Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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JANUARY — Subjectivity, psychology and the Cuban Revolution
Get PDFThis article contains a discussion on the Cuban Revolution and its effects on subjectivity and psychology. The authors reflect on the historical and psychosocial background of the revolutionary process of 1956–1959, the Cuban exception in the Latin American context, the role of objective and subjective factors in the revolution and in the socialist regime, Cuban psychologists' lack of interest in subjectivity, the history of Cuban psychology from the 1950s until now, and the connection of this history with historical events and specifically with the influence of the Soviet Union in Cuba. The great social achievements of the revolution are recognized, but also the appropriation of the revolutionary legacy by the regime and its negative consequences on the subjective sphere
Out of the woods: A journey through depression and anxiety. Brent Williams and Korkut Öztekin. Wellington, New Zealand: Educational Resources. 2017. 160 pp. ISBN: 9780473390068
Get PDFOut of the woods: A journey through depression and anxiety. Brent Williams and Korkut Öztekin. Wellington, New Zealand: Educational Resources. 2017. 160 pp. ISBN: 978047339006
SEPTEMBER — The loony bin trip. Edited by Kate Millett. London, UK: Virago Press Ltd. 1990. 316 pp.
Get PDFSEPTEMBER — The loony bin trip. Edited by Kate Millett. London, UK: Virago Press Ltd. 1990. 316 pp
Alcohol reform – New Zealand style: Reflections on the process from 1984 to 2012
Get PDFThis paper traces 30 years of alcohol reform in New Zealand, from the early 1980s through to the passing of the Alcohol Reform Bill in 2012. It begins with the liberalisation of alcohol through the passing of the Sale of Alcohol Act in 1989 allowing wine to be sold in supermarkets, followed by beer in 1999 along with a reduction in the age of purchase of alcohol from 20 to 18 years. Soon after a South Auckland shooting of a liquor store owner in 2008, the government announced a major review of the alcohol laws to be conducted by the New Zealand Law Commission. The remainder of the paper outlines the process by which successive National-led governments carefully managed this review and finally passed an Alcohol Reform Bill which contained very little in the way of reform. The paper documents how the government engaged in a drawn-out process with significant time delays, largely ignoring the main evidence-based recommendations of the Law Commission, withholding vital information from the public, dismissing concerns expressed by both the public and opposition parties, and using a combination of the “conscience vote” and an unusual voting procedure in Parliament to deliver a Bill that was favourable to the alcohol industry
The ethical (and political) status of theorizing the subject: Deleuze and Guattari
Get PDFWith Lacan's exhortation that the subject's ethical task is to “take up” his or her desire as its point of departure, this paper thematizes the question of the ethics of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's notion of the subject, as articulated (mainly) in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). It is argued that, given their ontological conceptualization of the subject as an open, complex “agency-assemblage” that is ineluctably characterized (“virtually”, if not “actually”) by a rhizomatic and multiplicitous structure (every subject always already being “a crowd”), their conception enables one to address the issue of the ethical status of theory in psychology in an exemplary manner. The reason for this claim is that their complex, multifaceted theorization of the subject construes it in a nonsubstantialist, “machinic”, or rather “structural-machinic” manner (that is, with a complex structure that operates like a becoming-machine). This stresses the enduring possibility for change on the part of the subject – something that has to be presupposed in any psychological or psychoanalytic theory of the subject, lest the possibility of efficacious therapeutic intervention be theoretically and ethically compromised. Another way of putting this is that, at the level of what Deleuze and Guattari termed “the abstract machine”, the subject is overdetermined insofar as it comprises an indefinite sphere of “virtual” possibilities that may be actualized under certain conditions – the subject is always already more than what has been historically actualized. Moreover, such a theory allows for the “deterritorialization” of the subject along “nomadic” “lines of flight” that effectively resist its endless “territorialization” by the “state apparatus”
On “coming out” as a rape survivor
Get PDFLines written on the publication day of “Shocking revelation! There are women survivors of sexual violence training as person-centred psychotherapists” Psychotherapy and Politics International, 15(1), DOI: 10.1002/ppi.139
Unbroken: One woman's journey to rebuild a life shattered by violence. A true story of survival and hope. Madeleine Black. London, UK: John Blake, 2017. 276 pp.
Get PDFUnbroken: One woman's journey to rebuild a life shattered by violence. A true story of survival and hope. Madeleine Black. London, UK: John Blake, 2017. 276 pp
Pharisees, Freudians and the fetishism of the text: Catholic triumphalism in Jacques Lacan
Get PDFThis paper argues that Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) was possibly the most famous Catholic psychoanalyst who was not known for being Catholic. Confusion on this score is understandable, however. He declared himself an atheist at age 16 but in later life, boasted of his Jesuit education, frequently quoted St. Paul, Augustine, and St. Aquinas, and, at the age of 73, pronounced Catholicism to be “the one true religion”. Lacan possessed an almost religious veneration for Sigmund Freud, but rejected Freud's theory of psychosexual development and criticised psychoanalysts who invoked Freud's characterology and theories of object relations as “Pharisees”. I argue that his bizarre polemics with the International Psychoanalytic Association are the result of habits of thought and feeling he acquired as a child, and then “transferred” from Jesus onto Freud in later life