Maturing the consumer/survivor movement

Issue:

Background:

• The struggle for empowerment starts as a struggle for raw power in a hostile, behaviorally managed situation. Like the suffragists of the 19th century, the clients had to think "power" and accommodate tokenism. As with the feminists of the late 20th century, the movement moves over as it matures to issues of respect for one’s way of being. The Summit with its emphasis on reconciliation and mutual recognition of boundaries reflects how this fact is slowly dawning on us.
• The winning of respect relates to when we modify the behavior of the system rather than the reverse. To hold the system to account for its behavior, we have habituated ourselves to a regime of advocacy, self-help, and the like (count ’em, it’s 11 planks here!). We need to go from habituation experiences over to sensitization experiences. The White House Conference on ‘Mental Illness’ shows how deep the need is to teach society about the true nature of ourselves, about madness itself.
• Our world today is ruled by entitlement ‘motivators’, such as SSI, Section 8, Medicare, etc. This sort of low-functioning social accommodation is insufficient. The full expression of our being as persons of quality is our real entitlement on this Earth. The prospect of working together cooperatively means we must train the clients in empowerment as a way of being, which means above all accountability to the client values — to the client culture.
• The opposite of sensitization is trauma. Trauma comes to us via our personal histories of abuse and also via the system's ‘treatment’ regimes. NAMI and the psychiatric system are deeply enmeshed in advocacies for institutionalizing and reinforcing traumatic outcomes. But people, ordinary non-clients, do not want a traumatized world, and we can build coalitions with people based on mutual opposition to traumatizing practices.

Client culture and human relations

Issue:

Background:

• We have to talk about a client culture and a client psychology. The client culture is a social space where the networking that will help manage and overcome the trauma lives and grows. A client psychology will have to explain the way of being in this client culture. Professionals today commonly lack insight into the real experience of madness and those struggling with madness.
• How do we explain our spiritual beings and communicate in ways that are mutually respectful? The backbone of a new Vision of human relations is upgrading our advocacy of core values. Key work areas include (1) the ethics of personal interaction, (2) discrimination/tokenism on a micro level, (3) respect for personal sensitivity and empathy, and (4) a humanist rather than rationalist paradigm in psychology. We need to cultivate broader and richer expression and acceptance of our symbolic life.
• Some of the legacy of the years of struggle for raw power is deep bitterness. We are learning that we can’t solve our conflicts by ‘steamrollering’ the ‘opposition’. The Summit is an exploration in how to reconcile all this bitterness. We hope for ‘restorative’ rather than ‘retributive’ outcomes, yes, but much creative work remains to be done.
• The key to full independence is good and wise coalition. In society today "that’s crazy!" is a synonym for "that’s a mistake." That’s crazy! — Er, it’s a mistake, and we must train society to treat us more gently. We can work with enlightened people to build a new society where madness will be dealt with sensibly because human relations will be handled better.