Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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We Don't Even Have a Name For It
Get PDFDespite being rooted in radical departures from institutionalized ways of caring for the mentally unwell, the psy-professions find themselves repeating patterns of the past when it comes to the psychological treatment of people who are very poor. In the UK professional counselling and psychotherapy bodies have embraced neo-liberal philosophies of individualism: locating responsibility for personal failure in the individual, positivity, and of employment being an absolute good. The psy-professions, at both executive and membership level, seem unaware that the philosophical foundations of government-funded initiatives purporting to help people with mental heath problems are based in political ideology rather than psychological research. In a profession where employment itself is rare, “opportunities for counsellors” has been the primary focus for the professions whilst the voices of people negatively affected by this ideology remain unheard. But things may be about to change. Focusing on the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, the largest professional body representing counsellors and psychotherapists, this paper offers a view of how the psy-professions have unthinkingly implemented harmful and unethical political ideology; highlights some of the inconsistencies and cognitive dissonance involved in the implementation of those policies; and offers some hope for change
Making a Difference: How Humanistic Practice Makes a Critical Difference to Humanity's Future
Get PDFIt's no news to anyone who reads a newspaper, watches TV or peruses the Internet that there is no shortage of bad news. This article proposes that the world can be better and that humanistic psychotherapy and other social practices aimed at human growth and existential freedom have a role to play in creating a sustainable humane future. Carl Rogers' work was based on the observation that, given the right conditions, all human beings have within them vast resources with which to face their threats and transform their circumstances. Other humanistic practices provide us with transformational approaches to providing these conditions and are the basis of social innovation in concrete actions for human betterment across the world. Some examples of humanistic practices at social and political scales conducted by the International Futures Forum and others are described, and some suggestions about steps to take to engage in undertaking transformative emancipatory action are offered
Relational Approaches to Social and Political Issues: Andrew Samuels Interviewed by Tom Warnecke
Get PDFThis article derives from an interview originally conducted for a webinar on relational psychotherapy. The focus is on relational approaches to political and social issues. The possibilities and limitations of such approaches are discussed in the interview. Attention is paid to ecopsychology and also to the interweave between personal experience and societal dynamics. The ways in which the political is still marginalized in psychotherapy are explored. Ideas about how to work directly in the session with clinical material that is political in nature are introduced. Specific attention is paid to situations where the therapist might be repelled by the viewpoints of the client
Move this Psychotherapy Conference from Jerusalem: Notes on an International Campaign of Protest
Get PDFThis “note” comprises an introductory piece written by Andrew Samuels which gives the background to the campaign, a letter of response from Dr Mark Widdowson, and a rejoinder to this by the original group that had taken the initiative
Donald Trump: Narcissist, Psychopath or Representative of the People?
Get PDFDonald Trump's detractors have called him a sociopath, psychopath, and narcissist, or as having an anti-social personality disorder. To his supporters he is a charismatic representative of the people. This article looks at the precise definitions of some of these terms and makes use of the available collateral information to make a tentative diagnosis of Donald Trump. It then considers the extent to which Donald Trump's personality traits may be an issue should he become president. Although concluding Mr Trump's behaviour could be detrimental not just to the United States, but also to world stability, this article moves on to consider whether he is the main problem, or merely symptomatic of a much bigger, global shift towards more extreme politics that is actively seeking destabilisation of the current political and economic elite
Demonised, Blamed, Negated, and Disappeared: The Victimisation of the Poor in the Globalised Economy
Get PDFThe first version of this paper was presented by its first author, Dick Blackwell, at the Group Analytic conference “Trauma-Dream-Consciousness: Traumatised Groups-Healing-Identity” in Prague, November 2012. This conference was founded on the question as to how far the Nazi persecution of the Jews might have been anticipated, and it aimed to focus on contemporary minorities likely to become vulnerable to persecution. The first part of this article, until the section on the global political economy, is from the original paper and was written by Dick Blackwell. The article argues that the poor have become a minority who suffer from systemic victimisation with which we all become systemically compromised. We are all fallible and susceptible to both blatant and subtle forms of propaganda and can uncritically accept received versions of reality that are widely shared and endorsed. So in contexts of political oppression we too can become bystanders or collaborators. In our modern globalised world, the poor have increasingly become victimised in specific ways. They are not only impoverished but also blamed for it, while suffering from widespread denial of the reality of their poverty and of their own subjectivity, which negates their existence and denies them any voice
Psychology, Europe, and Beyond
Get PDFThis paper asks what psychology might tell us about Europe and the way in which we in Britain voted in the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016. I look back at five examples of psychological discourse that claimed to help us understand what we were thinking and feeling as we weighed up how to vote. The key question is how we might refuse where psychology leads us in order to find some alternative ways of thinking for ourselves. I argue that those who argued for Brexit or Brussels both thought they knew well what was good for us. Instead, we need to go well beyond psychology, to psychoanalysis, to discover why they are wrong
Psychology in the Age of Austerity
Get PDFResearchers have established the detrimental influence of austerity measures on the mental health practices. What is relatively unexplored, however, is the manner in which austerity policies and neoliberal political economy constitute a significant element of contemporary mental health practices themselves. Many commonly-implemented assessments and treatments arguably are designed to emphasize cost-effectiveness, standardization, and the authority of the clinician, and are consequently already thoroughly neoliberal. Several elements of the neoliberal basis to the ideology of the psy-disciplines are examined, along with specific examples of such ideology in use
Other People's Movements: Ethnologic Perspectives on Motoric Armouring in Body Psychotherapy
Get PDFThis paper explores the body as subjectivity, dialectically constructed and influenced by its cultural, ethnological, and political history. It introduces the concept of uber-bodyness, a cultural internalised ideal of a body, with which we are in constant dialogue. The paper examines the body, as well as body-to-body communication as processes that should not be reduced to verbal exchange alone but merit a separate, unmediated, somatic language. When working with clients we therefore seek not only to identify presenting (and absent) self-states, but also to discern which bodies are present in the clinic. The paper offers a third approach to looking at and working with movements in psychotherapy, an approach that derives from relational body psychotherapy. On the one hand, Dance Movement Therapy explores movements as expressive material, which is analysable and interpretable; on the other hand, bodywork disciplines, such as Yoga and Pilates, encourage us to sense our body and find rest within it. This paper examines movements as expressing the body as subjectivity, not necessarily expressing the mind. A case study illustrates the extraction of ethnological, gender, and class aspects as these manifest in the body and its movements. The paper further offers some relational techniques to work with such movements as part of an analytic therapy, whereby the language of the body is welcomed as an irreducible agent