Finding Jesus in the Storm. John Swinton

Finding Jesus in the Storm - John Swinton


Скачать книгу
an attribute deeply discredited by his or her society is rejected as a result of that attribute: “While a stranger is present before us, evidence can arise of his possessing an attribute that makes him different from others in the category of persons available for him to be, and of a less desirable kind—in the extreme, a person who is quite thoroughly bad, or dangerous, or weak. He is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one. Such an attribute is a stigma, especially when its discrediting effect is very extensive.”6 Stigma is most powerful when it urges us to “reclassify an individual from one socially anticipated category to a different but equally well-anticipated one, and the kind that causes us to alter our estimation of the individual downward.”7 Such a powerful stigma redescribes individuals in negative ways that move them from one socially anticipated category to a different and lesser social category.8 Stigma is thus a malignant mode of social description that is very often aimed at some of the most vulnerable people within society.

      One of the problems with mental health diagnoses is that they are highly stigmatized categories that take their meaning not only from their clinical descriptions but also and sometimes primarily from the negative cultural accretions that accompany such descriptions. This is particularly true in the Western world, which has a preoccupation with intellect, reason, and clarity of thinking. In such a cultural milieu, mental health challenges can easily be perceived as challenging each of these socially valued attributes and, in so doing, challenging our conceptions of what it means to be fully human.

      Importantly, this “spoiled identity” stands in direct opposition to those claiming to bear witness to “normality.” This is why schizophrenia can be so alienating. Built into the description is an assumption of distance and presumed Otherness. However, this is not true in all cultures, as we will see. Indeed, in certain cultures it is not possible to be “a schizophrenic”; constructing people in this way is just not what such cultures do. A question we will explore in various ways as we move on is this: What is it about Western culture that constructs schizophrenia (and other forms of mental health challenge) in such a way as to make it so dehumanizingly stigmatic?

       Stigma Is Pathogenic

      It is clear that thin stigmatized descriptions produce spoiled identities and force expectations downward. Stigma is thus pathogenic (it causes pathology) in that once it is named, the stigmatic description actively causes harm. Stigma dehumanizes people living with mental health challenges. But it also dehumanizes the stigmatizers, who are trained to see only parts of other people without caring for the whole of them (like the doctor in my opening vignette). Stigma thins our vision and hardens out hearts. It is destructive for all concerned.

      The issue of stigma will come up throughout this book. For now, we just need to notice its devastating impact and the ways it thins people out and hurts them.

      One of the reasons this phenomenological tradition has been “lost” relates to the systems currently in place through which we make diagnoses and describe mental health challenges. These systems prefer thin descriptions to the richness and thickness of the phenomenological look. Part of the issue, as we have seen, relates to time. If you have only fifteen minutes with a patient, gathering rich phenomenological detail is not going to be high on your list of priorities. But lack of time is not the only reason for the thinness of psychiatric descriptions.

       The Power of the DSM


Скачать книгу