From: Andrew Phelps <dis_course@yahoo.com>

To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com

Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:30:37 -0800 (PST)

Subject: Re: [s-acc] medical model

 

Yxw:

On Tue, 1/5/10, you wrote:

Thanks for the context. It is helpful. I think it will be good to use the anniversary to assess what public progress has been made in the "second wave" - congratulations on 10 years, that is a big deal.

Today is the 10th anniversary of S-ACC.

A lot of that effort was diverted 2002-07 to the NO-LIST "national organizing" project. We measured our "second wave" perspective against the dominant agendas in the "client/survivor" movement. We found where we were strong and where "more work was needed." Now we are coming "unstuck" and our "infrastructure" work is on the upgrade. These last two weeks we've had an [!] explosion of conversation on the critique of the 'medical model', discussion of the 'clinical gaze', the 'second wave' approaches to strengthening our voicing and advocacy.

As with human rights movements generally, the processes of moving "first wave" to "second wave" and the like are slow and also powerful. You know, as an advocate against racism, how the Niagara movement kick-started the NAACP in the 1906-09 time frame. Many of us remember how the "women's support groups" of the late 60s/early 70s moved the feminist movement into "second wave" activism. And there are other examples: It's just that the "client/survivor" movement is significantly behind some of the other human rights struggles: We are still asking for our place on the "freedom traih."

Today it's the world politics that is so-called "crazy" and the government is in contradiction with the "national security state" system where security gets equated with psychoanalytic management [Daniel Ellsberg speaks well to that assessment]. Things are going to "pop" as the disconnect becomes more and more obvious, and it's our infrastructure work that's going to stabilize some of that "maladjustment dynamic." Thus in the 2005 Portland PsySR conference, myself, Pat Risser, Roberta Sprague, and Darrellyn Poole presented on "disconnect" as a dynamism. Today we are in dialogue with the leadership of PsySR regarding "new social roles" - we seek to replace the "clinically" driven relations with collaborate social-justice driven relations, where critique of the 'clinical gaze' brings us to shared social responsibility.

That effort will mature slowly precisely because it is "creative." Our focus on "grassroots advocacy" will back it up. What we do today that's unusual and even remarkable will in time become ordinary. And in time our "dignity" focus will actually take over from the earlier ('first wave') "freedom" focus. I see that happening, here, there, all around, bit by bit. Do you?

 

Andrew