◆ SpookStack

The National Alliance July 4, 1991 3 we _ British Psychologists Vis "Social Therapy Center : mae reat Britain being TE A ar ‘ t: a. lan Parker ond Erika Berman are. Alflance: How do see the practice a; . warty a Sy ‘at Ba | : radical peychologuts from Manchester, of prychology in i : wy canal . ; : England who recently visited the East affected by the country's cOntAMINg ran ‘ ne : } Side Center for Social Therapy whit move to the right politically? > : wsyrwre e ee ‘ - the United States to ati confer- cenntneen n = o ence. Parker and Berman were intro- duced to the Social movement by their colleague Valerie Walkerdine, an internationally prominent Marxist feminist psychologist. Woalkerdine, an ‘editor with Routledge Press, has invil- ed Dr. Fred Newman, the founder of Social Therapy, and Dr. Lois Holuman, his principal scholarly collaborator, to write a book on Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, whose discoveries have played an i role in she devel- opment of the theory and practice of the radically humanistic approach to clinical psychology known as Social Therapy. The book, called Lev Vygot- sky: Revol is due out later this year. What follows is an interview with Alliance senior editor and practicing Social Mary Fridley. i National Alliance: Could you talk about your own relationship to politics __ and psychology? lan Parker: I was & Marxist before 1 - was a psychologist. I was told by my comrades in the International Marxist Group, which I was & member of in the 1970s, not to do psychology. They said it was a reactionary disciptine because it was with the indi- vidual — psychology ends up, one way or another, reducing things to the level of the individual and about the structures of repression: class struc- tures of counter-abundance. So I went into psychology not wanting to be & psychologist but wanting to know what it was about psychology that made it tick, why psychologists did it and what the power of psychology was. I've jearned something sdout ald that, and I suppose I still have & hostility 10 the whole project of psychology. Even though I'm a lecturer in social and abnormal psychology in a department of psychology and speech pathology — te toon ton Hae of pares i . accompanied by the rhetoric of colebrating the femi- _being dramatically cut and reduced, the | that it is becoming i Berman: The context in Britain is that mental hospitels are being closed and nothing else fa being put in their place. These cutbecks are being ly and community. As services are nations! health sysiem is being sold off to privatized hospital: centers. Things are getting so bad — and this is also happening in education increasingly nec- essary for those who have money to buy private health care. It's very frightening. For clinical paychologixs, there is a push toward professionalize- tion, or chartering, a We call it in Grest Britain. With this chartering business, clinical es well as educational peychologists are also under the threat of being privatized. As a result, hospi- tals and local authorities may just decide they don’t need to employ psy- were looking et educational gists as change agents, a5 activists. Now there are all kinds of books com- ing out about educational paychologisis that are refocusing attention on gaining professional credibility so you can keep Parker: One of the effects of the clos ing of the mental hospitals and people being chucked out into the streets is that the radical demand of bodies like the National Association for Mental Health that mental hospitals be closed and alternative provisions made in the form of mental health centers is being discredited, because these professionals see that people are suffering. It is becoming very, very difficult for redi- cal menial health workers to erguc that mental hospitals are abad thing. Berman: In fact, in some cases it is precisely those radical menta} health activists who were at one time calling far the closing of the menial health tan Porker ad Erika Berman. we recent eh Pekin os aos ave: go’ tn taking EGRET tte nd . Kemane Wels yom & ques: © : ati’ mite as well as being homapho- transposing isis to England, where Viton ndend pede tht