Psychologically Informed Environments: Therapeutic Regeneration

By Dean Whittington PhD

Psychologically Informed Environments outlines the problems inherent in working with marginal populations, (such as the homeless). The analysis considers the issue of masculinities, and how these are erased within current academic discourses. The key issue is around how emotional recovery is generated using therapeutic techniques based on praxis. It also explores how organisations can be reconfigured to initiate emotional recovery and so stop people moving around the perpetual treadmill. This needs to be undertaken by grounding the client in the present, working on past traumas, those which shape the current lifestyle, whilst thinking about a sustainable future to move into. This involves the therapist moving into the bath of steel the client inhabits.

The book sets out to explore some of the problems arising from past interventions and situating a move to an emotional recovery, by rethinking current practices. It raises considerable questions around training, research and the style of the current set of interventions being undertaken. All should be appraised on whether they generate emotional recovery. This can be viewed by the use of case histories to depict the work undertaken and requires the use of phenomenological methods to detail the work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524665234

Dean Whittington PhD

Dean Whittington began working with the homeless populations in 1986 and was one of the first pioneers in delivering psychotherapy with marginal populations. From 1989 until 2005, he and his team, delivered the first therapeutic services within Deptford, South East London in an organization called Orexis. It was here that extensive issues relating to early childhood ‘complex trauma’ were discovered and the links were then made to people ‘self medicating’ as adults for the subsequent impact. The general lack of awareness during the nineties propelled him to do specific research on masculinities leading to the eventual publication of Beaten into Violence. Here, one of the first qualitative therapeutic methodologies to explore the complex trauma issues was devised. This became known as relational methodology. Later he undertook the first therapeutic interventions with homeless men, drawing on the idea of emotional recovery, taking ideas from his previous work ‘Beaten into Violence’. These were initially written up in a series of reports, circulated from 2007 onwards in the charity he worked within. They were drawn upon in an article, written in 2010, eventually published in 2011 in the Attachment Journal. This is where the term ‘psychologically informed environments’ was first extensively therapeutically explored.

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© 2016 Dean Whittington PhD. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 11/14/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6515-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6516-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6523-4 (e)

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Contents

Preface

Part 1 The Immoral Landscape

Innovation And Social Entrepreneurship

Background – praxis

Emotional Literacy And Emotional Shock Troops – The ‘Knights’

Batons Of Trust

Therapeutic Models

Dissolving ‘Self-Medication’

Ideal For Living

Part 2 Generating Emotional Recovery

Background: The Psychology Of Buildings

Therapeutic Environments

Evidence Based Relational Methodology In Action

Case Histories

Case History 1: I Only Wanted To Be Loved

Case History 2: Only Making Plans For Jamey

Case History 3: Beating The Brat

Case History 4: Attack!

Case History 5: Pin A Label

Case History 6: Lost In Rooms

Case History 7: Beaten Into Violence

Case History 8: Isolation

Case History 9: Finding A Purpose

Case History 10: Gun In Your Hand

Case History 11: Will To Live

Case History 12: Codes Of Silence

Case History 13: All I Feel Is Revenge

Case History 14: Violence Grows

Case History 15: Emotional Rescue

Case History 16: Madness Is A State Of Mind

Case History 17: Equal Opportunities

Case History 18: Waiting To Be Rescued

Case History 19: Magic Carpet Ride

Case History 20: A Waiting Game

Case History 21: Faith

Case History 22: Anger Blasts

Case History 23: Disdain

Case History 24: Dispelling The Fugue

Case History 25: The Inward March

Case History 26: Melting The Ice Man

Case History 27: Lost Childhood

Case History 28: Managerial Descent

Case History 29: Non-Prodigal Son

Case History 30: I Did It My Way

Case History 31: Detox Explosion

Case History 32: A Great Unsaid

Case History 33: Rejection As A Way Of Life

Case History 34: Man Who Fell To Earth

Case History 35: Man In A Lizard’s Skin

Epitaph

Part 3 The Role Of The ‘Knights’

Knights And Knaves

Chapter 3: Small Is Not Only Beautiful But Also Psychologically Effective

Emotional Literacy

The Knights

References

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I WANT TO GIVE THANKS TO the following people, due to the support they have offered over the years, Tony Burchell, Nick, Patsy, Anthony, Dirk Belau, Mark McQuinn, Jane Johnston, Mike Hyden and Jenny Finch. The basis of this book is derived from the numerous reports written for the organisation where I worked from 2006 onwards. These eventually became the basis for the Attachment Journal article, entitled Wrenching Open the Doors of Perception . This was written in the summer of 2010 and later published in early 2011. Subsequently, it was reworked within Bath of Steel (2012), written during the late summer of 2011. Further work has latterly been undertaken to provide breadth, based on continuous reflection on making sense of what my colleagues and I, experienced. The insights have finally emerged within the present format to add further depth derived from indwelling, reflection in order to gain further insight (Moustakas 1990).

It is appropriate now to understand that only the man who builds the future has a right to judge the past. In order to look ahead, set yourselves an important goal, and at the same time control that voluptuous analytical drive with which you now lay waste the present and render almost impossible all tranquillity, all peaceful growth and maturing. Draw around yourself the fence of a large and extensive hope, an optimistic striving. Create in yourselves a picture to which the future is to correspond, and forget the myth that you are epigones.

Nietzsche, F. (1873) Untimely Meditations:

On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,

PREFACE

T HE BACKGROUND TO THIS BOOK is rooted in praxis, an idea taken from Arendt (1958), grounded upon the principles of continuous action and reflection in an ongoing process of learning. It is based upon my former practice; working with homeless men and a subsequent reflection, making sense of what emerged. The ideas were latterly tested back within reflective practice to create an ongoing synthesis.

It builds on the ideas previously explored, and outlined, in Beaten into Violence (Whittington, 2007a), looking at the social construction of male identities. These have evolved in relation to the wider dynamics existing within the various ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) an individual inhabits, forever shaping them. Bureaucratic forces, continuously act upon the individual to socialise them, meanwhile, each individual has ‘agency’; shaping how they in turn react to these dynamics. There is clearly a power imbalance.

One of the issues I focus on in the case histories, is how the ramifications of childhood trauma have been submerged and hidden within the various ecological layers. For example, these dynamics remained invisible within the various university discourses (social work, psychotherapy, criminal justice, addiction, psychology, social policy, sociology, politics) until very recently, whilst the reasons for their previous erasure have never been discussed. Correspondingly, the emotional impact of the previous violence enacted by state practitioners has been obscured and their past actions appear disconnected from the end results. In retrospect, practitioners have engaged in various forms of ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 1998) enacted upon the client, which has kept them stuck. ‘Symbolic violence’ was perceived as a social norm, partly due to an academic erasure concerning its legitimacy, propelled by individual psychologies, contained within a cycle of violence. ‘Symbolic violence’ is a form of psychological violence; where ostracism and the feeling of being left out, or being subject to labels and denigration becomes the social norm, in an attempt to demarcate the ‘other’ (Sartre, 1943).

Instead, what has been built are various cultural myths, lacking any ability for the entrapped individual to escape their impact. These myths have been based upon various eugenic legacies; the belief the individual is biologically tainted, operating as a way of camouflaging these emotional dynamics. The belief in this particular discourse, allows the practitioner to distance themselves from how they operate their psychological violence. Correspondingly, they remain disassociated from its impact, and believe they inhabit the moral centre, which is nothing more than the operation of the pathology of normalcy (Fromm, 2011).

There is another pay-off for those involved. These legacies, or ideologies, have been established to sustain the position of the contemplative intellectual (Arendt, 1958); those who exist above the throng, the diviner who spins various fantasies within the head. These are the puppeteers who create a ‘social contagion’ (Le Bon, 1895). As forms of explanatory power these academic myths have erased individual emotional realities to spin a seemingly rational one in its wake. These rational fantasies are sustained by various collectives who wish to sever their own personal memories and exist within a surrogate world; the world of intellectual myths.

A contemplative intellectual (Arendt, 1958) wishes to exist apart from the social world in which they normally operate and are immersed within, where clearly they exist within a set of relationships. Instead they longingly inhabit the higher realms of rarefied knowledge, where they clamber to the heights of being socially disengaged. This performed objective stance operates as a counterpoint to those involved in ‘praxis’ (Arendt, 1958), someone engaged in social reality who penetrates beyond the social façade; the world constructed from academic myths. Unfortunately, this academic objective pose, has, in turn led to various individual and social catastrophes within the external world. Each of the problems are outlined within this analysis.

In their composed stance the contemplative lacks any emotional connection to the experiences of everyday life; as they are ‘disassociated’ from others, after becoming ‘dissociated’ from the self. Moreover, as Nietzsche (1968) highlights, an assumed static ego, (here the invisible academic self) becomes the basis for measuring all knowledge concerning the external world, due to the desire to quantify an individual against a standard item. The ‘self’ becomes the metre ruler, the kilo or the litre jug, used to quantify the ‘other’ (Sartre, 1943). This ‘ideal’ is explored in the following quote from Nietzsche (1969);

We need unities in order to be able to reckon: that does not mean that we suppose that such unities exist. We have borrowed the concept of unity from our ego concept – our oldest article of faith.

Nietzsche F. (1968) N635, Will to Power,

To understand the external world, the objective scientist, firstly presuppose they are a unified whole; composed of both mind and body. But contained within this belief is the first lie, as the mind is the only object considered to be of any real worth. Even when this is dissected, only the rational component of the mind is kept, whilst the emotions are quickly discarded, similar to how ‘orange peel’ is left uneaten, after the orange flesh is consumed. For the rational academic, what becomes sustenance is that which can be then calculated. So two important components of being human are erased, the emotions or experiences, and the body, whilst only the calculating mind remains. This becomes, in turn, the academic kilo, ruler or jug.

If the emotional self is banished (feelings, beliefs, attitudes, visions), the handrail upon which the stricken rational mind rests upon, that which provides balance, becomes merely a mirage. It can only be held together by numbers, equations and columns of figures; abstract entities which are socially constructed. It can be construed as a mirage because fundamentally everyone needs other people, in order to exist, whether it is a mother and a new born baby locked in symbiosis, or the individual seeking a mate on a dating site. Every individual exists in relation to other people.

An alternative rational fantasy is however manufactured inside a severed alienated self to make it feel comfortable in its self-delusion. Other people are not required, and ultimately a world can be ushered in, where everyone is Robinson Crusoe, trapped within their own make-believe worlds. This fantasy, stems from the ‘projections’ (Freud, 1937) of the alienated individual, who views their own unique world, as the pinnacle of human achievement. When this perspective is finally grasped for being a chimera, it leads to the collective work of Laing (1960) who explored this view in The Divided Self. A problem exists for the ‘rational mind’ around how reality is constantly manufactured; as a sense of stability for these alienates is based on forever counting numbers. Incidentally, this mind set is central to the continuation of the Neo-Liberal project. Here, cultural myths take central importance embedded within a cultural amnesia. Love, anger, empathy, justice and revenge are all made to disappear within this subterfuge.

Ironically, the knowledge composed within these abstract realms, the world of numbers, is often nothing more than an autobiographical form of ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 1998). It is another psychological ‘projection’ (Freud, 1937) derived from an existing academic subconscious belief around what constitutes superiority; latterly imposed upon the external world as a form of individual emotional revenge. How do I know? By retreating into a world of numbers, the individual no longer has to deal with relationships. They become alienated from life.

Question: But that about cultural relativism, my belief is as a good as yours?

Answer: The basis of all evaluations is whether any belief creates emotional recovery in the process. If it fails, then it offers no form of transcendence and needs to be discarded. There are too many forms of nihilistic ‘projections’ (Freud, 1937) beamed onto the world, operating as ‘parataxic distortions’ (Stack-Sullivan, 1953). These are ways of viewing reality that emanate from the unresolved psychological wounds of the individual making the pronouncements. Absent is any comprehension of ‘emotional literacy’ (Steiner, 2003) and whether these anointed ‘objective’ views assist in the emotional recovery of the individual, or groups, being pronounced upon. Clearly, those that provide an escape generate ‘biophilia’ (Fromm, 1973) or a love and engagement with life, whilst those that fail are ‘necrophiliac’, as they induce a form of living death. All interventions can be judged against these polarities, and those that induce biophilia (Fromm 1973), should be drawn upon.

This book builds on the article Wrenching Open the Doors of Perception, written in 2010 and published in 2011. It was where the concept of psychologically informed environments was first explored in depth, derived initially from undertaking four years of therapeutic work with homeless men. Prior to this I undertook sixteen years in a substance use agency, where I worked therapeutically with marginalised groups.

Unfortunately, these ideas were later drawn upon by various bodies unacknowledged, and so this book places the therapeutic work within a particular social and practical context. It is also highly critical by default of much existing and previous provision, thereby building upon the insights outlined in Bath of Steel (2012) and The Perpetual Treadmill (2014). The aim is to create a paradigm shift, and this necessarily entails walking on eggshells to turn them into a soufflé.

PART 1

The Immoral Landscape

It is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests… even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.

Nietzsche F. (1882), The Gay Science,

INNOVATION AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

A THERAPEUTICALLY BASED PSYCHOLOGICALLY INFORMED ENVIRONMENT (PIE) (Whittington, 2011) is founded upon an overarching belief: that a marginalised client’s eventual emotional recovery can be facilitated by a practitioner who works with the client to build a life ladder out of their current predicament. Emotional recovery is a shift from feeling a variety of ‘lacks’ (self-esteem, confidence, belief) to engaging in the world and eventually taking part in it, as part of an everyday ‘normalisation’. It also entails having a ‘social interest’ (Adler, 1954) or a connection with other people within a community, those who exist within an ecological system (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). An individual cannot emotionally recover just by their own remit, as it requires a communal supportive framework to provide a personal meaning to existence. Emotional recovery incorporates their individual psychological health in relation to obtaining a personal meaning by finding a purpose to existence, and then obtaining a sense of belonging within a wider community. This is derived from forming a set of relationships based on hobbies, work, love and friendship.

Upon this basic premise all the current practitioner’s interventions with a client can be evaluated. If an intervention is not facilitating the client’s emotional recovery, and this means engaging with the client first and foremost to seek their perspective, then it needs to be halted. Recovery is essentially ‘person-centred’ (Rogers, 1961) and it cannot be imposed upon the client. The client has to want to engage, and the practitioner then builds the pathway based upon this willingness. A crucial component however, is how the therapist builds the relationship along with establishing a potential care pathway. This is the basis of an emotional recovery, and it requires considerable groundwork.

A practitioner’s role, based on how they engage, needs to be clearly defined. They should be seen as a facilitator of emotional recovery, rather than someone who operates under the aegis of the state. ‘Gaming’, (Berne, 1961, 1964) or the pretence of intervening in order to trigger funds by rigging the appearance of meeting institutional targets, requires an immediate cessation from all involved in health and social care. What is being proposed with PIEs (Whittington, 2011) is a paradigm shift, a phenomenological realignment of intervention services.

A psychologically informed environment (Whittington, 2011) is not based on evolutionary psychology or neuropsychology for example, or any form of neo-eugenics. Clearly these discourses inhibit the notion that people can change by only measuring alleged levels of aberration; a deviation from a presumed norm (the standard kilo, litre or metre). These creeds constrain any belief an individual can engage in emotional recovery because they only seek to ‘label’ difference (Becker, 1963), rather than liberate.

Target culture, filling in templates and figures according to a contract, must also be halted, and instead a new paradigm, a new form of thinking, must arise, based on being able to explain a case history intervention to peers. This should encompass how a client is engaged in a sense of momentum and transformation, plus also explore the challenges and blockages. This necessitates an extensive use of psychotherapy, and not just the ‘gaming’ therapies of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) (Beck and Freeman, 1990). Some of the CBT techniques are useful, but overall this discourse lacks any phenomenological insight into the client’s existential predicament. Instead it operates as a top-down imposition placed upon the client when employed wholesale. The idea that recovery can be measured independently of the client’s perspective is another sign of an intellectual hubris. Essentially a technique is imposed upon the client, concocted within the moral centre, where a culture of manners is deemed to exist (Elias, 1939), to shut down the meanings inherent within the client’s experience. Then the client’s life is reconfigured, as their existential angst is turned into a palatable moral tale, and the dynamics which disfigured them remain untouched.

It is the ideology of the self-composed moral centre, where those who see themselves as the ideal litre jug, metre rule and kilo weight, calibrate the ‘other’ (Sartre, 1943). It operates as a subtle conjuring trick. The edifice upon which this is built is challenged extensively within these case histories, but Jamey in case history (2) and Simon in case history (3) challenge the righteousness existing within this ‘moral centre’. The other case histories outline how the moral centre operated upon children when they were in distress. It appears somewhat tainted as a result.

Within emotional recovery, elements of positive psychology are useful, such as Frankl’s (1952, 1959) notion of a ‘vision’. To be able to think of the future and understand its power is essential from moving away from being entrapped within the present. To do this requires an immersion within the client’s ‘ecological system’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), by understanding the various dynamics they are involved in. Only then can the therapist understand the positive quality of the relationships existing within their world, and how a personal vision can arise in relationship to the people they are involved with.

Clients require rebuilding, and this counters the Pollyanna fantasy world, where clients must obtain sudden eureka moments and then reach out to a world that previously shunned them. This depiction needs to end as a final fiction, usually connected to the instruction to hit ‘rock bottom’. Clients do not need to hit ‘rock bottom’, instead they require assistance, affirmation, belief and the building of a ‘secure base’ (Bowlby, 1988) to create a life journey. Clients are primarily people who previously encountered difficulties, firstly within their immediate families, and then were subject to the vast array of institutional instructions. These have not fostered biophilia (Fromm, 1973), and it is not the client who is at fault, but the legacy of practitioners who failed to build a life ladder. For many practitioners this fact will represent a significant challenge to their self-belief. Throughout the 20th Century, few practitioners envisaged emotional recovery as an outcome within the various state services, or even saw it as a possibility. To understand what this means, is staggering. Teams of people intervened for negligible effect.

For those in the 21st Century it means rethinking the purpose of each intervention. This may induce personal pain when those individuals who are coming towards the middle and end of their careers, as they have to recognise the levels of ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 1998) they previously enacted. But this is part of a continuous self-reflection, requiring a shift from being an unenlightened to enlightened practitioner.

Currently, there has been an institutional shut-down around men’s issues. It is clear, from these case histories and those outlined in Beaten into Violence (Whittington 2007a), masculine identities are social constructions. They are formed in relation to the ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) the boys originally inhabit, rather than being linked to any alleged chemical balance or imbalance. Necessarily, this means understanding the worlds of vulnerable adult men who eventually become clients. An investigation entails looking at how they arrived in such poor psychological shape. Along the line, they were failed by many practitioners, and their families too. In seeing them as interconnected to their own families, it often entails moving away from seeing them as victims to perpetrators, as outlined in Ron (1) and Moss’ (13) case histories.

Often, as highlighted in Beaten into Violence (Whittington, 2007a) an absence of empathy is part of an intergenerational cycle, composed of combined physical, sexual and emotional violence rather than any genetic misprint. Therefore, there is a requirement that practitioners firstly work through their own childhood ‘wounds’ and then reflect on their ‘projections’ and ‘transferences’ (Freud, 1937). This is fundamental when working with marginalised men who have minimal insight into their own motivations. Problems clearly arise when these dynamics are not understood, as highlighted in case history (4), where Jerry was subject to the unresolved wounds of the female statutory workers.

Blame, shame and anguish, along with various other psychological dynamics need to be worked upon, whilst working with vulnerable clients. Necessarily this takes a significant emotional toll on the practitioner, as they must be anchored within themselves and connected to a wider environment. Otherwise, they will succumb to ‘vicarious trauma’ (Courtois and Ford, 2009), and potentially feel the same sense of meaninglessness as their client(s). To enact a therapeutic version of a PIE (Whittington, 2011) requires emotionally literate (Steiner, 2003) practitioners first and foremost. Everyone, in turn, requires ongoing emotional support. Unfortunately, not all health and social practitioners have these defining qualities, as it requires continuous work on the self to work at a deeper level. A high standard is demanded from each individual to achieve this pinnacle, arising from wanting to understand how the ‘self’ operates in relation to other people.

Social class is not the defining attribute for ‘emotional literacy’ (Steiner, 2003), neither are specific gender, race or sexuality dynamics key to creating practitioners with a theory of mind (Tajifel, 1984). Neither does it require any previous experience of being homeless or using substances. ‘Emotional literacy’ (Steiner, 2003) is founded upon the individual developing a ‘theory of mind’ (Sartre, 1939, Tajifel, 1984) which is a basic requirement for the work, and this entails drawing on empathy. The levels of awareness often depend on how much self-awareness an individual has undertaken on their own reflection. The key is then to make continuous shifts. To be able to connect to the ‘other’ (Sartre, 1943) is the crux, and having this ability cuts across social class, gender, sexuality, race and religious beliefs. As the field begins to transform, enlightened practitioners should be the people contributing to, and eventually delivering aspects of social work, psycho-therapy, youth work, child studies, psychology, sociology and the other ‘soft sciences’. The aim is to create a paradigm shift throughout the health and social care sectors, based on phenomenology.

Academic research meanwhile, needs to be based upon the delivery of therapeutic methods, in particular, understanding the interventions which work in practice. This ensures that emotional recovery takes precedence. Knowledge needs to be embedded and lived, or derived from ‘praxis’ (Arendt, 1958, Freire, 1970), based on an application of action and theory in synthesis, and then time should be set aside for reflection. Links between practice and theory are crucial to embed both components. Practice becomes anecdotal without being linked to theory, as the reformed addict’s view for example, currently dominates the substance use discourse within substance use services. Currently, the unreflected views of the ‘wounded healer’ (Jung, 1964) is accepted as having divine credence. Meanwhile, those imbued in theory are engaged in a desire to dominate the field by quoting their random control studies. There is a battle for power, in the interpretation of reality. However, the arbiter is, what creates emotional recovery? When the links are made between practice and theory, the barriers existing between the contemplative world of the scholar, as noted by Arendt (1958), and the practitioner, began to crumble.

Presently within academia, scientific rationalism is lauded, based on the rise of neuroscience (Whittington, 2014); critiqued in this book as an empirical mirage. It is critiqued, because its adherents draw on unreflected psychological ‘projections’ (Freud, 1937), inherent within their hypothesis, and these are duly beamed onto the world without further ado. The social scientist is anointed in their task to label behaviour, and then seek the presumed biological cause. Freud, according to Adler (1954) had the same belief system. This only seeks to label the individual and does not engage in their recovery. It is founded upon the static world view of the individual being the measure of all things.

Praxis (Arendt, 1958, Freire, 1970), dissolves the psychological ‘projections’ (Freud, 1937) of those who have ‘been there’ and therefore do not read any further, because after being an ‘addict’ they understand all ‘addicts’ regardless of their life history. These are the basic tenets of a ‘wounded healer’ (Jung, 1964), a specific discourse, where those still hurt by their unhealed wounds, as Jung (1964) explored, view the world from these ‘schemas of apperception’ (Adler, 1954). A ‘wounded healer’ requires a deeper reflection by someone external to them, as they are trapped within themselves. Healing only occurs when the individual obtains a wider ‘social interest’ (Alder, 1954), a connection with, and understanding of other people. Their ‘wounds’, whilst they remain unresolved, entrap them within a form of narcissism; where they view the rest of the world based upon their personal ‘schemas’ (Adler, 1954), founded upon their previous negative experiences. Due to this lack of healing they remain disconnected from themselves, and most importantly remain distant from the individuals who they meet. Each individual is weighed according to their self-comprehension, as they become the jug, ruler or weight, and from this basis, then measure others. Alternatively, they could potentially offer a significant insight. Those who have worked through their wounds, are the people who develop an enhanced theory of mind. These are the elite practitioners, known here as the ‘knights’.

The entrapment of any individual within institutional labyrinths echoes the entrapment of the practitioner in creeds and discourses. Everyone is wandering around in Kafka’s (2009) Castle, trudging through the snow in a pointless mission. Universities and colleges need to equip frontline workers to engage with specific therapeutic tools, so they can enact a psycho-social regeneration of those individuals who remain ensnared in negativity. At present this rarely happens, as students are taught contemplative techniques (Arendt, 1958), whilst residing within the confines of the university. When they emerge into the external world they realise these constructs do not have any ecological validity, or any practical application. Instead the whole system is based on the same hierarchical arrangements that echo class based systems, encased in the scientific realm of ‘us and them’.

Academia has offered minimal insight from the time of its mass expansion, since the rise of New Labour in 1997, and this is an on-going concern. Due to the alienated forms of learning imposed upon students who are tasked to regurgitate neuroscience as truth, there is a primary focus on labelling (Becker, 1963) individuals; where there is a demarcation of difference, without any understanding around how people emotionally recover - leading to a wider social paralysis. Students imbibe at these pools of knowledge to obtain the necessary qualifications, and later re-enact their intellectual learning within their practice, despite the fact these ideas only offer a reflection of a personal nihilism of those who devise them. In effect, this discourse operates as another form of ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 1998), an emotional wounding. Firstly, the student is wounded as their voice is negated, and so the student learns to operate in the same mode when meeting a client, as they are taught to inhabit the moral centre.

Abstract qualities, such as the experiences and feelings of the client are negated, as the tabulation of their behaviour allows the practitioner to convert the individual into a thing, or category. All labelling is apparently undertaken objectively, without passion and then enacted without sentiment, drawing on a rational bureaucratic template. This is also what is termed science, a form of elevated disassociated ruthlessness, based on sublimating the individual emotions (Fenichel, 1945), whilst instead wearing a frozen dispassionate mask.

Nihilism ultimately builds within the construction of these knowledge pyramid schemes, operating as a form of necrophilia (Fromm, 1973), carefully manufactured by the contemplative academic (Arendt, 1958). The ideas they propound are fundamentally baseless, as they lack any axiom, or a secure foundation. A key component of these discourses are the various social constructions, concocted in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), the metre ruler of the psychiatrist. It has emerged in various guises, thereby allowing its ‘labels’ (Becker, 1963) to be applied without any understanding of their effect on the individual. The DSM provides ‘legitimacy’ for the practitioner to appear to be dispassionate in the dispatch of various directives, as it allows an order to hit the recipient with a ‘sting’ (Whittington, 2007a) without feeling any guilt, or comeback, in what then occurs. It provides the functionary with a meaning, so they can disassociate from any negative recoil. However, as Szasz (1960) explores, this template is a social construction, not derived from empirical science, but by groups of powerful practitioners. They meet to impose their ‘labels’ (Becker, 1963) upon the less powerful, and so legitimate their practices. Mental illness is a social construction, as there is no empirical science to demarcate the ‘trigger, only observation, tabulation and the eventual (mis)use of power. The ‘label’ is imposed upon someone who is vulnerable, and they carry the ‘stigma’ forever. The ramifications of this discourse were previously explored by Foucault (1978) in The History of Sexuality Volume 1.

An axiom is a foundation upon which the knowledge structures are built. Obscured are the origins of the knowledge base, but the discourse builds on preceding research undertaken by past researchers. Founding axioms can be traced back to Kraepelin (1906) and Galton (1869) for example, the men who concocted the ideas. Meanwhile, each current academic offers peer reviewed support to the newly indoctrinated (Polyani, 1946), so everyone buys into the knowledge pyramid, by being initiated into its secrets. However, any genealogical excavation (Foucault, 1972) of the knowledge base, illuminates the absence of any concrete foundation. For neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, speculation and projections (Freud, 1937) are the basic requirements for these discourses, but this is not empirical science, although, it is portrayed as being scientific by its adherents. They rest upon the notion of the hypothesis, which is nothing more than the unresolved wounds of the researcher, latterly transfigured, through the operation of power into the discourse of objective science.

Fundamentally, these discourses rest upon a certain degree of ‘faith’. They build upon the basis of the invisible realm: assumed brain reward systems, twin studies (Jay, 2016) or the reduction to an assumed ‘chemical balance’ or presumed genetic antecedents. There are no support structures, existing within empirical science underpinning these discourses. For example, demarcating someone who has ‘chemical balance’ is never explored, only those who lack chemical balance; instead these concepts operate as ‘social contagion’s’ (Le Bon, 1895) or Ponzi schemes, as if (Vaihinger, 1924) they were already proved.

Each individual who enters the realm has to believe in the veracity of the instructed discourse, because they have invested so much of their time in learning its language. Similar to medieval religion, this entails undertaking no reflection upon its inherent veracity. Whilst learning its doctrines, any anomalies are quickly ignored, because these undermine the belief in the core ideal. The Ponzi scheme(s) operate as a cult, and the university is its sanctified temple built upon various ‘parataxic distortions’ (Stack-Sullivan, 1953). Each discourse arises from the emotional wounds of the contemplative academic (Arendt, 1958) and their desire to obtain a ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche, 1968).

One axiom for neuroscience is the work of Crick (Siegel and Callaway, 2004) and the concept of genes; where the secrets of the robotic self are seemingly located. As a discourse it is very simplistic. It ignores the wider social world any individual is located. Wished away, are the family dynamics (micro worlds), neighbourhood interactions (meso), wider localities (exo) and national directives (macro) plus cultural history and customs (chronos) (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

Adherents of neuroscience willingly state that the men in these case histories would have emerged as ‘addicts’ and ‘mentally ill’, despite the fact they were ostracised, raped, beaten or neglected as children, because it was in their genetic template. Ignored are the realities, and instead invisible neuroscientific entities are given credence within this ‘faith’. Those who state this ‘fact’, believe they have the full weight of science backing them up in their inability to grasp the ‘reality principle’. Instead they refer to their studies composed of imprisoned rats (Bozarth, 1990) to outline the concept of addiction as inherent. This is where solitary rats are allowed the solace of feeding on a narcotic. Subsequently these findings, despite having no ecological validity, are applied to human beings due to an ongoing ‘social contagion’ (Le Bon, 1895), despite the fact humans have advanced language skills and live in social groups.

Alternatively, as this simplistic belief has come under attack for ignoring the wider world, there is a newer concept called epigenetics, where seemingly a percentage of genetic precursors, are apparently also located within the genetic make-up. These are deemed to be the causes of behavioural problems (Ptak and Petronis, 2010). So, behavioural issues, instead of being located within relationships and the local culture, along with the social dynamics, are, once again, reduced to presumed inherited dysfunctional individualistic genes. Twin studies (Jay, 2016) are then rolled out to provide legitimacy to this creed.

Again however, these discourses founded upon ‘parataxic distortions’ (Stack-Sullivan, 1953). Jay (2016) for example, analyses the foundations of the twin research discourse, linking how its adherents gloss over any anomalies to reconfigure the results. Twin studies were clearly falsified to provide a grounding for pre-existing genetic assumptions. As they became established in the popular mind, they gained legitimacy, as if they were true. The underlying principles were never challenged and so they form part of a social contagion (Le Bon, 1895).

Despite years of research there is still no empirical basis to any genetic component of a mental health diagnosis (Jay, 2016). Despite the outward sophistication of this genetic discourse, neuroscience is essentially an academic Ponzi scheme, founded upon what Polyani (1946) would term ‘faith’; requiring a form of hysteria or ‘social contagion’ (Le Bon, 1895) to spread its beliefs. Try isolating an adolescent schizophrenia gene from an early child abuse experience, for example. For epigeneticists, however, there is a belief that twins have the same micro-experiences, so, behaviour can be researched to ascertain convergences and differences (Jay, 2016). But this is not grounded upon any phenomenological investigation of the twin’s lives. Their voices are neglected, as the genetic researcher operates top down, drawing on a series of pre-existing assumptions, where, apparently parents treat both children the same. There are numerous examples of one twin trying or murdering another, so clearly the dynamics within the family are extremely important. Meanwhile, despite these anomalies, a knowledge pyramid arises from these beliefs, building in layers from a total erasure, as contemplative academic careers arise and float on hot air.

After being unable to encapsulate child abuse in the 20th Century, there is currently a neuroscience attempt to locate the experiences of child abuse within the ‘hard-wiring’ of the brain; as if the brain itself was a complicated electric circuit board (Melton et al, 2013). Within this discourse, the individual is reduced to a functioning orderly machine, thereby allowing the expert technician to legitimately make sense of their experiences. For those indoctrinates who believe in this discourse, there is a desire to prove that being the victim of child abuse affects the internal workings of the brain negatively. So, the main emphasis is a focus upon monitoring the behaviour of the individual, and then a further speculation aberrant behaviour is linked to the brains ‘hardwiring’. The term ‘hardwiring’ presupposes the brain is similar to an object which can be only deciphered by an objective scientist. Here, the victims of child abuse are pathologised by the technocrat, who, after initially losing the power to predict, due to being totally unaware child abuse existed, seeks to reclaim the crown of knowledge by pronouncing a sanctified view.

Interestingly, this was an idea later contested by Fodor (2000), in the mind doesn’t work that way. Fodor was one of the original proponents of the computational theory of mind, basing his ideas on Turing (Fodor, 2000:4). Fodor (2000) outlines, it was only ever meant to be a partial theory, and not the basis for a whole discourse of the mind. There is a discrepancy between what Fodor originally envisaged (2000), and how the discourse has subsequently unfolded. It has unfurled again, as a ‘social contagion’ (Le Bon, 1895), taking on a life of its own, as if (Vaihinger, 1924) it was initially proved true.

As if, written by Vaihinger (1924) explores how a Ponzi scheme emerges; where an illusion is produced within certain reminiscences, and a ‘social contagion‘ then results, as these ideas later become to be believed be true. A ‘social contagion’ (Le Bon, 1895), is therefore a superstition, which takes on a life off its own, as its veracity is spread by its adherents. Naturally, it depends on how these views are articulated (Le Bon, 1895:18), as to how they eventually become constructed as truths. As a result, these beliefs are handed to adherents within university discourses shaping how these technicians subsequently interact