To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com

From: "dis_course" <dis_course@yahoo.com>

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:12:17 -0800

Subject: [s-acc] Re: token and truth

 

Hi

Nml wrote:

Then that means there is hope for me.  It is a psych game and one I can no longer believe in. 

This discussion of networking better with "social justice psychology" has this underlying thread, that it has power and often affects us close to the heart. "Clinical psychology" has taken to speak to us like it's psychology itself. And now it's stumbling over the 'torture' issue and social justice psychology is emerging "out from the cracks in the edifice." Personality is being related to values again, rather than being a creature of objectification and "ego dynamics." Even stereotype and attitude now must be thought anew.

In our movement, in the 70s, Radical Therapy embraced a "denial system" based on the clinical construct of "transactional analysis." For which they got "radical politics," the opening to talk about racism, sexism, imperialism, and other human rights issues. For us this came down in a manner akin to "Games People Play." So you today, Nml, find your handle in talk about the "psych game."

What we have to do on this list is re-center so that we can dissociate our personal experience with clinical manipulation from the deeper concern for the truth of 'mind'. It isn't all tokenism, not now, in the hands of the anti-torture folks.

While reading this story my self image came back to me.  Of course it is still a struggle to keep it stable and in full view of my mind, even while I write this, but this is hope for me.

Yes. And for this list, we are going to have to find peer support for this realization of 'hope'. We've been there before, when "empower" came in and 'freedom' became the talk. Now honesty about "torture" means that 'dignity' can be the talk. A few words Nml, but really well said.

What's interesting about PsySR is that "building cultures of peace" thing. It empowers the discourse on human rights w/o having to fall into the "Games People Play" thing. PsySR is piece by piece realizing that its challenge is to take up the discourse of 'dignity'.

 

Andrew