Alison Hymes:

First of all I want to thank you based on private correspondence where you reminded me of the central role of ‘personality politics’ in the problematic of our times.

I realize that I conceptualize better with a context so I hope you don’t mind if I apply some of what you wrote here to what I am dealing with now in trying to work towards a consumer/client group organization where I live in Virginia.

Your response is entirely on point. In the mid-70s I was a client finding a role as an activist in DC; my cousin was a graduate student at UVa. My first real job hehehe was in VA. So I think I have some sense of the flavor of your struggle, what leads up to that Virginia Organizing Project, etc. But I surely don’t know enough to comment in detail.

Where I’m coming from with this posting is that I’m approaching the matter of refining the understanding so that it can be the cement for a ‘new tradition’ in client organizing. Here in CA we have created a statewide networking of veteran activists, so the problems that come to me, come to me as “how we network around being accountable” rather than simply being “how we act as accountable organizers.” That obviously sharpens the questions and gives them more of an interpersonal flavor.

Gerald Minsk is right that this is part of the theoretical and practical construction which makes this re-networking possible. And, in fact, makes it coherent. It is no good just to do the ‘same-old, same-old’ and put on a face that one is doing something ‘cooler’. Like you say, the matter requires major self-examination and the voluntary restructuring of one’s habits for the Vision of personal responsibility. Oh, and I hope people won’t stress too much about this, even if it’s challenging, it’s only what is reasonable.  :-)

Of course both you and I draw our insight into ‘personality politics’ from a lot of traditional experiences in mainstream liberal/progressive organizing. I remember sitting around the Cafe Mediterraneum in Berkeley for years listening to the one-time associates of ‘Martin’ and ‘Jesse’ talk about all the personality issues. About the boundary with forensic issues and who is regarded as ‘cool’ by society, etc. Lots of good excuse for good coffee.

The difference for the clients is that we are closer to the ‘paradigm in psychology’ question than the general anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-heterosexism, etc. movement. That’s why I started from Vygotsky and his argument with Piaget around ‘inner speech’ v. ‘egocentric speech’. If we want to go beyond Bedlam we need to understand the logic of the disciplining of rage, when it is excessive and destructive, etc.

Attack politics is the syndrome, the diagnostic for ‘personality politics’ among the clients. In the general movement this goes as far as why ‘correct thinking’ finally reduces to ‘thought reform’, to the issue of the brainwash. If we want to go beyond Gulag we need to find a caring and sensitive way to engage the issues of personality, short-circuit the brutality, etc.

Since the ‘free spirits’ don’t want to be organized in a bureaucratic sense, we have to find what kind of association makes their cooperative endeavor possible.

This doesn’t exactly address all you are writing about, but I wondered if it would help me to understand better if I put it in a context. I am very field dependent  <g>.

Don’t know strictly what to do in regards ‘field dependence’, only maybe some of my comments here are more directly on point. The website of the Accountability Caucus obviously has some contextual stuff for the CA re-networking experience. But if you want to see what this looks like in real time, you could refer back to my post on the Educational Retreat which is being organized via the A.C. for the Silicon Valley M.H. establishment.

There will be more info on this Retreat forthcoming, esp. we are planning a presentation on it as part of the Social Accountability Plank Dialogue Sessions at Alternatives 2001. Currently likely presenters would be myself, Jose Rangel and Barry Fultonberg from the Santa Clara clients movement, and Lynne Stewart, former CEO of the California Network, who is from Riverside. But I fear based on your previous comments that you might not be able to come to Philadelphia in August.  :-(

Respectfully

Andrew Phelps