Blogs

The concepts we use have undermined our natural resilience, sensitised us to an idea of our vulnerability, and encouraged us to transfer our agency to practitioners who use a system as if it has scientific validity and is clinically useful.

Professor Sir Robin Murray recently noted that ‘sadly, a few psychologists appear to have been stranded in a Jurassic world where they spend their energies railing against a type of psychiatry which became extinct years ago.’ If true, this would obviously pose a problem for those critics of psychiatry.

I see now that the ‘borderline’ label represents the shadow of our abusive and patriarchal power structures, which have great need to deny abuses (especially sexual), and to pathologize and scapegoat the sensitive, the feminine, and the different.

As time passed, the attrition of being in ‘services’ for so long took its toll on me. I would stay in my room for weeks on end. The conveyor belt is a long, slow and complicated process. Some never get off of it. Some get processed and dumped in the waste bin so to speak. Some simply are unable to endure it and commit suicide.

COVID-19 reminds us that we, as a species, are not an exception, able to stand outside or above the ebb and flow of life on earth.  This is of course unsettling, but there might yet be healing power in recognising our shared vulnerability and interdependence.