Stephen Jan Ticktin (born 1946) is a retired Canadian psychiatrist, therapist and lecturer, and a notable figure in the anti-psychiatry movement.
After earning his medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1973, Ticktin became personal assistant to anti-psychiatry movement leader David Cooper, travelling with him through Europe, North America, South America and Mexico on his lecture tours (1972–1976). He also studied with the Philadelphia Association and apprenticed in existential therapy with R.D. Laing. In 1983, Ticktin obtained an MRCPsych in Psychiatry through the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, and in the course of the decades during which Ticktin made the UK his home, he helped to found the British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry and the Supportive Psychotherapy Association.
He joined the editorial collective of Asylum in 1987 and has published articles in a number of British psychiatry journals. Ticktin has also been a visiting lecturer and supervisor at the Regent's College School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, and at The New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling at Schiller International University, where he worked with Emmy van Deurzen. In 2004, he returned to Canada where he saw patients in private practice and was also adjunct faculty at the Living Institute in Toronto.
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Anti-psychiatry is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections may include concerns about the effectiveness and potential harm of treatments such as electroconvulsive treatment or insulin shock therapy.
Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and Holocaust survivor.
Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness, Laing regarded schizophrenia as a theory not a fact. Though associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Politically, he was regarded as a thinker of the New Left. Laing was portrayed by David Tennant in the 2017 film Mad to Be Normal.
David Graham Cooper was a South African-born psychiatrist and theorist who was prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement.
Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment, clinical formulation, and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.
Person-centered therapy, also known as person-centered psychotherapy, person-centered counseling, client-centered therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers beginning in the 1940s and extending into the 1980s. Person-centered therapy seeks to facilitate a client's self-actualizing tendency, "an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment", via acceptance, therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.
Peter Roger Breggin is an American psychiatrist and critic of shock treatment and psychiatric medication and Covid-19 response. In his books, he advocates replacing psychiatry's use of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy with psychotherapy, education, empathy, love, and broader human services.
Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life. Instead of regarding human experiences such as anxiety, alienation and depression as implying the presence of mental illness, existential psychotherapy sees these experiences as natural stages in a normal process of human development and maturation. In facilitating this process of development and maturation, existential psychotherapy involves a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences stressing the individual's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in their life.
Emmy van Deurzen is an existential therapist. She developed a philosophical therapy based in existential-phenomenology.
Ludwig Binswanger was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. His parents were Robert Johann Binswanger (1850–1910) and Bertha Hasenclever (1847–1896). Robert's German-Jewish father Ludwig "Elieser" Binswanger (1820–1880) was founder, in 1857, of the "Bellevue Sanatorium" in Kreuzlingen. Robert's brother Otto Binswanger (1852–1929) was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Jena.
Although modern, scientific psychology is often dated from the 1879 opening of the first psychological clinic by Wilhelm Wundt, attempts to create methods for assessing and treating mental distress existed long before. The earliest recorded approaches were a combination of religious, magical and/or medical perspectives. Early examples of such psychological thinkers included Patañjali, Padmasambhava, Rhazes, Avicenna and Rumi.
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Philosophical consultancy, also sometimes called philosophical practice or philosophical counseling or clinical philosophy, is a contemporary movement in practical philosophy. Developing since the 1980s as a profession but since the 1950s as a practice, practitioners of philosophical counseling ordinarily have a doctorate or minimally a master's degree in philosophy and offer their philosophical counseling or consultation services to clients who look for a philosophical understanding of their lives, social problems, or even mental problems. In the last case, philosophical counseling might be in lieu of, or in conjunction with, psychotherapy. The movement has often been said to be rooted in the Socratic tradition, which viewed philosophy as a search for the Good and the good life. A life without philosophy was not worth living for Socrates. This led to the philosophy of Stoicism, for example, resulting in Stoic therapy.
The Critical Psychiatry Network (CPN) is a psychiatric organization based in the United Kingdom. It was created by a group of British psychiatrists who met in Bradford, England in January 1999 in response to proposals by the British government to amend the 1983 Mental Health Act (MHA). They expressed concern about the implications of the proposed changes for human rights and the civil liberties of people with mental health illness. Most people associated with the group are practicing consultant psychiatrists in the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), among them Dr Joanna Moncrieff. A number of non-consultant grade and trainee psychiatrists are also involved in the network.
Peter Lehmann, D. Phil. h.c., is an author, social scientist, publisher, and an independent freelance activist in humanistic anti-psychiatry, living in Berlin, Germany.
The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise is a 1967 book by the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing. The book comprises two parts - the first a collection of seven articles previously published between 1962 and 1965; the second a free-flowing quasi-autobiographical piece of poetry and prose.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to psychiatry:
Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr. was an American psychiatrist, author of several books on emotional and behavioral self-management, Elected Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists. He is the founder of the method of psychotherapy called Rational Behavior Therapy, the emotional self-help technique called Rational Self-Counseling, and the New Self-Help Alcoholic Relapse Prevention Treatment Method. He was an Emeritus Professor at the College of Medicine at Howard University in Washington D.C.
Andrew Feldmár is a Hungarian born psychotherapist living in Canada. He is most known as the Hungarian follower of R. D. Laing, the Scottish psychiatrist who was one of the leading figures of the counterculture of the 1960s. Laing, who later became his friend, was his teacher and therapist first. Following his mentor, Feldmár practices and popularizes a form of radical psychotherapy, where the main goal of the therapist is to engage in a real, spontaneous and honest relationship with the patient. This approach is based on the findings of research on interpersonal phenomenology, spiritual emergency, the anthropology of healing, existential psychotherapy and community therapy. Feldmár rejects the labelling of human suffering, and therefore distances himself from the mainstream forms of psychiatry and psychotherapy which are based on the concept of mental illness. He has published many books in Hungarian, he lectures, teaches, provides supervision and therapy internationally, he has worked as a psychotherapist with over 52 years of experience, having spent more than 100,000 hours in psychotherapy with clients. He has been noticeably successful treating psychotic patients. He is a well-known expert in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.