target location

 

From: target@batstar.net

To: psysr-disc@yahoogroups.com

Cc: two S-ACC activists

Subject: [psysr-disc] PsySR project ideas

Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 09:56:32 -0700

 

Hi

Earlier this year a proposal for a "PsySR project" was submitted to the PsySR OpCom under the title, "Beyond Tokenism: Building Creative Maladjustment"

There are ongoing discussions and some psychologists say they are "on board" and the "Social Accountability Work Group" of client/survivor activists has also embraced this talk.

Beyond tokenism is .. working through carefully how to initiate such a project.

Careful effort is required to put this project together in a trusting way, so that PsySR can take it on officially. This note aims to help open up the discussion.

Specifically the intention here is to indicate four general work areas under discussion. ["Work groups" referenced here generally includes both "client/survivor" activists and professional psychologists.]

 

  1. Designate a "networking work group" (about 4 persons) to help "client/survivor" activists and anti-torture psychologists to network locally on an individual basis.
  2. Designate a "clinical gaze work group" (membership as needed) that will promote discussions between "client/survivor" activists and anti-torture psychologists, and activists and psychologists as appropriate, on the phenomenology of the "clinical gaze" and how people are to engage that dynamism responsibly. Possibly this may include organizing presentations involving the history of Italian psychiatry and what's needed to bring that sort of anti-torture sensitivity to the U.S. situation.
  3. Develop a forum where the "client/survivors" can "tell their stories" and express a "new psychology of adjustment and imagination." Make that forum an [?] "anti-clinic" and develop a process of ethical oversight to make it "safe" as "seeing a therapist" is meant to be "safe" today. [For clinicians, it has been suggested that such a forum may include some kind of "casebook" development.] Alternatively put, this means to work past "identity politics" and struggle for social justice together creatively, built around personal integrity. U.S. models involving community facilitation of social justice centered approaches to helping people such as the recent "Vanderbilt" model or the "Psynergy" approach would be looked at.
  4. Create a PsySR 'engagement' list, jointly moderated. Draw from previous efforts such as the "client/survivor" 'disconnect' and 'social death' lists, such as the professional 'radpsynet-members' list, such as 'psyact'. ["Building cultures of peace" calls for engagement with the concern for 'human rights'.]

Can we work our way out of the medical/rehab narrative into the social justice narrative?

 

Andrew Phelps

with the help of many others, both "client/survivor" activists and anti-torture/social justice psychologists