Power, Responsibility And Freedom

Power, Responsibility and Freedom An Internet Publication By David Smail 1 Introduction The standpoint from which I write is a 'clinical' one, and the (tentative and provisional) conclusions I come to are the result of having struggled for years to make sense of the kinds of distress people bring to the psychological clinic, and how they cope with it. In the course of that struggle I have found myself constantly wandering into territory that is only partially familiar to me and being forced to use tools not routinely found in the clinical psychologist's kit. Though this is not a work of sociology, politics or philosophy, it will at times seem as if it is trying to be; but I want to insist, still, that it is a work of clinical psychology, and that is because it is throughout rooted in and informed by 'clinical' experience. Even then, however, I have heavily to qualify the use of the word 'clinical' because it carries with it so many false assumptions. The majority of those who find themselves in distress in Western society turn to the clinic because there is nowhere else to go that carries the same promise of relief. They, as well as most of those who treat them, believe that they are hosts of a personal illness or disorder that can be cured by established medical and/or therapeutic techniques. That belief, however, is in my view (and the view of many others) false, and it is clinical experience itself that reveals it as false. By 'clinical psychology', then, I do not mean a set of medically or therapeutically based procedures for the cure of emotional distress, but rather a privileged opportunity to investigate with people the origins of their difficulties and to consider the possibilities for change. Unfortunately, orthodox clinical psychology has in my view failed to make the most of this privileged opportunity, and has been misled by its anxious desire to heal, as well as by i