the plumber’s place
the plumber’s place
To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com
From: Andrew Phelps <no-action@cwnet.com>
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:15:02 -0700
Subject: RE: [s-acc] re: classic on communication and conflict resolution
Hi
On Sun Aug 2 10:20 , Ccc sent:
I agree totally with Bbb.
I agree mostly with what she said. The problem she does not directly address is "develop a literature," what does that mean. There are limits and diversions in the business of "Language Arts."
We all know the history of the psychiatric industry, its leaders and theories. We need to develop our own history, one that builds on the truths of people living the life, and ways we survive and overcome the problems we face. I think we can!
We already have, the problem being that it is a "torture denial" based narrative that reduces our movement to something that developed with MPLF at the beginning of the 70s. Bad way to mythologize, bad notion to reduce being to "myth." That project was presented e.g. at St. Louis Alternatives.
To put it differently, Onm had some marginal engagement with MPLF. What she has to say, however, is not yet framed well by the perpetrators of "the myth."
Which is more valuable...reciting over and over the torture and philosophies of those who created the repressive system; or creating a new way of looking at life, and techniques people have used to find their personal power?
I believe that misses the point, in a way. "Torture denial" means that people do "front door, back door." They TALK AROUND their bitter experience and then they "go for it" in "creating a new way of looking at life," by mythologizing. Neither of those dialogical schemes is particularly well-grounded. We need a new approach, which encompasses "make our own literature," but goes beyond that and is more complex.
Excessive complaint about torture is "bitterness talk;" the matter of torture should not be avoided, but it also shouldn't be dwelled on. [If you look at the anti-torture psychology talk today, it dwells on "the strategic helplessness of the APA," that is, "torture denial," not on the pain of torture.]
Concretely, I talked with Gfe (PsySR activist, who is a clinical psychologist in Berkeley) two days ago. She wanted these stories. When she met with Bbb and me last fall, we talked "casebook." This time, I demurred. Reducing our stories to "casebook" may register with some unconvinced social justice minded clinical psychologists. That's OK with me. What we need, however, is to DANCE our stories, or .. as you might say, play them on a stringed instrument. [Turn them into mathematical theorems?] Our "language arts" project will be to render our lived truths in a "client/survivor" culture of expression.
For me, the issue is "safety." In the present clinical system, things are SUPPOSED to be set up so that the person is "safe" in the clinical session. What we need from the social justice psychologists today is to WORK OUT a parallel mutual understanding, an ethics of interaction so that our story telling is [1] valued as a contribution to psychology and also [2] "protected behavior," whatever that means.
Andrew