From the Radical Psychology Movement to STS: A Journey From the 1960s in Multiple Parts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Activism in the late-1960s through the early 1970s in the radical psychology movement created the foundation for an intellectual critique and political practice that was part of a group of overall radical science movements that would become important components of STS in practice. The radical psychology movement emphasized lay perspectives in science and medicine, public participation in science, alternative care, and citizen-science alliances. The anti-psychiatry movement among professionals complemented this phenomenon. Groups such as Psychologists for a Democratic Society and numerous mental patients' rights groups, publications like The Radical Therapist, radical caucuses in professional organizations, and a burgeoning feminist therapy approach helped create a major challenge to normal science in the mental health sector. Participants in these movements were connected to broader health activism and to radical science efforts. Lessons from these challenges to the status quo were useful in developing critical environmental health and justice movements later on, resulting in civic science and community-based participatory research projects which would become central elements of STS. These traditions also nourished a strong co-existence of scholarship and activism in many arenas of science and medicine.