Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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The uses and potential dangers of diagnostic language in psychotherapy and counselling
Get PDFThe following is a discussion between two psychotherapists from different backgrounds (Gestalt and psychodynamic) debating the uses and potential dangers of diagnostic language and thinking within the profession. Starting from different positions, the two authors engage with each other's views in order to explore and expand the notion of diagnosis in more depth. The emphasis is on widening the discussion rather than proving each other wrong. Therefore there is no attempt to wrap things up in a neat conclusion. The reader is left to find his or her own position, which may end up being aligned with both authors at the same time. What on the surface may look like an expression of polar opposite positions becomes a relational exploration of common ground, expressed in different ways for different reasons
Out of time: The pleasures and the perils of ageing by Lynne Segal. London, UK: Verso, 2013. 320 pp.
Get PDFOut of time: The pleasures and the perils of ageing by Lynne Segal. London, UK: Verso, 2013. 320 pp
Against humanism: On therapy and the overhuman
Get PDFTransformation means changing shape, mutating; it is akin to metamorphosis. Most revolutionary projects of the past left the human unchanged and unchallenged. They often planned and described a better world in absolute terms without the ambiguity praised by Simone de Beauvoir as necessary in leaving the future open to active adaption and creative error. Most utopias never left the narrow confines of anthropocentrism, whose origins are in Christian ideology and which, for that reason, still perseveres in seeing the human as the centre of “creation” with all other living networks merely as context, backdrop, and footnotes to the human story. Psychotherapy too, whether socially engaged, relational, or myopically bound to neoliberal notions of private liberty, is restricted to obsolete notions of the human. But care of psyche requires a metamorphosis of the human, greater alignment of the self with the organism—an organism that is already (part of) the world, in rhizomatic contamination with the non-human. Psychotherapy implicitly invites a creative crisis that brings the human closer to what Nietzsche called the “overhuman”, a space where we can cultivate our vulnerability in relation to a sad, beautiful, and unfathomable world
The neglected complexities of refugee fathers
Get PDFUsing two different stories from our practice as illustrations, we focus on the uniqueness and complexity of the predicament of refugee fathers. In the context of the current phenomenon of the feminisation of refugees, refugee fathers tend to be overlooked. In this article, we draw attention to the specific difficulties refugee fathers face, as well as illustrating our synergic approach to working in this field, which, whilst not neglecting the person's distress and suffering, also identifies the strengths they retain (resilience) and the new positive experiences that they gain by their very exposure to adversity (adversity-activated development). By collaborating synergically with the refugee fathers’ strengths, in the context of their trauma, it is possible to heal their traumatic experiences and to activate their potential to the maximum
Psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, and anti-anti-psychiatry: Rhetoric and reality
Get PDFThe term “anti-psychiatry” was coined in 1912 by Dr. Bernhard Beyer, and popularized by David Cooper and his critics in 1967 in the midst of a widespread cultural revolt against involuntary hospitalization and in-patient psychiatry. However, with the demise of the old-fashioned mental hospital, and the rise of Big Pharma (with all its attendant evils), the term “anti-psychiatry” has survived as a term of abuse or a badge of honor, depending on the user and what rhetorical work the term is expected to perform. Those who still use the term generally have a polemical axe to grind, and seldom understand either the term's origins or its contemporary implications. It is time to retire this term, or to restrict its use (as much as possible) to R. D. Laing's followers in the Philadelphia Associates and kindred groups that sprang up in the late 1960s and 1970s
Thoughts and questions about Tolstoy's War and Peace in Gaza and the “war on terror”
Get PDFTo mark the world premiere production of the Arabic stage adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace by Theatre for Everybody, which took place in Gaza in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in November and December of 2017, this piece of writing asks what the relevance of this work might be for the people of Gaza and how Tolstoy's novel may throw light on the character and history of war in the contemporary world
Otto Gross: A case of exclusion and oblivion in the history of psychoanalysis
Get PDFThis article attempts to explain why Otto Gross, one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis and the first to think about its political implications, a thinker who exerted considerable influence in the artistic and cultural milieux of a number of European countries, was segregated by the psychoanalytic community. The article presents some documents and several excerpts from the correspondence between psychoanalysts that demonstrate the crucial role played by Jung and Freud in this segregation. The article also aims to explain how this segregation resulted in the oblivion with which the history of psychoanalysis treats Otto Gross, questioning and even denouncing the way history is written in this field