The challenge of Post modernism
David van der Want
THe subject of this posting suggests a dry and academic debate, far removed
from the intricacies and intimacies of a working therapeutic relationship.
However, if we take post modernism seriously, there are extreme consequences
for our conceptualisation of what comprises a therapeutic relationship.
Firstly, psychotherapies aligned with the modernist intellectual tradition
view the therapist as an expert, possessed of specialist knowledge and armed
with techniques aimed at addressing deficit in a client. A post modern
perspective rejects the implications of objectivity inherent in the employment
of a corrective technique and suggests that there is no privileged position
for observation. Michael White attempts to address this using a narrative
metaphor for psychotherapy but ultimately fails, in my opinion, to establish a
post moder practce of psychotherapy. While the techniques he employs,
(landscape questions etc) are elegant and effective, his theory still
privileges the perspective of the therapist as he/she is able to detect
deficiencies in the storying of experience used by the client to make sense of
experience. The therapist then becomes subject acting upon object in order to
ameliorate difficulties. THe subject-subject nature of the the therapeutic
relationship suggested by post modernism falls by the wayside as soon as a
theory privileges the experience of the therapist, informed and shaped by
theory, over that of the client, informed by narrative structure.
The academic question behind these musings is then; Is it possible to realise
a post-modern praxis of psychotherapy? In a pragmatic sense the question
becomes; Is it possible to have a helpful and therapeutic conversation without
privileging the perspective of the therapist as expert.
Another question; is it desirable to adopt a post modern lens for
understanding psychotherapy? The work of the anti-psychiatry movement and
lately the work of social psychologists (Kenneth Gergen) and discourse
analysts (Ian Parker) would suggest that the modernist approach creates sets
of knowledge that are disseminated into communities and become constitutive of
experience thereby creating and maintaining pathologies. The implication being
that we, as professionals, create the phenomena we seek to explain and "cure".
Hence the rationale for rejecting modernism and the potentially harmful
effects of its "truth claims".
Any thoughts, experiences?
David van der Want
(MA Clin. Psych.)
University of Pretoria
South Africa
dvd...@libarts.up.ac.za
Tim McNamara
In article <dvdwant.1...@libarts.up.ac.za>,
dvd...@libarts.up.ac.za (David van der Want) wrote:
> THe subject of this posting suggests a dry and academic debate, far removed
> from the intricacies and intimacies of a working therapeutic relationship.
> However, if we take post modernism seriously, there are extreme consequences
> for our conceptualisation of what comprises a therapeutic relationship.
I have to admit that i find post modernism difficult to take seriously.
This no doubt biases my perspective on your questions.
> The academic question behind these musings is then; Is it possible to realise
> a post-modern praxis of psychotherapy? In a pragmatic sense the question
> becomes; Is it possible to have a helpful and therapeutic conversation
without
> privileging the perspective of the therapist as expert.
If the client is not seeking the therapist out explicitly FOR her/his
expertise, then why go to therapy in the first place? Do you expect your
physician not to be an expert? Or the mechanic working on your car?
"Privileging the perspective of the therapist" (as a transitive verb) is
an interesting choice of concepts in the contxt of the therapeutic
relationship. The client is in fact the holder of the privilege, as s/he
is the employer of the therapist, and may or may not grant privelege to
the therapist in the sense of bestowing a "special advantage, immunity,
permission or right." The client is free in this respect, from an *ideal*
standpoint. In reality, however, the therapist probably expects to be
priveleged in the therapeutic relationship since this is the norm,
professionally and societally. I think that such privelege is
unavoidable- and probably necessary- in the therapeutic relationship for a
variety of reasons, including but certainly not limited to:
1. The client probably has some problem interfering with his/her
functioning (or why else would therapy be being sought?).
2. The client's problems may be unresolvable with the internal and normal
external resources available to him or her. Thus the client seeks out an
extra-ordinary resource, the therapist.
3. The client's problem may inherently handicap the client's ability for
resolution, e.g., major depression of such severity that the client cannot
develop his or her own effective management plan; another example would be
an illness that impairs perception of reality.
4. The client lacks the knowledge necessary to address the problem
successfully.
5. Because of all these factors, the client is in a vulnerable position
vis-a-vis the therapist.
Because the client experiences some sort of deficit in his or her
functioning, the client seeks out the assistance of a professional. This
requires, at least to an extent, the assignation of privilege to the
helper. Cautionary statements are required about this, in both the
broader syetematic-philosophical sense and in the consulting room itself.
The therapist must explicate and protect against harm befalling the client
because of the privileging of the therapist, as is specified in the
ethical principles of the profession.
> Another question; is it desirable to adopt a post modern lens for
> understanding psychotherapy? The work of the anti-psychiatry movement and
> lately the work of social psychologists (Kenneth Gergen) and discourse
> analysts (Ian Parker) would suggest that the modernist approach creates sets
> of knowledge that are disseminated into communities and become
constitutive of
> experience thereby creating and maintaining pathologies. The implication
being
> that we, as professionals, create the phenomena we seek to explain and
"cure".
> Hence the rationale for rejecting modernism and the potentially harmful
> effects of its "truth claims".
Your final paragraph appears internally inconsistent and illogical (are
you interchanging "postmodernism" and "modernism"?). There is an
assumption in your statment that the dissemination of "knowledge sets"
into the community can *only* create and maintain pathologies. This is a
bleak- and nonsensical- assumption. Ideas which are phenomenologically
accurate, for example, would tend to be counteractive of pathologies. I
have no doubt that ideas influence experience, less than philosophers
would have us believe and more than biologists would have us believe (your
statement appears to imply that experience is solely mediated
conceptually, e.g exclusively psychic in nature and ignoring somatic
experience). I find it impossible to believe that "professionals" have
such power over societies simply due to the laws of intertia, if nothing
else.
Tim
--
Don't cry now, don't you cry, dry your eyes
on the wind.
-Robert Hunter
David van der Want
In article <5lsbin$o...@netnews.upenn.edu> wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>From: wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck)
>Subject: Re: The challenge of Post modernism
>Date: 20 May 1997 14:13:43 GMT
>You would have to define your terms more concisely, I think --
>postmodernism is a rather useless concept at this point. I'd suggest
>that you think in the direction of poststructuralism instead. The
>elements you perceive to be "postmodern" in therapy are, by and large,
>all present in Freud, esp. the fantasmatic nature of truth and memory,
>the "constructedess" of our identities, and, most importantly, the
>narrative quality of analytic discourse.
>For starting points, I'd recommend, if you haven't read it yet,
>Deleuze/Guattari's _Anti-Oedipus_ that goes to the heart of the
>question of structure.
>I'm crossposting this to alt.postmodern.
I have not read the books to which you refer but consultation of the library
computer tells me that we have them. I was trained in ecosystemic approaches
to therapy and hence my interest in social constructionism, discourse and
narrative. Perhaps you are correct and a post modern perspective is
irrellevant or even anathema to therapy which takes place in the context of a
broader discourse of cure, treatment and disease. What the post moder
perspective does raise for me is a question about the role of theory in
psychotherapy. Most theories posit the existence of a stucture or process
which is damaged or deficient in some way and that the therapist has access to
privileged expert knowledge on how to repair or redress this deficit. The
result is the propogation of the broafder discourses of illness and cure which
in turn becomes constitutive of people's lives hence perpetuating systems of
pathology. Cynically it is possible to argue that this process of self
perpetuation is based in economic realities but I think that it performs a
function in terms of society's negotiation of issues that do not fit in with
dominant discourses of what constitutes health and normality. It becomes a
question of what is mental illlness and whether illness is an appropriatte
term or not.
As far as defining terms goes; I would regard post modernism as the
realisation that there is only subjectivity, that no theory can claim to have
cornered truth. Also it incorporates the idea that knowledge is created not
discovered, that we both see the world AND create what we see by the
epistemological distinctions we draw. It is easy for a theory to pay lip
service to this idea; another matter entirely to realize its implications in
practice. And this we must in order to avoid constructing knowledges which
ultimately become problems in and of themselves.
A mentor of mine once said that the meta-communication of therapy conducted
by a devoteee of any particular theory could be read as "Buy into my discourse
or it will label you mad/bad/sick/deficient/dysfunctional"
Thanks for the input and the tip to alt.postmodern. I'm new here and am still
finding my way around
>David van der Want
>(dvd...@libarts.up.ac.za) wrote:
>: THe subject of this posting suggests a dry and academic debate, far removed
>: from the intricacies and intimacies of a working therapeutic relationship.
>: However, if we take post modernism seriously, there are extreme consequences
>: for our conceptualisation of what comprises a therapeutic relationship.
>: Firstly, psychotherapies aligned with the modernist intellectual tradition
>: view the therapist as an expert, possessed of specialist knowledge and armed
>: with techniques aimed at addressing deficit in a client. A post modern
>: perspective rejects the implications of objectivity inherent in the employment
>: of a corrective technique and suggests that there is no privileged position
>: for observation. Michael White attempts to address this using a narrative
>: metaphor for psychotherapy but ultimately fails, in my opinion, to establish a
>: post moder practce of psychotherapy. While the techniques he employs,
>: (landscape questions etc) are elegant and effective, his theory still
>: privileges the perspective of the therapist as he/she is able to detect
>: deficiencies in the storying of experience used by the client to make sense of
>: experience. The therapist then becomes subject acting upon object in order to
>: ameliorate difficulties. THe subject-subject nature of the the therapeutic
>: relationship suggested by post modernism falls by the wayside as soon as a
>: theory privileges the experience of the therapist, informed and shaped by
>: theory, over that of the client, informed by narrative structure.
>: The academic question behind these musings is then; Is it possible to realise
>: a post-modern praxis of psychotherapy? In a pragmatic sense the question
>: becomes; Is it possible to have a helpful and therapeutic conversation without
>: privileging the perspective of the therapist as expert.
>: Another question; is it desirable to adopt a post modern lens for
>: understanding psychotherapy? The work of the anti-psychiatry movement and
>: lately the work of social psychologists (Kenneth Gergen) and discourse
>: analysts (Ian Parker) would suggest that the modernist approach creates sets
>: of knowledge that are disseminated into communities and become constitutive of
>: experience thereby creating and maintaining pathologies. The implication being
>: that we, as professionals, create the phenomena we seek to explain and "cure".
>: Hence the rationale for rejecting modernism and the potentially harmful
>: effects of its "truth claims".
>: Any thoughts, experiences?
>: David van der Want
>: (MA Clin. Psych.)
>: University of Pretoria
>: South Africa
>: dvd...@libarts.up.ac.za
>--
>-----------------------------------
>Silke-Maria Weineck, Ph.D.
>http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~weinecks/
David van der Want
>> >You would have to define your terms more concisely, I think --
>> >postmodernism is a rather useless concept at this point. I'd suggest
>> >that you think in the direction of poststructuralism instead. The
>> >elements you perceive to be "postmodern" in therapy are, by and large,
>> >all present in Freud, esp. the fantasmatic nature of truth and memory,
>> >the "constructedess" of our identities, and, most importantly, the
>> >narrative quality of analytic discourse.
>>
>> >For starting points, I'd recommend, if you haven't read it yet,
>> >Deleuze/Guattari's _Anti-Oedipus_ that goes to the heart of the
>> >question of structure.
>>
>> >I'm crossposting this to alt.postmodern.
>>
>> I have not read the books to which you refer but consultation of the library
>> computer tells me that we have them. I was trained in ecosystemic approaches
>> to therapy and hence my interest in social constructionism, discourse and
>> narrative. Perhaps you are correct and a post modern perspective is
>> irrellevant or even anathema to therapy which takes place in the context of a
>> broader discourse of cure, treatment and disease.
>Whoa, hold your horses. I didn't say any of the above. On the contrary,
>I'm saying that much of what you identify as "postmodern" is already part
>of Freud's psychodynamic models, esp. the later ones. I happen to think
>that they are extremely relevant, and I deplore the general departure
>from precisely those parts of Freud I find most valuable -- the
>devaluation of memory as an indicator of "truth," for instance, the
>(later) admission that transference mets counter-transference and that
>there is no stance of objectivity if we take this seriously,e tc.
I see what you are getting at. Perhaps the favour given psychoanalysis in
psychology since it arrived on the scene has led to a reification of the ideas
of conscious, unconscious, transference etc hence the widely held belief that
these are eternal verities. My difficulty lies in my percpetion that the
theory locates qualities inside individuals as "truths" posssessed by them. I
think the self is far more fluid than this being embedded in broader social
processes. But point taken!
> What the post moder
>> perspective does raise for me is a question about the role of theory in
>> psychotherapy. Most theories posit the existence of a stucture or process
>> which is damaged or deficient in some way and that the therapist has access to
>> privileged expert knowledge on how to repair or redress this deficit.
>It greatly depends on what school of therapy you are conscribing to, I
>think. Many models do not function that way but let the client define the
>goals, after all. But you are no doubt correct that much of therapy
>proceeds along those lines; in spp, for instance, we have practitioners
>posting who seem to indicate that a female client without a bra is
>presenting a challenge to the therapist....
RE the bra, again not wearing a bra would be a challenge to a particular kind
of therapist participating in a particular context. (I don't wear a bra either
and no therapist has ever contrued that as a challenge, in fact I think if I
were to do so, my therapist may well decide I was challenging her!). Seriously
I do think that the vast majority of therapies from the medical approach to
CBT and even Michael White's narrative either overtly or through implication
do locate deficit in a person. Also I'm not proposing that we ignore the
experience of suffering but rather that we need to exercise far more
responsibility as a profession for the knowledges constructed by our theories.
EG) in South Africa (where I am) a local pharmacy chain, with the sanction of
the medical association, has sponsired the production of millions of
papmphlets and a TV programme explaining exactly what the various disorders of
the DSM IV are like and how to detect early warning signs of impending
personality disintegration. On one level this might be seen as eductive and a
sincere effort to help people become more aware of mental health issues. On
another level it vcan be seen as the propogation of discourse, the making
available to culturally sanctioned myths for people to make sense of their
lives with. Every time I see one I feel a volcanic vitriol rising in my
braless chest!
>The
>> result is the propogation of the broafder discourses of illness and cure which
>> in turn becomes constitutive of people's lives hence perpetuating systems of
>> pathology.
>Again, certainly -- even though it should also be said that these
>perceptions do not necessarily originate in therapy but are the causes
>why someone seeks therapy in the first place. The problem I have with the
>position you sketch is that it risks going to the other extreme, i.e. to
>not listen when people say, "I hurt, I'm suffering" -- someone with
>severe depression, for instance, is not necessarily better off if told
>that depression is a social construct.
See comment above. I would not advocate telling a client in pain that his
"ilness" is just a fairy tale constructed by our participation in discourse
but I would advocate an approach sensitive to this issue.
> Cynically it is possible to argue that this process of
self>> perpetuation is based in economic realities but I think that it
performs a>> function in terms of society's negotiation of issues that do not
fit in with>> dominant discourses of what constitutes health and normality. It
becomes a>> question of what is mental illlness and whether illness is an
appropriatte>> term or not.
>You might want to check out Foucault's (middling) _Madness and
>Civilization_, as well as a number of books written in its wake. He also
>has a shorter one, quite nice, I think, _Maladie mentale et Psychologie_.
>And there is, of course, the anti-psychiatry movement, Laing and Szasz
>etc. etc. that you're probably familiar with.
I've read Foucault's stuff and the others Goffman, Cooper etcetera. These
ideas have been around for a while but the profession seems to have labelled
them radical.
>>>> As far as defining terms goes; I would regard post modernism
as the>> realisation that there is only subjectivity, that no theory can claim
to have>> cornered truth.
>Not good enough, I'm afraid. And "subjectivity" is itself a rather
>beleaguered term. All of that starts much earlier, and is probably most
>explicitly prefigured in Nietzsche, who adds subtlety. "Truth and Lie in
>the Extramoral Sense" is a fun way to start, and the _Gay Science_ has a
>whole preface dedicated to the idea of sickness/health.
OK fine, what I mean is that meaning and "truths" arise from a context of
interacting subjectivites. My first ever psychology textbook quoted Robert
Frost "We dance in a circle and suppose, while the secret sits in the middle
and knows". We are on the right track. All we must realise now is that there
is no secret, only a dance.
>> Also it incorporates the idea that knowledge is
created not>> discovered, that we both see the world AND create what we see by
the>> epistemological distinctions we draw. It is easy for a theory to pay
lip>> service to this idea; another matter entirely to realize its
implications in>> practice. And this we must in order to avoid constructing
knowledges which>> ultimately become problems in and of themselves.>> > A
mentor of mine once said that the meta-communication of therapy conducted>>
by a devoteee of any particular theory could be read as "Buy into my
discourse>> or it will label you mad/bad/sick/deficient/dysfunctional"
>Sure, but a bit trite, in the end; any school of therapy that puts
>emphasis onto the self-awareness of the therapist contains a few
>safeguards against this, I think. But spp at least isn't too fond of
>Freud, so you might get to hear vociferous dissent.
I'm not too fond of Freud also, although when I read him (which is
infrequently) I must acknowledge his genius. I think it's more than self
awareness required but a knowledge of how I (the therapist) participate
in a context of truth generation.
>>>> Thanks for the input and the tip to
alt.postmodern. I'm new here and am still>> finding my way around
>Well, welcome! I hope both groups put in.
Me too although the server I'm on doesn't seem to pick up any of the alt
groups. I thik they are afraid we'll want to look at the porn.
Thanks for all the interesting input. Who are you?
Cheers
Dave
>> >: THe subject of this posting suggests a dry and academic debate, far
removed>> >: from the intricacies and intimacies of a working therapeutic
relationship.>> >: However, if we take post modernism seriously, there are
extreme>consequences
>> >: for our conceptualisation of what comprises a therapeutic relationship.
>-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
David van der Want
The trouble with this whole taking post modernism seriously (and we can call
is post structuralism or even Fred if we want to because after all the thing
isn't the thing named) is that it is impossible, once these ideas have dawned
on our conceptual horizons not to acknowledge them. It is a second order shift
that is made and once we accept the fluidity of knowledge and "reality" it is
impossible to go back to thinking of reality as a fixed and eternal truth,
immutable and independent of our observation and description of it.
What I'm lieft with is a struggle to actualise these ideas in such a way that
my theorising, observation and description does not perpetuate "realities"
which are dmaging to clients and perpetuate potentially harmful discourses. Or
is it impossible to do this, whatever discourse or knowledge I create through
description and theory will always have some negative effect. Is this the one
eternal verity. I don't mean to be belak or pessimistic, actually just the
opposite; once we realize make the world as we see it and we see the world as
we make it and in seeing it we make it (obviously whithin the constraints of
biology) the possibilities for the creation of extremely optimistic positive
systems of knowledge become evident. For example; is it really necessary to
construct human suffering in terms of illness? Another one, is it possible
that their are truths about humanity different from the commonly held
assumption that we are driven by urges and impulses unacceptable to communal
living (the implication of psychoanalysis).
Cheers
Dave
Chris Chandler
This is an intriguing question, and would be quite useful were it not
for the fact that the psychologizing of modernity already has a vast
history of wrangling with precisely these problematics of the
client-therapist relationship - i.e. whether it is power-laden,
whether the therapist can be considered an expert when the patient
already holds the key to their own recovery, and so on. I think what
is at stake here is not the identity of professional praxis in the
"postmodern" era, nor if we can stake a claim into the identity
politics described by this discourse, but rather how can we begin to
insert a whole field of lived experiences that have heretofore been
unacknowledged by the supposed universality of the unconscious field.
This is not merely a question of therapy, but instead one that begs a
rigorous investigation into the lingusitic and semiotic properties of
the pathological instance. Thus, if we then want to ask what the
shape of things can be in the future, it is entirely within our grasp
as a lingua-politic. My suggestion: take a look at the work being
done at GIFRIC in Canada by Danielle Bergeron....Lacanian
psychoanalysis with real results.
John Clark
In article <8642284...@dejanews.com>, <wein...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>proceeds along those lines; in spp, for instance, we have practitioners
>posting who seem to indicate that a female client without a bra is
>presenting a challenge to the therapist....
Just as an aside, is the bra a structualist element, and the burnt bra
a post structuralist retort?
Actually I'm waiting for some bright person to apply the Deep Blue
Wundercomputer to therapy, then everything will in fact be transference, as
DBW presumabley has no 'personal' material to transfer to the client...
John Clark
In article <8644100...@dejanews.com>, <wein...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>Of course -- the question I'm interested in here, or another one I find
>fascinating, is the following --- since this marketing scheme seems to
>work, can't we conclude that there is also a certain value placed on
>being-ill? I mean, where and what is the pleasure of the client who
I thought this was sort of part of the on going comedy of perenial
therapy. Woody Allen when he was funny was often making jokes.
It may have a return vogue as more banal therapy is taken up by the
behaviorists, for a quick fix and cheap rate, that the well to do can
return to long periods of 'care'.
sisy...@pacbell.net
I hope I'm permitted to join this thread....one of the most
interesting to come along in a while.
I think that out of Freud's genius came an altogether new form
of dialogue. He made it possible for therapists and patients to
engage in consequential forms of transformational dialogue that
had never existed before. He showed therapists how to do things
with words to help revise radically their patients' hitherto fixed,
and often unconsciously directed constructions of both subjective
experience and action in the world....to use words to change
lives in a thought-through, insightful manner. No one before him
had ddone anything as profound, comprehensive, skillful, basically
rational, and effective. Now that my commercial is
done, I would add that many schools of therapy have derived from
Freud's
legacy...Adlerian, Jungian, Rogerian Kleinian to name a few.
Like Silke, I eschew a "back to Freud," modern or postmodern
microscope to view the therapeutic dialogue but would rather
focus on the factors that make the clinical dialogue
transformative. My current thinking is that it does so by
_destabilizing_, _deconstructing_, and _defamiliarizing_ the
patient's consciously narrated presentation of the self and
its history among people.
Because the life narratives with which the patient has come
for treatment are more or less stabilized by defenses, the
invaluable analysis of defense, insofar as it is effective,
necessarily destabilizes them. The process destabilizes both
the established stories of guilt, trauma, neglect, misunderstanding,
and blissful, unambivalent love, and the stories that seem merely
to have been put together spontaneously in the thick of the ongoing therapy.
The patient develops a new slant on lives that have been lived
and that are expected to be lived.
By deconstructing I mean that the patient's narratives are
deconstructed through the therapist's focusing on first, their
internal contradictions, their being founded on displacements,
condensations, and marginalization, and their erasures of
expectable, emotion-laden crucial life experience...and second,
the hidden hierarchies of value in taken-for-granted polarities
such as male-female, active-passive, and dominant-submissive.
Psychoanalytic deconstruction brings out particularly the
contraictory or otherwise incoherent types of overt and fantasized
relationship that the analysand tries to develop with the relatively
neutral and relatively opaque analyst. Other schools may employ
other techniques. Contrary to popular stereotype, however,
deconstruction is not a lofty name for destructiveness and
disillusionment. Deconstruction makes possible new and sounder
constructions, in particvular the construction of more fulfilling
narratives of lives in progress.
Another thing that happens in the therapeutic dialogue is
defamiliarization. Here the therapist begins to retell much
that the patien initially has told and is telling naively,
abjectly, seductively, or aggressively and of course, defensively.
By introducing new or revised storylines as major amendments to
the patient's narratives or as supplements to them, the therapist
begins the process of defamiliarizing them and here, too, engages
the analysand in the process.
It is to be emphasized that the patient is an active party to
these processes. What was once experienced in passive, frequently
victimized terms moves towards more assertive and responsible terms.
So while I agree with Tim that a patient may first come to a therapist
as an expert, the therapeutic dialogue soon puts both therapist
and patient on a relatively equal footing. And both are transformed.
Another commercial....Freud taught us to see the action in appparent
inaction and accident, and he also taught us how much of our sense
of power and control is illusory, is compensatory
fantasy that denies and reverses the powerful and sometimes dire
necessities of the body. He showed us that we share with others
in our world a great amount of helplessness over our life cycles.
He introduced a modern tone into our conceptions of tragedy and irony.
After Freud, our understandings and narratives of human existence
could never be same.
Norm
John Clark
In article <338751...@pacbell.net>, <sisy...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>I hope I'm permitted to join this thread....one of the most
>interesting to come along in a while.
>
>I think that out of Freud's genius came an altogether new form
>of dialogue. He made it possible for therapists and patients to
>engage in consequential forms of transformational dialogue that
>had never existed before. He showed therapists how to do things
>with words to help revise radically their patients' hitherto fixed,
>and often unconsciously directed constructions of both subjective
>experience and action in the world....to use words to change
>lives in a thought-through, insightful manner. No one before him
>had ddone anything as profound, comprehensive, skillful, basically
>rational, and effective. Now that my commercial is
>done, I would add that many schools of therapy have derived from
To what end Norm... To live a more integrated life as a person? Or make
the person more amenable to living with others in the society they find
themselves.
The deconstruction process of the social setting of the individual
seems to be totally absent from your posts.
Or is this one of those western forms of Zen Koan, the person drinks
water, the patient drinks a magical substance called water, the new formed
person, drinks water...
sisy...@pacbell.net
Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
>
> sisy...@pacbell.net wrote:
> : I hope I'm permitted to join this thread....one of the most
> : interesting to come along in a while.
>
I didn't want to interrupt the fine dialogue you have going with
David...without permission.
.
.
I had hoped you would. Unfortunately, I
> agree with pretty much all you say, so there goes that --
Silke, why unfortunately? You, Edna and I must battle the
disbelievers and other unwashed, together. <g>
but perhaps
> some of the rabid anti-Freudians would like to say a few words?
> Preferrably not about cocaine or Irma?
But Silke.... if In vino, veritas
then, In coca, claritas.
And maybe Irma is code for Irmageddon? <g>
Besides we have our own three ships of enlightenment:
The Norm, the Edna and the Silke-Maria!
>
> A footnote to what you brought out as major achievements or
> potentialities of analytic settings -- I'm especially enamored of Freud's
> essaay on negation and its implications -- it seems to me that erasing
> negation is one of the most radical moves he makes, and one of the most
> liberating ones, however tough it is. In teaching Freud, I love teaching
> this essay most of all -- it reliably infuriates my students, and since I
> consider fury one of the beginnings of wisdom, I'm well content with this.
>
> Silke
Re Negation, it also reflects Freud's views on "judgement."
I think it is difficult to situate Freud in the discourse of
contemporary thought. Intellectually, Freud was a child of
the Enlightenment that dates roughly from the late seventeenth
century and I think that it was in the context of the development
of that Enlightenment that he tried to be up to date. In this
"official" aspect of his effort, he provided a rationalistic,
empiricist, objectivist account of his methods, the findings
based on them, and his conclusions. He presented himself as
working within the prevailing axioms and conventions of
discourse of the natural sciences of his time. He also drew
heavily on the content of what was, for him, contemporary psychology,
anthropology, philosophy, archeology, philology and other disciplines,
all of which were born of the same epistemological and methodological
mold. To read him otherwise takes him out of historical context.
In any event Freud brought us psychotherapeutic dialogue and if
dialogue is central, I think it follows that the Kleinian (and Sullivanian),
and Kohutian self/object-relational thought has gained stature.
Most psychoanalysts have shifted their discussions away from elaborations
and critiques of the theory of psychic energy and the energic
underpinnings of psychic structure. They have even been moving
away from rigorous debates over the idea of structure itself and
the explantory value of structural concepts. The current trend
seems to be to use the term _structure_ descriptively. And instead
analysts seem to find it more worthwhile to join dialogues that
feature object relations and self experience. This might have overtones
of a move from "therapist as expert," to therapist as "participant
observer." I say this from the POV of the ways we dialogue are time
bound....and not minimally, culture bound. I also think this supports
your view of the importance of literature. Comments?
On another historical note, one of my mentors made note of the
fact that Freud published Negation the same year, and shortly
following his paper on "Resistances to psychoanalysis."
Was he saying, "you protest too much"?
WRT fury being one of the beginnings of wisdom...It doesn't seem
to work around these parts. <g>
Best,
Norm
>
str...@actrix.gen.nz
I am in the process of swapping horses from engineering to psychology.
My community psychology course has a segment on the influences of
post-modernism, which is great but post-modernism philosophy doesn't
seem to have entered the engineering world yet. So without an
understanding of the ideas of post-modernism, I am completely at a
loss to comprehend its influence.
I asked my brother - he's the family philosopher - and he said "It's
just another mistake, a blind alley." Which wasn't a lot of help.
So, does anyone have any suggestions for reading to get me started
here? Remember - engineer, skeptic, philosophically illiterate, many
modernist hurdles to be cleared in my comprehending meaning in
everything.
Sue
David van der Want
Hello Silke,
I've been away for the weekend and so just got your postings,
I've cleaned up the posting a bit. I find it very confusing with all of these
simultaneous discussions going on; my multi-tasking capacities are not yet
up to the level required by my new found interest in the internet.
>Oh, you'd
_love_ Anti-Oedipus, is that is the direction your thinking it>taking. And you
are, of course, quite correct in pointing out that>Freud's thinking resulted
in structures as well -- far be it from me to>defend the whole edifice. I
guess what I love about Freud, or at least>elements of his work, is precisely
that it gives us the tools to go at>him as well. I brought up
transference/countertransference, btw, because>it seems to me that, if taken
seriously, phenomena like those admit that>there is more than two
subjectivities in the room -- esp. with>counter-transference that splits the
therapist, or may. It becomes>possible to see the therapy as a force-field of
conflicting desires that>aren't easily located in one or the other person
anymore -- play of>forces rather than one person presenting problems and
another one>responding.
Ja, absoultely. This is I think what Bateson called the ecology of mind. THat
when I have a thought, I automatically take ownership of that thought (a
function of the subject object dualism created by language) when perhaps it is
possible that the thought belongs to the context, to the web of relatrionships
in which I am at that time.
What the post moder>> >> perspective does
raise for me is a question about the role of theory in>> >> psychotherapy.
Most theories posit the existence of a stucture or process>> >> which is
damaged or deficient in some way and that the therapist has access>to>> >>
privileged expert knowledge on how to repair or redress this deficit.>>>[bras
snipped -- nice passage!)> . Seriously>> I do think that the vast majority of
therapies from the medical approach to>> CBT and even Michael White's
narrative either overtly or through implication>> do locate deficit in a
person. Also I'm not proposing that we ignore the>> experience of suffering
but rather that we need to exercise far more>> responsibility as a profession
for the knowledges constructed by our theories.
>I'm in full agreement as to your last sentence. It's quite complicated,
>though -- after all, the perception of deficit originates in the client
>who seeks a therapist -- and therapy may in fact take the course of
>trying to convince the client that there's no deficit (or that the
>deficit is the perception of a deficit) ---- banal example, someone
>coming in complaining that he can't stick to his diet. Therapist may want
>to help the guy dieting, or might want to convince him that he doesn't
>need a diet, or all kinds of other alternatives....
Again Ja. Your example may be banal but it is instructive. After all, who am I
as a therapist, to lay claim to expert understanding of the correct way to
conduct a human relationship. Rogerian discourse has convinced us that a good
relationship is one characterised by the congruent honesty of both parties.
Makes sense but are there other ways of conducting a relationship that I as a
therapist might sanction as normal. When a therapist diagnoses a client all
he/she is doing really is to sanction or condemn behaviour as subscribing to
culturally acceptable norms of behaviour. Also, if this idea of ecology of
mind is useful then who should I be diagnosing? A frivolous example to match
your banal one; if a martian landed in my consulting room would he be able to
tell that I was trying to help the client? What would he/she (do martians
have gender?) make of the therapeutic relationship without access to the
discourse of therapy?
>[horror story of DSM marketing snipped -- if you have lexis/nexis access,
>try to find the Harper's Story about the DSM -- hilarious!)
Lexis/nexis you lose me in a maze of new internet software which seems, in a
very post modern /structuralist way to have a life of its own.
>> >The
>> >> result is the propogation of the broafder discourses of illness and cure
>which
>> >> in turn becomes constitutive of people's lives hence perpetuating systems
>of
>> >> pathology.
>Of course -- the question I'm interested in here, or another one I find
>fascinating, is the following --- since this marketing scheme seems to
>work, can't we conclude that there is also a certain value placed on
>being-ill? I mean, where and what is the pleasure of the client who
>perceives herself as afflicted? In the critique of the marketing aspects
>of psychic illness, this question often gets lost, since we tend to focus
>on the marketers and view the clients as their passive victims --- but
>undeniable, it can be great fun to be "ill," and there are all kinds of
>privileges to be gained by a perception of one's self as weak or in need
>of help (again, Nietzsche is great on this...). I wonder whether this
>isn't related to secularized Christianity and a priviliging of suffering,
>in the end.
WOW! I never thought of that. I got caught in my own trap there; so busy being
the professional that I forgot about the client. As my grandmother would say,
work hard young man and eat frugally and the lord will reward you!
>>>>
>Again, certainly -- even though it should also be said that these>>
>perceptions do not necessarily originate in therapy but are the causes>> >why
someone seeks therapy in the first place. The problem I have with the>>
>position you sketch is that it risks going to the other extreme, i.e. to>>
>not listen when people say, "I hurt, I'm suffering" -- someone with>> >severe
depression, for instance, is not necessarily better off if told>> >that
depression is a social construct.>>
>> See comment above. I would not advocate telling a client in pain that his
>> "ilness" is just a fairy tale constructed by our participation in discourse
>> but I would advocate an approach sensitive to this issue.
>Yes. How do you feel about drugs, in this context?
Drugs, a difficult one. THe problem is that they often work! IE the symptoms
disappear. Of course so does the person. My issue is not so much with the use
of drugs but the discourse that surrounds them. All the economic arguments go
doupble for the psychoactive pharmaceutical industry. As a communication on a
relationship with a person, giving them a drug has a particular meaning: you
are sick and so defines a context in which illness can only be perpetuated. I
think of the mental health professional as a character in a story. If you
enter the story talkinng about illness and health then you will elicit action
around these themes. I think the therapist's task is to discern subjective
meaning in much the same way as we do when watching a piece of theatre or
ballet with one important difference. The therpiast is a participant in the
story and will contribute to the collectively negotiated meanings. Or
something like that....
>> I've read Foucault's stuff and the others Goffman, Cooper etcetera. These
>> ideas have been around for a while but the profession seems to have labelled
>> them radical.
>Not surprisingly; they do go to the root of the enterprise.
Emphasis on enterprise!
>> OK fine, what I mean is that meaning and "truths" arise from a context of
>> interacting subjectivites. My first ever psychology textbook quoted Robert
>> Frost "We dance in a circle and suppose, while the secret sits in the middle
>> and knows". We are on the right track. All we must realise now is that there
>> is no secret, only a dance.
>Yes, and "how can you tell the dancer from the dance" is quite a relative
>question in this regard -- Paul de Man has a great essay on this line,
>inviting us to see what happens if you read the question as rhetorical
>vs. non-rhetorical. But perhaps you can see in this context why I'm
>interested in transf/countertransf issues, as desires dancing with
>desires.
How can you tell the dancer from the dance - I love that!!
>> >> Also it incorporates the idea that knowledge is
>> created not>> discovered, that we both see the world AND create what we see by
>> the>> epistemological distinctions we draw. It is easy for a theory to pay
>> lip>> service to this idea; another matter entirely to realize its
>> implications in>> practice. And this we must in order to avoid constructing
>> knowledges which>> ultimately become problems in and of themselves.>> > A
>> mentor of mine once said that the meta-communication of therapy conducted>>
>> by a devoteee of any particular theory could be read as "Buy into my
>> discourse>> or it will label you mad/bad/sick/deficient/dysfunctional"
>>
>> >Sure, but a bit trite, in the end; any school of therapy that puts
>> >emphasis onto the self-awareness of the therapist contains a few
>> >safeguards against this, I think. But spp at least isn't too fond of
>> >Freud, so you might get to hear vociferous dissent.
>>
>> I'm not too fond of Freud also, although when I read him (which is
>> infrequently) I must acknowledge his genius. I think it's more than self
>> awareness required but a knowledge of how I (the therapist) participate
>> in a context of truth generation.
>More, yes, but it's a precondition. I'm obviously fond of psychodynamic
>approaches, so I'm biased. I wonder, though, how you would figure in the
>question of economic transactions -- at that level, hierarchy (even
>though complex) is an absolute given, unless you'd engage in lay analysis
>etc. I wonder how far you could get without theorizing the significance
>of payment in therapy.
Interesting stuff. My teachers told me that if a client doesn't pay for
therapy then the therapy doesn't work. Even if they pay a nominal charge; they
must still pay. THey said it has something to do with a level of investment
(interesting word) in the process. I don't buy (again!!) it. Sometimes I have
seen healing in someone I've been speaking to on a social level and I have
experienced healing in a social non-paying context too. The financial
transaction is so embedded in our society's understanding of a healing
relationship that we don't regard any healing that takes place outside of this
as valid. YOu might even argue that by "expertising" the healing relationship
we as a profession, disempower communities by fractionating their
intrinsically present capacities for self healing. Again I know I go to the
other extreme but it is significant I think that the number of registered
psychologists increases hugely from year to year and without any sign of an
assymptote (spelling?). Kenneth Gergen expands at length on this. Everyday a
new disorder is found, finds a niche on the Oprah Winfrey show and pretty soon
there are support groups and medications and theories of etiology and all the
rest of that stuff, all of which of course, has to be paid for by someone.
This has led a number of my friends to give up on psychology and psychotherapy
as a fundamentally flawed discipline. I'm not prepared to go that far yet. I
couldn't practice and teach with integrity if I were at that point but I do
think that we need to question the naive conceptualisation of the psychologist
as expert.
>I'm a CompLit Ph.D., analysis client, resident bitch, and absolutely
>thrilled at finally having found someone who wants to talk about these
>things! You can find some of my stuff at www.sas.upenn.edu/~weinecks.
Thanks for the URL (speaking the lingo already). I'm a clinical psychologist
teaching at the University of Pretoria in sunny (not today though) South
Africa. Comp Lit is what? Computers? What's a computer person doing in the
vagaries of post modernism and psychoanalyis (apart from being a client?)
Cheers
Dave
Ron Allen
> for the fact that the psychologizing of modernity already has a vast
> history of wrangling with precisely these problematics of the
> client-therapist relationship - i.e. whether it is power-laden,
> whether the therapist can be considered an expert when the patient
> already holds the key to their own recovery, and so on. I think what
> is at stake here is not the identity of professional praxis in the
> "postmodern" era, nor if we can stake a claim into the identity
> politics described by this discourse, but rather how can we begin to
> insert a whole field of lived experiences that have heretofore been
> unacknowledged by the supposed universality of the unconscious field.
> This is not merely a question of therapy, but instead one that begs a
> rigorous investigation into the lingusitic and semiotic properties of
> the pathological instance. Thus, if we then want to ask what the
> shape of things can be in the future, it is entirely within our grasp
> as a lingua-politic. My suggestion: take a look at the work being
> done at GIFRIC in Canada by Danielle Bergeron....Lacanian
> psychoanalysis with real results.
I cannot read your message easily because the horizontal width of your
message is too wide. Please reduce the width of your message & repost
your message.
Thank you.
Ron Allen
John Clark
In article <338898...@pacbell.net>, <sisy...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>I think it is difficult to situate Freud in the discourse of
>contemporary thought. Intellectually, Freud was a child of
In keeping with my usual unenlightend view... ever wondered why
in Freud's english translations, 'ich' is translated to 'ego',
while in another sort of contempory german writer we have a nice
almost 'homey' and perhaps even 'warm' I-thou... (contempory at
least to the first Freud translations...)
For people who place a lot of importance on words, perspective, and
hidden significance, it seems to me to be interesting.
John Clark
In article <5m9ql4$v...@netnews.upenn.edu>, Silke-Maria Weineck <Z.> wrote:
>str...@actrix.gen.nz wrote:
>: post-modernism, which is great but post-modernism philosophy doesn't
>: seem to have entered the engineering world yet. So without an
>: understanding of the ideas of post-modernism, I am completely at a
>: loss to comprehend its influence.
Computer Engineering as applied to artificial intellegence may be an area
were such things meet on a philosophical level... on the other hand
deconstructing bridge failure could have implications in understanding
the human condition...
John Clark
In article <8648729...@dejanews.com>, <wein...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>this might be fun to think through -- how much does your Martian know?
>Does he know the language? Does he know something about human body
>language? It's a bit like a Martian seeing two people have sex -- what
>would he make of that?
And where this traveler a venusian... what would she make of such goings
on...
>This is really interesting. I do agree with you that it's crap to say
>that healing cannot come to pass without payment; on the other hand, I
>_do_ believe that healing through interaction with another tends to
>happen as an economy. In other words, if you help a friend, you're in the
It may be an economy, but in some sense the 'trust of the future' that
money promises must be appriciated differently with friends... on the
other hand in some utopia, as opposed to an eutopia, perhaps money would
be unecessary, were the economy of friendship durable...
David van der Want
In article <86488668...@optional.cts.com> jcl...@cts.com (John Clark) writes:
>From: jcl...@cts.com (John Clark)
>Subject: Re: The challenge of Post modernism
>In article <8648729...@dejanews.com>, <wein...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>
>>this might be fun to think through -- how much does your Martian know?
>>Does he know the language? Does he know something about human body
>>language? It's a bit like a Martian seeing two people have sex -- what
>>would he make of that?
Ja, without reference to the discourse in which is embedded the mechanisms for
making meaning he/she ould have no idea what to make of anything he saw
really. Anthropologists face a similar dillemma when trying to understand
another culture; it is impossible to "see" through the eyes of another,
only to participate in the generation of new meaning through attemts to
see.
>>This is really interesting. I do agree with you that it's crap to say
>>that healing cannot come to pass without payment; on the other hand, I
>>_do_ believe that healing through interaction with another tends to
>>happen as an economy. In other words, if you help a friend, you're in the
The sentence just ended!!!!????
>It may be an economy, but in some sense the 'trust of the future' that
>money promises must be appriciated differently with friends... on the
>other hand in some utopia, as opposed to an eutopia, perhaps money would
>be unecessary, were the economy of friendship durable...
Interesting to view money as a symbol of trust, the economy of the soul.
John Clark
In article <5mk3ev$5...@netnews.upenn.edu>, Silke-Maria Weineck <Z.> wrote:
>John Clark (jcl...@cts.com) wrote:
>: In article <8648729...@dejanews.com>, <wein...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>[...]
>
>: >This is really interesting. I do agree with you that it's crap to say
>: >that healing cannot come to pass without payment; on the other hand, I
>: >_do_ believe that healing through interaction with another tends to
>: >happen as an economy. In other words, if you help a friend, you're in the
>
>: money promises must be appriciated differently with friends... on the
>: other hand in some utopia, as opposed to an eutopia, perhaps money would
>: be unecessary, were the economy of friendship durable...
>
>economies -- a "durable friendship" is precisely that. We owe our
>friends, our friends owe us -- if you pay money, you owe very little.
In my wife's family there has been explicity mention of the significance
of 'money', and 'trusting the family members to be there in a time of need'.
Hence one family member has indicated that their 'need' to be tight with
money relative to intrafamilial loans/gifts is the preceived lack of trust
for 'being there' in the individuals time of need. This of course sets up
a circular set of reasoning, that members only deal with the individual
in 'financial' like transactions, ie 'I'll do this if you garentee a
return on my investment now'... 'emotional capitalism'.. perhaps too
reductionary... but in any case perhaps the analogy of a wicker basket of
finance and emotional 'value'... take one or the other apart and the whole
basket vanishes... into little strands all over the floor.