about his work before embarking on the case studies. The next post will be one of...

06/03/2023

You can read a Spanish translation of the Mental Patients Liberation Front article on mental health workers i transcribed plus my editorial note here!

Como buena rata de biblioteca paso horas, días y semanas buceando entre los textos que encuentro en páginas de internet. Hace unos días me topé con este brevísimo texto de el Frente de Liberación de pacientes mentales que nos lleva más allá, a pensar en posibles sinergias con los trabajadore...

28/02/2023

New post on my blog. Starting a new series on various forms of “pre-psychiatric” care or forms of integration of madness. https://www.unsoundmind.org/post/approaching-the-question-what-was-madness-before-psychiatry

This first post, called ‘Approaching the question “what was madness before psychiatry?”’ is mostly laying out definitions and a method of approach. I’ll have one more article on the ambivalent legacy of Foucault’s History of Madness before I jump into examples (it’s simply too influential to leave unaddressed). I intend for this series to be long term and appear in short snippets and then one day I’ll write a wrap up of what I learned, probably.

This text will be the first in a new series on pre-psychiatric care for the mad, or more precisely (since these didn’t always appear as a system of care) on the different defined social meanings and roles created for the mad. In the simplest terms, I am looking to answer the question “how were t...

20/02/2023

Check out some of the fruits of this incredible research project from our friends to the south!

¿Es posible generar conocimiento crítico en salud mental bajo los principios de la autogestión? 🤓 Este 2023 celebramos 6 años de nuestro laboratorio de investigación militante y compartimos todas las publicaciones que hemos desarrollado desde/con el movimiento loco en nuestro país ¡La locura no se detiene! 🧡

Aproximaciones al “movimiento loco” en Chile: participación política, producción de conocimiento y formación crítica en salud mental
https://www.revistamovimientos.mx/ojs/index.php/movimientos/article/view/293

Enloqueciendo la academia: Estudios Locos, metodologías críticas e investigación militante en salud mental
https://www.relmecs.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/article/view/relmecse097

Estrategias de inclusión laboral de la comunidad de trabajo "Locooperativa: laboratorio de ciudadanía social en salud mental
https://www.scielo.br/j/psoc/a/VC7BrLrPtDFH8X9jTHjSNnP/?lang=es #

Orgullo Loco en Chile: políticas de identidad, luchas simbólicas y acción colectiva en salud mental
https://revistadeantropologia.uchile.cl/index.php/RCA/article/view/64436?fbclid=IwAR0R9tHBWNZudX4tBYkvWt4cCHmj1haD3xmdrYTmRN9frD_OPWrOjQiQalI

De la subordinación asalariada a la caridad neoliberal: análisis crítico de la ley de inclusión laboral de personas con discapacidad en Chile
https://cuhso.uct.cl/index.php/cuhso/article/view/2415

“Cooperativismo loco”: trabajo, comunidad e inclusión laboral en salud mental
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CRLA/article/view/76228

Gasto público en prestaciones hospitalarias y extrahospitalarias en el modelo de salud mental comunitaria en Chile
https://www.scielo.br/j/sausoc/a/ZfN4PhsvkjqDLffqZbTLX7g/?lang=es

Electroshock o Terapia Electroconvulsiva (TEC) en Chile: diagnóstico crítico, activismo social y enfoque de derechos
https://www.quadernsdepsicologia.cat/article/view/v22-n2-cea-castillo

De la locura feminista al "feminismo loco": Hacia una transformación de las políticas de género en la salud mental contemporánea
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/INFE/article/view/66502

“Locos por nuestros derechos”: Comunidad, salud mental y ciudadanía en el Chile contemporáneo
https://www.quadernsdepsicologia.cat/article/view/v21-n2-Cea

Locura y neoliberalismo. El lugar de la antipsiquiatría en la salud mental contemporánea
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/POSO/article/view/57277

Subjetividad y autonomía: significados y narrativas sobre la discontinuación de fármacos psiquiátricos
http://revistas.unla.edu.ar/saludcolectiva/article/view/1861

Estado neoliberal y gasto público en psicofármacos en el Chile contemporáneo
https://revista.psico.edu.uy/index.php/revpsicologia/article/view/507

Ilustración: Josh MacPhee

13/12/2022

We all at ISPS-US were saddened and shocked to learn of the recent passing of Celia Brown, a "mother" of the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement.

We were honored to have Celia as a keynote speaker at this year's ISPS-US annual conference and to have had the opportunity to learn from her great wisdom. We repost her keynote address "Peer Support Facilitates Change" in honor of her legacy: https://youtu.be/N0z8aWg70Jw

We send our deepest condolences to those and knew and loved her and add our voice to the many who say thank you Celia for all you did for the movement.

01/12/2022

https://www.unsoundmind.org/post/mental-health-workers-from-the-mental-patients-liberation-front

I've transcribed an article from the Fall 1977 edition of "Our Journal" from the Mental Patients' Liberation Front on the possibility of solidarity between patients and hospital workers in light of the recent strikes in health care and mental health care here and in California, Hawaii, and elsewhere. [feel free to skip my rather long editorial if you just wanna read the article]

Editorial note: The following is a transcription of an article published in the Mental Patients' Liberation Front's first issue of Our Journal from Fall, 1977. As far as I know, this is unavailable anywhere online at the moment. I was able to track down a physical copy on an archival research trip t...

23/11/2022

Powerful posthumously published text on mental health by Leijia Hanrahan. So many questions and provocations to ponder

“ I can only report what I’ve lived: that the web of mental health diagnosis is at least as absurd as everyone says it is, if not more so; that these diagnoses are endlessly capitalized upon by vultures of every variety; that the narrow field into which standard-issue psychiatry attempts to cram experiences of the mind is an ahistorical joke; yet, nonetheless, that certain digressions from functionality and happiness are likely not just the world being crazy (as it is) and the industry trying to profit (as it does) — that these experiences can be truly terrible and incongruous with any attempt to be alive, and that any resolution, regardless of whose dirty hands it may play into, carries the value of its outcome. This is a strange sort of middling position, but navigating mental health as a patient or even simply as a subject necessarily implies a lot of balancing, so it’s an appropriate theme.“ https://illwill.com/communism-wont-save-us-from-ourselves

19/10/2022

It's been a while, so I posted a short little update on what I've been up to this year and what's to come for this project.

It's been a while since I've posted or added anything to the site and I've picked up a few new readers, so I figured Of Unsound Mind was due for a short update and a reintroduction. What is this site all about? Of Unsound Mind is a translation of the legal category "non compos mentis" used to identi...

18/09/2022

https://asylummagazine.org/2022/09/asylum-magazine-volume-29-no-3-autumn-2022/

"Two articles welcome back, and reflect on, Mad Pride and its evolution over the past thirty years. In other pieces, Robert Chapman draws on lessons from the neurodiversity movement to develop a Marxist analysis of neurodiversity; and Nelsy Cristancho explains how she’s managing heal herself from the madness of socio-capitalism. The Deaths by Welfare project is documenting the devasting impact of welfare reforms on the lives of people, especially disabled people and people of colour. – China Mills explains how."

Our Autumn issue opens with our feature article by Mud, also our cover artist, who makes a powerful case for changing the way health professionals treat suicidal people. Two articles welcome back, and reflect on, Mad Pride and its evolution over the past thirty years. In other pieces, Robert Chapman...

06/07/2022

Caroline Mazel-Carlton joins host Krys Boyd to talk about her personal experience with hearing voices, surviving a su***de attempt, and how she works now to fight for change in how mental illness is viewed.

29/06/2022

The film Lyn Corelle and I made, A Co**se Among Co**ses, is now freely available to view.

"A Co**se Among Co**ses is a 35 min essay by Sasha Warren and Lyn Corelle on the decaying graveyards of insane asylums and institutions across the Midwest. The film was completed in September 2021. We've hosted a number of screenings with community groups across the country. We're now excited to offer it online, but hope it can continue stimulating irl conversations among friends, collaborators, lovers, etc. Please reach out if you're interested in organizing an in-person screening, via on Twitter or IG.

CW: discussion of genocide, institutional violence, and self-harm.

Annotated shot-list and transcript: https://www.unsoundmind.org/post/corpse"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-WrBZ2t2HY

A Co**se Among Co**ses is a 35 min essay by Sasha Warren and Lyn Corelle on the decaying graveyards of insane asylums and institutions across the Midwest. Th...

23/06/2022

'I’ve been doing listening sessions with the CAMPHRO’s LEAD program, our Lived Experience Advocacy and Diversity program for two years now, going to counties all over California. Last count I think it was 44 listening sessions. We’re doing small groups with people, asking them, “What is missing? If you had a magic wand, what would you change?”

None of them said “I want more inpatient stays.” No one said, “I think I need more medication.” No one said, “I think somebody should, you know, lock me in a room and tell me what to do.” It was more like, I need people to talk to, I need support in my community and in my neighborhood, I need housing, I need clothes to go apply for jobs, I need help filling out this paperwork for Social Security, I need someone to speak in my language that understands my culture.'

https://madnessnetworknews.com/2022/06/13/care-not-court-an-interview-with-camhpro/

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing an Orwellian solution to homelessness and the “mental health” crisis. CARE Court will vastly increase forced treatment throughout the state, and th…

13/05/2022

The New York Times yesterday published a book review of "The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches" by Daniel Bergner. In it, the reviewer Christine Kenneally presents Bergner's perspective that an overreliance on the biomedical approach to psychosis and other mental health conditions can be problematic.

"Fortunately, Bergner reports, alternatives to biological psychiatry are being developed all over the world. Caroline, the woman whose story Bergner tells, now works in one such program, providing peer support to others. She has learned to listen to her own voices, too. When Bergner sat down with her for the first time, she said, “I’ve told them that you’re not here to hurt them.” In programs like Caroline’s, medication may be included, but the spirit of treatment is “person-centered.” The phrase doesn’t do justice to the extraordinary, intimate and wise interactions that Bergner describes in these places. Their goal is to listen to all voices, external and internal, with “ceaseless empathy,” with “deep and true interest.”"

Read the full article here: https://nyti.ms/3FCtf5n

02/05/2022

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1283882/10445312-italian-psychiatrist-franco-basaglia-his-life-his-impact-his-legacy-a-conversation-with-professor-john-foot

This is currently my favorite mental health podcast. Check out this episode on Basaglia with John Foot. He's translating The Negated Institution into English!

John Foot is a professor of Modern Italian History at the University of Bristol in the U.K. He is an expert on the life of Dr. Franco Basaglia, the visionary psychiatrist whose lasting impact on the Italian mental health system continues to insp...