the above article is actually critical. thank god...

i think the bakunin quote is most instructive. i see no reason for an 'anti-psychiatry'. i'd rather just interact with psychiatry.

the error the author is making is actually fundamentally liberal. he's concerned with the rights of the mentally ill to accept or refuse treatment, and is willing to throw out the entirety of science for the sake of his liberal ideology.

might i make the suggestion that the following statement is not an assumption but a testable hypothesis:
all human beings are created equal.

liberalism is rooted in inherent rationality. if this assumption collapses, traditional forms of anarchism on both the left and right become unworkable and utopian.

the topic here is the precise class of people where that assumption collapses. anarchist society or not, anarchist ideas are not applicable.

so, rather than this 'anti-psychiatry' nonsense - which reduces to rejecting the science because it contradicts the ideological assumptions, which is sort of the definition of anti-intellectualism - there needs to be an evolution of thought within anarchism.

the antidote is neither obscure nor unknown: to each according to her needs.

http://libcom.org/blog/thomas-szasz-antipsychiatry-neoliberalism-22102013