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“What is Functional Research?”
Get PDFA final reflection on funtional reserach, the theme and meaning of the volum
Neuroscience and Generalized Empirical Method Go Three Rounds
Get PDFA review of Robert Henman's Book Neuroscience and Generalized Empirical Method
An Introduction to Anti-Black Sanism
No full textSanism is an oppression. It makes normal the practice of discrimination, rejection, silencing, exclusion, low expectations, incarceration, and other forms of violence against people who are othered through mental ‘illness’ diagnosis, history, or even suspicion. Of particular concern for us are the sanist experiences of racialized people who identify as Black, African, or of African descent, for we and others have long noted and experienced an anti-Black crisis in mental health diagnosis and “care.” For instance, young Black men are diagnosed with schizophrenia more than any other group, Black children are being psychiatrized at higher rates, and in our experience on the front lines here in Toronto, more Black-identified patients are being held against their will in hospitals. Is what we are seeing here a kind of sanism, a particular form of racism, or something combined that has not yet been named? In 2013, we three authors began to call this place of intersection anti-Black Sanism, starting a historical, theoretical, methodological, personal, and practice conversations in our community work, in our research, and in our classrooms. In this article, we outline our analyses thus far. We also chart the responses we have had to date, responses of the community, research, and pedagogical kinds. We detail how the anti-Black Sanist experience makes itself present in multiple places and spaces complicating “care,” critique, and madness
Attempting to Engage in “Ethical” Research with Homeless Youth
No full textRisk pervades contemporary discourses surrounding and describing homeless youth. Deemed to be at risk and vulnerable to a range of dangers related to living on the street as well as risky due to their delinquent behaviours, homeless youth tend to be reduced to narrow conceptualizations bereft of complexity, variability, or respect for individual agency. Largely left out of dominant discourses are youths’ own voices, perceptions, and experiences relative to their individual efforts to engage in, confront, and negotiate the various risks associated with street life. In this article, I explore my own attempts, as a social work practitioner and budding researcher, to engage in research that aimed at destabilizing dominant discourses of homeless youth and privileging homeless youths’ diverse articulations of risk in their day-to- day lives. Specifically, I describe my lack of acumen related to positionality and subjectivity and to asymetrical power dynamics. I propose ways in which I could have better reflected upon, and negotiated, these issues in my doctoral project as lessons for future researchers, in particular, practitioner-researchers. I argue that bridging subjectivity, situated ethics, and anti-oppressive research practices may provide meaningful ways to address these misgivings
Relocating Mad_Trans Re_presentations Within an Intersectional Framework
No full textStigmatizing images around Mad_trans positions are a part of everyday re_presentations; they can be found in numerous discourses, including those around medicine, the news media, fictional narratives, and even activism. When looking at discourses around madness, (mental) disability, and trans identity it becomes clear that stigmatizing images around madness in combination with other marginalized categories are not limited to any particular time period or genre. Having said that, however, the long tradition of Mad_trans re_presentations in thriller movies can be used as a magnifying glass to gain awareness of how widespread and routine discourses that establish Mad_trans positions as fearsome and abnormal truly are. For that reason, this article begins by looking at Mad_trans re_presentations in thriller movies; it asks the following questions: How are these images connected to wider psychopathologization, intersectional power relations, and a long tradition of stigmatizing re_presentations around madness? How do they work to create sameness and difference, belonging and Othering, normality and abnormality? I provide an exemplary overview and critical analysis of Mad_trans re_presentations in discourses around thrillers, medicine, the news media, and activism. In dialogue with Ahmed’s (2004b) concept of affective politics of fear, I analyze the function of fear here as a significant recipient response to the particular re_presentations mentioned above. Other aspects that are addressed include how hegemonic Mad_trans re_presentations influence counter-discourses and the possibilities and challenges of resistant re_presentations and readings in dialogue with broader discourses around re_presentation, spectatorship, solidarity, and identity
A Desire to be ‘Normal’? A Discursive and Intersectional Analysis of ‘Penetration Disorder’
No full textPsychiatry’s problematic framing of femininity, women’s bodies, and sexuality has attracted much condemnation (Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004; Frith, 2013; Ussher, 2011). The intersection of sanism and sexism is particularly overt in the psy- complex’s (Rose, 1979) response to violence. While psychiatry acknowledges that many of those diagnosed with ‘female sexual dysfunction’ have experienced sexual abuse, addressing the problems of violence against women is starkly absent within psychiatric discourse. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders combined ‘vaginismus’ and ‘dyspareunia’ to produce a new diagnostic classification: ‘genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder.’ The diagnostic criteria included difficulties, pain, or fear regarding penetrative heterosexual sex (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Using discourse analysis (Burman, 2004; Parker, 2013) and critical intersectional analysis (Cole, 2009; Crenshaw, 1991; Hill- Collins, 1998, 2003), this paper analyzes psychiatric discourse to illuminate the violence inherent in procedures and treatments that perpetuate sanism and (hetero)sexism within psychiatry. We argue that psychiatry’s positioning of penetrative heterosexual intercourse as ‘normal,’ necessary, and ‘healthy’ pathologizes experiences of sexual violence as well as other forms of sexual identity (e.g., asexuality and homosexuality). Psychiatry needs to promote and accept sexual diversity, including the choice not to have penetrative sex at all
Galactic Functional Research
Get PDFThe presentation of an alternative future vision for both Lonergan studies and for all academic and scientific collaboration
Recovery-as-Policy as a Form of Neoliberal State Making
No full textIn this paper I provide an analysis of the implementation of “recovery” as a policy object and commitment in the United Kingdom. This can be situated as part of the New Labour government’s (1997–2010) reform of the NHS during the 2000s. Through a textual analysis of policy and legislation from this time I draw out a tension between contemporary ideals of choice and autonomy in health care and the specificities of a mental health care system in which psychiatrists are legislatively empowered to treat patients without their consent. In the United Kingdom, evidence continues to show that the most economically and socially disadvantaged members of British society are most likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act (2007). This paper provides an intersectional analysis of the ways in which policy, legislation and psychiatrization enact particular subjects as “failed” citizens. Following Tyler (2010, 2013), I argue that these practices of exclusion and detainment are constituent elements of neoliberal state making, which are discriminatory and unjust