Socialist Patients' Collective

[3][4][8][1][9][6][10][11][12] Rejecting the roles and ideology associated with the notion of the revolutionary as scientific explainer, they stated in Turn Illness into a Weapon that whoever claims they want to "observe the bare facts dispassionately" is either an "idiot" or a "dangerous criminal.

The SPK established a "free space" for "political therapy", re-framing illness as a contradiction created by capitalism which could be embraced to bring an end to the system which gave it life.

Like other anti-psychiatry experiments, such as Kingsley Hall and Villa 21, SPK questioned the patient/doctor paradigm and ultimately called for an overthrow of the "doctor's class".

To counter this suggestion, Heidelberg university's faculty of medicine supported the establishment of a counter-panel consisting of three critics of the SPK who were mandated to campaign against the group.

[15] The rhetoric denouncing the SPK as engaged in "terrorist activity" and a precursor to the RAF re-emerged after the arrest of Kristina Berster, who crossed the US border illegally seeking asylum from West German counterterrorism operations.

"[18] Kristina Berster explained that "the purpose of the Socialist Patients Collective was to find out the reasons why people feel lonely, isolated and depressed and the circumstances which caused these problems.

"[17] GSG 9 raided a facility belonging to SPK, discovering the first documented case of a terrorist organization training radio-jamming techniques.

It organized international congresses, founded a newspaper: RVU (or Rote Volksuniversität, People's Red University), supported prisoners and reprinted some SPK literature.