Sunday, May 23, 2004
I'm baaackkkkkkk - must contemplate goals further...
I'm dog-sitting; cable and a hot tub are at my disposal - 'tis nice. They even left me the adult channel code, which is 000000. There is little food here, but ample wine. It's a decent gig for now - beats 9 to 5 -ing. I wonder if I went into the doctoral program full-time cuz I was exhausted to the depths of my soul with working forty plus hour weeks in social work for nearly a decade... It was actually easy, compared to the work week grind. I loved my course work. My advisor too. I disliked the pedantic and self-reinforcing culture of academ (note: I never used the word pedantic until I entered a PhD program!!!). But it was easy enough to not attend to; all was glorious, until I failed my qualifer... and my little bubble burst.
I know I desperately wanted to contribute something relevant and useful to the struggling public mental health system that I've worked in so long and know so well... I wanted my dissertation to be concretely helpful, applicable, but now it is so egg-head jargon filled that I can't even explain it to most folks... how did this happen??? Why did I change my topic from CBT with psychosis to 'ecological validity' (yes, that is a real word...), with regards to implementing mental health practice innovations in complex stakeholder settings???? I remember thinking that focusing on one intervention would be too narrow, and implementating interventions seems to be such challenge, and also the place where research actually becomes (or does not become) useful and used...
What if I did pursue CBT in England, instead of finishing my PhD which I have no motivation for?? Or maybe - is it my dissertation topic that I don't like?? What if I changed my topic?
But, if I focus just on micro practice, then I feel like I'm ignoring the larger macro/ social justice issues, which pains me. I'm just so tired of that kind of battling - I did years of activism, and now I suppose I'm burned out with that form of protesting - I'm introverted and conflict-avoidant by nature, so activism certainly took a toll on me. I feel more in a healer rather than warrior or visionary/scholar mode right now. I'd like to think of my practice as 'therapy as revolution', but many would say therapy simply reinforces our capacity to tolerate the status quo rather than rebelling against it, and ultimately serves the interests of the professional elite at the expenese of working class interests. Sort of like Prozac Nation's (I think that is the title) asserting that we medicate ourselves so that we can tolerate the intolerable... I take Prozac, and although I feel a zillion times better, I wonder... I have this Marxian book that is completely ideological and basically reams therapy. Others call therapy the new 'secular religion' and the therapy session the church of the individual....
I actually wrote a paper theoretically taking a stab at integrating Beck's cognitive theory with Foucault's reflexive thought as self-liberation. It wasn't half bad. Foucault's thing is that we have to reflect in order to de-colonize our minds; or as ani d. would say 'I've been around the world... the mind control is steep here... it's deep here...'.
I'm dog-sitting; cable and a hot tub are at my disposal - 'tis nice. They even left me the adult channel code, which is 000000. There is little food here, but ample wine. It's a decent gig for now - beats 9 to 5 -ing. I wonder if I went into the doctoral program full-time cuz I was exhausted to the depths of my soul with working forty plus hour weeks in social work for nearly a decade... It was actually easy, compared to the work week grind. I loved my course work. My advisor too. I disliked the pedantic and self-reinforcing culture of academ (note: I never used the word pedantic until I entered a PhD program!!!). But it was easy enough to not attend to; all was glorious, until I failed my qualifer... and my little bubble burst.
I know I desperately wanted to contribute something relevant and useful to the struggling public mental health system that I've worked in so long and know so well... I wanted my dissertation to be concretely helpful, applicable, but now it is so egg-head jargon filled that I can't even explain it to most folks... how did this happen??? Why did I change my topic from CBT with psychosis to 'ecological validity' (yes, that is a real word...), with regards to implementing mental health practice innovations in complex stakeholder settings???? I remember thinking that focusing on one intervention would be too narrow, and implementating interventions seems to be such challenge, and also the place where research actually becomes (or does not become) useful and used...
What if I did pursue CBT in England, instead of finishing my PhD which I have no motivation for?? Or maybe - is it my dissertation topic that I don't like?? What if I changed my topic?
But, if I focus just on micro practice, then I feel like I'm ignoring the larger macro/ social justice issues, which pains me. I'm just so tired of that kind of battling - I did years of activism, and now I suppose I'm burned out with that form of protesting - I'm introverted and conflict-avoidant by nature, so activism certainly took a toll on me. I feel more in a healer rather than warrior or visionary/scholar mode right now. I'd like to think of my practice as 'therapy as revolution', but many would say therapy simply reinforces our capacity to tolerate the status quo rather than rebelling against it, and ultimately serves the interests of the professional elite at the expenese of working class interests. Sort of like Prozac Nation's (I think that is the title) asserting that we medicate ourselves so that we can tolerate the intolerable... I take Prozac, and although I feel a zillion times better, I wonder... I have this Marxian book that is completely ideological and basically reams therapy. Others call therapy the new 'secular religion' and the therapy session the church of the individual....
I actually wrote a paper theoretically taking a stab at integrating Beck's cognitive theory with Foucault's reflexive thought as self-liberation. It wasn't half bad. Foucault's thing is that we have to reflect in order to de-colonize our minds; or as ani d. would say 'I've been around the world... the mind control is steep here... it's deep here...'.
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