If we are relying on any singular pseudospecialist term designed explicitly
for use by and among professionals, are we not continuing to imply that we
are more experts at knowing what plagues our clientele than they are? What
if we simply did what other non-professionals do, and described persons
using adjectives from everyday language? This would certainly move us away
from relying on fancy terms that, in my view, tell us little about the
client's relationships and personal meanings, but tell us a whole lot about
the professional's need for some kind of (elusive) overarching system for
comprehending others.
Szasz might argue that it doesn't matter what we call it, especially if
"it" is simply a matter of the more powerful person defining/naming the
less powerful one.
JON
At 01:10 AM 11/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi
>
>Resuming the original discussion, why don't use a word like "methanoia"?
>(Maybe I'm misspelling it). It was the original proposal of the English
>antipsychiatry movement. (I don't know if it was Thomas Szasz' or R. D.
>Laing's idea). It focuses on the process aspect of the "schizophrenic"
>events, therefore placing the weird symptoms in a time perspective. (This is
>somewhat parallell to what Salvador Minuchin calls "bringing the symptom
>back to normal").
>But then again, methanoia was given a try -and it failed. It has its
>advantages: is a single word, with a shareable construction, and it's not
>easily turned into a stigma.
>Unfortunatelly, it's not the preemptive "diagnosis" the medical model (and
>their insurance counterparts) seem to enjoy...
>Kind regards,
>
>Esteban Laso
>eslaso@ibm.net
>You can respond to this e-mail online.
>If you have ICQ my ICQ# is 10231215
>If you don't have ICQ you can send me e-mail to 10231215@pager.mirabilis.com
>You can download ICQ at http://www.icq.com/
>
>
>
>
Jonathan D. Raskin, Ph.D.
Dept. of Psychology-JFT
State University of New York at New Paltz
75 S. Manheim Blvd.
New Paltz, NY 12561-2499
phone: (914) 257-3471 or 3606
fax: (914) 257-3606
e-mail: raskinj@matrix.newpaltz.edu
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