Off the Shelf: The Magazine of Progressive Delirium Vol. 1, No. 1-4; Vol. 2 No. 1

Bayside, NY: The Association for the Preservation of Anti-Psychiatric Artifacts (APAPA), 1980-1981. Allen P. Markman, ed. Five issues bound as four (Vol. 1 No. 3  & 4 released together). Vol. .1, No. 1: 8 ½ x 10 ⅝ in., all else 8 ½ x 11 in. Thermal inkjet printed. Saddle-stapled. 19, 19, 15, 15 pp.

The first four issues of this anti-psychiatry journal “produced by ex-psychiatric inmates using APAPA’s Apple II Plus microcomputer…to educate the public to the dangers of involuntary psychiatry in a free society.” 

Off the Shelf is remarkable not only as a document of the anti-psychiatry and psychiatric survivors movements, but as a radical attempt to self-archive, and to build networks of communication and low-cost information for the movement, primarily by means of the first personal computers.

Essays and articles throughout the journal include “Psychiatric McCarthyism,” in which Tom Weiss attacks mental health discrimination in the workplace - decades before such conversations reached mainstream publications and the upper echelons of power. The magazine also includes news relevant to the movement, poetry by former psychiatric inmates, uncredited illustrations, and an essay of mental health advice entitled, “How to Avoid Killing Someone.” In addition to this periodical, APAPA also produced the radio series, “Madness Network,” on WBAI-Pacifica, along with Project Release of New York.

We are not able to locate records of any other issues of this journal in OCLC as of March 2021. However, we did locate one of the group’s “data bank printouts” at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and documents related to the Association for the Preservation of Anti-Psychiatric Artifacts in the Tom Behrendt Papers at UMass Amherst. 

All very good; nos. 1 and 2 are stamped and postmarked.