Kate Millett:
We must conclude that psychiatry, by refusing to relinquish force, violence and coercion has indeed committed crimes against humanity and continues to do so, in general through maintaining its legalized category of mental patient as sub-human. It has deliberately injured human dignity and denied our humanity.
The Verdict 
          of the 
Foucault Tribunal

On the 1st and 2nd of May 1998 the" Free University Berlin" together with the 
"Irren-Offensive" (Lunatics Offensive) Association organized in Berlin 
an international Tribunal 
on the state of Psychiatry 
in the "Volksbühne" theatre.
The Tribunal was named after 
Michel Foucault, 
the French philosopher and author of "Madness and Civilization: 
A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason".
The defence and the accusation
were academics and professionals, the jury  was a box of nuts...

 The first Day 

Kate Millett:
this is a statement of charges.
We,  the Jury,  would like to give notice that we do not see this occasion as a forum or debate on the state (lage) of psychiatrry but instead as a Tribunal whereat psychiatry is brought to justice for crimes against humanity.  Crimes we have ourselves witnessed and even been subjected to.  We frame the charges upon the following grounds.

This is the fiftieth anniversary  of the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights, the most basic of which is freedom from fear, including fear of arbitrary incarceration, torture and arbitrary killing.  We charge psychiatry based upon coercion and forced treatment with arbitrary  incarceration and various tortures including electroshock, lobotomy or psychosurgery, the bondage of four point restraint, forced drugging, the divestment of human dignity and status through labeling and stigma and frequent lifetime incapacity and disability.
Coercive psychiatry habitually and continuously violates civil human and natural rights through its denial of due process in depriving persons of liberty of person through arrest and imprisonment and further violating bodily integrity through forced injection, restraint, and electrical tortures, its victims even denied access to the records of their experience. Or their right to chose which kind of treatment or help they prefer 

Kate Millett
Author, "Sexual Politics"
USA

Hans Peter Wittig
Member, Irren-Offensive Marburg
Germany

Eleonore Ernst
Member Irren-Offensive Berlin
Germany

Sarah Heselhaus
Member, Irren-Offensive Berlin
Germany

Hagai Aviel
Chairperson, Israeli Association 
Against Psyciatric Assault
Israel

Alexander Schulte
Board member, Bundesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener
Germany 

Fritz J. Rudert
Member, Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener 
Berlin-Brandenburg
Germany

Bהrbel Garz
Member, Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener 
Berlin-Brandenburg
Germany

Don Weitz
Delegate of Support Coalition International
Canada

Renי Talbot
Member, Irren-Offensive Berlin
Germany

 Erika Radecki
Board Member, Landesverband Psychiatrie Erfahrener 
Berlin-Brandenburg
Germany

ACCUSATION
Prof. Wolf-Dieter Narr
Political science, Freie University Berlin

Prof. Narr:

The following dissidents, i.e. the followig differences - also with the reform psychiatrists have to be noted:
The rock, on which all consensus is categorically smashed, has the name "coercion". Even the reform psychiatrists tend to play down coercion. They want less coercion. They want - as it is called in this theory - and I quote: "that coercion becomes ever less necessary". But they work in the system of coercion. They accept it with (or without) a bit of thoughtful reservation, so what is the use of this thoughtful reservation, other than their own rationality? They work just like all other psychiatrists - I might say - here and now on the basis of the conditions of coercion which prevail under the free and democratic laws in the Federal Republic of Germany. They make these conditions despite all the modernity and reform, yes even within all this modernity and reform - the peculiarity, the - so to speak - not so fragile foundation of psychiatry as it has developed professionally over the last several hundred years by the forerunners, not to mention since the 17th, 18th century.
 
This idea of coercion as normality has and still does determine the modernity as a process of society, according to - in many viewpoints overrated - Norbert Elias. As a coercion by others in state monopole of power, which forces us to obey laws to do this and that, which decide which drugs should be considered as such and which can be banalised so that one can drink oneself silly and then vomit five times and this is still O.K. In any case, this development of coercion which was firstly coercion by others (namely by the development of the state monopoly of power which developed gradually with "bleeding limbs" in the 14th, 15th and 16th century in Europe) and is a so-called self-coercion or self-discipline. It is naturally sometimes a pleasant place because one ostensibly has - so to speak - a form of protection thereby. 

ACCUSATION
Dr. Ron Leifer M.D.
Psychiatrist 
USA

Leifer first speech:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. To come to Berlin to speak against psychiatric tyrany is a great pleasure for me and very moving for me.
Psychiatry is not a science. The medical model is not scientific. One cannot find a model. A model is a metaphor. The medical model is a metaphor. Namely it is the use of the language of physical illness to describe thoughts, feelings and behaviour and there is a purpose in it. It is an ideology rather than a concept or theory in the sense that ideologies promote interests and the ideology which is promoted by the medical model is the ideology of social control, so that from my point of view, the only function of the medical model, the only function of medical diagnosis and the only function of medical psychiatry, which means coercive psychiatry, is social control. So I accuse psychiatry of not being a science, but being an ideology, which in co-operation with the state, serves the function of covert social control.

In psychiatry we have a phenomena which Thomas Szasz has pointed out to me last week - and I hope I say the word correctly - called "Gleichschaltung". "Gleichschaltung" is a coercive consolidation of thought, a homogenization of ideas in order to avoid and repress dissenting opinion, so that everybody thinks alike. This is what's happened in psychiatry; they all think "medical model", they all think people have mental illnesses, they all think that mental illnesses are caused. 

If mental illnesses are caused, then "mind" does not make any sense. So This is a war between two ideologies, as one might say: the ideology of the medical model through which we are all automatons, whose thoughts, feelings and actions are caused by errant biochemicals or bad genes or traumatic events in childhood or uncontrollable urges but caused. And if an action is caused, it loses its moral quality and its moral content and in that sense, it is dehumanizing since we are fundamentally moral animals. 

So I accuse psychiatry of fostering this ideology and the consequence of this ideology is: No. 1 Psychiatry is not a science, because it represses and exterminates its critics. It is not a science, because the essence of science is criticism. The essence of science is the non-hypothesis. The hypothesis which is presented for criticism and for falsification. Psychiatry does not do this and in my opinion loses its status as a science. So I accuse psychiatry of being ideology, not science. And ideology in the service of social control.

And I gather to say that those of you here who may be opposed to coercive psychiatry, have friends or relatives who are in favor of it, who have used it or who have commtted their sons or daughters or parents to mental hospitals because they don't what else to do, and I am not minimizing the problem of what else to do and it needs to be addressed but we also have to understand that the political dynamism behind coercive psychiatry is a mandate from people. You see, we cannot ... There are two things that human beings both want and cannot tolerate: tyranny and freedom. We want greater social control that is provided by government of law and we also want freedom. On the other hand, we are afraid of our freedom, because freedom means disorder, freedom means novelty, freedom means deviation from conventions and if we can't tolerate those then we want a greater degree of social order that is possible.

Through coercive psychiatry we are able to maintain the illusion of living in a state ruled by law, because the exception to that is disguised as medical treatment through the medical model as ideology.
I accuse medical psychiatry of abuse, coercion, force and fraud. The evidence for this is in the voice of those who have experienced it.
Involantary confinement in a mental hospital is abuse. Not that it is sometimes abused. Sometimes it is outrageous. What happens to people who are dragged out of their homes by secret police - effectiveliy, taken to a mental hospital against their will - a place called a mental hospital, where they are confined in leather straps, drugged against their will and brainwashed. And if they don't believe they are mentally ill, this counts as a symptom which validates their illness. So you find on some medical charts that one of the reasons this person is called "schizophrenic" is because they have no insight into their illness. So if you deny the illness, it is considered as evidence against you, evidence that you have the illness and one is then placed into a total institution where one loses autonomy over one's movements, over one's speech, over one's thoughts and over one's behaviour. 

Very often I have been asked over the years to help get people out of mental hospitals. I say: "It's very easy, if the person has enough self-control. Keep your mouth shut, do what they tell you, act happy and in two weeks you'll be out." And - suprisingly enough - many people, when they hear this, they understand, because for the first time they are hearing: "You are not in a hospital, you are in a prison! You are in an involuntary situation!" These people will hold you there as long as you speak your mind and it's not the kind of thought they understand or appreciate. Or express your feelings and they are threatened by them, Or act in your behavior which violates their sense of rules of deportment they will keep you in the hospital as mentally ill until they can brainwash you and transform you with drugs into a cheerfull robot, who can then be viewed as non-harmful although the effect of these drugs is the suppression of thought. The effect of the most powerful psychiatric drugs, which are extremely dangerous, cause "tardive diskenesia". In my early training and now I see people who are on these drugs and these drugs do make people more conformist - "Conformozine" I call these drugs, "Obediancezine". They call them by other names: "Stelazine" and "Compazine" but they are "Compliant-zines". And people do become robotized but they can't think. They can't remember. Their brains are damaged and their minds are damaged but they are no longer making any trouble and so they are considered by psychiatrists to be under control.

I consider forced drugging an abuse. No-one should ever be forced to take a drug against their will. Yet this is common practice in psychiatry and it is justified and rationalized as for the help and benefit of the person who is taking it. "Arbeit macht frei". Psychiatric drugs "macht frei". It is the same kind of thinking. And we all believe it, because we are told it by experts and the propaganda machine - in our country: the government - the government puts out this propaganda: that there is such a thing as "schizophrenia" and other mental illnesses, which are cured or relieved by drugs: "Arbeit macht frei", psychiatric drugs "macht frei"! This is a "Gleichschaltung". 

I accuse psychiatry of employing the medical model to create an identity for themselves. This is something that was very clear during the 60's. During the 60's Szasz, Ernest Becker and myself were really interested in science but we were also very interested in the history of ideas, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology and there were increasing numbers of non-medical therapists coming into practice and psychiatrists felt threatened. They had to re-establish their medical identity. And so what they did to re-establish their medical identity is: they took the reductionist path, they took the path of biological psychiatry that all these things: anxiety, depression, anger, all human evils are the result of some kind of errant brain function or errant brain anatomy or errant physiology or biochemical imbalances and one of the functions of this ideology is to make psychiatrists doctors. Because if psychiatrists are going to be doctors, the patients have to be sick. If the patients are not sick, the psychiatrists are not doctors and so psychiatrists have - and some of them even know it and talk about it - create their own medical identity for their prestige, for their egos, for their financial benefit over the bodies of people who they call "mentally ill".  Erving Gufman said: "Psychiatrists view the people who are the objects of their actions as the kind of objects upon whom their actions are appropriate".  Psychiatrists define people as the kind of objects upon whom psychiatric activities are appropriate:

The mind does not make sense if these behaviors, thoughts and feelings, which are labeled as "mentally ill" are caused by biochemical or genetic factors. Then the thoughts are just like hiccups or coughs. They are just extrusions which have no meaning.

I accuse psychiatry of making false and fraudulent claims. For example, that depression is caused by a bio-chemical imbalance. This is false! And yet, everybody seems to think it is true. In the United States people come to me all the time and say: "I have a bio-chemical imbalance". 
I say: "How do you know? Did you have a test?" No, because there are no tests. "Did you go to a laboratory and have your blood drawn?" No, because there are no tests. "Well how do you know you have a bio-chemical imbalance?" "Well my mother's aunt is taking Prozac and she says she has a bio-chemical imbalance and I feel depressed like her." Or: "I read it in the New York Times." Or: "I heard it on the radio." Ladies and gentlemen, depression is the only disease known to man which is spread by word of mouth. 
Because, even from the bio-chemical point of view, Prozac, for example - I don't know if you use Prozac in this country but it must be something like Prozac or other anti-depressants - they are supposed to increase the level of Seratonin in the brain because they are selective Seratonin re-uptake inhibitors i.e. they inhibit the uptake of Seratonin in the synaptic spaces where nerve transmissions occur and by increasing ...  Depression is considered to be due to too low a level of seratonin because these S.S.R.I. anti-depressants increase the level of Seratonin. This is the evidence upon which the psychiatric claim that depression is a disease is based. However because they have no critics, nobody ever hears that the Seratonin goes up immediately but the depression isn't relieved for six weeks.

Depression is a spiritual malaise which occurs when we lose hope. Now psychiatrists consider hopelessness to be one of the main symptoms of depression. Now is the hopelessness due to decreased levels of Seratonin or are the decreased levels of Seratonin due to the hopelessness? They will not address this question which is proof that they are not a science, proof that they function ideologically and the function of that ideology is social control, covert social control in alliance with the state because there is a public mandate for a greater degree of social control that is provided by rule of law.

I accuse psychiatry of collusion with drug companies to bolster its identity. Every psychiatric journal is financed by drug companies All of these conferences are financed by drug companies. If you were to go to the A.P.A. convention in Toronto in a couple of weeks, you'll find drug companies advertising - every one of them, handing out very expensive gifts to psychiatrists.
But try and get Psychiatric survivors or critics into psychiatric conventions and you can't do it. They'll call the police to keep us out. But the drug companies, they can come in. A friend of mine I talked to last week he said he's getting worried, what are you getting worried about? He said, well, the drug companies are buying all our lunches.  

This alliance between psychiatry, drug companies and the state - what I call the "state/science alliance" - the function of this "state/science alliance" is social control and the only way this social control can be affected is by dehumanizing people by saying that their thoughts, feelings and behaviors are caused rather than chosen. By denying that mind makes sense.

If behavior is caused, then the individual who is exhibiting that behavior is not responsible for it, because responsibility means choice. And the language of choice is very different from the language of bio-chemical imbalances. You can have it one way or you can have it the other way or you can have it both ways but you can't logically ascribe as a cause of thought, feelings or behavior, you can't ascribe as a cause of bio-chemical or a physical act. That's a logical mistake and now we don't have time to go into the logic of this. It's something that should be debated, namely you cannot have as a logically valid explanation of a thought, feeling or an action a bio-chemical or genetic factor. Bio-chemical or genetic factors means cause and effect that the thought, feeling or behavior is an effect but if we are going to be considered responsible for our thoughts, feelings and  behavior. If we opposed to coercive psychiatry then we have to take responsiblity for ourselves. This is the only alternative because unless we take responsiblity for ourselves, unless the concept of personal responsiblity is expanded and promoted and taught in a humane way, so that children from a very early age understand the meaning of personal responsiblity and unless we as adults are willing to take personal responsibility, people will then accuse us of having acted out of some bodily factor, some genetic factor, some bio-chemical factor or some past trauma which causes our behavior, which - in our country has been called the "abuse excuse", that is people who attempt to be excused from crimes on the basis that they are mentally ill. That's the other side of the coin of the medical model. On the one hand, the medical model serves as a justification for depriving people of their freedom, on the other hand, the medical model serves as a justification for exculpating certain people whose behaviors are charged as criminal but they present a defense of insanity. So the medical coercion and the insanity defense are opposites sides of the same coin: on the one hand to coerced people, on the other hand to excuse people. And both of them undermine the concept of personal responsiblity which is essential to any civilisation. 

Take my advice, never go to medical psychiatrist. He or she will find something wrong with you because we all have something wrong with us and that will be in your permanent records and it can be used against you if your employer or your insurance company or the legal system can get hold of these documents and use them against you, if they want to. These are all public records and now in the computer age they are easily accessible.

THE VERDICT:
Furthermore, psychiatry cannot pretend to the 
art of healing, having violated the Hippocratic Oath through a conscious use of harmful drugs, 
which caused in particular the world wide epidemic of tardive dyskinesia, as well as other interventions which we recognize as tortures: 
involuntary  confinement, forced drugging, 
four point restraints, electroshock, all forms of psychosurgery and outpatient commitment.

DEFENCE
Prof. Peter Kruckenberg M.D.
Head of the Psychiatric Clinic Bremen 
Germany

Prof. Kruckenberg first speech:

The situation of the defence is somewhat unusual but this is also true for the situation of psychiatry as a whole. Here in this tribunal, which we attend with great pleasure, we also see this as a possibility for an opening of psychiatry and as a possibility for a discussion. Here in this tribunal the constellation that we have is a staging, a trial. We are having a trial and this is somewhat extraordinary, in that the organizers are the prosecutors, the initiators provide the experts. They are at the same time the mediators, the presenters, they make up the jury and you will see that the jury holds an opinion of its own.

So maybe a statement right at the beginning:
Psychiatry is facing a difficult task, despite this sometimes unavoidably necessary use of force. I don’t want to make an excuse here. By the way, Mr. Narr has also proceeded along our lines earlier. Despite the unavoidable use of force, psychiatry has to offer a human and professional help that will eventually lead to a greater degree of self-determination, of satisfaction and the possiblity of communication. That is the task. 

And now to my second point which is abuse of power and necessary coercion. The experience of the abuse of power often relates to the emergence of a psychic illness. And this is probably far more often the case than we think today. Probably it is the case that people who have been subjected to an abuse of force in their early stages of development without the necessary protection, without understanding and without being promoted by their environment tend to be in a situation where they bear uncompleted biographies within themselves and where there is only a limited possiblity to cope this situation or where development can only take place with difficulty and where vulnerablitly for future similar situations remains. Psychiatry which exercises and additional abuse of power is not only inhumane but it turns into a second illness of their patients. And this is a constant danger with any kind of psychiatry. Because psychiatry has power. It has the power of definition. And this is not only the case in certain threshhold situations, where coercion can be exercised. Rather it is the case that power begins much earlier. It has the power of definition and this has already been touched upon. 

And of course psychiatry has an additional power. It is given to only a few state-run institutions. It is true that there is a certain degree of control but there is the possibility to exercise immediate control or force or pressure in certain situations. All this means that in psychiatry there is a great difference of power between the professionals and the patients and this is something which is very difficult to cope with in a positive way, also from the outside. But this does not mean that this can be absolutely generalized. There are a lot of people who work in society and deal with this power in a very sensitive and very supportive way. A call for a kind of psychiatry without any coercion at all or any pressure would be just as humane as the abuse of power in psychiatry. 

And this is why protection and help against even current expressions of the will of the affected are a necessary part of the therapy. In cases where a serious disturbance of self-determination brings about  a considerable danger. 

Kate Millett:

Sir, Herr Professor! A question: Do we understand you when you say that you have no intention of restraining from force and coercion? You regard that as necessary?

Kruckenberg:

You understand me correctly.

Kate Millett: 

Uha! And you give as an example the wonderful effects of preventing a suicide.

Kruckenberg:

That is one example, yes.

Kate Millett:

I once when I was 18 was a psychiatric aide. I've been a psychiatric inmate too and a prisoner. But at this point I was an aide, 18 years old and we had a woman confined in a small room that we looked into with a "Judas-eye", a little round window. She had been there for 18 years. They were preventing her suicide. Do you understand that the moment a person is discharged, they are free to commit suicide and really we do at least own our own lives.

Kruckenberg:

With regard to the first point, I would answer you that this is exactly the same psychiatry, which isn't helpful, rather even a worse kind of second illness. 
With regard to the second point, I would like to say that in this case you really have to take a closer look whether you can release this patient or what other solutions can be found. 

Kate Millett: 

But if the patient were in your care voluntarily, you do have the responsibility perhaps to prevent suicide, as friends would. However, you see, there is no way to prevent a person from committing suicide unless involuntarily because eventually they will get out and if this, their sadness or sense of hopelessness, which is often exacerbated by psychiatry and psychiatric stigma - I mean psychiatry is responsible for millions of suicides - but if it is so great, that it will transcend your power to prevent it, then they will in fact have the freedom to take their own life. So the whole reason for justifying coercion by preventing suicide, is silly and illogical. You do not make sense!

DEFENCE
Klaus Nouvertnי
Psychologist
France

Klaus Nouvertnט first speech

So, at first, some information about me: my name is Klaus Nouvertnי, I am a psychologist and a psychotherapist so I tend to belong to what is called “good psychiatry”. For me, by the way, it is a very comical role to play as I sit here because normally I am the prosecutor of the other kind of psychiatry but I will join in the game. I have a psychiatric identity and in order to give you a reason to criticize me right away, I think that there are situations where force has to be exercised and I was also involved in such situations and I stand by this.
But I also have another biography: the psychiatric one. Later on I worked a I director of a large psychiatric aid system of the community in which we dealt with a lot of identity problems that could easily seduce you here. I know that I did a lot of things that I used to do then with a bad conscience and I recall the saying - which is also one of mine – just as I was completely consternated by what generations of psychiatrists did before me. I too have always worked in the belief that in 20 years time, people will defend what I do and this has to do with a bad conscience. 

Kate Millett:

You said that when you first went into the hospitals, you observed many abuses. (Can you understand what I'm saying? Good!) I wondered, what did you do when you observed abuses and what abuses did you observe?

Klaus Nouvertnי

This is a direct question. I saw these abuses not only then but still see them today as well. So I do not belong to those who believe that the psychiatry reform has reached the point - or, as has just been said: "the reform project" - has reached the point that it should have. I have personally made the decision that I cannot take the responsibility for clinic work and at that time I left the clinic together with a large number of patients. However up until the present day I have kept a deep respect for those people ...

Kate Millett:

Excuse me, but could you just explain what it is you observed?

Klaus Nouvertnי

Basic behaviour of disrespect for human beings, disrespect of the individuality of people, conditions that the psychiatry enquiry at the time that I started in psychiatry, called "unworthy conditions for human beings". I saw these conditions and they existed not only on a basic level but also in the general condition of the premises.

Kate Millett:

Could often... the term "human rights abuse" is used when in fact a more specific term like "torture" for example ... you know, like, there are many human rights abuses: bad cooking is probably one of them. But could you be specific about cases of abuse that you observed?

Klaus Nouvertnי

As a frenchman I would certainly say that bad cooking indeed should be included as a human rights abuse but the psychiatry

[Kate Millett: "Be specific!"]

 that I saw at that time really did punish unwanted behaviour not with torture but by putting them under pressure or with medicine. Perhaps I could describe one situation to you. I think that one doesn't find this still today but at the time it was my first job. I needed the money and was employed as a night-watch in psychiatry. My job consisted of sitting on a high podium like the one we have here and to write down how often the people rolled over in bed at night. I had to write this on a list and then the next day each one was given medication on an individual basis. This was progress because until then on this ward medicine was administered on a collective basis. This meant that when the ward was restless, everybody received more medicine. These are conditions which I observed at the time. I think we don't find them any longer today, rather I think - when I may say so - that the violation of human rights today are much subtler and much subtler than the taking of evidence brings us to believe. But we will come back to this point later. I think that it is still the case today.

Kate Millett:

Thank you very much for your candor. And the other question I had was: What did you do when you saw these things? Did you make a protest? Did you ... hmmm...   I congratulate the woman who was a nurse because she quit working in a locked place, where they imprisoned little children. You also probably quit working in this place. But did you speak out at all?

Klaus Nouvertnי:

Yes, I did. But this shouldn't make me candidate for a halo here. I made the decision for myself personally that with my own personal character I could never endure the long path through this institution of in-patient psychiatry, that I could never take this path, that it would end in failure, that it would destroy me. That is the reason for me leaving this clinic. 
I have not said this, rather I have always had respect for those who did take this path. Even after I left psychiatry, there were still patients in this psychiatry and there were patients who urgently needed help. I think that up until today, I have never lost this respect for these people who are engaged in a new way of doing things in psychiatry. I know however that for me this is not my path and that I never could have followed it. 

Kate Millett:

The reason I ask this question is because from within psychiatry there is so little criticism and everybody's job is at stake. So they really don't speak up very often, even when they'd like to. I know a nurse who is forced to administer electroshocks here in Berlin. She has argued with the doctors repeatedly. This is, after all, a discredited form of ... to call it treatment is absurd. It's kind of an assault. Rather like torture and perceived as such by it's victims. But this woman, she may say to the doctors that she doesn't approve; they will not debate the substance of the issue with her, they will not really discuss shock. And the best she can do is to be excused from participating, so one sees how in fact there's a sort of vicious circle of silence within the profession. 

The second Day 

USHER
Prof. Bruder
Psychologist, Freie University Berlin

Bruder

First the experts who are sitting here on the rostrum, who would like to present their positions on the various questions:

Next to Mrs. Duisberg is Mr. Bruns. He is 49 years old. He studied medicine and sociology. He is a medical specialist for neurology and psychiatry. 

Mr. Bruns

Ladies and gentlemen, the criticism of psychiatry existed on three different levels yesterday:
Ths first level was a fundamental criticism which questioned the very existence of psychiatry. On the second level of criticism, the use of coercion in psychiatry was questioned. To my mind the first level is an utopian level. The second level is the level of concrete utopia but there is also a third level. This is the level on which the inner contradictions of psychiatry are lined out, including the acceptance of rationality of the system of psychiatry under the conditions in which society currently exists. My paper will concentrate on the third level but it will become clear that there are many inner contradictions in the system of psychiatry. 

The rate of forced incarcerations in western Germany varies largely: according to a study in 1987, with 100,000 inhabitants in a given region the rate varies between 5 and 199, which is a factor of 40. According to a survey in 1991/2, the rate varied even more: between 0 and 239. The reform of psychiatry - and this is an essential point - has not led to a decline but rather to an increase in relative numbers of forced incarcerations. 

Moreover the rate of forced incarceration tends to be higher with men. It is not true that primarilly women are persecuted by psychiatry. It is primarilly men who are affected by measures of force taken by psychiatry, a very common thing in society. Moreover the rate is highest with men between the age of 20 and 34 who are additionally unmarried and unemployed. 

From a sociological point of view, it is striking to note the parallels of these features to social demographic features of delinquency in the sector of violent criminality and house break-ins. A group of people who require special disciplinary measures from a social point of view.

Finally I'd like to give you a comparison of the diagnostic distribution by comparing two cities which have a high and relatively low rate, namely Cologne and Bremen. Cologne has a high forced incarceration rate with a prevalence of 175 per year. The rate in Bremen is lower with a prevalence of 77 per year. In Cologne the rate of forced incarceration in psychiatric clinics is 22,2%; in Bremen it is 6,3%. 

In Cologne 85% of the forced incarcertion are suspended by the courts prematurely. In Bremen it is 57%. In Cologne there is a diagnosis of a psychosis in only 32% of the cases; in Bremen it is 68%. An unspecific diagnosis, which is a description of what can best be described as "situative conspicuacy" is made in 40% of the cases in Cologne; in Bremen it is 10%. 

This scenario makes it seem very likely that in cases where forced incarcerations are made more frequently and generously without proper medical reasons but, as some authors wrote in their study - these measures are used against disturbing and deviant behaviour, which means that they are used as a disciplinary measure and this is a reference to the fact that psychiatry is still abused as a means of social control. 

Thank you very much.

EXPERT
Dr. Georg Bruns
Sociologist and Psychotherapist
Germany

Sarah:
Yes, this is an interruption. I would like to create a real communication here and all those who are sitting here and are able to speak and ask questions etc. and I would like to be able to see the people here and not just sit here like an object, which is what psychiatry made out of us. They want to silence us at all costs and we shouldn't ...  It is interesting that there is immediate reaction.

It is exciting because there are only a very few of us here who have the courage to sit here with you staring at us and to have to endure all this. The basis of psychiatry that I experienced was that there was no dignity towards me. Nobody asked me; they just seized me like an object. They bound me and gave me injections against my will and as long as this kind of psychiatry exists, it is a danger for everybody in society. Everybody here could be incarcerated and it is hard to bear and hear all this but nevertheless we still sit here and try not to explode because it is socially not acceptable if we are not able to speak like a professor. 

THE VERDICT:
Psychiatry not only refuses to renounce the force it has historically obtained from the state, it even takes on the role of a highly paid and respected agent of social control and international police force over behavior
and the repression of political and social dissent.

Witness from the audience:
I was treated by a dentist or should I mistreated. I suffered from tooth-ache. The wisdom tooth was crowned and under the crown the tooth was rotting and I couldn't sleep. I asked for a pain-killer for the pain. The nurse replied: "These are psycho-somatic pains. I cannot give you pain-killers." The result was that I couldn't sleep for 3 nights. I was in great pain. Then the diagnosis: "psychosis". I was transferred from the psychosomatic department to psychiatry. I received forced medication of Halidol and Neurocil. I tried to defend myself. I resisted when they wanted to give me an injection. I asked them: "What's wrong with me?" The assistant physician answered: "A psychosis is a psychosis!"

Witness from the audience:

I come from Marburg and was a bit shocked by the statement that in psychiatry forced incarceration is not a problem which particularly affects women. This doesn't reconcile with my personal observation in Marburg where I occasionally visited  a institution where patients were kept who are described as schizophrenic and who are regarded as not being able to care for themselves and in danger of committing suicide. There I met very many women, who repeatedly got the usual decision by the courts to be forcibly institutionalized for 8 weeks, who then, after these 8 weeks -  sometimes they got a prolonging for another 8 weeks - found themselves there once again after a few months. 

Every time I see the same way these women are treated; they are put under heavy medication and for the most harmless reasons they are attached to the bed, so that they aren't even able to move their limbs.

WITNESS  FOR  THE  DEFENCE:
My name is Joachim Weber. I live in Hamburg. I have declared that I am prepared to speak as a witness for the defense because I have come to the conclusion that psychiatry has helped me a great deal during some very difficult times which I went through in the last few years, specially the out-patient psychiatric institutions.
WITNESS  FOR  THE  DEFENCE
Joachim Weber
Germany

WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE:

My name is Ludwig Wast. I am a relative. We had to forcibly have our daughter institutionalized in psychiatry. I don't know if you can understand my feelings; what hell we went through, all three of us, my wife, my daughter and I, to come to this decision, which had been a great strain on us, especially my wife. 

Sarah:

It is still not quite clear to me if you talked this over together with your daughter, firstly what it meant to your daughter. Did you discuss this with her just in the family or in the company of others?
Ludwig Wast:
I wish that due to the experience gained from the psychosis seminars that we come together for discussion. I must confess quite honestly that my daughter has her birthday in May and we will be taking a vacation together and I hope that I will be able to  talk about this with her after so many years. At any rate, I am going to try. However, if she doesn't want to talk about it, I will also accept this.

WITNESS  FOR  THE  DEFENCE
Ludwig Wast
Germany

THE VERDICT:
These practices and ideology allowed the psychiatrists during the Nazi era to
go to the extreme of systematic mass murder of inmates under the pretext of "treatment”.

Elvira Manthey was born in 1932 
to a poor family.
Under the Nazi laws the family was termed "antisocial" and Elivra and her three years old sister were taken to a psychiatric hospital 
in Magdeburg.
She was six years old.

Elvira Manthey:

One morning we went to Magdeburg by train. They brought me to the Südenbürger hospital, where a unscrupulous man named Prof. Dr. Fünfgeld needed only a few minutes to find out that I was an idiot, constituting a public danger. It was not until the reunification that I received a copy of the file which said that I had to be brought to Urtspringe immediately to the lunatic asylum for treatment and - as it said - "for elimination". 

I met my younger sister there, the one whom we had seen in the nursery. She had already been there for a year. She had come there when she was two years old. Every day I saw children being taken away by the undertaker. I saw completely normal, healthy children going mad, simply because they came from a broken home like mine. They started crying. They were put into a strait-jacket, they thrown into padded cells and they cried. We tried to cover our ears with our hands but we heard it nevertheless. It was impossible to ignore it. Then there was silence. The children were dead. I didn't want to end that way. 

I always said: "I don't want to go mad. I don't want to end like the children here" and it was forbidden to leave the day-room. The only toys we had were the chamber-pots. So we sat down on them and turned around with the pots, playing merry-go-round. The room was very narrow. We had to stay there all day long. There was a window in the door and when the nurse passed by and saw a child that didn't sit in it's place, she beat it. At noon we had to lay our heads on the table. Then they put a white blanket over our heads. This was our afternoon nap. We were alone all day. They only opened the door at noon to control us. I didn't want to go mad. I didn't want the undertaker to take me away, but what could I do? I knew that if I had stayed inside, I would have gone mad. I didn't want to, so I thought: "now you take the floor-polishing brush and you start polishing the floor". And all the time I was afraid that a nurse might pass by and beat me. But I wasn't beaten, so I polished the hall every day.

Now I have to say that when I polished the hall, I opened all the doors and I often saw a nurse giving an injection to a child. The next morning this child was taken away by the undertaker. He put a blanket on the floor; laid the dead child on it; tied the ends of the blanket together and brought the child away. Outside the door there was a small cart with two wheels and two pull-handles. Sometimes there were several children lying on it. We saw the undertaker everyday,

And then they said that my sister would be taken away as well. It was terrible. I hugged her one last time and then she was gone. I thought: "Now you are going mad. Now you can't cope with it anymore. I sat down. I cried. But I couldn't cry anymore; I just sat and stared. A week later my sister had been taken away on the day before her fifth birthday. We, the 8 remaining children in the home were told a week later that we were going to be taken away. They brought us to another building. There was a stage and many chairs. Thats where we had to sit down and wait. Then someone said: "Get out everybody! Children first!" In front of the door there were 4 busses with windows that were painted dark blue from inside. So you couldn't look outside and you couldn't look inside. 

There had been 8 children in that home. I can't quite remember if there had already been other people when we got on the bus or if they had entered later on but when we left the bus there were 35 to 40 people. I tried to scratch a little hole into the paint with my fingernails in order to look outside but it was too difficult. I had to do it very far below to make sure no-one notices. The bus stopped, drove into a building. We had to get out and I was the first again. There was a very narrow hall, not much wider than a door. At the end of the hall there was open door and they had turned on the lights although it was day. I entered the room and I felt immediately: there is something wrong; it is dangerous in here. 

So I entered the room; it was a very small room and in the first wall of the room was the entrance; right in the corner. Then there was the second wall with an iron door in the middle, which led to the gas-chamber. Then there was the third and fourth wall and in the corner there was a table which led to the middle of the room. Sitting at the table there were four people sitting in white coats: three women and one man. Next to the table there was a pile of clothes and a pile of shoes. I stood between the table and the pile of clothes.

The woman who had accompanied on the bus shouted at us: "'Take off your clothes! Hurry up! Put your shoes here and your clothes there!" She had taken the youngest child; torn off it's clothes; carried it on the arm - the child must have been about 4 years old; maybe younger. Then she stood in front of the table. The papers were checked and she turned around, made two large steps, opened the iron door. The child hung in the air and it tried to run and it moved it's legs but the legs hung in the air. The woman opened the iron door and threw the child into the gas-chamber. I wanted to start crying; I had tears in the eyes but I had a guardian angel. Suddenly there was a voice which said: "Don't you cry". So I didn't cry; I only watched. Suddenly I had a completely different emotion. All the children had gone into the gas-chamber and I still stood there between the table and the pile of clothes.

They shouted at me to undress as quickly as possible. I wore a dress with many buttons. I slowly opened the buttons and threw the dress on the pile of clothes. I was lucky again; I had shoes with laces. I slowly untied the laces and then I threw the shoes on the pile of other shoes. When I was naked, the man grabbed my left arm, pulled me towards the table and turned me around. I now stood naked in front of the table.

I was asked: "What's your name?." "Elvira Hempel." "How old are you?" "I'm eight." (It was shortly before my ninth birthday). I was allowed to put on my clothes again, which were still lying on top of the pile of clothes. So I put on the clothes again; I was brought across the yard into another building. We went up some stairs and there were iron bars which reached from the ceiling to the ground and in these iron bars there was a door. The woman unlocked the door and pushed me into the hall. Two children, who had also been on the bus, were there already. Then the door was locked again and we three children were locked in. They were very small cells and since this entire building was divided by iron bars, we could see the entire building or at least the entire floor. After we had recovered from our first shock, we found out that we were in prison. Today I know that it was the old Brandenburg-Havel prison.

Well, after I had recognized the prison on T.V., I wrote to Mr. Honecker and that was the first time that someone had told me that I was officially an “idiot, constituting a public danger, feeble-minded, hereditary ill, perverse, unkempt and unable to get educated“. This is still valid today. I wrote a book called: "The Hempelsche" and I fight for my human dignity. I think all these things must be taken away but it is unpleasant to talk about this because many of the offenders were awarded the "Order of the Federal Republic of Germany" later on. But my struggle goes on.

I ask the defenders to call their witnesses.

Witness for the defence Elke Bücher

Here a little bit about myself: I am one of those who were fortunate enough not to be harmed by the psychiatric system. When I was in a bad situation and when I was treated in both systems in the in- and out-patient sector, I had the very good fortune to meet therapists and doctors who did not have the ambition to try to tell me things about myself; to try and convince me that they knew everything better than I did but who had the strength and the courage to try and find the strength that I still had in myself and who had the courage to talk to me about how I see my situation. And from that moment on, I had the chance to get out of these problems.

Kate Millet:

What is at issue is the issue of coercion, the issue of force. We are not in discussion of the merits of helping or psychiatry and things like that. What we are addressing ourselves to, is the issue of force, coercion. Do you have an opinion about that?

Elke Bücher:

Yes, of course I do. I think that force is misused, still today and it is used too often in both sectors, the in- and out-patient. And this is exactly the second point, to which I wanted to draw your attention. I think that it isn't legitimate, if we deal with force and violence, to just focus on the in-patient sector with fixing, forced medication etc. 

WITTNESS  FOR  THE  DEFENCE
Elke Bücher
Germany

Dietmar Kamper:

Now the prosecution, the prosecution, the defense and the jury will cross-examine Dr. Ellis Huber, president of the Berlin Chamber of Doctors. That means he will be heard from different sides. He had given his consent to participate and I would like to thank him very much that he has come and now request him to take the stand. 

Ron Leifer:

Let me ask you some pointed questions: We are both physicians. If a patient comes to you with appendicitis - an adult patient is brought to you with appendicitis and refuses treatment, can you force that patient into a hospital? Can you be called by the police to the house of a person, who is suffering from heart failure and make that diagnosis and have the police take that person to a hospital? Can you, on the report that somebody has AIDS, break down the door of that person and take them to the hospital and force a test upon them and force treatment upon them? These are all medical situations. In my country, if the physician does this, he is guilty of assault. But this is done with so-called psychiatric patients all the time. Would you not agree that the fact that these kinds of course of practices are done only to correct deviant behaviour, feelings and thoughts, that psychiatry functions as a covert instrument of social control. Granted, as you said, demanded by the populace but should we not, as physicians, take a stand against the use of coercion under the guise of medicine as a supplemental form of social control, because the public demands it?

Ellis Huber: 

When I am on the street and I see somebody who risks dying from blood loss then I would bring him to a hospital with the use of force and for that I would be prepared to go to prison.

Ron Leifer: 

And you probably would go to prison as a result.

Ellis Huber: 

I am not defending psychiatry in it's present-day state, rather I am defending the psychiatrists, who want to fulfil their function in a responsible fashion. And I think there is a difference. We have together - and I see that those affected and the helpers see themselves as partners - to 
see to it that conditions in psychiatry are reformed and continue to improve and to organize the social violence in order to break the resistance of the state or society against these reforms, which is not easy.

Ron Leifer: 

Sir,  you are a leader, you can speak out against it.

Ellis Huber:  

Social communities are always subservient to a social control. So there isn't an individual arbitrariness in human life.

Renי Talbot:

Why shouldn't a psychiatric doctor also go to prison just like you, when he brings a person who is bleeding to death to a hospital against his will? Why shouldn't he go to prison just as you would?

Ellis Huber:  

I am quite sure that the person who is bleeding to death, who could continue to live, would not sue me. But I am also sure that everyone in Germany understands and can follow the reason for  the forced incarceration in the subjective decision of the doctor. And that in this situation society would not make the unreasonable demand that I go to prison. But it could be that this is made possible by a crazy culture. And that which applies to bleeding bodies I think applies to bleeding souls as well. 

Renי Talbot: 

Once again: Why shouldn't the psychiatric doctor also have the same certainty as you that he won't be sued, just like you won't be sued although you did something against his will? Why should the psychiatric doctor have this special state protection?
Ellis Huber:  

I don't think that this a special state protection, it could even be a special "prison". The psychiatrist stands between the interest of the state and the situation of the individual and he doesn't get any other freedom of action other than that which the laws offer him at the present time. I am for having this conflict, this contradiction be made more public in a medicine of the future where there is no longer a distinction between acute bodily treatment and psychiatric help and where this separation no longer exists. But that there are people who also suffer so much psychologically that they cannot be tolerated by their environment without aggressive intervention, there is no doubt. 

THE VERDICT:
We find psychiatry guilty of the combination
of force and unaccountability, a classic definition of totalitarian systems. 
We demand the abolition of the "mental patients” laws as a first step toward making psychiatry accountable to society. 
To this end, compensation will have to be made for the harms it has done.  
Public funds must also be made available for humane and dignified alternatives to psychiatry.

THE  CLOSING SPEECHES

The closing speech by the prosecution Leifers 

We must exhume and purify our language of all traces of the medical model if we are to make sense of mind and eliminate this justification for coercive psychiatric - I won't call it treatment, but interventions. In this newspeak orwellian deceptive rhetoric, coercion is called "help", condemnation is called "diagnosis", coercion is called "treatment". And it is very difficult - you could see from the nature of our discussion - that when we confuse this language, its very difficult to come to clear understanding of the difference between coercive interventions which are designed to control people and actual offerings of help, which must be voluntary. Now there is no doubt in my mind - I've been practicing psycho-therapy for decades - that psycho-therapy can be helpful to be people. It is not always helpful to people, its not necessarily helpful to people, its not helpful when the psycho-therapist uses the medical model. 

We do need help and we do need helpers. But this situation must be voluntary. And even in the voluntary situation there is an inequality of power, which is a very delicate situation which must be handled with great sensitivity. The Chinese have a saying which cuts through the deceptive rhetoric. The saying is: "Why are you angry with me? I never tried to help you!". You see, because the helper intrinsically has more power than the person that is helped, which is why it is so important, because in this helper/helping situation there is an intrinsic difference in power; that the state stay out ot it and that this power not be socially mandated and approved and backed by the government and the police. And fundamentally involuntary psychiatric treatment is administered at the point of a gun, because if you don't comply, the police will come after you and if you don't comply with the police, they will make you do it.

And the last problem I would like to mention is that the psychiatric profession itself will not listen to this, they will not hear this, they will not engage with us in dialogue. I am very greatful to my colleagues who have been courageous enough to come here and engage in this debate but there are many empty chairs of professors of psychiatry from the academic institutions who promote the medical model and the idea that mental illness is a bio-chemical disorder. They are not here, they will not listen, they have to be forced to listen. I eschew the use of force but in some way we have to make our voice heard enough, so that these people will listen. And that - believe me, I know from my 40 years of experience - is an extremely difficult task.

Kamper:

May I invite the defense to make its pleading.

The closing speech by the defense (Kruckenberg)

The defense will be making its pleading from here to make it clear that it comes from all three of us. The situation of the defense was sometimes not very easy but that's our job. 

The second point, which I don't want to blur here - the prosecution continues to stand behind it - is that assistance on the one hand and force and coercion on the other hand cannot be reconciled with one another. I cannot elaborate on this. I can only add to what to what Mr. Huber said earlier. This exists in every aspect of life: for example parents, school, science, workplace etc. Here too there exists power and coercion and support which is always exists in combination with support or they stand in contradiction to one another and this question has to be solved. And one shouln't forget this problem and try to ignore it for the two following reasons:
Firstly, in psychiatry one is sometimes impaired in acute state of illness, which sometimes lasts for a long period. One must then live with this in a very responsible way and this is difficult.

Secondly, the balance of power in psychiatry and also elsewhere exists and one must try to get along with this balance of power and try to reduce it, to use it responsibly, one must see to it that it is legitimized, that it is controlled. And one has to see to it that those who handle this power keep their own problems and interests excluded. This means that they must a) be qualified for that - this was mentioned earlier - and they must also be controlled. 

The closing speech by the defense (Nouvertnי)

The image of psychiatry - also my image of psychiatry - always has something to do with a view of life. Please don't see this as nationalism but I cannot desist from saying that I find it typical that the prosecution - and this is what essentially has remained from the americans - is represented by americans. Not because I am against America but I am against a culture and the representatives of a culture with a very individualistic view of life, in which everyone is responsible for everyone at all times. And the limits and things like solidarity and mutual assistance - as Mr. Narr called it and there I am of the same opinion as him - and at certain occasions to help and support. That lasts by me sometimes not one day rather 14 days. That is however my time limit and this  - so to speak - negates this. And think about this: that a culture which suggests even to a 14 or 15 year old  - a 14 or 15 year old! - that they have the full responsibilty for making their own decisions for example sentences them to death just like an adult. That is the human image - I don't want to make evil visions here - but this is the human image which is at the root of this and it isn't my image. 

Jury debating the verdict

Rene:

We speak now about the verdict.

Nora:

I'll read it in german. The defense speaks of necessary therapeutic force including the use of physical force but admits that in good psychiatry, as little force as possible is used. Forced incarceration in these cases cannot be of any help. 

Rene:

Nora, in my opinion you had it much sharper, you said "Vorbeugehaft". "Vorbeugehaft" is that you are incarcerated just if you might do something. But you said prejudiced, it's not only prejudiced, no, it's incarceration. Before something is done, people could be incarcerated.

Kate: 

In english Its called "preventive detention".

Rene:

Thats the term nora used.

Rene:

The psychiatric hospital institutionalization is no help offering for these cases.

Alexander:

What, is it necessary to say what is necessary? Its a question.

Rene: 

Its not necessary in my opinion. The state of psychiatry which we have, the title of the whole event, It is not necessary to say what we offer, what we design as help. Its the force in psychiatry and that we want it banned.

Don:

That's it!

Kate :

This is just an opening but from what we've heard, we are convinced that psychiatry is unwilling to renounce force and therefore has lost being a medical art and betrayed it's profession. 

Don:

Has lost it's right to call itself a medical art, lost it's right.

Hagai:

Well, I object because I don't think psychiatry from the beginning - in the 1800 - was ever a medical art.
Don:

Lost it's right, well ..

Kate:

"Cannot pretend". How's that?

Don:

O,K. Could you read that once again because ....

Kate:

From what we've heard, psychiatry is unwilling to renounce the use of force, coercion and violence and therefore cannot pretend to be a healing art, having betrayed it's Hyppocratic Oath and has taken on the role of social control as a kind of international police force for the state.

Epilogue 
Prof. Thomas S. Szasz, 
For 40 years critic of Psychiatrie

Interview with Szasz:

Psychiatric victims or inmates - there are various names - have been protesting in psychiatry for hundreds of years but that has not been very fruitful. They can't stand alone, because they are discredited. People say they are crazy and they don't have any credibility.

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine and physicians should not use force against patients. People should not be deprived of liberty and treated against their will, just like they are not treated in other branches of medicine.

Its not necessary to propose an alternative, it would be easy to do so. But in my writings for almost 40 years I have used the analogy, which I think is very valid, to slavery. Slavery is an unqualified evil. Now, it existed for thousands of years of human history and there came a point and slavery was abolished.  Abolishing slavery does not require that one propose an alternative as to what to do with these people. That would, once involuntary psychiatry, once it would be abolished, society would develop different ways of dealing with different problems because so-called "mental illness" is many different problems. One can't make a single solution.

This is really - I hope - an important event, because this is - to my knowledge - the first time that a university anywhere in the world has supported the idea of giving voice to this point of view. Because the point of view that psychiatry should be imposed on people against their will has dominated the western world for almost 300 years. So this could be a historic occasion. This has not had any place in universities until now.

Special thanks for making the Tribunal possible:
Prof. Dietmar Kamper
Dr. Renate Bauer
Prof. Gerburg Treusch-Dieter
Mahide Lein
Daniel Deferre
Elke Heitmüller
Prof. Rolf Schwendter
Prof. Otto Rצssler
Herman Treusch
Jan Robert Bloch
Knut Gerwers
Bernd Ternes
Herbert Fritsch
Frank Wilde
and the Team of the "Volksbühne"

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Kצln

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