ABSTRACT
It is with a second eye on the career origins of Annie Altschul and Hildegard Peplau, that this chapter positions the concept of psychosocial intervention and its therapeutic community legacy.1 The foundations of mental health nursing, through the work of Hildegard Peplau and Annie Altschul especially, are shown to be coterminous with the emergence of the therapeutic community (TC) method. With its emphasis from the start on social inclusion and user involvement, it is argued that TC methods continue to promise radically and politically informed mental health practice, compensating the anti-therapeutic tendencies inherent in modern psychiatry.
