To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Will Hall
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:37:53 -0700
Subject: Re: [s-acc] Fwd: childhood neglect
Hi
I was really quite taken aback by Ttt's comment, that I helped her get 'unstuck' by bringing her to Portland PsySR/CSJ conference 2005. Maybe I have "Hillary" infection because I was paying attention to the fact that Monica Lewinsky was a Psych Intern at Southeast Mental Health in Portland before doing the White House 2nd internship. And there we were at Lewis & Clark Univ. checking out her haunts!
Bbb, this is indeed a thoughtful piece.
This conceptualization of "passing" as opposed to "bluffing" may be tangential to this thread since it is a political thread.
I'd say "tangential" is the wrong term. I'm teaching trigonometry this summer, so I'm supposed hehehe to know something about tangents. For me the political critique is precisely in trying to understand the strategy and tactics of handling this 'neglect' dynamism.
It seems to me that in our efforts to be right with the world outside of our inner selves, psychologically, we need to consider our socio-political identities and how that has impacted on our past and is affecting our relationships and endeavors today.
This is the "political economy of personality" in my terms. It is reconstructing "being" from the 'ground up' or by "rearranging the new relating in a positive way" as Will Hall would say. When Gramsci talks about developing the "proletarian personality," this is where he starts.
In other words, what "creative maladjustment" have we participated in to "pass" as not being mad? And what are the consequences to our integrity?
I'm awfully tired if thinking "what kind of sales job do I present as?" As a part-time mathematics instructor, I had
lots of opportunity to examine that in the context of departmental politics.And what "creative maladjustment" have we participated in to align our basic needs not being met with our ability to meet them ourselves? And how much pain to our soul has this inflicted on us?
You speak plainer and more simply than I.
Is there a paradox here? The more we creatively mal adjust to our society or growing-up-environment, which does not meet our needs, the less mad we become and the more pain we experience, but the more we appear to the world to be mad.
The "hot flash" based on MLK, Jr.'s advocacy was the riots based on his assassination some months after he spoke to the APA. There people did what felt right directly, while appearing mad to the authorities. In Washington, DC this resulted in a counter-culture of "it is right to rebel." My psychiatric perpetrator (as I've posted before here) saw that in psychoanalytic terms as an issue of "ego fusion" in ghetto youth. Instead of the metaphysics of "paradox," we need to "Barack" it and consider how to positively construct the paradigm that supersedes the 'medical model'.
And no, I'm not making a Presidential campaign statement here. My use of the term 'infection' was pointed. I'm just putting the 'paradox' in sociopolitical terms. We have to construct the "second chance" that follows the April, 1968 blowup; we have to put the "behavioral science" question back on the table.
Nice
Andrew