Hello again.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 9:21 PM
Subject: Re: Feminism: a psychology aside


> Tina,
>
> Thanks for your post,
> > Not just psychology either. The western 'approach'
> > to education seems to be
> > about teaching others to label/group/classify in the
> > textbook fashion. Any
> > leaps of imagination are curbed (until at least PhD
> > level and sometimes even
> > then) by asking for reference points 'where is your
> > evidence?' - and so the
> > system supports and reinforces itself.
> >
>
> I agree with this in many respects, but, on the other
> hand, I've always liked science because in actual
> practice it depends upon making endless precise
> observations and distinctions. There is a way in which
> in public education and perhaps in popular thinking
> that science is connected with categorizing and
> labelling, which is definitely an aspect of it, and
> perhaps the emphasis is skewed that way in public
> education. But that's probably no more than the way in
> which poetry is taught in many classrooms, for
> instance the ubiqutuous presence of Shel Silverstein
> in elementary schools.

I'm not even sure that poetry is taught or introduced at all at elementary
level in Britain. This may not be a bad thing I suppose. I will soon find
out as I have two four-year olds due to start formal schooling in September.

>And in the practice of science,
> it seems to me that the emphasis upon evidence is
> precisely so that the eye of the scientist is forever
> drawn back to the facts and made to question whatever
> assumption or hypothesis or overarching theory with
> which she began.

I think the danger is in the notion that there is a search for something
real at the end of it - some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If a
scientist believes that they are tentatively exploring the world and seeking
to re-arrange understandings of that world then this can only be positive...


>In those few scientists that I know
> well, it seems to me that this capacity for making
> intellectual distinctions which always lead to more
> distinctions is combined with a kind of freeing of the
> creative imagination.


.. however, I have a mixed experience of scientists and some do (the
majority?) proceed with the assumption that they are seeking some absolute
unshakeable truth/facts that are universal. That arrogance is a problem I
think.

> Well, I found myself thinking afterwards that I hoped
> I hadn't seemed 'anti-' therapy from the accounts of
> the failed treatments of my brother and my uncle.
> Since I do feel it can make a great difference, as it
> has with my children and myself, individually and also
> in our relationships with ourselves and others. I grew
> up in a house where what I can only call a fear of
> being labelled crazy, a fear of seeking help, a fear
> of psychiatrists was instilled.


I have some related experiences from my family and my husband's family.
More extreme in the case of my in-laws where fear of 'what people will
think' or 'what the doctor's will do' was/still is quite rampant. I don't
consider the basis of the fear to be illogical though. Turning control of
your body over to others should not be something that is done lightly or
without some caution/fear. I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume
that others do not necessarily know what is best in a given situation.



> Basically the dynamic
> was that all sorts of injuries would occur, control
> and manipulation, in which one would try and maintain
> a sort of calm or quietly taking it, and then at a
> point, after several months usually get upset, showing
> some of the emotional consequences or responses that
> had been buried, at which point all of the attention
> would be rivetted on the 'problem' of that person who
> would be subjected to what was something like a
> psychological assault of what was wrong with her or
> him, the result of which was usually the person would
> go from being upset to blowing up, which was taken as
> evidence of the problem he or she had in the first
> place. There was always a point at which the ultimate
> threat was 'you're crazy and you need a shrink" or 'to
> be committed.' This technique originated with my
> father, for my mother was the first 'nutcase' and then
> it went sort of down the line of the kids. So, really,
> when my brother had a crisis, this was the view he had
> of any help, which meant he postponed getting any help
> or talking to anyone, and furthermore, he was mostly
> looking for help from my family, these people who
> still had the same views, for whom a dominating
> concern was that no one should know (including me
> until three days before his death because I would have
> made 'trouble') and that help was a last, shameful,
> resort, and who were so in denial that the slightest
> improvement from the medication was taken as his being
> 'fine' enough to be left alone and with his guns. It's
> very complicated, of course, as all such things are,
> but the treatment he received was probably the least
> of these failures of care.


One of my husband's uncles was being treated for auditory and visual
hallucinations and no-one but his partner knew. When he hung himself
(following an improvement in his condition) it was a huge shock for his
relatives and the questions were asked 'why didn't we know?' 'why weren't we
told?' etc. etc. I'm sure it was shame of being seen as 'mad' or weak in
some way that led to the secrecy - and the hope that at some point it was
going to all go away.



> or so later when some friends came to visit, Wayne was
> so freaked by the appearance of other people he went
> out of the house. I found him in the backyard standing
> under one of the flowering fruit trees, though,
> truthfully, I had fled the house too, not my
> characteristic response to the arrival of friends for
> dinner! but it was as if I felt the terror he did. We
> looked at each other for a few minutes, I remember
> still thinking to him very clearly, strongly, as if it
> were talking out loud that it was all right. And at
> some point he picked one of the blossoms off the tree
> and gave it to me and said it was edible; it was
> apricot, I think, like eating fragrance itself. And
> then he followed me back into the house and from that
> point began talking, took up playing chess again. I
> don't know exactly how to explain it, perhaps it was
> just the real contact with another person where he
> was, without all the alienating distance. Ah, well,
> but, yes, those ways of dismissing another out of
> existence are various, and often subtle, for instance,
> there was another occasion where someone sent me drops
> from meadow blossoms as therapy for my feelings,
> well-intentioned, I think, but it took me a long while
> to admit to myself how it felt to be treated as one
> might treat an ill-behaving horse, or the implicit
> dismissal and control of those feelings. And apologies
> if this is too long, or rambles,

It is long but not rambling at all. This is a wonderful story. Connections
like the one you describe are very rare. And as you say, the many and
various ways of dismissing someone whilst appearing to care are many and
often subtle. A lot to think about...

Tina