From: "northcoast_com" <starfish@northcoast.com>
To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tue 08/26/08 11:59 PM
Subject: [s-acc] Re: seven views of time
Ccc:
You wrote:
I don't believe anyone should ever manage another person in any way. In the business world, I was taught and now teach others that you manage property, equipment, and situations; but you "DO NOT manage people." ..
You're getting closer, but there's still what I call a "matter of social psychology." We have a movement that has spent decades becoming proficient at advocating for freedom. What we need is to advance that advocacy so that it will extend to an movement against prevailing behavioral management practices.
We start from a perspective aligned with what you say here. Having folks like you and Helen here who've shown integrity while working in the behavioral health milieu is a blessing for this list. However the average "client/survivor" person (and activists on this list, by and large, too) are immersed in different ways in the experience of being managed as though we were "property, equipment, situations." We who are immersed in this system of denial and control need to develop proficiency at advocating for dignity under the trying conditions of "treatment" that often impede our way. That sometimes become torture and that often act as impediments.
Zimbardo is a spokesperson for the social psychology of denial. His "seven views of time" are his tools for objectification. We need to clarify and understand how/when/why/whether they are effective, and then what we are to do. We need to remember the 40th anniversary of M.L.King, Jr.'s death and take up the mantle of changing behavioral science so that our "creative maladjustment" is supported.
This is not a
difference with you, it's a problematic of advocacy.
Andrew