Sozialistisches_Patienten-Kollektiv_1972

The Socialist Patients' Collective (German: ''Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv'', and known as the SPK) is a patients'

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...

founded in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

, in February 1970 by Wolfgang Huber. The kernel of the SPK's

ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

program is summated in the slogan, "Turn illness into a weapon", which is representative of an ethos that is continually and actively practiced under the new title, Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, PF/SPK(H). The first collective, SPK, declared its self-dissolution in July 1971 as a strategic withdrawal but in 1973 Huber proclaimed the continuity of SPK as ''Patients' Front''. The SPK assumes that illness exists as an undeniable fact and believe that it is caused by the capitalist system. The SPK promotes illness as the protest against capitalism and considers illness as the foundation on which to create the human species. The SPK is opposed to doctors, considering them to be the

ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply ...

of capitalism and responsible for poisoning the human species. The most widely recognized text of the PF/SPK(H) is the communique, ''SPK – Turn illness into a weapon'', which has prefaces by both the founder of the SPK, Wolfgang Huber, and

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

. Rejecting the roles and ideology associated with the notion of the revolutionary as scientific explainer, they stated in ''Turn Illness into a Weapon'' that whoever claims they want to "observe the bare facts dispassionately" is either an "idiot" or a "dangerous criminal."

History

The group was founded by Wolfgang Huber and became publicly known in 1970 at the psychiatric hospital of the

University of Heidelberg Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is List ...

. The SPK established a "free space" for "political therapy", re-framing illness as a contradiction created by capitalism which could be embraced to bring an end to the system which gave it life. They believed that the sick formed a revolutionary class of dispossessed people who could be

radicalized Radicalization (or radicalisation) is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radic ...

to struggle against oppression. Organizing by sickness instead of

socio-economic class A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wea ...

allowed

middle-class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Commo ...

student leftists to articulate their own feelings of psychic and political oppression and to struggle against the

status quo is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, economic, legal, environmental, political, religious, scientific or military issues. In the sociological sense, the ''status quo'' refers to the curren ...

in their own right in solidarity with other oppressed groups. Additionally, according to the SPK sickness had the advantage of being familiar to everyone, hence everyone was a potential revolutionary so long as they disavowed the medical establishment. Like other

anti-psychiatry Anti-psychiatry, sometimes spelled antipsychiatry, is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment can often be more damaging than helpful to patients. The term anti-psychiatry was coined in 1912, and the movement emerged in the 1960s, ...

experiments, such as

Kingsley Hall Kingsley Hall is a community centre, in Powis Road, Bromley-by-Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It dates back to the work of Doris and Muriel Lester, who had a nursery school in nearby Bruce Road. Their brother, Kingsley Lester, die ...

and

Villa 21 A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fal ...

, SPK questioned the patient/doctor paradigm and ultimately called for an overthrow of the "doctor's class". The SPK collective produced information leaflets, held

teach-in A teach-in is similar to a general educational forum on any complicated issue, usually an issue involving current political affairs. The main difference between a teach-in and a seminar is the refusal to limit the discussion to a specific tim ...

s and Heidelberg University studied to recognize SPK as a part of the University.English Google translation
"Turn Illness into a Weapon,"
Original German text

''Ruprecht (Heidelberger Studierenzeitung)'', Number 35 (16 May 1995). SPK conducted "agitations", called "single" (individual actions) and "group agitations" (collective actions), working from 9 am to 10 pm or later. However, the SPK experiment was criticized by many within Heidelberg's university and psychiatric clinic and the SPK's funding, salaries and meeting space were threatened. Despite opposition to the SPK, in the autumn of 1970 the university convened an advisory panel of 3 experts who recommended that the SPK should be institutionalized in Heidelberg university. To counter this suggestion, Heidelberg university's faculty of medicine supported the establishment of a counter-panel consisting of three critics of the SPK who were mandated to campaign against the group. The Minister overseeing both panels ultimately sided with the 3 SPK critics and decided against implementing any of the recommendations from the pro-SPK panel. SPK's funding was subsequently cut and the group was evicted from the university campus. The decision provoked a confrontation between the SPK and the university, which led to a sit-in and attracted the attention of a wider audience, including the police. Ultimately, the collective moved out of the university and into the homes of its members. On 24 June 1971, a mysterious shooting at Heidelberg police station was attributed to the

Baader-Meinhof group The Red Army Faction (, ; RAF ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang ( ), was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970 and active until 1998, considered a terrorist organisat ...

, and based on that unrelated pretext, the police began conducting raids on SPK members' houses. Three hundred fifty officers were charged with finding the shooter. At its peak, the SPK counted about 500 members; of these, seven were arrested in the raids, including Huber on 21 July 1971. Firstly SPK was falsely linked to the Baader-Meinhof group but none of the SPK patients arrested was ever condemned due to any relation with the Baader-Meinhof group and neither was ever proved any relation within SPK and RAF. Accounts notice the brutality, legal irregularities and other sort of abuses which surrounded the case, and they also notice this was part of a disinformation campaign against SPK due to their revolutionary positions, and thus SPK was criminalized as part of a political persecution. The rhetoric denouncing the SPK as engaged in "terrorist activity" and a precursor to the RAF re-emerged after the arrest of

Kristina Berster Kristina is a feminine given name and a variant of Christina. Notable people and characters with the name include: People *the Swedish name of Christina of Sweden * Kristina (born 1987), Slovak singer * Kristina Adolphson (born 1937), Swedish actr ...

, who crossed the US border illegally seeking asylum from West German counterterrorism operations. Berster was acquitted of all conspiracy charges, and the disinformation campaign was exposed by Greg Guma. Link t
paper via Phil Taylor site
/ref> A West German embassy spokesman stated, "By all accounts the SPC was fairly harmless." Kristina Berster explained that "the purpose of the Socialist Patients Collective was to find out the reasons why people feel lonely, isolated and depressed and the circumstances which caused these problems."

Dissolution and the IZRU

Even before Huber was arrested in June 1971, the ''SPK'' dissolved. The IZRU or Information Zentrum Rote Volks-Universität (in English; Information Center of the Red People's University) was founded by former ''SPK'' members; however, the IZRU was neither the official or unofficial SPK. It organized international congresses, founded a newspaper: ''RVU'' (or , ''People's Red University''), supported prisoners and reprinted some SPK literature.

The SPK today

Since 1973, the SPK has continued as Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, or PF/SPK(H). The refounding of the collective as Patient's Front was announced by Huber whilst he was in

solitary confinement Solitary confinement (also shortened to solitary) is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single Prison cell, cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to ...

Stammheim Prison Stuttgart Correctional Facility (), also known as Stuttgart Prison or Stammheim Prison, is located in the Stuttgart district of Stammheim, the northernmost district of the state capital of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the largest of a total ...

, later called PF/SPK(H).

Interest and influence

Discussion of the SPK in both German-language and English-language written sources increased during the 1970s, fell during the 1980s, and rose again during the 1990s.Google Books Ngram Viewe
"Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv"
/ref> Artistic projects that have cited the group include SPK, an industrial music and

noise music Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music include ...

group in Australia, founded in 1978 and dissolved in 1988, which was named after the collective.

References

External links

PF/SPK(H) - Official website of the Socialist Patients' Collective
Außerparlamentarische Opposition Anti-psychiatry 1970 establishments in West Germany 1971 disestablishments in West Germany