Joseph Berke studied at Columbia College of Columbia University and graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He moved to London in 1965 where Berke worked with R. D. Laing in the 1960s when the Philadelphia Association was set up, and was resident at Kingsley Hall, where he helped Mary Barnes, a nurse who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia to emerge from madness. Barnes later became a famous artist, writer and mystic. A stage play based on the book that Berke and Barnes wrote together (Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness) was adapted as a stage play by David Edgar. Berke collaborated on a number of projects with R. D. Laing including the Dialectics of Liberation international conference in London,15-30 July 1967. Berke was the principal organizer of the conference.

 

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist for Individuals and Families. Co-Founder of the Arbours Association in London in 1970. Co-Founder and Director of the Arbours Crisis Centre, London, and a lecturer and teacher, Berke is the author of many articles and books on psychological, social, political and religious themes.

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