We were under no illusions as to what we were undertaking. We were aware we were entering the lion’s den and were warned about supping with the devil! But two main reasons determined why we went. Firstly for Mary herself to stand face to face with the profession of psychiatry who had visited so much harm on her and on our family for over 20 years and secondly to speak our truth and our learned experience from our association with medical bio-psychiatry. Would anybody be willing to listen or was our invitation just a window dressing exercise? We would see.
The Congress was held in the enormous Messe Berlin centre and was attended by 10,000 people from all over the world. Security was extremely tight as we arrived on the morning of Tuesday October 10. Unfortunately we had left out laptop and prepared documents in the taxi from the airport the night before but luckily had a backup which we now hurriedly had to photocopy and prepare again for our talk. Our gratitude is due to the helpful lady in the Business Centre which we eventually located after quite an exhausting search.
The conference began each day at 8am and went on until 7pm. There were numerous keynote speakers addressing large audiences in large halls while simultaneously, numerous symposia were being held in smaller rooms throughout the complex. There were also poster exhibitions on Psychiatry in The Third Reich, photographic exhibitions on Psychiatry in West Africa, book stalls, various ‘service user/carer’ tables and of course a huge section for numerous pharmaceutical companies to display their latest products which included a drug that could be taken by inhalation.
We commenced our presentation at 12 noon at which point, we had 14 people in our audience, 10 women and 4 men. Subsequently we only had the opportunity to speak to a few of the women who turned out to be psychologists and psychotherapists. None of the men approached us or had anything to say about our presentation. In fact, two of them walked out halfway through! The women were very encouraging and receptive.
We had decided to simply dispense copies of the chapter from Peter Lehmann’s book to everybody and avail of the opportunity to put our specific points across as to what we challenged in psychiatry in relation to labelling, human rights violations and forced treatment while also relating our journey from blind participants who originally went along with the system to the active dissidents we are today. We also dispensed free copies of our own book Soul Survivor. Our allocated hour was to be shared with another presenter from America but we both felt we said all we wanted to in the 35 minutes we utilised.