The socialist patient collective, the printing press, and anti-psychiatry in Heidelberg in the 1970s

To question psychiatry was part of the bigger ‘fight against repression' of the New Social Movements and the alternative milieu in West Germany from the late 1960s until the 1980s. In this paper, I focus on the media production of the Socialist Patient Collective (Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, SPK) in Heidelberg, which challenged hegemonic concepts of ‘normality' and ‘insanity' and instead sought to generate its own episteme at the start of the 1970s. I argue that the SPK's media production, which was in the hands of the group itself, enabled the collective to react very quickly and independently to current events and that it was thus an important element in the escalating conflicts between the group and its opponents. In addition, the SPK succeeded in building up a (counter-) public, which even reached beyond West Germany and connected the SPK to psychiatry-critical groups in France, the Netherlands, and Italy. Moreover, writing, typing and printing leaflets had also a group-building and empowering