Delphine Brody presents at SJCC
To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com
From: starfish@northcoast.com
Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:13:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [s-acc] maladjustment
Hi
These days I'm wrestling - again - with my 'maladjustment'. The consequence of "infant trauma" is a distorted pattern of behavior that accommodates the "box one finds oneself in." Since I live by the values of "freedom and dignity" I've mainly focused on getting my maladjustment to work well for me and to reflect these values. My habits — like chasing after starfishes — are coming to make social sense.
I've gone through many stages in this project, esp. since it wasn't supported very well by 'mental health' or by the limited focus of the early "mental patients" movement. It's "all political" for me, as human rights issues are like that. I feel I've now reached a boundary though, one [!] illustrated by the ABC News treatment of the PA Clinton-Obama debate: Charlie Gibson the Pres. of my senior class in H.S. DID IT AGAIN, taking the issues and turning the discussion to the personal attack level. Only now he's made himself look bad in public .. only 48 years after I was campaign manager for his opponent, the unsuccessful candidate for Class President.
I actually started my trek doing the "creative" thing; I became a devotee of William Blake and his "Vision" approach. That finally led me to realize the need to do "maladjustment." And worse came, when the explosion of learning provoked psychiatric involvement, while the society was rejecting "creative maladjustment" in favor or street riots and then yuppification. That all meant I had to
do it from scratch by following "first principles."I think that if we want to take MLK, Jr.'s project on behavioral science to the next level, we need to take the "infant trauma" thing and turn it to a critique of conventional behaviorism. In fact I thought that in the 60s and figured much of the logic of how to "fight the 'medical model'" out then. Today the dominant behavioral agenda promotes a war between 'neocon' ideology and the so-called 'Islamo-fascist' agenda that oppresses people generally and also needs our insight into "building cultures of peace" and opposing torture in the name of treatment. It's taking on that agenda which will provide the context for the flowering of the present discussion and for networking with social justice minded folks.
Andrew