Thank you so much for reading this! So, the idea here is a little like Munchausen by proxy, but it is not a diagnosis 🙂 — I simply show how communication DOES or creates the very circumstances it purports to describe. So, yes, communication makes our world, and through communication we can reconstruct it. The interesting thing is that therapists are taught/trained to use language in a way to bond, so that they can in fact persuade clients to see in the therapeutic way…the irony is that authenticity is therefore a strategy of authority…
Alex!
Yes! Therapy is a helping asymmetry, and thus depends (relationally) on the patient’s agreement to be “helpless” (Seligman has done some interesting work on learned helplessness.
Maybe you might be interested in reading some of my work? I would love to hear what you think? I study therapeutic authority…which is the assumption of dialogue, but not dialogue at all.
This one is available on academia.edu 🙂 https://www.academia.edu/1271106/How_the_therapist_does_authority_six_strategies_for_substituting_client_accounts_in_the_session
Not sure what you think about what we have judged? I have studied psychotherapy as communication dynamic and written about it (critically) and been on the receiving end. I think we have lots to talk about 🙂
Trust me, plenty of passion. I appreciate you seeing what we were trying to do here. But like I wrote, I used to be very angry. The fact is, anger is not welcome in academia, but passion can be communicated in other ways, too.
Not sure what you mean about therapeutic dialogue? can you say more?
Hi,
The “label” of social construction in therapy is quite a good one…are you familiar with the work of Lynn Hoffman, Harlene Anderson, David White, Tom Andersen, The Milan School of Family Therapy? Again, labels are misleading, and the best therapist, I find is eclectic and NOT a slave to their beliefs…by this a mean not only trained in ONE way of doing things, you know? Like CBT or attachment modalities…but with a rich toolbox. It seems that you are doing fine, and that your interests will serve you well!
Interesting 🙂 But the also interesting that we keep happiness as the way to be. This seems to say than non happiness is a dysfunction? Am I misunderstanding?
I am with you. Enough apologia for our views. When I teach the undergraduate class Communication, Language and Mental Illness I tell my students that it is not my job to tell the story of psychiatry, for they are doing quite a fabulous job of it already. First, I study psychiatry as a DISCOURSE, that is, as a way of how it has always existed as a construction in language, and language makes it so, it ratifies and justifies things as “treatment” vs. “torture”. Then, I tell them that this is a class in appreciating how we create the world we live in, and if we choose to abide by institutions that are undesirable and oppressive, and communicate within their discourse, then we are in a sense allowing them to exist and continue.
You are absolutely right. In an excellent ethnographic study “Making It Crazy” Sue Estroff who lives for a long period of time in a transitional community with people with a schizophrenia diagnosis notes that the ONLY way to get well is for the members of PACT (the name of the community) to LEAVE psychiatry completely: the other members, any affiliation with the medical community, the notion of brain, medication, and the community of “insiders.” This is not a provocation, but what she concludes by seeing the few who make it out, into reintegration. It is stunning.
Not sure when to insert this comment, but I so would recommend this book! Making Us Crazy, Kutchins & Kirk
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Us-Crazy-Psychiatric-Disorders/dp/0743261208
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I am with you.
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Thank you. I know that Amber in particular will appreciate this, oldhead and Richard 🙂
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Thank you so much for reading this! So, the idea here is a little like Munchausen by proxy, but it is not a diagnosis 🙂 — I simply show how communication DOES or creates the very circumstances it purports to describe. So, yes, communication makes our world, and through communication we can reconstruct it. The interesting thing is that therapists are taught/trained to use language in a way to bond, so that they can in fact persuade clients to see in the therapeutic way…the irony is that authenticity is therefore a strategy of authority…
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Yes!
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RIGHT. It is inheritable like poverty, is what I say.
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Alex!
Yes! Therapy is a helping asymmetry, and thus depends (relationally) on the patient’s agreement to be “helpless” (Seligman has done some interesting work on learned helplessness.
Maybe you might be interested in reading some of my work? I would love to hear what you think? I study therapeutic authority…which is the assumption of dialogue, but not dialogue at all.
This one is available on academia.edu 🙂
https://www.academia.edu/1271106/How_the_therapist_does_authority_six_strategies_for_substituting_client_accounts_in_the_session
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Thank you so much for the essay! Sorry for the misunderstanding in my previous post. I really appreciate this interaction.
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Not sure what you think about what we have judged? I have studied psychotherapy as communication dynamic and written about it (critically) and been on the receiving end. I think we have lots to talk about 🙂
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Thank you!!! I am off to watch it and will show it in class!
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Trust me, plenty of passion. I appreciate you seeing what we were trying to do here. But like I wrote, I used to be very angry. The fact is, anger is not welcome in academia, but passion can be communicated in other ways, too.
Not sure what you mean about therapeutic dialogue? can you say more?
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Indeed, I very much recommend Tanya Lunhrmann’s observations on cimplex and simple empathy in Of Two Minds
http://www.amazon.com/Of-Two-Minds-Anthropologist-Psychiatry/dp/0679744932
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Hi,
The “label” of social construction in therapy is quite a good one…are you familiar with the work of Lynn Hoffman, Harlene Anderson, David White, Tom Andersen, The Milan School of Family Therapy? Again, labels are misleading, and the best therapist, I find is eclectic and NOT a slave to their beliefs…by this a mean not only trained in ONE way of doing things, you know? Like CBT or attachment modalities…but with a rich toolbox. It seems that you are doing fine, and that your interests will serve you well!
Report comment
Interesting 🙂 But the also interesting that we keep happiness as the way to be. This seems to say than non happiness is a dysfunction? Am I misunderstanding?
Report comment
I am with you. Enough apologia for our views. When I teach the undergraduate class Communication, Language and Mental Illness I tell my students that it is not my job to tell the story of psychiatry, for they are doing quite a fabulous job of it already. First, I study psychiatry as a DISCOURSE, that is, as a way of how it has always existed as a construction in language, and language makes it so, it ratifies and justifies things as “treatment” vs. “torture”. Then, I tell them that this is a class in appreciating how we create the world we live in, and if we choose to abide by institutions that are undesirable and oppressive, and communicate within their discourse, then we are in a sense allowing them to exist and continue.
Report comment
You are absolutely right. In an excellent ethnographic study “Making It Crazy” Sue Estroff who lives for a long period of time in a transitional community with people with a schizophrenia diagnosis notes that the ONLY way to get well is for the members of PACT (the name of the community) to LEAVE psychiatry completely: the other members, any affiliation with the medical community, the notion of brain, medication, and the community of “insiders.” This is not a provocation, but what she concludes by seeing the few who make it out, into reintegration. It is stunning.
Report comment