“Speaking requires a language but dominant vocabularies may lack the resources necessary to express perspectives of subordinated groups, because language is essentially public creating new vocabularies is necessarily a collective rather than an individual project” – (Jaggar, 1998)
What follows after the prelude is a digest of the work of R. D Laing, ‘The Politics Of Experience’. Laing made valuable contributions to critical thinking in fearless appraisals of institutions that have become sacred cows. The untouchableness of the medical institution approaches the untouchableness of the family, and precisely because of these untouchable status major problems arise within them and from people acting out roles of them. Read more…
Please come and help us celebrate the 30th anniversary conference of ‘Asylum Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry’ in the community and promote the ideas which it has represented over the many years it has been running. Asylum magazine is 30 years old now and year after year it has been a platform for people who have had something critical to say about psychiatry. Read more…
I still remember the day we went through the ICD- 10 in the clinical psychology class. Our professor, a practicing and competent clinical psychologist, talked us through the various symptoms that constituted a mental illness. Mental illnesses such as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) schizophrenia and depression were assumed to be universal. Extensive studies have been conducted around the world documenting these illnesses. We finally got to the section on culture bound syndromes. Read more…
There is always a potentially difficult relationship between service users, carers and professionals. Open dialogue seeks to address this issue through allowing every party in the relationship to have a frank interchange, based on honesty and mutual respect. Hence it is disingenuous to attempt to misrepresent the idea of showing “insight”. Read more…