FROM PERPLEXITY TO IMAGINATION:
working with madness
by Andrew Phelps
Summary
A growth opportunity for social constructionism
To become the dominant paradigm, social constructionism needs to
exhibit a superior practicum for working with madness. I propose that
by linking with the mental patients movement's fight against
discrimination, this can be exhibited because major needs that are
currently unmet can be met. Social constructions are needed to
challenge the perplexity that governs social relations in the mental health
sphere. Human imagination which now expresses itself in 'regressed'
ways to fit the available 'client' social roles can upgrade to a more
satisfactory presentation as reasonable.
My argument draws from direct mental health client activist experience
in the San Francisco Bay Area, identifying the incapacities of client
organizing where support is craved. I make analogy to the untimely
execution and philosophical survival of Boethius as described by
Gibbon (Decline and fall), a prototype that draws out the
contradictions of irrational social role. Then, from Francis Bacon's
work on 'illusions' of reason ("idols"), I derive a historical model for
deconstructing irrationality and blending in new rationalities. Lastly, I
illustrate the grounds for affecting/changing prevailing social relations
- what I call the 'perplexity system' - by reference to Aristotle's
philosophy of 'material cause'.
An individualist model of personality and the attendant clinical
practicum has major resource limitations, see for instance Albee (J. of
mind and behavior, 1990). For one thing, a model based on the alliance
of mental health client activism and social construction makes for a
better fit with the social nature of personality. And by relocating
therapy to the framework of a mass movement, we can hope to
assemble a more economical, more productive engine for healing. This
approach to madness work will come to be seen as a remedy to many of
the failures that beset the present system - and will have the prospect of
being funded correspondingly.
In place of current cliches of blaming craziness and current habits of
discriminating against people involved in 'madness', we will place value
on the imaginative gifts that accompany madness on their merits. This
sea change in social attitude, comparable to an earlier change associated
with the name of Freud, will revolutionize aspects of society. Like that
preceding change vector, however, it will be accommodated more than
suppressed politically, by equilibrating with the low-level endemic
reform processes. So we will come to have new arguments about the
efficacy/repercussions of diverse radical interpretations in
constructionism, and that will be all to the good.
