Article by Sascha - Unraveling the Biopsychiatric Knot: the Future History of the Radical Mental Health Movement
Submitted by Icarus Project on Sun, 04/18/2010 - 12:31pmHey check out this article I just wrote and please tell me what you think!
Mad Love, Sascha
There are few things as powerful as identifying the manufacturer’s mark on what we have perceived as our personal demons.
–Aurora Levins Morales
My heart beat fast as I wrote many of these words. I did the research for this article to try and make sense of this story I carry around with me about being someone who is seen as mad, who struggles with what this society considers a serious “brain disorder.” My hope is that by the time you finish reading my words you will have more tools to analyze this hyper-complicated world around you, tools to find points of connection between people you might never have thought you had much in common, tools to tear apart the psychic walls that keep us from understanding ourselves and one another. Part of building a movement, in this case what we might as well call the mad movement, is the conscious telling of our stories and history. This isn’t my personal story, but one that ties together the larger story of psychiatry and economics in all of our lifetimes. The important part to keep in mind is that it is very much a story in progress and that we all are characters in it. My hope is that we can use this knowledge to raise our collective consciousness and to write the next chapter together with brilliant colors and the visionary fire of our growing mad community. -- Sascha Altman DuBrul
read the full article here: article
Switching the Subjective Lens
Beautifully written and well-researched article. It dovetails with a lot of what I have been writing about on my weblog. I appreciate the factual perspective re: how culture and pharma have shifted the paradigm in our thinking about the subjective nature of causation and stigma.
Yes - I have (finally) come to realize that I am actually quite reasonable, clever, and viable - - - despite my 'flawed' brain and my intolerance for things that don't seem to bother most folks.
(editeditedit)
(of course, I had to come back and edit this comment because I realized just how much was conditional about my last statement: No one person or authority (...) has any right to define what is personally safe and functional for anybdy else...UNLESS, there is an issue of biological life and death, harm to oneself or another, blahblahblah...)
Interestingly, it has been my experience that harm I have done to myself and rage against concept or property was often due to the cumulative stress effects of trying to "pass" and "just do what we all have to do"
- often the flight reaction becomes so strong after a while that doing something like making a precisely significant slice through one's arm just so you have a viable enough reason to not go to work for awhile...well, it seems a reasonable option.
(...it's not, by the way, the ER nurses will laugh at you and you'll get stuck on a psychiatric floor, which might be okay - sorta tough to go to work if you are involuntarily commited due to hospital policy. The bill is brutal. Just quit your job if it is killing you.)
It is sad that our economy and the value we place on some traits over others are so constraining that those naturally situated on the edge of ordinary feel like the only way to gain acceptance is to run in the race with everyone else...
...except then we fall down, or decide the race is stupid, or get distracted by some small something or other, or mysteriously feel like we have to stop or something awful will happen...
That damn race is stupid. Really.
faithrr - www.mynameisfaith.net