“Weglaufhaus” - an example of lived anti-psychiatric care in Germany

di Paula Cramer, Hanna Reisch

“I think it's incredibly important to get out there and show how ‘normal’ it is to be crazy.”  Tina Stöckle (2005, Orig. 1983)In Italy, Basaglia and his comrades marked an important step in the history of fighting psychiatric violence and institutionalised segregation between those marked as normal and those deemed mad. They transformed the psychiatric system with a powerful emphasis on community-based healing, patients’ rights and the absolute rejection of coercive psychiatric treatments. Their efforts culminated in the law 180/1978 that mandated the closure of “manicomi” (psychiatric asylums) and established more community-based alternatives.Their revolutionary work didn’t go unnoticed by other psychiatry-critical movements in the rest of Europe. Inspired by Basaglia’s approach, in Germany a group of people established an utopian project that is vibrant and alive to this day and offers an alternative space for being with each other in moments of psychological ...