Hi

One of the requirements of my contract is that I give periodic reports on the progress of the organizing for the Educational Retreat. This is the second one. Please note that this is an interpretive report, not minutes for the meeting.

1. Website.  Documents related to the Educational Retreat are online.
2. Personality.  I regard it as axiomatic that the clients have to overcome the Alinsky agenda. Which is to say, either we get bogged down in attack politics where the ‘coolest’ personality wins, or we take up some kind of accountability to interpreting the truth of our beings. The former solution is plainly in vogue in state mental health circles today. In Santa Clara County such fashion is interpreted from afar, as an alien thing, but this passive response is not adequate for the momentous choice of direction we are making. Local client meetings tend to be dominated by ‘attack’ dynamics; people ‘vote with their feet’ and do not continue to participate: We have a problem.
3. Vygotsky.  What is required of the clients for us to take responsibility for this problematic? I think it requires that we find a reasonable way to understand individual rage and reasonable ways to present our own. In terms of the paradigm of psychology, this calls for a privileging of the role of sensitization. But that’s not a sufficiently political formulation. I go back to the 1920s argument between Piaget and Vygotsky on egocentric speech. If our rage is no more than a reflection of the clockwork of ego development, then the expectation is Bedlam, and the logic of its remedy is Gulag. But Vygotsky’s insight regarding the social ground of ‘inner speech’ offers the prospect of a tool for bringing rationality to the ‘question of intuition’. We have to know how to separate out creativity from the negativity of hurtful behavior. Experience shows the providers are often stuck on this one, to the detriment of the clients.
4. Organizing.  The clients are absorbing the fact that client-driven activity must be backed by a responsible process. And they are challenged by the contrast (locally) between the responsible process being a traditional informal networking, and the conundrum that the problems exceed its capacity. This is noticeably so both in the on-going self-help work and in the work for this Educational Retreat. The fact that M.H. Admin. is relatively ‘real’ and ‘judicious’ about engaging this traditional networking is a tremendous positive in the situation, but does not substitute for the clients taking up the organizing problem themselves. We have to give this Educational Retreat our best!
5. Agenda.  Six of us met on Thursday the 28^th — myself, Nancy Pena, Administrative Services Manager Luann Hahn, Tom Jurgensen, Barry Fultonberg, and (by speakerphone) Stephen Blum. Here’s the agenda I provided:
   
   
   • Discussion: Personality Politics
   • Structure of Follow-up Work
   • Status of Organizing
     Los Gatos Facility
     Contact Work
     Costing Spreadsheet
   • Plan of the Day Discussion
   
   
6. Discussion.  I used my recent Social Accountability post Personality politics as a prop for this discussion. Last time we discussed this issue from the ‘client ideology’ perspective, in terms of ‘fighting tokenism’. This time I introduced the problem from the ‘provider ideology’ perspective, in terms of the psychology of personality. Vygotsky’s advocacy of the creativity of the child and the consequent social grounding of rage/intuition in ‘inner speech’ was my text. I remember hehehe San Jose State University psychology professor (now retired) Bud Andersen and the psychological insight he brought to the South Bay in times of yore.
7. Rage.  Personality is interpreted as ‘mental illness’. This is placation of the person, it is commonly perceived as ‘tokenizing’. If the person is not ‘mentally ill’, then we say they have a ‘bad personality’. Whence, the respect issue. ‘Inner speech’ as a perspective makes the rage of this ‘bad personality’ socially accessible — it becomes a negotiation. Then a criterion of meaningful creativity can be assessed, which is a very different criterion than compliance! Tom pointed out that in practice treatment becomes ‘pushing down’ on the rage and diminishing the personality, whereas sometimes what is being ‘pushed down’ results from legitimate rage at real abuse. I added that it actually goes further than this, that sometimes the rage being attacked is socially productive or even results in works of art.
8. Class.  Stephen suggested that we bring this discussion in via our 2×2 groups. I don’t understand this comment, as I think the problem is not readily addressed by individual initiative. In other places in the state, in former times in Santa Clara County, we find professional manipulation of client personality questions. Nancy said it’s a matter of driving home to the administrators (and providers) a bona fide consciousness of the personality of the clients. She went further and described this as a ‘class issue’ with the task of ‘client-driven’ mental health being to eliminate the ‘class barrier’, which metaphorically means to overcome the prevailing dominance relations in client-provider interaction. She added this ‘class issue’ should resonate with sensitivity to other isms like racism, sexism, heterosexism. The pathologizing of personality is not acceptable.
9. Accountability.  Undoubtedly this choice of language is an artifact of the rhetorical context. Still the truth is that the professionals have not looked as closely as they might at the turmoil associated with declarations of ‘revolution’, the huge problematic of learning accountability that the clients must work through if the outcome is to be wholesome. Those of us liable to get hurt take this part very seriously. Plus the way this is commonly being presented in current state m.h. politics seems reckless to many of us.  :-(  I pointed out that Tom and Barry are in the meeting as ‘stakeholders’, but they know they don’t speak for the clients based on any representative process. The fact that we have ‘good insight’ into client issues is an elite argument; what’s needed is a democratic argument. Barry was extremely supportive in sustaining this line of argument.
10. Followup I.  I presented the ‘followup' question as suggested by the previous meeting, using the following outline:
    
    
    • Followup for Staff and Stakeholders
      Working Followup Committee
      Inclusion of Stakeholders
      Inclusion of MHB
    • Followup for Facilitors
      Independent Client Organization
      Accountability Training
      Client Psychology Conference
    
    
11. Followup II.  The above is only a sketch; the plan remains to be fleshed out. Nancy was very supportive of the ‘staff and stakeholder’ followup. Still (see above) the matter of what’s required for quality client organizing is clearer IMHO to the clients. I spoke to this in terms of the ‘accountability perpective’ presentation by myself, Bonnie Schell, and Maria Maceira, from the plan of the day. Right now, as Jose Rangel emphasizes, the Santa Clara clients must organize a ‘Steering Committee’ and get the local client networking into operant mode. In the long run, I believe, some perspective of ‘accountability training’ is imperative, if the clients are really to rise to the occasion and do a competent job with the ‘client-driven’ agenda. I also mentioned that ‘client psychology’ is the focal direction of work for the Accountability Caucus.
12. Status.  I mentioned that Syl Plowright has signed on to this project, much to my delight. I didn’t mention, but after the meeting, I had a long talk with Agnes Arvai Lintz and she also indicated a serious interest in presenting. (She has a group at Napa State Hospital where she’s filling in for the regular leader due to serious illness; this is a Friday group and she will need to find a replacement.) Luann and Nancy have gone ahead and reserved the Los Gatos Lodge.  :-)  I presented the invite letters and Nancy approved them in principle. Norma Gonzales at M.H. Administration is to help me put these out and make arrangements for people. Her phone # is 408-885-5785.
13. Budget.  We discussed the budget. Nancy is compensating the client facilitators who work for her the equivalent of $150 for the retreat and the pre-meeting the nite before. She set that sum as the honorarium rate for presenters. We reserved 18 rooms for the nite of the 16^th. Anything for the following nite will be based on special needs; nothing has been reserved yet. The cost of the facility (meeting room, ‘corporate package’ for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and those 18 rooms comes to about $5600.) The rooms have patios which will be eminently suitable for 2×2 sessions. More on the budget later.
14. Plan.  We still can’t get to the ‘Plan of the Day’ in a systematic manner. I pointed out that based on the previous discussion, I had provided for a ‘History Link’ table at lunch-time, where Phil Cushman and Lynne Stewart would be accessible for people who are looking for this kind of ‘3-person’ grounding (quote from Phil Cushman). Also some of the discussion above goes to the Accountability Perspective topic and will help me to clarify this portion.

We agreed to set up a meeting time of 12:30 PM on Tuesday, July 3^rd. You may contact me at 408-793-6476 for ‘input’.

Respectfully

Andrew Phelps