The 1967 ¿Summer of Love¿ brought all sorts of unusual people and events to London but perhaps
nothing so extraordinary as the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation. The congress
organized by the American ¿anti-psychiatrist¿ Joe Berke with help from Leon Redler R.D. Laing
David Cooper and a host of students ex-students psychiatric ¿patients¿ and secretaries
took place at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm Road over two weeks during July and was designed to
¿demystify human violence in all its forms the social systems from which it emanates and to
explore new forms of action.¿ But that bald summary of the purpose of the Congress accurate as
it is hardly does justice to its immediate achievements or to its long-term significance.
Mingling with the many then famous speakers: Allen Ginsberg Herbert Marcuse Paul Goodman
Stokely Carmichael Gregory Bateson C.L.R. James Julian Beck Emmett Grogan Thich Nhat Hanh
Paul Sweezy John Gerassi and Lucien Goldmann were many younger people who arrived with their
own ideas and who themselves went onto distinguished and influential careers in the arts
politics and academia. One was the American artist Carolee Schneemann who devised a happening
which was performed on the last day of the Congress. Another was the British psychoanalyst and
feminist Juliet Mitchell. A third was the American Marxist and feminist Angela Davis. This book
which is in part a biography of Joe Berke traces the Congress from its origins in the United
States to its major outgrowth the Antiuniversity of London and concludes with some brief
reflections on the congress¿s relevance to today¿s ¿revolutionary¿ identity-based politics.
