Dear Annie,
Thanks for opening up debate about feelings. I would like to be a bit
clearer about my position too.
Regards whether or not I am scary. I would rather stick with it than
explain it away (not that you are doing so but I want to resist any
inclination I might have to do so because I find it uncomfortable). But
I want to stick with it as a (critical) community psychologist (again
not because critical community psychology has all the answers and other
psychologies have none of them but because I want to see how much we can
explain and how we can intervene within what is for me a community
psychology frame of reference).
I certainly do not deny that some people find me scary. You are not the
only person to have said exactly that and it was also said to me in
person at the Newcastle conference so I do not think it is just a
phenomenon which emerges from my email style. I agree there is a
consensus that I am - or at least can be on occasions - scary.
I don't want you to resolve matters prematurely by you accepting
ownership of the emotion (what is it about you that you are scared)
because that would be a sort of victim blaming and because I believe in
social causes of psychological states or at least, less simplistically,
that psychological states emerge out of an interaction between social
causes and human agency.
Personally I do not feel scary. Rather I feel diffident, timid and
ineffectual most of the time and my interior commentary on my own
positions is so very critical that my more public critical commentary
often seems to me so very restrained and anodyne by comparison. However
I do feel that we are immersed in problematic ideologies we take for
granted or as some put it become enchanted by and that 'surfacing',
critiquing and contesting them is for me an obligation. I am unable to
stay quiet at staff meetings, public meetings and in all sorts of
contexts, even if feeling timid, if what I see seems unjust. That does
not make for an easy life. To refer to one of Mark's question I see
critical scholarship as a form of activism.
So, am I scary? I don't have a sense that there is an external social
reality about this to which we can appeal to find out. I would say there
are a variety of accounts which serve different interests in different
ways. In some I am scary. In some I am not.
However whilst I think there are all sorts of interesting and useful
accounts we give of this as phenomenologists, counsellors, clinical
psychologists, magistrates, friends etc and indeed from countless other
perspectives, I am primarily interested (on a community psychology list
or at a community psychology conference or in a community psychology
publication or in community psychology practice / praxis) in what else I
can bring to the debate as a critical community psychologist.
In that connection, I am interested in what functions are served for
whom in what ways by deploying an account of me as scary and what
avenues for change they open up. One way that I have observed that
people use to discount critical commentary is individualise and
pathologise. I think that deploying the account that a person is scary,
aggressive, arrogant, dominating etc., especially habitually so, is a
way of closing them down and thus not having to attend to what is being
said. Also it positions the needed change as a change in that person.
Maybe CBT could help me be less scary?
Note that I am still not denying that there are important accounts which
in which I am scary and am not trying to explain my scariness away.
Some of what you say later in your message is very valuable in taking us
further in my critical community psychology view. I believe it is useful
to regard power as being structured in the contemporary societies we
know about through wealth, class, gender, dominant ethnic group
membership, dominant norms about sexuality etc. One very real concern
for me as a critical community psychologist is to what extent power
structures in the wider world are and have been reproduced and
maintained within our list group. The work of feminists has made clear
that dominant groups are often unable to see their own privilege but
that subordinate groups are much more able to see them. Thus the very
valuable work on male privilege, white privilege and so on. It seems to
me that discussion of intellectual matters on our list has tended to be
dominated - not universally of course - by older, relatively high
academic status, white men and that those marginalised in this within
the group tended - not universally of course - to be younger lower
status women. There are implications of this for the discussion of
feelings and emotions, of course, as the dominant group tend to discuss
such things less.
There are all sorts of points one could draw from this account if one
went along with it but the one that I want to make here and now is that
accounts which position someone as 'scary' because they individualise
and psychologies also close down the likelihood of our addressing the
social structuring of power. My scariness may in part be explained by
the ways power structures in the wider world are being reproduced and
maintained - by us - within our list group? Also, in passing, this CCP
account of the issues has the merit, I think, of also reducing the
tendency to issue accounts in which those who are 'scared' need to
become more think skinned or assertive or . . . whatever, again an
individualising and psychologising account, which implies a need for
individuals to change rather than us collectively to change the system.
I apologise for such a long email but hope it has been of interest and
is not seen as an answer but as a stepping stone to further exploration
of the issues by yourself and others and perhaps one more stimulus to
consider critical community psychology accounts as ways of opening up
new ways to conceptualise and intervene
David
David Fryer
Community Psychology Group
University of Stirling
FK9 4LA
Scotland
+44 (0) 1786 467650 (tel)
+44 (0) 1786 467641 (fax)
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of amitchel
Sent: 03 December 2005 8:03 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] on being critical
>Dear David,
As you quoted one of my comments here, let me explain where I was coming
from
in what I said, and whose interests I (think) I was trying to serve. I
said
(at least, I meant to say) I find you scary sometimes. Note, not that
you ARE
scary, just that I find you so. I do - but that 's a comment about
relationship, not intended as an individualising critical ( in the
common use
of the term) description of you, though I can of course see how it
could be
read so). The reasons I said it include, partly, that it's true for me
and
I think we might want to think about whether or not it is a useful/
productive process that I feel scared in this context sometimes - I
suspect it
probably is, as long as I don't get so scared that I go away and start
rubbishing/hating community psychology or its practitioners ) . Also
because I
suspect that some of the our list members ( and perhaps some of these
are
also women like me) might feel heartened to hear that another person
can feel
scared of someone but can nevertheless speak up and try to challenge -
even
if what they say might be judged to be wrong or bad - I intended it (
as far
as I am aware) as a possible way of liberating others who feel less
powerful
in our network to have more of a voice. I can't think that I've been
very
successful in that, however, ( and indeed I can see that it might be
judged as
pretty patronising) because the debate has continued at a fairly heavy
level
since. I was imagining that if I had been the person who had started
some of
this off with a thoughtful analysis of difference - which you commented
that
you agreed with much of, but found other parts deeply flawed because, if
my
memory serves me, of the person being a trainee clinical psychologist
or at
least having a clinical psychology background, which would mean, you
said,
that their analysis would be deeply flawed, I'd have been distressed and
would
have felt reluctant to try again. And because I felt that there was
value and
lessons for us all in what they said I'd like us to hear more from that
person.
Finally, I note that I am using quite a lot of feeling talk in what I
say
here. I don't know if that's because I'm a woman, a northerner, a
clinical
psychologist, because I'm having a hard time myself at present or what.
But
you might be interested that when we had our southwest community network
meeting yesterday we spoke again about the message from our community
members
at the Exeter conference that we (professionals) need to look after
ourselves
more. And part of our discussion led on to acknowledging our pain and
distress
. And we wondered if part of what underlies our reluctance to
acknowledge and
appreciate the other ( not just here in our discussion list but in the
larger
world) is because of our avoidance of our pain in doing so. And I feel/
think
that one bad outcome of a split betweeen clinical and community
psychology
would be a continuing split between our feelings, our intellect and our
experiences of the operations of power - and a continuing neglect of
what I
feel to be central in all of our concerns - relationship with "the
other".
Love,
Annie
===== Original Message From The UK Community Psychology Discussion
List
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>Again let us not rush to agreement too soon lest we foreclose critical
>discussion too soon
>
>
>
>To me clarifying 'being critical' is not as simple as either of the
>following postings suggest. Firstly, shouldn't the notion of there
>being a 'right' or 'best' explication of what critical psychology is,
>and is not, be anathema to critical psychology?
>
>
>
>Secondly, isn't critical thinking reflexive so that any account of what
>constitutes critical psychology is immediately subject to further
>critical scrutiny?
>
>
>
>Third, isn't the explication of what criticality is in terms of
>'schools of thought, who has Professorships and where' an
>institutionalised account of criticality in several senses and
>therefore not a critical one?
>
>
>
>Fourth, isn't the characterisation of critical thinking too narrow,
>too prescriptive and too proscriptive to be critical in any interesting
>way? Isn't most interesting contemporary critical thinking also
>informed by feminist standpoint, psychoanalytic and Foucauldian
>approaches to name but three others as well as often drawing upon the
>thinking of Marx one way or another (though usually so diluted it could
>hardly be called
>Marxist) and isn't the suggestion that critical thinking is
>intrinsically modernist (and that post modern ways of addressing issues
>cannot be critical) to ignore the massive international influence on
>community psychology of Foucault, some at least of whose work is
usually
>regarded as postmodern?
>
>
>
>Fifth, isn't what is offered below just one account? It may be a useful
>account for some interest groups in some respects in some ways but
>isn't it still one of indefinitely many possible accounts of what
>critical psychology is? Isn't each account produced from a standpoint
>and isn't none neutral in relation to issues of the distribution of
>power. Isn't what is interesting and important not whether there is
>definitive account of what a term 'really' refers to (because it
>implies notions of 'truth' and 'reality' problematic when one is
>talking about the social
>world) but what is accomplished for whom by deploying it?
>
>
>
>Sixth, isn't to suggest that to be critical (in a non 'lay' way
>whatever that is) you must be steeped in and familiar with the works of
>inaccessible continental intellectuals and/or perhaps even be a Marxist
>at heart excluding and elitist and isn't to suggest that the
>alternative is to be a lay, posturing, destructive, part of the
>consumerist capitalism patronizing? Can't anyone engage in critical
>thinking irrespective of their formal (institutionalised) educational
>trajectory or there place on it? Wasn't Mrs. Cathy McCormack - who
>spoke at the Newcastle meeting - the most critical thinker (and
>critical activist) who spoke at the conference and also the least
>educationally credentialed and amongst those who left school earliest.
>Wasn't Mrs McCormack's critical education was gained through
>collective action and popular education and rather lacking in the
>Frankfurt school department?
>
>
>
>At the Birmingham community psychology conference Rebekah Pratt, Paul
>Duckett and I tried to explain what the 'critical' in critical
>community psychology meant to us without disabling people by heavy
>references to intellectual oeuvres. It was published as Critical
>Community Psychology: What, Why and How? in Clinical Psychology, 38,
>39-43, 2004. In that paper we stated "By 'critical' we do not just mean
>'sceptical', 'negative', 'faultfinding', 'derogatory' or 'disparaging'"
>and that "for us, critical refection is, essentially, about reflecting
>on whose interests are being served by what is thought, written and
>done, on what the ideological implications of various positions are and
>on where there is default to reproduction of problematic assumptions."
>
>
>
>In that paper we also described some of the hazards of engaging in
>critical debate: "Ideologically critical feedback is seldom welcome . .
>. . Our own critical reflection has usually been re-presented as:
>academic territorialism; ambition; arrogance; disloyalty; hostility;
>intellectual exhibitionism; Machiavellianism; rudeness;
>self-righteousness; social disruptiveness; social incompetence. At
>their most pernicious, these re-presentations have become internalized
>. . . . Note, the ironically double-edged nature of these
>re:presentations. Not only do they damage the critic but they also
>reinforce and maintain that which the critic was seeking to critique
>since they are themselves manifestations of psychologistic
>individualistic frames of reference: the critique is re:presented as a
>variety of personality or characterological dysfunctions and the moral
>nature of the concerns being voiced with regard to social justice is
>being re:presented as personal immorality." We wrote that long before
>this list discussion but it is interesting to note that critical
>reflection recently on this list has been dealt with by some fellow
>list members by: describing the critic as 'scary': by telling the
>critic to F . . . off; by trying to put a guillotine / cut off point on
>critical discussion; by implying the critic is either using the phrase
>'critical' inappropriately in an unschooled fashion or naively; by
>implying the critic is self interested / uncomradely etc.
>
>
>
>If anyone is interested in reading the full paper and cannot get access
>to The Clinical Psychologist I could send a prepublication near final
>draft.
>
>
>
>If anyone is interested in reading more about critical psychology I
>would strongly recommend Ian Parker's Qualitative Psychology:
>Introducing Radical Research (Open University Press / McGraw Hill) 2005
>which I regard as a quite superb example of sustained critical thinking
>in relation to methodology, though the word 'critical' does not even
>appear in the index. Critical Psychology: An Introduction Edited by
>Dennis Fox and Isaac Prilleltensky (1997) Sage is also very diverse and
>has some superb contributions (it also includes a section on the
>Frankfurt School!). A key classic text for critical psychology in the
>UK and elsewhere was Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social
>Regulation and Subjectivity by Julian Henriques, Wendy Hollway, Cathy
>Urwin, Couze Venn and Valerie Walkerdine (1984). Routledge (republished
>periodically).
>
>
>
>Let's get not be too concerned with the intellectual pedigree and get
>on with building a community psychology in the UK which is not only
>theoretically coherent, methodologically sophisticated but also
>ideologically progressive (using ideologically in the sense of Wendy
>Stainton Rogers i.e. constructing and using knowledge to promote the
>power of the least powerful and most oppressed) constantly reflecting
>on whose interests are being served by what is thought, written and
>done, on what the ideological implications of various positions are and
>on where there is default to reproduction of problematic assumptions.
>Let's assume that anyone is capable of doing critical psychology. Let's
>be open to the possibility that clinical psychology might be
>problematic when we think critically about it. And let's think
>critically about whose interests are served by organising our annual
>community psychology conferences as opportunities for (mostly) clinical
>psychologists to listen to presentations (mostly) by clinical
>psychologists about mostly (the failings of) clinical psychology. That
>seems to take us back to . . .. . On the subject of conferences...
>
>
>
>David
>
>
>
>David Fryer
>Community Psychology Group
>University of Stirling
>FK9 4LA
>Scotland
>+44 (0) 1786 467650 (tel)
>+44 (0) 1786 467641 (fax)
>[log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Smail
> Sent: 02 December 2005 12:00 pm
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] on being critical
>
>
> Thanks for a helpful clarification. Rather embarrassingly, it
hadn't
>occurred to me that 'critical' in relation to psychology had its
>origins in Frankfurt, if only indirectly.
>
> David
>
>________________________________
>
> From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Burton
> Sent: 01 December 2005 21:43
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] on being critical
>
>
> Being critical?
>
> The term 'critical' as currently used to prefix various
disciplines
>(including community psychology!) has multiple origins, but perhaps the
>most significant one is from its use in 'critical theory'. This itself
>refers to several things - in some contexts it was used as code for
>Marxism, or rather for historical materialist analysis. It became best
>known in referring to the Frankfurt School of Marxist intellectuals
>concerned with questions of culture and its relation to society - e.g.
>Adorno, Horkheimer, Fromm, Habermas. What is being meant by the term
>'critical' is an approach that tries to understand a social reality
>through introduction of another, more penetrating frame of reference,
>one that has to do with a general theory of human society (or at least
>late capitalist society) understood in terms of contradictions between
>different social interests and economic processes of exploitation,
>capital accumulation, and so on. So these critical theorists apply a
>powerful set of practical-theoretical tools to social phenomena to try
>and get a more thorough understanding that can help foment progressive
>social change. Not very post-modern, and there are some rules implied.
>
> Another use of 'critical', however, seems to come from the lay
notion
>of the 'critic'. At its worst (and most post- modern) that can mean
>'say what you like', and 'pose around as the most critical voice of
>all'. There is no method, just individual opinion. The process is
>destructive not constructive. It is part of the 'society of the
>spectacle', of consumerism, of capitalism itself.
>
> Here I've set up two ideal types, with a clear bias as to the
one that
>I'm more comfortable with, and why. The idea is to use the two models
>to evaluate contributions that march under the critical banner.
>
> So if you want to convince me that you are being critical in the
best
>sense, I'll be asking
> "Is your analysis one that requires stepping outside the
hegemonic
>frame of reference of this society and its dominant psychology?"
> "Where is your argument taking us and in whose interests are you
>doing it in?"
> "What's the action - and what's your action?"
> and
> "Are you doing this in a comradely way?"
>
> --
> 37 Chandos Rd South
> Manchester
> M21 0TH
> UK
> 0161 881 6887
> Local rate phone no: 0845 458 1165
> Fax no: 0870 751 5595
> [log in to unmask]
> ___________________________________
>
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>
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>
>--
>The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
>charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA. Privileged/Confidential Information may
>be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated
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>COMMUNITYPSYCHUK - The discussion list for community psychology in the
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Annie Mitchell
Clinical Director and Acting Programme Director,
Doctorate in Clinical and Community Psychology,
University of Exeter
01392264621
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UK. To unsubscribe or to change your details visit the website:
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The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
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be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated
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person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone
and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is
prohibited and may be unlawful. In such case, you should destroy this
message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise
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