Wednesday 24 February 2010

Enjoy some bipolar-Stan-Grof-Ken-Wilber-élitism with Sean Blackwell from Bipolar Or Waking Up? - comments

I reposted an edited version of this piece here. Since the comments on the original piece are still relevant, here they are.

5 comments:

abellve said...

"On my previous video on paranoia, I said that in many cases, paranoid people will be better off medicated. Here though, I thing sharing the truth will have a more positive impact on our society than hiding it."

Look how strong the superior well/inferior sick roles are. Two people discussing the merits and benefits of either communicating or withholding the truth as an agent of control. Apparently people deemed mentally ill are not entitled to the same truth as "well" people. Disgusting.

Unknown said...

I think that was someone else you or Gianna Kali wrote about who lives in Vermont.

"If memory serves, Sean himself has experienced to be discriminated against by Grof when he once applied for some workshop, something along those lines, with the guru, and was turned down due to his "bipolar"-label."

Marian said...

Rossa: I'm pretty sure, Sean writes about this in his book A Quiet Mind.

Anonymous said...

Though the latter part of abbeyism's comment requires some serious clarification, people suffering from paranoid episodes do pose a number of threats to their well being as well as to that of others. That danger need not be of physically violent kind, but still does exist. I know quite a lot of people who suffered from the false accusations of one paranoid superior they had at the office. The diagnosis and medical care this person later received, helped clear the sexual harassment and mobbing accusations falsely thrown on others. No one to blame in a situation like this. Acceptance and science is what's needed rather than a reactionary uber-personal attitude of reading stigma conspiracies in every disagreement.

And health is not what's deemed to be superior or powerful in today's society. To the contrary, it is being sick that has all the value. Look how everyone's personally, socially,institutionally, spiritually encouraged to be scarred and take it as a sign of identity. Even and especially the ones who allegedly hold an alternative approach don't fall far from it. In fact they seem to be the ones who need those identities most.

T.

Marian said...

T.: I agree that our society regards being sick increasingly a suitable replacement for true identity. If I can't be special in any other way, I always can be "bipolar", for instance, and thus be special - in addition in a very fashionable way as far as "bipolar" is concerned - anyway.

What I don't agree to, is that the medical profession would have the expertise to answer the question who or what we are, respectively to answer the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything". A diagnosis like "paranoia" as an answer to these questions actually equals to the answer given by Deep Thought in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 42. Uhm... At best, such an answer shuts the questioner up. - It's an answer, isn't it? At least formally it is. So, stop asking inconvenient questions! - In the case of a psych label unfortunately, it also more often than not exposes the questioner to the disabling and life-threatening effects of the drugs that almost inevitably come along with the answer. Acceptance, yes, of the fact that we're human beings constantly trying to find The Answer, and, at least, trying to understand ourselves and the world. I don't think, we need more of the kind of "science" that doesn't do anything but provide "42-answers".

"No one to blame" is the usual argument resorted to in favor of the biological model. It shows, it doesn't work out. As long as we haven't found The Answer, someone/something is to "blame" (= to be held responsible). "Paranoia" as in irrational thoughts of being followed, surveilled, harassed, controlled doesn't exist. People labelled "paranoid" always, in one or the other way, have been denied their personal freedom and integrity by someone.