Tag: Eduardo Duran

when therapy is sorcery

Sorcery - the Seven Arts (Salvador Dali, 1957) for when therapy is sorcery

"You may find it remarkable that I am classifying therapists with sorcerers.  There is a fine line between the Healer who heals and the one who, due to ignorance, may cause harm.  In working with patients, I have found that archaic language and images are the best means of relating to the spirit or the unconscious.  Referring to an ignorant therapist as a "practitioner of iatrogenic illness" would evoke little feeling in the patient and there would be no affective connection to the healer/therapist.  Therefore, I use the word sorcerer in order to make the point about the seriousness of some of the actions taken by therapists towards patients.  This affective connection is crucial to the task of allowing the soul to open to the process of healing." - Eduardo Duran, Healing the Soul Wound

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Empowering people to become lifelong patients

photo magnolia flower for empowering

You remember that 2006 NASMHPD report on morbidity in the “seriously mentally ill” population, so often cited in the current literature, the main navigational tool charting the course of mental health policy for the past decade or so (that I wrote about here and here)?  One of the main policy recommendations to come out of that report was that caregivers should “support wellness and empowerment of persons served, to improve mental and physical well-being.” Sounds good, but don’t be fooled – they didn’t really mean that.  What they want is to “empower individuals to engage in services” – empower people to become lifelong patients.  What they want is controlled [false] empowerment as a strategy for achieving lifelong treatment plan adherence (non-compliance/non-adherence being the $100,000,000,000 problem for pharmaceutical companies – their words.)

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Diagnosis as Naming Ceremony

photo of light fixture with blue flower background. for diagnosis as naming ceremony

by: Alt-Mentalities ~~ Diagnosis as a Naming Ceremony Our modern society likes to draw a sharp dividing line between “religion” and “science.”  Religion is the stuff of ritual and superstition, while science is a beautiful structure built entirely of FACTS.  Objective.  Proven. I don’t think it works like that.  Faith is an integral part of life – even in the presence of facts, faith can make all the difference in the world.  Likewise, ritual, or patterned behavior with special significance, is something that we as humans can’t help but create in our interactions with others and the world around us.  Easy to recognize in other cultures, but harder to see in your own -- until you start looking....

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