Beyond the Ladder

In some respects group therapy, masked as citizen participation, should be on the lowest rung of the ladder because it is both dishonest and arrogant. Its administrators - mental health experts from social workers to psychiatrists - assume that powerlessness is synonymous with mental illness. On this assumption, under a masquerade of involving citizens in planning, the experts subject the citizens to clinical group therapy. What makes this form of "participation" so invidious is that citizens are engaged in extensive activity, but the focus of it is on curing them of their "pathology" rather than changing the racism and victimization that create their "pathologies."

 

See, I look at it the other way - I see power as something that's meant to flow and when it gets blocked in the hands of a few, it's unhealthy for them and downright toxic for society as a whole.

 

It's also interesting how many powerful people could very easily be diagnosed with a DM mental illness, ranging from bipolar disorder to sociopathology.

 

Let's flip the pyramid over, shall we?