[Deleuze-Guattari] waffling, again...

[Wouter Kusters]

Hi there,

> thanks Chris for the psychosis link-its an interesting
> proposition-i will make an effort to find out if there is anyone
> who expereinces psychosis who has been blind since birth. i'm
> hoping that there is for i would not want, after years of
> constructivism, to link psychotis to brain development (kind of
> gives too much ground back to biological determinism) but worth
> finding out nevertheless.

In that sense, logically, schizophrenia may be a brain disease, something
uncomfortable.

> charles, the url would not work so i am still in a state of
> ignorance ( name ruth). however, your post sounds like you have
> been doing thoughtful work which i would like to hear elaborated
> more should you have the time.

thanx charlie P. I think once a girl named melissa mentioned me the
connection in spanish with what's his name, Rayuela...a Paris....Cortazar.

>  i have a bit of a practical dillema around the role of the
> expert.

mmm

> i agree with what you say but, in practice, one is often
> in dialogue with majoritarian discourse. for example, i'm also
> involved in a service user training initiative-basically people
> using or who have used mental health services meet with trainee
> clinical psychologists once a month to answer questions  about
> training concerns from the context of service user perspectives.

of course..

> this all ran smoothly until it came to naming the role. the group
> felt that their function was consultative so decided on
> consultant which was rejected on the grounds that it implied
> considerable professional training, skill and expertise.

problem is then, in that case, where do you send them to,...Next, at the
Office!

> also
> that the term had other connotations in the nhs ( that is don't
> step on the toes of the doctors).

agree

> the group replied that anyone
> who had self managed a psychotic episode also had considerable
> skill and profesional experience-the group was made up of a maths
> teacher a special needs teacher an ex social worker.

OKayy..

> whetherthey
> had been 'professional' or not, they considered themselves the
> experts of their own experience-

Question of naming-identifying the source, where they get "experience" fromm

> there are PR consultants and
> other kinds of consultant. the group asked why they were being
> required to use a name (advisor)

mmm

> that did not fit what they were
> doing. anyhow, the choice came down to pulling out-then the work
> would not be done at all or raising all this stuff in the project
> evaluation. the group decided that they take this path. so
> wouster-you are right to be cautious-there is a lot of work to do yet.

piles of work in the academy

> the point of all this? i support the group in so far as they need
> a site of enunctiation in practices that have power over them.
> moreover, i think there  still needs to be room to acknowledge
> what people can do. however, i work in the awareness that the
> experts of their own experience could easily become as despotic
> as any other kind of expert. resistance is not innocent in other
> words. i find mysel in a continual negotation between making room
> in majoritarian languages and contesting the egocentric premises
> of this language.

phhhwww, that s hard working keeping a household.

> the focus on neologisms is the other side of this problem.

for the youngsters indeed, but who isntit?

> psychaitry defines psychosis as lacking in insight and out of
> touch with reality.

ok, thnx Ruth, I have here this book on my desk: by Guus Labooy: "Waar Geest
is, is Vrijheid." to me the question to write an article in MGv.
www.Trimbos.nl.

> i don't think i need to bother with the real
> on this list but lacking in insight clearly belongs to subjective
> interiority. there is also the whole question of reflection and,
> again, power. it is quite ok to have exstatic expereinces if one
> is a theologian or a philosopher but not so for most other
> subjectivities. people that expereince psychosis frequently
> dialogue with their voices and often has a reflective dimension
> that is comparable to but not the same as 'sane' reflection. this
> is important because psychoanalysis often refuses to work with
> people that experience psychosis. however, psychosis is as much
> an attempt to make sense out of nonsense as is it is a flight
> from dominant sense regimes.so been doing a lot of work on
> idioysyncratic syntaxes of  exteriority. its nothing big or very
> clever-just trying to find a way of listening responsively to
> expereinces that don't follow recognised conventions but usually
> have some of their own. we've been thinking of this as a kind of
> translation (with all the problems of [power and transposition
> that go along with this).

> Sloughing one's skin.-The snake that cannot slough its skin
> perishes. Likewise spirits which are prevented from changing
> their opinions; they cease to be spirits (Nietzsche: Daybreak:V:573)

wku, have a nice day