["Keine Angst vor Psychiatern." Psychiatry, critics of psychiatry and the public in the Federal Republic of Germany 1960-1980].

Whenever psychiatry became object of public interest it was object of criticism. Since psychiatry has been established as a medical discipline in the beginning of the 19th century, the diagnostic, therapeutic and juridical practices have been subjected to fundamental attacks. Conversely psychiatrists periodically complained about misconception in the public and press of the mentally ill, their medical treatment and the psychiatrists themselves. In their opinion the general public ignored psychiatric information and, therefore, impeded any innovation. Medical knowledge, however, appeared as a sustained means to overcome the "latent terror of colloquial language" and to improve the social status of the mentally ill. The text focuses on the discussion among West-German social-psychiatrists from 1960 to 1980 and the conception of the public as revealed in their statements. Using Thomas Gieryn's concept of professional "boundary work" it looks more closely at two controversies which attracted public as well as professional attention (and caused their irritation) in the 1970s, i.e. Frank Fischers's book "Irrenhäuser. Kranke klagen an" (1969) and the "Frankfurter Psychiatriestreit 1976".