Dear Frederic,
This is very interserting and not at all uncomfortable. Hopefully we might just be in for a new Liberal moment where the potential of government action is less sitigmatized than over the last few years.
 
I certainly hope its not taboo for psychologist to get involved in economics particularly was we have just been lumbered with a rather poor economic model purporting to releive distress. I've been thinking that providing a better model might be one way to go with this. I was hoping you might help me out a little with your paragraph on no linear modeling though. Every time I get stuck into chaos theory I get lost quite quickly. 
 
Thanks
 
John
 
________________________________________________ Dr John McGowan, Year/Academic Director, Centre for Applied Social and Psychological Development, Canterbury Christchurch University, Salomons Broomhill Road Southborough Tunbridge Wells Kent TN3 0TG +44 (0)1892 507778 [log in to unmask] www.salomonscaspd.org.uk www.canterbury.ac.uk 

________________________________

From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List on behalf of Frederic Stansfield
Sent: Sun 12/14/2008 4:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Welfare Reform White Paper


Hi everybody
 
Thank you, Mark, for this.
 
Mark Burton's reply to was in response to a message which seemed to have got extraneous characters in it ('A's all over the place) when sent back to me. I hope that people did not receive my message with these characters. If you did, please read through the distractions. I am not sending from my own computer so there's not much I can do about such a problem.
 
The most important point I want to make is that I suggested there is a need for action; but this thought has not been taken up.
 
I would like to thank Mark for supporting, and clarifying, my observation that the issue of unemployment needs to be tackled by the supply side solution of job creation.
 
There is an important point, however, on which I wish to disagree with Mark Burton. He thinks that there is not much psychologists can do about economic systems, i.e. the financial services bubble,  the unsustainability of the production economy and the earth's environmental crisis. But economists, financiers, businesspeople and politicians themselves recognise that the failure of these economic systems the result of inadequate provision the effects of human psychology. Financial markets collapse because of lack of confidence - don't we hear that all the time in the media?! United Kingdom manufacturing industry, and even more seriously, much more seriously, the earth's environmental sustainability, are imploding because people focus on the near future although their resultant actions will lead to devastating long-term disaster. 
 
Famous economists overseas, Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahnemann, have won Nobel Prizes for work overlapping economics and psychology.
 
Economic psychology and environmental psychology are both important sub-disciplines internationally. The trouble is that in the United Kingdom they have been ghettoised: the ESRC concentrates research funding onto one university - Surrey in the case of Environmental and Psychology and Exeter in the case of Economic Psychology. Both these are very good Departments in the sense that they produce work that is cited internationally. However, I don't think, as a personal opinion (if you are reading this in Guildford or Exeter please comment!) that they are paradigm (in the Kuhnian sense of the word) busting - which given the depth of the current economic crisis is what is needed. Even the best Departments develop shared perspectives: the United Kingdom needs arrangements that bring in people with fresh views. In addition, the result of over-specialisation is that many psychology students and professionals don't see the wider scope of psychology as a basic discipline including all aspects of life, rather than as one of "helping people". For instance, universities tend not to offer final year options, or encourage projects, relating to sub-disciplines not represented amongst their research interests.
 
If you think that recent economic problems have cost £billions, Government and industry financing of economic psychology research in the United Kingdom is ludicrously small.
 
The first environmental psychologists at Surrey, Terence Lee and David Canter, very much saw their sub-discipline as overlapping with community psychology. Perhaps people in this discussion group could say how much this perspective is still the case there.
 
There are long-standing problems about the way economists have warped the relationship of psychology to the establishment, These date back to tensions in the 1920s involving economists such as the Coles, Sergeant Florence and Frank Ramsay (whose wife worked in psychology before becoming a photographer), and which related to personal tensions as well as intellectual issues.
 
Could I point out the the debate currently going on in this group about postmodernism has links to issues about economic theory. Philosophical ideas about postmodernism originated in part, way back before the Second World War, out of the difficulties that Quantum Theory causes for science and social science based on linear mathematical models. A major reason for the present economic crises is the widespread use in economics, finance and banking of such linear models. This is although we have known mathematically for some time, and in common sense for much longer, that economic changes are often sudden. They are best described by non-linear models that can model such change. However, there are problems in doing so. Cynically, the large reason for using linear models is that they represent mathematics people understand. In addition, linear models are robust to minor variations in the data entered, which is not so for non-linear models (the famous Butterfly Effect). And I don't think we have curve-fitting techniques for complex models comparable to factor analysis for linear ones. These issues probably apply to use of mathematical and statistical models in psychology as well.
 
Too much psychology is based on textual description based on half-baked understanding of selected philosophical theories such as postmodernism. There is considerable scope in community psychology for the use of more sophisticated techniques, including mathematical modelling, to increase our understanding. In particular, the use of advanced quantitative psychology is often seen as "establishment". At present this is often true; but it need not be so. Indeed I suspect that the radical challenges that are needed in the currently failing economic and social systems may depend upon willingness of those wishing to see power and wealth spread more diffusely within the United Kingdom to understand, develop and apply quantitatively expressed theories of psychology, economics and environmental issues.
 
The lack of mathematical and statistical expertise amongst UK psychologists, not least as compared to those in other countries, is seriously damaging to community psychology as well as to other sub-disciplines.
 
I am aware that many contributors to this discussion group are clinicians helping individuals, and I suspect may be uncomfortable with my viewpoint. To you, I would emphasise that unless you combine such vital contributions with wider perspectives embracing the matters I am discussing in this message you will continue to be exploited by the establishment as suppliers of "sticking plaster". It is wrong to stigmatise individuals and to force them to conform in cases (which are of course not all those that psychologists see) where the real issue is that they are reacting normally, but uncomfortably to those in power, to a failing system.
 
I again think that we need a meeting to identify ways of acting in response to the Welfare Reform White Paper.  From what I have written above, it seems that we should get input from economic and environment psychologists as well as occupational and clinical psychologists etc. In some cases, this may mean challenging as radical community psychologists people from other sub-disciplines who have become over-socialised into an establishment whose failures are now realised by its insiders. Perhaps Mark as a leading Community Psychologist (which I am not) could suggest how we should go about the necessary arrangements.
 
Frederic Stansfield
 
   
 
  

--- On Thu, 11/12/08, Mark Burton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


	From: Mark Burton <[log in to unmask]>
	Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Welfare Reform White Paper
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Date: Thursday, 11 December, 2008, 2:32 PM
	
	
	There has been some coverage on the news of left MPs making the point that
	this is the worst possible moment to move to a work-based welfare system. 
	As Frederic makes clear, this would require a suply side rather than
	demand side intervention from government and should be part of an urgent
	rethinking of the relationships btween work, community, production,
	resources and ecology.  We can think about this in terms of the three
	economic systems: a) the financial services bubble that has just crashed,
	b) the real production economy that is unsustainable and c) the earth's
	capacity to renew its resources and sustain human life  - which is
	currently gong critical on us.
	I doubt if psychologists have much to say about any of this but it would
	help to make interventions that link the distress and exclusion that this
	new welfare policy makes to the unsustainability of the current economic
	system.  Solutons have to be found outside the current frame of reference.
	
	
	
	> Hi everybody.
	> Â 
	> I haven't seen the article in the paper but heard the radio news. In
	> relation to the White Paper, this will not have been released until the
	> official announcement is made  to the Commons (which I believe was
	> taking place as I typed this message). The articles in "The
	Guardian" etc.
	> are because the Government is downgrading parliament as usual with
	> "official" leaks.
	> Â 
	> The best that can be said for this White Paper is that it predates the
	> recent economic crisis. Many of us will think that the real reason for
	> it will be to reduce the budget of the Department of Work and
	Pensions.
	> Â 
	> The only way to deal with unemployment is to create jobs. This can only be
	> done by people with resources, i.e. Government and business, including the
	> banks. People going into self-employment almost always need to be
	> financed.
	> Â 
	> The Government has spent many billions bailing out the banks. It could and
	> should have spent such money before on creating jobs in environmentally
	> sustainable industry located where people live. Given that there are
	> currently desperate needs to spend, on a scale similar to the financial
	> expenditure on the Second World War. on the creation of facilities to
	> create energy by renewable, non-pollution emitting, means, and on
	> transport systems to use such energy, there is plenty of scope to create
	> genuinely worthwhile jobs. 
	> Â 
	> Unemployment is psychologically devastating; but so is forcing people to
	> take useless actions to look for work when they know full well there is
	> no work. And when the  people charged directly to interface with the
	> jobless on behalf of the Government know full well they are being told
	to
	> bully people into doing pointless things. The Government is setting
	up a
	> situation with similarities to the famous warders and prisoners experiment
	> that Zimbardo ran at Stanford.
	> Â 
	> If truth be known, hundreds of thousands of students are studying as a way
	> of reducing the workforce. Even psychology students, when less than ten
	> per cent of psychology graduates enter the profession, and a large
	> number don't even get relevant graduate level
	work. (Incidentally, we
	> ought to be protesting about this. The BPS is probably accrediting courses
	> in lesser universities, the ones people from disadvantaged backgrounds
	> tend to apply to, from which few if any people go on to actually become
	> psychologists.).  Why is it acceptable for officialdom to bully
	disabled
	> people and single mothers into pointless activities, and threaten them
	> with even greater economic hardship, whilst letting middle class
	students
	> study as a means of reducing the numbers unemployed?
	> Â 
	> The case of Professor Stephen Hawking shows that in theory occupational
	> psychologists can design work even for people who can literally only
	> bat one eyelid. But for severely disabled people the costs of support
	are
	> more than the amount of work that will result (except in the case of a
	> mathematical genius). In other words, the decision as to who should be
	> unable to work because of physical disability is primarily an economic
	> one, not a medical one. In the emerging economic climate where there
	will
	> be far fewer opportunities for productive employment than people able to
	> work, I think we should be much more frank, and accepting, that
	> marginal members of the labour force such as the disabled and single
	> mothers, who can do things other than work whilst retaining respect,
	> should be supported to live modestly but in dignity and without poverty,
	> given that there are insufficient jobs for all of working age. At the
	> moment, such people are having their
	>  lives made a misery so that politicians can pamper the prejudices of
	> those who do not understand.
	> Â 
	> The Occupational Psychology Branch of the Employment Service
	was severely
	> damaged by pushing too large a proportion of its grossly inadequate
	> number of psychologists onto the assessment of people who might be
	denied
	> benefit instead of onto  schemes to give positive assistance to help
	> people work. Doctors as well as psychologists involved with such
	> assessment loathed it. The Government appears to be dealing with this
	> situation by pushing medical GPs to assess their patients. In my view,
	> it will be unprofessional if the medical profession  considers
	such
	> Government needs that conflict with the interests of their
	patients.
	> The medical profession in my opinion have been pusillanimous
	in relation
	> to ethical issues such as the loss of confidentiality due to
	> computerising records. I think this is due to the Government abusing the
	> NATIONAL Health Service, whose insurance basis they treat with
	contempt,
	> whereas insurance based schemes overseas
	>  retain a more proper client-professional relationship. I
	> think psychologists should clearly and publicly warn doctors about
	the
	> dangers of taking over dirty work we have been exposed to in the past,
	> and criticise them if they fail to stand up for the primacy of their
	> patients' rights. Similar issues apply to clinical
	psychologists.  
	> Â 
	> There are simple things that could be done to help those in sink
	social
	> housing. For instance:-
	> 1. Prevent addresses and school names from appearing on job
	> applications.
	> 2. Cut down the job creation scheme for civil servants that
	> is the Criminal Records Bureau, which almost certainly contravenes
	> international human rights legislation anyway. I am of course in
	favour
	> of careful checking out people for a reasonable number of sensitive jobs,
	> although the most effective way of preventing  problems is good job
	> design. However, the current explosion of bureaucracy, and
	> over-inclusive checking, simply perpetuates and exacerbates social
	> exclusion with all the dangers that implies. In the real world, we need to
	> provide employment for people in deprived areas where large numbers
	of
	> people have criminal convictions, e.g. for drugs offences, or
	prejudicial
	> social or medical issues.
	> 3. Above all, more must be done to fit jobs to hard-to-place claimants
	> rather than force them to submit endless job applications for
	> vacancies offered without any thought as to who needs
	employment. 
	> But these things don't happen because they tread on the toes of those
	who
	> enjoy (and I mean enjoy, in the sense of "get kicks out of")
	exercising
	> power by rejecting job applicants. 
	> Â 
	> I first met David Fryer, our Convenor, at a day conference on the
	> Psychology of Unemployment. This is a topic that requires action, not
	> research, as the psychological implications of unemployment
	> were conclusively established in the 1930s, and confirmed in the 1980s.
	I
	> don't think the psychological issues involved in
	dealing with the
	> emerging work and welfare situation can be dealt with by on-line
	> discussion alone. We need to have a special meeting (conference)Â to
	> consider current developments relating to unemployment and to ensure that
	> action on the ground arises on this issue. 
	> Â 
	> Frederic Stansfield  
	> Â 
	> Â 
	> Â 
	> Â 
	> --- On Wed, 10/12/08, John McGowan <[log in to unmask]>
	wrote:
	>
	> From: John McGowan <[log in to unmask]>
	> Subject: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Welfare Reform White Paper
	> To: [log in to unmask]
	> Date: Wednesday, 10 December, 2008, 11:32 AM
	>
	> Hi,
	>
	> I don't know if anyone picked up on this on the news this morning.
	>
	> Its summarised in this Guardian article.
	>
	>
	> http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/10/jamespurnell-welfare
	>
	>
	> And in this DWP press release last week.
	>
	> http://www.dwp.gov.uk/mediacentre/pressreleases/2008/dec/drc120-021208.a
	> sp
	>
	>
	> I can't find the white paper itself on the DWP website. Am
	particularly
	> struck by the following phrase from the press release. "The review
	> recommends that from now on nearly everyone on benefits should be
	> required to take steps towards finding employment".
	>
	> I was wondering what this might mean in terms of IAPT and the
	> possibility (am I imagining this) that benefits could potentially be
	> contingent on accessing therapies. This would (to me at any rate)
	> certainly shift something fairly fundamental in the nature of therapies.
	>
	> I was hoping that David or someone who knows a bit more about these
	> developments  might be able to say more about possible implications of
	> this?
	>
	> Many thanks
	>
	> John McGowan
	>
	> ___________________________________
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