Mutual Support: Disconnect, Habit Work, Nurturing Being

WRITTEN FOR PSYSR MANUAL FOR ACTIVISTS (NOT ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION)
UNDER HEADING "PEACE MAKING: TRANSFORMING CONFLICT INTO CREATIVITY" JULY 2005

Mutual Support:

Disconnect, Habit Work, Nurturing Being

by Andrew Phelps

Who is 'Crazy'?

The psychology of peace-making involves being able to take on the question, "Who is 'crazy'?" Aggressive war-making has an irrational element and surely one thing the peace activist can do is "point the finger" and say, "The war-makers are 'crazy'." Commonly though they have explanations and rationalizations for their aggression, and pinning down the psychological excessiveness of their behavior on "clinical" type grounds is a hard sell. (1) A grounded approach discussed here is to make coalition with the activists in the resident "client/survivor" movement and thereby challenge the operant perspective on the social relations of 'madness'.

A prominent example of activism in that vein is the anti-Vietnam War activism in the U.S. linked to the rise of the counter-culture, the "Summer of Love," and so forth. That movement leaned on human rights struggles such as civil rights and feminism, but it had an inner component of "craziness redefinition" at its core. (2) In subsequent times in the U.S. that passion of activism has been supplanted by the yuppie mentality of 'tweak', yet at the same time the "social compact" of the moment does incorporate actual progress in multicultural, feminist, GLBT and physically disabled rights issues. Today the political leadership is moving toward a mentality that supports 'torture' and it is our responsibility to coalesce with the "client/survivor" movement and work together against the madness of the times in a way that authentically embraces their struggle for human rights.

Relationships based on disrespect, objectification, control and the politics of 'torture' are challenged by the practice of 'mutual support': We need to nurture and network that pivotal kind of social relationship. The activists need to identify and invoke support for people developing this approach; by so doing they will develop the capacity to dissolve conflict and nurture creative activism. The "client/survivor" folks face the trauma of being subject to behavioral management in the name of "treatment": We say, "nothing about us, without us." To reconstruct social relations on the basis of respect, on the basis of a mutual fight against trauma, the activists must dialogue with us, must organize in a way that empowers the understanding and trust necessary for mutual respect between people in uneven relationship.

We will stress here that mutual respect requires that "top-down" Alinsky (3) style approaches take a back seat to "bottom-up" nurturing, that society is made by people and you are involved in making it. (4) To invoke change of consciousness with full mindfulness, we describe a view of the stages of transformation. The politics of "disconnect" sets the presenting problematic; nurture and mutual support sets the organic response; we change habits, doing business differently to overcome the conflict-driven behavioral management system; ultimately the way of relating folds into what people are calling the 'beauty path' of madness. In the spirit of revolutionary reform [Gramsci (5)] we work to convert war's conflict into the creativity that fosters the 'new order' of peace.

The Politics of Disconnect

The much-sought-after "repeat of the 60s" has an element of truth in it - and the Mutual Support project presented here will take up on that - but it's implementation is oriented and constrained by today's specifics. The nature of the war politics of today governs what social construction for peace [as in: "the 60s counter-culture"] is on target: The guiding politics of the present war in Iraq and its relevance for neocon objectives is well presented in the "disconnect" model advocated by Thomas Barnett (6). Understanding that as strategy and tactics of social management gives us the sociopolitical grounding to act moderately in ways that can positively reduce the tension caused by social conflict.

The social objective of the war-makers is (according to Barnett) the maintenance and amelioration of the "global core." That is to say, he speaks to the problematic of globalization and the efforts of some to weaken its social fabric. The strategic target is thus to identify and make conflict/war with the dominant source of "disconnect" dynamics interfering with globalization. Today that target is Iraq because it is the social dynamic associated with that country's polity that stands in the way of "democracy" a.k.a. tighter globalization.

The tactics need to be understood for what they are: It is not (simply) oil, as little attention is paid to securing oil supply. It is also not (simply) WMD or "fighting terrorism" as those objectives are seen to be phony or secondary in nature. The real business behind the (apparently) diseconomic choices of the U.S. administration is targeted at fighting "disconnect" by seizing the psychological high ground. Our approach on the other hand is [1] bring the war home and [2] find the psychological high ground in the revolutionary reform of the 'madness' system, a different sort of "fighting 'disconnect'."

When we detach ourselves from our direct political advocacy and connect better with the social environment "in the making," we put our minds more at ease for the struggle against trauma. In the war at home, our activist projects are designed so that they deconstruct the habits and illusions that derive from trauma, that are reinforced by the traumatizing demands of the war dynamic. Good attention to that project requires that we identify the how the present behavior patterns are maintained, how we keep falling back into same-old patterns of conflict. The patterns for the present are focused on the logic of the international disconnect and the logic of how mutual support can help to render "connect" to social relations.

Nurture and Mutual Support

The social fabric of new social relations starts from mutual respect, from eschewing objectification: Valuing one another as human beings and regarding people's (socially responsible) involvement in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as worthy activity promotes 'respect'. By contrast, the 'medical model' - not just medications but the management of behavior based on objectification - is the ideology supporting personal manipulation and (finally) disrespect. The mentality of this war is reflected in the psychology of force and clinical control, (7) in the psychology of relationship management by psychiatric diagnosis (8): Its bottom line is referenced to torment and torture. What is needed is an emotional/relational approach based on the logic of people being involved in social interaction. [Shotter: 'Withness' (9)]

The core of an emotional/relational approach is mutual support, based on authentic dialogue and authentic relating. Such support can scarcely be imposed from without, as such interaction tends to magnify control dynamics and diminish the valuation of respect. Thus a positive advocacy for respect is required and nurturing the emotional/relational situation tends to open up possibilities with difficult implications. Such an approach is dangerous to the activist, because it appears to "invite" the perpetrators of the war dynamics to intervene; the good side is that personal "disconnect" is challenged and opportunity for new "connect" arises.

The Archbishop Samuel Ruiz (10) describes how he went into a rural town in Chiapas, sat down the village elders, and asked them, "When do you want mass?" He reports they said, "You're the archbishop; you are supposed to tell us." The traditional control dynamics were challenged and the emotional/relational character was elevated to a positive, more respectful level. Over and over we see where "client/survivor" activists can be empowered by a mutual commitment to engage and then to change problematical dynamics.

Our prototype is Sir Geoffrey Chaucer (11), who himself wrote of being depressed and of feeling "old age itself" to be a sickness. Aged, in debt, his fame and reputation uncertain, his wife, friends and most of his family dead and gone, Chaucer was not too proud to accept mutual support - the friendship and care of his junior employee, commoner and fellow poet, Thomas Hoccleve. Much later, Hoccleve wrote Lament for Chaucer, admonishing death for taking Chaucer before society produced someone like him in learning and accomplishment, pleading for God to give rest to the lonely soul of his departed friend and employer. Hoccleve's own Complaint states clearly the personal disconnect, the "stigma" of social rejection stemming from mental breakdown, when his own mind departed from him, ca. 1410: (12)

For although I knew my wits were back home again
No one gave me the benefit of the doubt
Or had the time of day for me.
All my old friends were shaken off,
Put away, and I dissolute and alone
And with no one to talk to or be with,
I became a stranger to all.

Reworking the 'Social Death' Habit

As we are talking systematic organizing for mutual support, we must consider how we obtain effective networking against trauma, for social accountability of the networking process. The social environment dominated by war dynamics shames people into insufficient responses to these naturally felt concerns. The official remedy, that "treatment" regime of system user control by behavioral management, challenges human rights, promotes disrespect, and produces a behavioral regime based compliance rather than authenticity. A person using the system experiences the shame-based dominance dynamics and the designed nonresponsiveness of the social environment as a 'social death sentence'(13).

To have widespread impact under those traumatic conditions, it is necessary to work systematically against the 'social death sentence'. The behavioral control dynamic induced by the system amounts to a set of compliant behaviors which amount to a set of habits of accommodation. People need to rework them and replace them by a new habit structure which embraces authentic expression in the frame of habits of freedom and self-respect. The activist seeking to network with the fledgling mutual support process needs to [1] hear the pain and wretchedness of living the 'social death sentence' and [2] embrace activities which will empower socially accountable emotional relations leading to new habits.

For example, there's the work of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability (CJA) in San Jose, CA: A multicultural committee working against police shootings, they are at the 'cutting edge' of the community struggle against racism. The CJA aims to get the police to "behave better." When a networked group of "client/survivors" started working with them, they were taken seriously as people experienced in handling behavioral management issues; when the role of "emergency psychiatry" in exacerbating some police problems was noted, all worked together to dialogue with psychiatry with the aim to get the psychiatrists to "behave better" also (14). The "client/survivors" have 'voice' because they are applying their creativity to a real problem and making use of their experience with the politics of madness to the benefit of all.

Authentic involvement in social change challenges habit expectations of society and validates people's construction of the new habits. Those with the new habits and those who promote them have made themselves part of the process of changing civil society in the direction of peace. The erosion of the 'social death sentence' shame-avoidance based management system (15), does help to undermine the dynamics of war; but there is also a way that changing habits itself feeds the peace process. And that way calls on the nurturing of creativity, what William Blake called Vision (16), what the "client/survivor" movement - based on the life path insights of traditional societies - is calling the "beauty path" of madness.

The Beauty Path of Madness

"We know the medical walk, the institutional walk, the shrink walk and the psychosocial walk - and most certainly, again and again, the social death walk; but talk about walking the beauty path of mental illness, though it happens, happens almost silently, and in soft voices and chuckles, and without a name." (17) Or, from a healing perspective, we may "promote a place of compassion and connection for people with issues of trauma, stress, and loss." (18) Traditional sources of life path empowerment, such as the Native American "beauty path" and the Buddhist "heart essence" cited here above, offer social grounding for a direction of way of being beyond the scope of the dynamics of war and torture. To exceed the boundaries of conventional "treatment" and "case management" dynamics, is a point of leverage, a fulcrum of stability is needed: The internationally based traditional value systems provide that, and they are linked to the spirit of international peace.

How do we tell when we've "got it," when the beauty path empowerment is the "real thing," not just a fetish or "token" activity? Independence of action and being is central; fundamental dependence on the corporate agendas like that of the pharmaceutical companies or the patronage of government (federal, state, local) is counter-indicated. Nonetheless such dependence should be differentiated from "client" styles which in form accommodate and "survivor" styles" which in form confront in a single-issue kind of way. The ground is in self-defined principles, which relate to [1] the integration of this movement into the movement for peace and justice in an authentic way (the 'freedom train') and [2] the overt advocacy of the mutual support challenge to the 'medical model' approach to madness ('respect advocacy').

Recognition of authenticity and dialogue with it is one thing, integrating with it yet another. The "trauma management" habit is to be replaced by the "trauma deconstruction" work process, an approach requiring constant appeal to the traditional values core of the beauty path. From working those values into a creative rethinking of the clinical practicum, we are enriching the internationalism of the dialogics of peace. "There's been a quantum leap technologically in our age, but unless there's another quantum leap in human relations, unless we learn to live in a new way towards one another, there will be a catastrophe." (19)

Where does "voicing" we engage come from, in dialogue, but from expressions of conundrum grounded in individual experience and cultural knowledge? In 1803, in the famous "Ibo Landing" incident outside of Brunswick, GA, the African captives seized the slave ship as it landed. They looked at what they were facing in America; then - voicing the counsel of their god Chukwu - they turned around and walked singing on top the water back to Africa. (20)

Conclusion

Our political system has a strong incentive to control the way 'madness' is managed "its way," and mighty social forces - including the big pharmaceutical companies - are arrayed to that effect. Maintaining ownership of the social judgment of "who's 'crazy'" is worth providing ready resources and advocacy for those folks who are needful or willing to buy in. Many do, and many are reluctant to, or can ill afford to "take the heat" of marginalization or being labeled "crazy" themselves. (21) What we've outlined here is a path for working past this cooptation process: It is the invite to the 'freedom train' where the "client/survivor" struggle gets to take its rightful place as a partner in the struggle for human rights.

The project calls for politically conscious coalition work between the providers employing a social justice orientation and the "client/survivor" activists using a creative empowerment dynamic. If the external criterion relates to cooptation, the internal criterion of validity is the presence or absence of "tokenism." Are expectations truly respectful or are they essentially limited and demeaning; are the providers working from the imperative of the peace dynamics? Are the "client/survivors" authentically realizing the "beauty path" values in full expression of being; are they valued on such basis?

Sensitivity in social engagement does not derive simply from a person's opening up of the senses. It also involves a sensible and wise human purpose for the involvement. The common pursuit of peace and the common work on voicing and social accountability marginalize the conflict energies and bring forward creativity. Better, deeper, more trusting interactions, a 'souped up' emotional/relational reality is the hope and expectation.

The warfare of our time is perpetuated to set up and stabilize society through retraumatization. The option of collaboration or ameliorating the retraumatizing process exists; the wisdom here is to opt for transformation by nurturing the mutual support process. Networking on the basis of transformation against the 'social death sentence' character of conventional "treatment" rewrites the social compact. People can make society better for peace, with better human relations where the common value arising from mutual support and creatively struggling for human rights together can take hold.

Notes

For instance, the psychiatrist Carol Wolman (Albion, CA) has written Is the President Nuts? She claims that G.W. Bush is diagnosably 'insane'.
In California in the 60s and beyond, prominent projects of "craziness redefinition" include the Esalen Institute. Also the Radical Psychology movement (present instantiation, the Radical Psychology Network).
Saul Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 1969, is a leading proponent of top-down "poverty" organizing.
Giambattista Vico, The New Science, 1744, developed the first perspective on social science grounded in humanism rather than objectification.
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, tr. Quintin Hoare and G.N. Smith, 1971, posed the philosophy of "revolutionary reform," which provides a core ideology for the Italian social change movement.
Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map, 2004.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, tr. Sheridan Smith, 1975.
See Suggested Readings, 1st entry
See Suggested Readings, 2nd entry
Samuel Ruiz, speech at Stanford University, January 24, 2001.
Donald Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World, 1987.
Thomas Hoccleve, Complaint, tr. Carl Grindley.
See Suggested Readings, 3rd entry
In February, 2005, the CJA met with the E.D. of Valley Medical Center regarding the relationship of Emergency Psychiatric Services to recent police shootings.
Andrew Phelps and Thomas Scheff, The Challenge of Bonding, Shame and Social Death.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793.
See Suggested Readings, 4rd entry
Lou Garner, Heart Essence TSL proposal.
Albert Einstein, quoted by Diane Perlman.
H.A. Sieber, The Factual Basis of the Ebo Landing Legend.
Today the FSD-Alert is challenging feminists to take the agenda of the big pharmaceutical companies head-on.