Discovering what psychiatry’s really like

I talked about Jan Foudraine in the first chapter of my edited Critical Psychiatry book. As I said, he became the ‘personal ambassador' in Holland of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh or Osho, as he later came to be called. Osho was an Indian spiritual leader who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, individual devotion, and sexual freedom while amassing vast personal wealth (see Foudraine’s obituary on the Osho website). My original idea was that the presentation Foudraine gave at a 2001 Critical Psychiatry Network conference, which I organised, would be included as a chapter in my book. However, I never received his consent, so it did not appear in the the published version.

As I also say in my chapter, Foudraine wrote the best selling book Not made of wood (1974). To his surprise, this book became an immediate bestseller. More than 200,000 copies were sold and later the book appeared in seven translations. I have been re-reading a manuscript that Jan sent me - ‘The man who dropped out of his mind: Pointers from a rebellious mystic’.

It’s interesting looking back how popular anti-psychiatry, represented by Foudraine amongst others, was at the time (see eg. previous post). As Jan said in the presentation and manuscript, becoming a mega-seller made him into “some sort of Jesus Christ of psychiatry”. The same happened to R.D. Laing (see eg. previous post) after his books were republished by Penguin. Laing was taken up by the 1960s counterculture and always hankered to return and be accepted by mainstream psychiatry, but once he had become infamous this was not possible.

Jan admits in the manuscript that Not made of wood was “almost naive”. He said, “The experience of being a so-called famous ‘anti-psychiatrist’ led to much loneliness and despair”. This made him realise “the undeniable fact that this whole planet looked … very much like one big insane asylum”. He went into a personal crisis over several years with a sense of utter emptiness that the follow-up to his success had created. He was rescued from this mental state by his lightening-like realisation of the Truth. He read books and listened to audiotapes giving a discourse on Zen by Osho, as he became known, and went to Poona to “land right at the blessed feet” of his Guru. Foudraine published a book in 1979 entitled Original face, a journey home, although it was never translated from the Dutch, declaring his love for Osho, of whom he became his disciple. He described his mystical communion with Osho, who he thought was genuinely wise in his belief that “humanity is committing a collective suicide”. 

Laing too went on retreat to Ceylon and India in 1971. As I wrote in my book chapter 'Historical perspectives on anti-psychiatry', this retreat could be said to have symbolised a lack of commitment to changing psychiatry. The difficulty in changing psychiatry is real and I have often commented in this blog about how hard it is to get the message of critical/relational psychiatry accepted (see eg. previous post). Overcoming the power of the prevailing biomedical structure in psychiatry, and medicine in general, is not easy. I have always argued that any critique of psychiatry needs to accept that there will not be a paradigm shift away from biomedical psychiatry, however much it may hope for one. Still, psychiatry can become, and needs to be, more open and therapeutic in its practice. But I think it is likely to remain a conflictual area of clinical practice. 

So, rather that being deflected from the conflict involved in trying to change psychiatry to promoting personal authenticity, as were both Foudraine and Laing, the differences within mental health practice do need to be acknowledged and accepted. Foundraine's mystical solution to the dilemma of psychiatry does need to be respected, even if I don't personally accept it.