tree in Tazewell, VA
To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Subject: Re: [s-acc] coalition proposal
Date: Sun 03/07/10 08:24 PM
Rtv:
The training to make a "trained assessor" (dominant) on the condition of another (subordinate). The undoing of this positional training will require coming to a place where there can be an educationalsystem that removes the dominant and subordinate positions in the relationship to put out professionals with the ability to tolerate a mutual relationship. .. To move to mutual respect in the psychiatric system will require a social change that will affect almost every area of life.
That's pretty accurate. But it's also the problematic of a "human rights struggle." Mutual respect on an ethnic basis or on a gender role basis, for instance, has not come quickly, or easily, or fully. But there is a historical dynamic that involves going through different levels of interaction-change bit by bit, with occasional 'qualitative' changes. In the Afro-American movement, following the 14th amendment and the breakdown of "Reconstruction," there was a struggle leading up to the founding of the NAACP in 1909. Another level was reached in 1954 with Brown v. Board. These each resulted in the blossoming of new directions. Now with Obama's election we are facing yet another. Similarly the feminist movement was "first wave" up through the right to vote c. 1920. The 'gender role' issue took a new form in the "support groups" of the late 60s/early 70s. This is commonly known in feminist circles as "second wave." Talk regarding "third wave" is now prominent there.
In the "client/survivor" advocacy, "first wave" has been the dominant process, since the late 60s/early seventies and up to the present. However there is a developing movement for "second wave," which roughly means focusing on "dignity" rather than (just) "freedom."
The S-ACC was founded in an effort to help move things in a "second wave" type of direction (not: to make the "second wave" happen). This 'coalition proposal' is an effort to get the social justice counselors and psychologists to recognize this dynamic, and find ways of accommodating it. It's a kind of change that will - as you rightly indicate - take a lot of doing and won't happen quickly. The proposal is to develop some infrastructure for nurturing the development of this sort of social change.
Andrew Phelps