Dear Paul (and everyone)
I agree with a great deal of what you are saying here. I wouldn't imagine that many people would claim that the understanding of subjectivity is a waste of time - quite the opposite, and for the reasons to which you allude. For me, the main difficulty comes in when we start falling into the familiar (psychotherapeutic) trap, of believing that if we can help disempowered people to supposedly manipulate their subjective states - whether through "cognitive restructuring", "insight", or "narrative re-storying" etc, then this in itself will be enough to enable them to take control of themselves and their world, and to improve their lot. The essentially delusional nature of this kind of claim should be obvious to anybody who is part of this network.
Nevertheless, I have to admit that I do have one other slight reservation (or perhaps a note of caution) about taking subjective accounts at face value: and this is the perhaps commonplace observation that what an individual might say about themselves (and even to themselves)sometimes seems to jar with what our senses and reasoning are telling us about that person. For example, you sometimes meet people living in what are obviously chronically stressful conditions - who claim that the latter have little effect on them, that they are "managing well" etc when this does not at all seem to be the case (and could not be the case). And I think I'm right in saying that there is some sociological evidence which suggests that people are not always very good at recognising the harmful mental and physical health effects of the environments in which they are forced to live. I suppose that another way of saying this is that people can lack the ideological tools (or discourse) for understanding their situation, and this is of course something that critically inclined psychologists can help people to develop: a matter of language, certainly.
Yet there are obviously tricky aspects to this process, which has to be about negotiation: to what extent are we entitled to openly disagree with another person's views, particularly where they have less power than ourselves. There is the very real danger that we can end up being dogmatic and oppressive if we are not careful - and this is presumably a matter of using one's judgement. Anway, I've never quite managed to find a way of properly resolving these issues, although they seem to arise quite often in my work (and in my life generally!).
Finally, I also share the sentiments about Bach on the radio and the suggestion that electronic reading material might form a good / accessible basis for future discussions / debates.
Wishing everybody a happy new year
Kind Regards
Paul M
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Paul@home
Sent: 23 December 2005 14:27
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Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Shared reading 'Living in a material?'
Both to share some reading in the spirit David suggested, and to continue
with the debate about the importance of us attending to the material vs the
non material world (those debates about the usefulness and redundnacy of
postmodern thinking and working), here is what Richard Wilkinson wrote
recently that might be pertinent. This is why I do not accept arguments that
our over involvement in theorising about the nonmaterial world is unhelpful
to what we are seeking to achieve in com psy when working alongside those in
poverty and in distress in our communities:
[p.60]
When I first became interested in the social gradient in health some
twenty-five years ago, I, like most researchers working on this problem,
assumed that the health differences we saw between different occupational
classes resulted from differences in material living standards. (As
mentioned in chapter 1, studies had shown that differences in health-related
behavior - differences in drinking, smoking, exercise, and so on - failed to
account for the bulk of the health differences.) Most of us assumed our task
was to identify what aspects of the differences in material living standards
contributed to which diseases. But what has become clear from numerous
studies over the years is the surprising success of psychosocial variables
in explaining differences in morbidity and mortality. Variables such as a
lack of a sense of control, depression, hopelessness, hostility, lack of
confidence, lack of social support, bad social relationships, stressful life
events, family conflict, stress at work, social and material rewards from
work that fail to match work effort, bereavement, being single or divorced
rather than married, and job and housing insecurity all seemed to produce
poor health.
[p.61]
The shift in emphasis from individual psychology to the social patterning of
psychological life reflects the fact that epidemiological studies of health
and health inequalities often collect data from many thousands, sometimes
tens of thousands, of people. The interest is inevitably in the broad
patterns rather than the individual differences. But at the same time the
broad patterns tell us more about individual sensitivities. When we see, for
instance, that levels of stress hormones in middle age are related to birth
weight, or-as in the last chapter-that levels of violence and the quality of
social relationships in a society are related to the degree of inequality,
we are learning about processes which affect individuals. Often they are
processes we may be blind to until we see the evidence in data comparing
large numbers of people.
So, for instance, [p.62] things such as air pollution, infectious
microorganisms, poisoning, and vitamin deficiencies are all capable of
harming our health even if we are totally unaware of them: they are
therefore classified as material factors having a direct effect on health.
But job or housing insecurity affects your health only if you are aware of
it.
Despite individual differences, mental states are rarely independent of the
practical world. Instead they are perceptions of it and attempts to make
sense of one's situation in it. Sometimes an emphasis on psychosocial
influences on health is criticized for seeming unrelated to the practical
reality of people's lives: what is at stake is, however, their experience of
life, and the easiest way to change that is to change the practical reality.
But to know what to change we need to know the way people's worlds are
subjectively constructed and experienced, and that is why the psychosocial
is crucial. The growing understanding of the biological pathways through
which [p.63] stress affects health has provided us with one more major new
pathway through which the environment can affect health. It is no longer
just a matter of what we ingest or inhale, or how we use our bodies; it is
also a matter of our feelings and subjective experience of life.
Wilkinson, R. (2005). The impact of inequality: how to make sick societies
healthier. London: Routledge. pp.60-63.
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