Cooper, D. G. 1931-1986

David Graham Cooper (1931 – 29 July 1986) was a South African-born psychiatrist and theorist who was prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement. Cooper graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1955. R. D. Laing claimed that Cooper underwent Soviet training to prepare him as an anti-apartheid communist revolutionary. After completing his course, he never returned to South Africa out of fear that the Bureau of State Security would eliminate him. He moved to London, where he worked at several hospitals. From 1961 to 1965, he ran an experimental unit for young people with schizophrenia called Villa 21, which he saw as a revolutionary 'anti-hospital' and a prototype for the later Kingsley Hall Community. In 1965, Cooper was involved with Laing and others in establishing the Philadelphia Association. An "existential Marxist", he left the Philadelphia Association in the 1970s in a disagreement over its lack of political orientation. Cooper coined the term "anti-psychiatry" in 1967, and wrote the book Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry in 1971. He also co-founded the Antiuniversity of London in February 1968.