Dear Paul and everyone
I have no quarrel with being critical, which I see as absolutely essential
to any undertaking that is aimed at uncovering truth about the world. For
that reason, it seems slightly strange to me that any group should try to
claim criticalness as their own particular property. Being critical, in
fact, was the main thing I was taught to be as a student, but that was a
long time ago in a very different social context.
I realize too that criticalness is no longer a welcome feature of present
day psychology (in particular clinical), and it's partly that that gives me
a perspective on cp that is rather different from yours, I think.
Psychologists (in particular their leaders in the BPS, etc.) have always
tended to be craven hangers-on to the coat-tails of power and are now of
course thoroughly immersed in the Business model of everything. I think
this makes us rather pathetic more than anything else, and our abandonment
of criticalness means that we no longer have any legitimate pretension at
all to be scientists (in the best sense). (The clinical doctorate seems to
me the biggest confidence trick of all time, and it's easy to read its
significance from the fact that nearly everyone who's got one tends to sign
themselves 'Dr So-and-so' these days.) But I see that more as a rather sad
bid for status rather an indication of real status, and in fact, with its
almost exclusive preoccupation with techniques of individual (or
individualizing) treatment, cp has reduced itself to the level of say,
chiropody, but with the important difference that chiropodists do a really
necessary and helpful job.
So I think the apparent power and prestige of cp is built on very shaky
foundations indeed, and can prosper only in a world where spin and
make-believe define truth. Sooner or later people are going to pick up the
fact that, for example, talking about 'oppositional defiant disorder' in
small children is just stupid, and when they do they may see that what
psychiatry and cp have evolved into is just stupid too. In the meantime of
course we need to stay critical of cp's claims and to lampoon its
pretensions.
None of us, critical or otherwise, can escape the social context all of this
is taking place in ('you can't swim around in a cesspool without getting
covered in shit'is an aphorism I created some years ago and which I'm
childishly proud of as I've actually heard it quoted once or twice). For
this reason, I very much agree with Jan Bostock's last posting - what those
of us who have some concern about and insight into all this need is
solidarity rather than division. That, of course, doesn't and absolutely
shouldn't exclude arguing amongst ourselves, but maybe we could try to avoid
scrambling for the high moral ground too strenuously.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul@home
Sent: 30 November 2005 19:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] On the subject of conferences...
My extended response to some recent emails:
Nice to see you contributing to the discussion David S! Sorry, but I use the
term 'being critical' rather than 'problematizing' and I see criticality as
a virtue where I work (university), particularly as this year some of our
psychology students have to take a mandatory course on 'learning and
employability' (New Labour has not only landed in academia, it taking up
roots!!). It is increasingly difficult to be critical in higher education,
some of us our facing threats, bullying and abuse for being critical. For me
it would be a shame for the com psy network to be a place where we were
discouraged from being critcal also.
I really admire Tony Benn but I didn't vote labour last time and won't next.
Tony Benn has minimal if any influence over the Labour Party. If I had ever
joined the Labour Party, I am sure that I would have left under Tony Blair's
stewardship irrespective of Tony Benn's decision to stay on.
I have met and communicated with students on clinical psychology training
programmes who are either being crushed by the dominant clinical training
system which gives them little or no room to think community psychologically
on their courses (results in any community psychology they receive being
less a life line but more the glare of the spotlight from the prison guards
as they attempt their escape from mainstream clinical practice) to those
students who are being crushed directly by their community psychology
clinical supervisors. I don't just think this is a problem on the clinical
psy training progs alone. For those of us who teach psychology, we often
forget the brutalising system that we are a part of and that much of what we
do does the work of the system, as much as we think it doesn't. You cannot
be a community educationalist in a university setting. I could actually name
the names of the community psychologists in the education system who are
crushing psychology students in this way. It is deeply unprofessional of me
to do so, but what the heck. I will be the first (public) whistle blower.
The first one I want to name and shame is Paul Duckett at Manchester
Metropolitan University.
Back to clinical psychology. Clinical Psychology isn't just an arbitrary
label, it is a powerful social signifier that conveys status, power and
authority and conveys privileges. For those of you who are clinical
psychologists, you may not recognise it, but a fish may not be aware of the
water in which it swims - take it out of the water, and it soon will! For
me, David F's comments were like grabbing the tales of clinical
psychologists and threatening to take them out the goldfish bowl. The
reaction from the clinical psychologists among us was, I am sad to say,
fairly predictable.
Clinical psychology has been one of the most prized identities within the
discipline of psychology and every year I watch psychology students get
brutalised in the awful scramble to secure a place on a clinical training
course (only one or two are ever successful) and every year I see doctoral
students brutalised as they scratch and claw in their attempts to keep on
their clinical training place. Let's not forget that. And let's not forget
that to keep a hold on the title of 'clinical psychologist' is much more
than an arbitrary decision. It is a bit like the use of the title "Docor"
more broadly. When I use the title "Dr" It affords me many privileges (a
nice table in the restuarant, flight upgrades, unusual levels of patience
and courtesy from my bank manager and so on and so forth - that is until
they discover I am not a 'real' doctor). Notice, I still need to let you
know that I am a doctor, so that I retain the power identify even when I
seem to be giving it up: ie.
P: 'Please don't call me doctor, I prefer you just call me paul
CPUK: 'Wot? I never knew you were a doctor, wow!'
Paul: 'Yes, well, I don't really like to talk about it ... you know ...
being a doctor and everything .... I hardly ever like to mention that I am a
doctor ..... I get so embarrassed when the waiter shouts out "Hey, Doctor
Duckett, your table is ready". Gosh, I get sooooo embarrassed. Why can't we
just all be equals? I just hate those social hierachies. So does my friend
Dr Fryer, by the way.'
For some, particularly those who have survived the psychiatric system,
clinical psychology is also a signify of the most appauling oppression and
cruelty. Sure, you can be a community psychologist who works in clinical
psychology. Same as you can be a vegetarian who happens to work in an
abattoir. That is fine. In both instances you may carry a sick bag with you
to work as you will probably want to vomit at most things you see happening
around you and some of the things you are asked to do yourself. Also, don't
be surprised if when I invite you to one of my vegetarian candle lit
suppers, I politely ask you not to talk in detail about what you do for a
living as it might put some of my other dinner guests off their food. Note,
I also feel the same could be said of survivors of the education system and
working as a community psychologist in academia.
In relation to Mark B's comments, The Rotary Club is a voluntary
organisation. That doesn't mean that we should refrain from being critical
as to their activities from time to time. The Hitler Youth began as a
voluntary organisation. I could give many more examples, but I won't. I
think I have made my point. Philanthropy is no protection from critical
scrutiny. The European Community Psychology Network would dive for cover
from critical scrutiny using the same rationale of philanthropy. If
anything, we should focus our critical gaze more attentively as the vested
interests of the philanthropists may be more difficult to discern if we
cannot see the immediate monetary gain they are securing. This is not a
personal attack on colleagues from Great Yarmouth or those CPUK members who
are clinical and proud. These are my critical commentaries on the arguments
and discourses circulating in recent CPUK emails.
regards
paul
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