To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:20:13 -0700
Subject: [s-acc] working past torture denial
Hi
Since I don't adhere to "identity politics" I try to solve my "unsolvable boundary issues" more like George Herbert Mead, by explaining them in terms of society. Yesterday I attended a
performance of "La Bohème" performed at the Mendocino Music Festival.A tent full of Mendocino "hippies" with the original "bohemian" Vision "in the face!" Too much! This is a micro society learning it "isn't crazy" (as is often said) but rather coming to see "how to be in a situation where one is "regarded as crazy." Others on this list live with other pieces of today's "U.S. experience" but this one, it happens, touches me. Social attitudes are in change, and the agendas of "torture" become .. more and more up-front & talk-able.
Recently we've talked on this list about calamitous cut-backs in services, and we're all "taking a hit." Yesterday, before heading north, I participated in a "Stakeholder Leadership" MHSA meeting in San Jose, which involves the planning project for MHSA funding in the Silicon Valley. [Two other S-ACC members attended and did camcording for the meeting; I'm the official representative for San Jose City College.] As it happened I sat next to the County Sheriff representative. He told me "Andrew, you got that right, County M.H. is off here" on an issue (of police shootings) that I had raised. Why do the police start to think the "client/survivor" people are "less crazy" than "mental health system?"
What can I say? "Mimi!" It's the matter of a young woman dying of consumption in the heartbreak of love.
Our movement has been 'hamstrung' for the last 40 years, in my experience, by the attitude of "torture denial" that has pervaded the practice of clinical psychology (and affected the mentality of psychiatry). Our folks have learned a parallel denial system, which I call "denial of psychology." The blessing of our times is that the Radical Psychology (now: "Ethical APA") challenge to the "torture denial" system is now shaking up the professional establishment. While we are facing the brutality of "cutbacks" we are also looking at the possibility of "new networking" with less denial, more respect, and some .. actual trust. New habits may emerge.
Right now I'm too much hurt by the passing of Mimi, but still I'm fancying that the 'artwork' of efforts we are making to build a project/better working relationship with the anti-torture psychologists offers some hope.
I will try to talk about those hopes and plans, if I can get over what happened in the opera.
Andrew