Beyond the advanced psychiatric society: POSITION PAPER

BEYOND THE ADVANCED PSYCHIATRIC SOCIETY

THEMES

Psychiatric power/ bureaucratic power-

Agency and empowerment-

What does it mean to rehabilitate-

What does it mean to cure -

May one get crazy ?-

Existential/humanistic/transpersonal psychotherapy-

Extreme experiences ; their personal  elaboration, their social elaboration-

Case tests : for example the deaths of Sylvia Plath and of Sarah Kane, Marie Cardinal’s life-

Philosophy of psychotherapy-

Philosophy of ‘alternative’ therapies-

What is psychiatry ? What is antipsychiatry ?-

Basaglia, Tommasini, others-

First-person accounts of lived experiences-

Relationships with postcolonial, feminist, homosexual discourse-

Relationships with technoscience-

Thought police, and police per se-

Some texts which might be used (just to name something):

S.Plath: Bell Jar, Johnny Panic, the poems ; Marie Cardinal : in other words ;

Max Weber : on bureaucracy ;  S.Kane : 4 :48 pychosis ;

Betty Friedan : the feminine mystique ; Michael Hemmingson’s book on Tijuana (Zona Norte… ) ;

Gloria Anzaldua : la frontera ; L.Kontos’ Encyclopedia of gangs ; Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road

This blog moves from a work I began some time ago- see for example the whole series of notes (29, I think) , ‘paths of antipsichiatry’, published in my fb pages, and also several essays published or not ; but it goes back too to all the comments and discussions which took place around these, - and lastly and in a substantial way to a vast ensemble of exchanges among persons qua persons, mental health professionals, so called sick people : this being an extremely rigid tripartition, because roles can overlap, variously mix up, be exchanged- and anyway intuitions, visions, hypothetical or definitive conclusions may come from any side. Common to many is the dissatisfaction with a psychiatry often lived as mere means of social readaptation (if not of repression/ social control). But what alternatives are there ? And what do they promise (and what do they cost- not just from the economical point of view) ? And how does all of this tie in with the complex of our social system (or systems) ?

This blog  hopes to give voice and visibilty to these problems and to this rhizome of experiences.

Giacomo Conserva- december 2010, march 2011
see http://gconse.blogspot.com/2011/03/giacomo-conserva-sartre-la-psicanalisi.html