Socialist Patients' Collective

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Socialist Patients' Collective
Operational 1968 - June 1971, (1973-)
Led by Dr. Wolfgang Huber
Objectives 'Liberation from Iatrocapitalism'
Active region(s) Heidelberg University, West Germany
Ideology 'Pro-illness' (often considered an extension of anti-psychiatry), Radical left
Status Largely disbanded following a stint as Informations Zentrum Rote Volks-Universität from July 1971. Partially absorbed into the Red Army Faction.

(Ostensibly continued as a licit organisation, Patientenfront from 1973, later SPK/PF(H))

The Socialist Patients' Collective (in German the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv) also known as the SPK and the Patients' Front (in German Patientenfront), or PF, was a leftist German patients' group of the late 1960s/early 1970s fighting against medicine and doctors as enemies of the "patients' class", seeing capitalism as the reason for illness and trying to see "illness as a weapon" against capitalist society.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

The group was officially founded in February of 1970 by Doctor Wolfgang Huber of Heidelberg University. It began when Huber was sacked from his position in the University clinic because he refused to co-operate with the rest of the psychiatric department. This led to his group therapy patients staging protests and eventually occupying the administration offices of the University. Huber warned the director of the University that some of his group therapy patients may commit suicide if he wasn't allowed to work with them again, so Huber was reinstated with full pay and given the use of 4 rooms from the university.

During their group therapy sessions, the SPK were supposed to be discussing dialectics, Marxism, religion, education and sexuality, but in reality their working circles were based on explosives, radio transmission, photography, judo and karate.

A mentally ill girl was once sent away from Huber's group therapy because he said that after two weeks she had made "no noticeable political progress."[citation needed]

[edit] Dissolution and the IZRU

When parts of the group turned militant Huber was imprisoned (June 1971) and the group eventually dissolved. They changed their title to IZRU or Information Zentrum Rote Volks-Universität (in English; Information Center of the Red People's University) and proposed the formation of guerrilla cells however most members soon joined the ranks of the leftist Red Army Faction, a large terrorist organisation.

[edit] Ideology

Members of the early/original SPK (before its dissolution), according to Jillian Becker, believed that the 'late-capitalist performance society of the Federal Republic' was sick and that it therefore kept producing physically or psychologically sick people. Therefore they believed in order for society to be cured it must undergo revolution - a violent revolution, if necessary. Becker states that members of the SPK believed that to cure their own personal mental disorders they had to execute violent attacks on 'society.' They therefore saw their illness as a weapon against society and despised doctors and capitalism and saw them as enemies of the 'patient class.'

One of the SPK's slogans was:

The system has made us sick. Let us strike the death blow to the sick system.

[edit] The SPK today

A group of some individuals, amongst them Ingeborg Muhler, a lawyer in Mannheim, still claim to be legal successors to the original SPK group and claim to be the only "pro-illness" group in the world.

[edit] Notable Members

Notable members of the SPK include:

[edit] Sources and notes

  1. ^ baader-meinhof.com this is baader-meinhof / terminology / SPK

[edit] Further reading

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