Dear Sarah and Livia and David and Dawn and all,

Thank you for this exchange.

I just read a piece by phycisist  Stephen Hawking http://gu.com/p/5dpgy. :- entitled, this is the most dangerous time for our planet . He says ( and, for what it's worth,  I agree with most of what he says), about inequality and the global political situation  "For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change...." He finishes by saying "We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility"

Members  of the psy-complex are part of the elite who, like others, urgently need to do the questioning of the relationship between truth and power that David urges. We need to do this with humility, as , among others, David and Jan Bostock and Mark Burton have always said we should do as community psychologists. Drawing on critical ( and I would add, creative) resources beyond the discipline of psychology is really important in this, as David says , as is  questioning and challenging our own vested interests. Asking always , in whose interests  is this.....and acting to shift  the balance of power towards those who have least, where ever we can. And how hard is this, when we individually and collectively numb ourselves against pain.   I have been re-reading the sociologist Stanley Cohen on States  of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. He says:- we need to turn  to a political critique of the atrocities" .

Another thing to consider is that community psychology as a subject/ discipline / activity is unregulated. It is not a formal part of the psy-complex , in that it is not a protected title, at least not in the UK. Though we do have a BPS Community Psychology Section, in  which can work inside the psy-complex and at its edges, it is also important that  we can also work together with anyone who feels psychology is worth engaging with, as community psychologists and citizens together,  outside formal regulated structures. That ( including this list for which I am grateful ) gives us a realm for shared critique and activism around psychology and beyond it, that can overlap with our various professional, academic and personal and social Identitites and activities.

I know that it is very hard for people who are training  as professional or academic psychologists to take on board critical ideas , which seem to threaten the very foundations, subjects and  identities they wish to take on , unless they have strong critical role models and mentors. So I appreciate you Sarah for asking the question and you others for being such strong and able critics and inspirers of challenge. Much needed, as much as ever if not more, at this time.

Oh oh oh , on re- reading..I realise that nearly all the authors I have quoted here are white men. So much for my critical self! Maybe others can add more from other sources?

Warm wishes to all

Annie


________________________________
From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of David Fryer <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 December 2016 12:33:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Advancing social justice - Clinical and community psychology

Dear Dawn,

Thanks. What you and colleagues are attempting to do at Notre Dame, WA, is impressive.

I think it is relevant to this discussion that at Notre Dame University you and your colleagues are engaged in education beyond the reach of the institutionalised psy-complex (in the form in this case in Australia of the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council / Psychology Board of Australia) to regulate and police what is and is not taught and how it is and is not taught (but institutionalised psy-complex regulation and policing takes different forms in different countries).

Do you agree?

David




________________________________
From: Dawn Darlaston-Jones <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, 29 November 2016, 12:42
Subject: Re: Advancing social justice - Clinical and community psychology

Hi David
I loved this response, particularly the final paragraph, it captures what I and others are attempting to achieve in the realm of education
Dawn

____________________________________________________
Associate Professor Dawn Darlaston-Jones, PhD MAPS MCCMP
Registered Psychologist
Behavioural Science
School of Arts & Sciences

University of Notre Dame
19 Mouat Street (PO Box 1225)
FREMANTLE
Western Australia WA 6959

Tel: +61 8 9433 0124
e-mail [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

CRICOS Code 01032F

"Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world" - Nelson Mandela

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From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Fryer
Sent: Tuesday, 29 November 2016 10:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Advancing social justice - Clinical and community psychology

Dear Livia,

Thanks for continuing the discussion.  I waited a while before picking up the thread in case Sarah or anyone else wished to open other important issues before I head off down one limited interest track with a reply.

You asked “What is the ‘next step’ that such a radically critical approach would propose?” What one’s ‘next step’ should be depends on what one is trying to achieve? That may seem obvious and perhaps it might be taken for granted that members of this list in general, and Sarah, you and me in particular, will be in agreement about what we are trying to achieve? In Sarah’s post it seemed to me that it was positioned as obvious that community and clinical psychologists are committed to making “efforts to contribute to advancing social justice” and in your post it seemed to me that it was positioned as obvious that clinical/community/critical psychologists aspire to “actually make a difference in people’s lives”. From the perspective within which Sarah’s and your posts were framed, a key question of a ‘critical’ approach is how it could be translated into ‘something manifest in the world’ which psychologists can do which  will actually ‘make a difference in people’s lives‘/ which will ‘advance social justice’. It makes sense to ask it and you did.

From the critical perspective within which I work, the psy-complex (“the heterogeneous knowledges, forms of authority and practical techniques that constitute psychological expertise” (Rose, 1999: vii) is already only too  ‘manifest in the world’, already makes only too great a difference in people’s lives by discursively positioning domains of human life as ‘psychological’, constructing and deploying expertise in relation to them and regulating them through the (re)construction of subjectivity. A key question is not how to deploy it, collaboratively or not, but rather how to resist it.

I reject the modernist positioning of the subject as unitary, rational, agentic, and the modernist notion of power as a phenomenon an individual can adjust e.g. through empowerment. I also follow Hansen (e.g. 2016) and others in rejecting normative approaches which position a key task as “unmasking the structures that impede justice from actualization”. In relation to discourse and practices of ‘social justice’, ‘human rights’ etc., I prefer to critically investigate how they are deployed, with what effects, in whose interests etc. rather than position them as taken-for-grantedly as ‘good’ and beyond critique.

There is lots more which could be said but this reply is already too long. I also do not want to get too technical or inaccessible. It is probably enough already to explain why I am not interested in approaches in which community and clinical psychologists are unproblematically positioned as making “efforts to contribute to advancing social justice” or “actually mak(ing) a difference in people’s lives” through problematic ways. My critical interest is in troubling psy-complexification, modernist notions of the subject, of power and of normative approaches to social justice.  My next step within the critical approach I work within is, as Foucault (put it (2007: 47) to “question truth on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of truth” and more particularly to question psy-complex ‘truth’ on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of psy-complex ‘truth’ .

More broadly my next step is not to find a different way to psy-complexify etc. but to abandon the psy-complex, to strive to engage with subjectivity and power without drawing upon psy. For stimulation and support with this I look to trans-disciplinary approaches to the genealogy of the subject drawing on critical theory, contemporary anthropology, radical politics, feminist and queer theory studies and so on rather than psy (clinical or community). I would recommend any clinical psychology trainee in “the process of developing a question for a professional issues essay” to draw upon those approaches too.

David

________________________________
From: "Ottisova, Livia" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, 21 November 2016, 20:50
Subject: Re: Advancing social justice - Clinical and community psychology

Dear David,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

As someone with an uneasy foot in each camp (community/critical and clinical) I wonder, what is the ‘next step’ that such a radically critical approach would propose?

In the second part of Sarah’s question, she asked about the potential for collaboration between clinical and community psychology to advance social justice, and what this might look like in practice. Your response is that clinical psychology (and its all too often individualistic, intra-psychic, medical model) is actually an impediment to developing and deploying a more critical approach – and, if I understand correctly, collaboration would therefore not be desirable.

So where do we go from here?

How do we translate this more critical approach into something manifest in the world, that will actually make a difference in people’s lives?

Thank you for your thoughts, I am very interested to see what emerges from these questions and reformulated questions!

Very best wishes,
Livia





From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Fryer
Sent: 21 November 2016 07:25
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Advancing social justice - Clinical and community psychology

Dear Sarah,

Thanks for raising some interesting issues and also for being open to different ways to respond to them, including allowing the possibility that the questions you are asking might be usefully reformulated in other frames of reference, at least for some members of the list.

I think you raise issues of interest to many on this list. Thanks. However, in the context of this list, rather than ask whether clinical psychologists should concern themselves with community psychology as part of their efforts to advance social justice, I would ask whether there is a need to develop approaches to subjectivity and power which thoroughly reject individualistic, intra-psychic, medical model, mainstream ‘scientistic’, treatment approaches to promote what are positioned within dominant, metropolitan discourses as taken-for-granted, normatively-desirable, socially-just, forms of human social life. This is to ask the question of whether a radically critical approach to collective subjectivity and socially-constituted power is required. In my own, critical, frame of reference, it is required and clinical psychology – and community psychology too in many of its clinically psychologised manifestations - is an impediment to developing and deploying such a critical approach.

That may not be an appropriate alternative question for your professional issues essay as a clinical psychology trainee but thinking about the issues raised by the reformulated at question, or discussing them on this discussion list, might lead to interesting alternative questions.

Good luck!

David

________________________________
From: Sarah W <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, 17 November 2016, 20:36
Subject: Advancing social justice - Clinical and community psychology

Hi All
I am in the process of developing a question for a professional issues essay and I wondered if I might invite comments. I'd like the finished product to be a worthwhile contribution.
As a clinical psychology trainee I have been introduced to community psychology through the activities of members of the Community Psychology Section and the Division of Clinical Psychology, the DCP's Pre-Qualification group, Psychologists Against Austerity and influential experts by experience.
I'm curious about:
1) whether clinical psychologists should concern themselves with community psychology per sé as part of their efforts to contribute to advancing social justice (assuming the implied boundaries exist)? - my sense is that there are a variety of views on this, but I might be wrong.
2) what collaborative efforts to advance social justice might look like in practice - specifically, how might the day-to-day role of the clinical psychologist need to evolve with these shared values/aims in mind? e.g. involvement within public health - no doubt this would involve overcoming many challenges.
I suspect I'm asking the 'wrong' questions in a way - please excuse me if so. I'm opening this up at the very early stages in my thinking process! Perhaps they have been answered fully elsewhere?
I hope no one minds me using the email list as a resource in this way. I'd value any thoughts at all.
BW
Sarah
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