Cold War Psychiatry, Extremism, and Expertise: The “Special Committee on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry”

Abstract Throughout the history of psychiatric ethical professionalization, question “extremist” contextualizes and frames limits medical practice. Using archival research at Royal College Psychiatrists, article explores how professional committees debated ethics after evidence participation in national security measures against dissidents. British, American, global associations organized a prominent struggle Soviet membership World Psychiatric Association 1970s 1980s—reconstituting field expertise through Cold War geopolitics. The Special Committee on Political Abuse Psychiatry was formed 1978 British to publicize detention dissidents USSR pursue expulsion delegation from fora. In doing so, it constituted an identity for Global Mental Health (vis-à-vis abusive practice) as impartial, objective, uncompromised. However, this many ambiguities that complicate performative constitution Western psychiatry good, bad—reflecting political dynamics, philosophy science, which underwrote expertise.