I found this song on youtube two days ago and I cant get it out of my head. The song is very typically 80's synth pop with some powerful vocals. Very Corey Hart in style. The Track featured on the movie 9 1/2 weeks. It has a nice intensity and an unpretentious video to accompany it.
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Thursday 14 July 2011
Disability in India - Resources
Here are a few resources you will find helpful
Anita Ghai - A Reader in Delhi University, Dr Ghai teaches in Jesus and Mary College Delhi. I have had the pleasure of meeting her at a conference. Her work on disability in India is very moving and very raw.
Here are a few links that I have found useful.
click here
click here
Dr Ghai looks at disability in India from both a historical and current perspective. She questions the notion of disability and looks at the social construction of disability.
Disability like mental illness is socially constructed, it serves a social and political purpose. It is tied to our ideas of productivity and usefulness to society, since 'disability' is seen as a burden, the disabled individual is thought to be useless.
Disability is not biology alone but the complex creation of a social system that chooses to make disability real.
PS: I am not saying the pain a disabled person might feel isnt real, the pain is all too real, its the labels that are unreal.
Anita Ghai - A Reader in Delhi University, Dr Ghai teaches in Jesus and Mary College Delhi. I have had the pleasure of meeting her at a conference. Her work on disability in India is very moving and very raw.
Here are a few links that I have found useful.
(Dis)embodied form: issues of disabled women
By Anita Ghaiclick here
Psychology In India Volume 3: Clinical And Health Psychology
By Misra Girishwarclick here
Dr Ghai looks at disability in India from both a historical and current perspective. She questions the notion of disability and looks at the social construction of disability.
Disability like mental illness is socially constructed, it serves a social and political purpose. It is tied to our ideas of productivity and usefulness to society, since 'disability' is seen as a burden, the disabled individual is thought to be useless.
Disability is not biology alone but the complex creation of a social system that chooses to make disability real.
PS: I am not saying the pain a disabled person might feel isnt real, the pain is all too real, its the labels that are unreal.
Photos of early psychiatry
Some dreadful, some disgusting pictures of what 'pioneering' work in psychiatry looked like. Now before you get all patronising thinking we have made great leaps think again we still do the same to people today. we lock them up, we still think criminals have something different in their neuro chemcial system and women are still targeted for their biology.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10008523-7.html?tag=img
http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10008523-7.html?tag=img
Monday 11 July 2011
Disability in India
में पेचले कुछ दिन से एक पेपर लिख रही हूँ , विकलांग व्य्क्तिन्यो पर जो हिनुस्थान में रहे रहें हैं.
हिन्दुस्थान की जन्सक्न्ह्या लगभग १.२१ बिल्लियन है.
For the last few weeks I have been writing a paper on disability in India here are some of the things i found out.
The current Population of India in 2011 is estimated to be 1.21 billion.
Disability affects over 20 million people in India.
The population of Mumbai is about 20.5 million.
20 Million disabled people, this amounts to 20% of the population.
To break it down further that would be about 20 disabled people in a group of 100 people.
However this number could be larger as a lot of people are not included in the census.
Disability could include visual problems, auditory problems, speech defects and mobility issues to name a few.
When disability affects such a huge number of people why don’t we see them more often?
How many disabled people did you go to school with?
How many disabled people work with you?
And most importantly how do view these people?
Do you believe disabled people are not the same as you? Most people do. Most of us have grown up with prejudices about disabled people. A few people grow up feeling sympathy for the disabled and may contribute to charity. Do the disabled want our charity or do they want us to treat them equally?
Saturday 2 July 2011
How does one practise critical clinical psychology?
This is a question I posed to my critical psychology professor a few years ago, hoping to find a simple answer. Three years later I stand corrected.
Critical psychology does not criticise and no it doesn’t offer a blanket solution to all the problems of the world (it creates a few of its own though).
So now that this has been cleared lets proceed to what I think of the question and its possible answer.
Critical psychology is often engaged in activism of the unheard kind, it asks patients what they expect of the system, it gets them involved and thinks of them as being capable of being an expert on their condition. It attacks most things conventional in psychology and does not provide a simple solution or a one solution to every problem, sometimes it the solution is up to you if you want one that is. The goal isn’t to provide a quick answer that can be applied everywhere as conventional psychology does, it keeps looking for answers and basks in its own dissent.
Perhaps I was so used to a solution or to see clinical psychology being practised (in the most conventional sense of the term) that I didn’t see what lies at the heart of ‘curing people’. that critical psychology is engaed in activism maybe enough for a few people is sometimes impossible to imagine. Why would activism be enough? Is there anything else to it then a few nosiy protestors? These are some of the questions I had. However a protest is neeed not be a means to an end it maybe the end or if I may use the term ‘therapeutic’.
The assumption of treating, counselling has been with us for so long that I am afraid that it takes a huge leap to think beyond the language of therapy. Perhaps some people don’t need or want therapy and protesting about it makes perfect sense to them. Perhaps its is not for me to decide what to replace conventional therapy with. That would be a real shame- replacing an oppressive syatem with a new improved version of itself.
The answer if one can call it that is not to fall into the old ways of complacency and rhetoric but to invent and reinvent and dissent.
Disclaimer: This article only represents my view of things and isn’t everyone’s view of how the ideas of critical psychology can be put into clinical practice or help change what exists.
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