by israelirealities » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:26 am
Yes, I agree. <br>Its just that I have a strong resistance now to psychologizing too much, when things are actually more simple and more complex at the same time. For instance, if you have those people who torture children in order to create DID and control them, we can view it on the level of the mechanics (PTSD etc.) or on a political level - enslavement, for instance or other forms of known abuse of power and crimes. If we focus on PTSDizing it, we do not focus on political means of dealing with power, rather we leave it intact and deal with the pacification of the crime, or with some sort of bourgeois response to a private condition. It keeps the problem on an individual basis, rather than taking it into the political sphere. THis is the American aspect of it. It goes :"we will turn children into sexual slaves" (for instance) and then we will devise a medicine (jobs and money for pharma people, and same power people) and treatment (again, more money to same social class and inculcation of same values that allow us to do it), to make these children feel better about their past, or even forget it. I am exaggerating, for the sake of the argument. Or, we will send soldiers to perform crimes for our greed looting, and then devise drugs and treatment to make their conscience numb, or wipe it out by drugs, so they cope with it...etc. this is the larger objection I have.<br>On a personal level, I met too many psychologists who knew a lot of bad stuff (they get all the juicy info...) and then play the role of "Doubling", namely, they split their ethics in a way that allows them to gain money from the abuses, and yet sort of provide a pacifier and "support' for the victims, so they don't feel useless. THis is a social role they perform for the power structures, to contain time bombs and potential revolutions or upheavals. I lost my trust in the ethics of most psychologists. I don't think they are bad people, au contraire, but the methodology they swallow in school, works them out this way. They start believing the theories, because it gives them a false sense of power over people. The "western shrinkage" is an important bourgeois agent for the powers that be. Whereas, if those cases became a political or even spiritual issue, this perhaps would have forced change on a social level to eradicate forms of abuse.<br>I spoke about it with a friend who is now completing his internship in clinical psychology. He agrees, but he is saying that I am an extremist and that abuse of power has always existed, and he can only "mediate" between the "nazis" and the disempowered victims. He can advocate and sometimes get one or two victims off the hook, but cannot change the system, cause nobody can change the system. (He is referring to the situations in those facilities where the state places neglected children, this is where he is working). Now the "nazi" description is his. He sees the management and the bureaucracy in those facilities as being "nazi" and he sees himself as having to play within those rules, being able occasionally to make it better for the "inmates", only if he plays by the rules (or else they'll just kick him out). SO in fact he is advocating a sort of "doubling", and collaboration. I think this is very problematic, and perhaps it would be better to make these places worse till they implode, or as the saying goes "the worse it is the better it is" in terms of having to let the process complete itself, and not serve as a bandage that prolongs the existence of BAD institutions. This is perhaps psychology's role on a larger scale. Basically, as you said, in an Auschwitz situation it is better to resist or escape than cooperate, I say it is also better to bomb Auschwitz and wipe it out, with the victims, rather than let it function forever and "work with the system" to alleviate some of the consequences. I see many of the psychologist's (per their methodology, not as people god forbid, some are nice) role as the prison doctors in camps...not much use, AND it makes the camp appear good, for the red cross reps. :-)<br> <br> <p></p><i></i>
