David Smail on Depression

David Smail talks about depression and psychotherapy in excerpts from Thames TV series on depression produced and directed by the late Nina Burr in 1989.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• David_Smail
• Depression
• Psychotherapy

[djlookwood]

@djlookwood And it is the KNOWLEDGE of that pain, those wounds and what it really feels like to be abused that drives my own work forwards, that helped me see how I was mistreating my own children (slapping, shouting, ordering, bullying) and STOP and make myself accountble to them, and change my behaviours...

[djlookwood]

@badlydrawnboyan I understand that perfectly.... I am Survivor of Irish Catholic Boarding Schools and it has taken me 30 years to get tot he point where I am now. And was I angry, raging? Yes! Tinged with shame, guilt and confusion and that was toxic as f&^k! Having been able to develop self empathy for me as a child and re-parent myself myself, I still carry the scares, the memories but without the shame, the guilt or the confusion. I wish the same for all of us who have been harmed.

[djlookwood]

I agree too about the intelligence of the working class and underclass and the blindness of middle class in this regard is partly the outcome of Compulsory State Education.

[djlookwood]

@badlydrawnboyan you are correct, of course. "remote" is just a good a word as "distal". He is saying what you wrote, and his writings speak to that awareness... yes he IS middle class, and is speaking to a middle class audience... that doesn't need to diminish his core message. we are born into a power society and power damages people and then blames the damaged to mask their actions...

[djlookwood]

Badly drawn boy - if you LISTENED carefully, Smail makes it VERY clear that the limits of therapy have to be recognised, and in recognising these, one is drawn to examining the kind of society we are born into - what he shows clearly in his work is that peoples lives are most often adversely affected by the influences of what he calls 'distal power' - power beyond the reach of most people to influence. That's a HUGE point to make, and one ignored all too frequently by Politicians and ideologues

[kamilla1960]

His website is called 'Social Power and Psychological Distress: A social materialist approach to clinical psychology.

[kamilla1960]

Have a look at David Smail's books and his website.

[thisaccursedman]

@badlydrawnboyan I'm fairly sure he's saying that people from exactly those sorts of backgrounds cannot be held responsible for being depressed, and that it is society's fault that they end up that way. But don't let that inconvenient fact interfere with your moronic scouse ranting.

[othernessmusic]

Excellent. Lets stop blaming the victim.

[djlookwood]

@peoplesrepub0fEmily It turns out that the disruption of the child mother bonding process in any given Society is the best predictor of the emergence of violence, hierarchy, religiosity and sociopathy. Google 'james prescot' and 'origins of violence' for more data on this. You're right, politics IS a compensation for that lack, because lack of empathy = lack of connection which gives rise to FEAR, and fear leads to violence.