From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: friends
Subject: Mickey Mouse won
Date: Fri 10/08/10 08:44 AM
Hi
It is difficult to respond personally to the events at the Garden Grove 2010 Alternatives Conference. Pam Hyde of SAMHSA was made to back off on Will Hall's workshop description as "coming off meds." I gather she spent much time there meeting with people and explaining herself.
Bob Whitaker presented on that topic - scheduled very early in the morning - and a thunderbolt came down, and the people jumped up and cried "Jove!" [That's the way Giambattista Vico would have described it, and James Joyce would have represented it.] Bob later attended our "new social roles" workshop.
And we did
that institute, in a meeting room we ourselves rented: More on that engaging discussion will I'm sure ensue. What could be seen in various points was re-organization of significant portions of our movement, e.g. Project Return in L.A. County. "Attitude change" was evident and the psychological flavor was on the whole better, I thought.Personally I was put up in the home of a clinical psychologist who has a background in Radical Therapy from the 70s, who was brought back to California a few years back as consultant for state DMH in the U.S. DOJ Consent Judgment for the mis-management of the five state mental hospitals. He attended our institute, and he got yelled at by another psychologist attending, for so doing. [!]
I am a graduate of Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia, PA. In the 90s, the incoming President of our student body, Laura Wilcox, was murdered in Grass Valley, CA and the Involuntary Outpatient Commitment law enacted thereafter in CA was named after her. My report is that our college fight song was the "Mickey Mouse Club Song" and that, down the street from Disneyland, it seems that Mickey Mouse indeed won the day.
Best
Andrew