ABSTRACT
The Sixth Congress, held in August 1977 in Honolulu, was notable for more than the professional concerns; the Soviet misuse of psychiatry emerged as the most critical issue on the conference agenda. The same strategy was quite beyond application at the time of the Honolulu World Congress. The American Psychiatric Association proposed the formation of a special committee to review the political abuse of psychiatry wherever it might occur. In one interview with a Soviet journalist he highlighted the alleged flaws of the voting system, rehearsing the same points expressed in the delegation’s Honolulu document. The programme had been renewed annually without fuss—until the review held in October 1977, that is, two months after Honolulu. The adverse publicity stemming from a series of investigations of dissenter-patients would, in the American calculation, deter the USSR from continuing to resort to political psychiatry.
