Gonder, Ethiopia
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 12:35:23 -0700
To: "MHOCCA List" <mhocca@egroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Subject: Re: [MHOCCA] Personal responsibility

Katherine Minsk wrote:
I don’t think that we should blame all our problems on the mental health system, the way we were potty-trained, the political system, etc. We need to take responsibility for our actions.

Judgment of actions need to also take into consideration the context of the action and also history. It is one thing if a person lashes out in the frustration of the moment, and another if he/she is consistently abusive.
Well, with this I agree. Only there’s a caveat:

At some points in history, things achieve an irrational interface and ‘social violation’ takes on a different earmarking under these time/place considerations. For instance, when Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, this did not get judged on the basis of the hurt feelings of the passengers and the inconvenience of the bus driver who was after all just a working stiff. That’s because the focal meaning of segregation came out at this time.

I was involved in similar situations in the 60s around People’s Park. Some people took over this vacant lot that the University was using as a parking lot. This was a violation of the laws of property. But eventually even Gov. Reagan and the National Guard couldn’t get U.C.’s right enforced. Today which is 31 years later the property is still undeveloped and the place is being used today as .. a park.

The issue of how to deal with the fundamental irrationality of the rationalist, pre-scientific mental health model we have today is IMHO volatile in the same kind of degree. TAC argues that we should adopt a regressive stance, Torrey’s version is that we should retrieve the feudal family customs of tribal Ethiopia and impose them on Western society. That’s like arguing for racism. The alternative is very challenging and requires that we deal with what it means to be human [‘respect’] in a way that challenges fundamentally the present scientific methodology.

In short, the present issue is by its nature highly inflammatory. As a human being and a client you, Katherine, do not deserve to be subject to ‘consistently abusive’ activity by others. But you have chosen to take sides with the regressive direction, and you are ‘treading on thin ice’ with the client activists! To me, it’s like the anti-segregationists would have been wrong if they’d sent death threats to the family of that bus driver, they would have lost their sense of proportion. And I think people who harass you on this matter have also a problem with their sense of proportion.

Respectfully

Andrew Phelps


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