Cresswell, M. 2007 "Self-harm and the politics of experience".
Journal of Critical Psychology Volume 7, Issue 1, Spring 2007, pp
9-17
Cresswell, M. 29.5.2008
"Problems with academic writing on the
history
of psychiatric user/survivor activism - some
notes on the 'History of Mental Health Service User/Survivor Movement
Group' meeting 29.5.2008"
Cresswell, M. 2008/Szasz "Szasz and His Interlocutors: Reconsidering
Thomas Szasz's "Myth of Mental Illness" Thesis". Journal for
the Theory
of Social Behaviour
38:1 - 0021-8308
pdf copy
Cresswell, M. 22.8.2009
"Asylum to Action, 'Survivors' history, and the
symbols of a movement". Survivors History Group. 22.8.2009.
Available at
http://studymore.org.uk#CressHS.pdf
This is review of Helen Spandler's
Asylum to Action, Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic Communities and
Beyond 2006
Draft offline
1 -
2 -
3 of "Survivors' history and the symbols of a
movement -
A review of Helen Spandler's Asylum to Action, by Mark Cresswell. To be
published in
Asylum
Mark Cresswell and
Helen Spandler
Cresswell, C. and Spandler, S. 2009 "Psychopolitics: Peter
Sedgwick's legacy for the politics of mental health" Social Theory and
Health Volume 7, 2, pages 129-147. Palgrave Macmillan 2009 -
pdf
copy
Cresswell, M. 14.7.2010
History of Self-Harm Activism, 1986 - 2004
. PowerPoint presentation. Mark Cresswell for the Survivor
History Group. Centre of Excellence in
Interdisciplinary Mental Health, University of Birmingham,
14.7.2010.
download
Mark Cresswell and Zulfi Karimova
Cresswell, M. and Karimova, Z. 2010 "Self-Harm and Medicine's Moral
Code: A Historical Perspective, 1950-2000" Ethical Human Psychology and
Psychiatry, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2010. Springer Publishing
Company
download
Mark Cresswell and
Helen Spandler
Cresswell, M. and Spandler, H. forthcoming 2011? "The Engaged
Academic: academic intellectuals and the psychiatric survivor movement".
Cresswell, M. and Spandler, H. 2012 "The Engaged
Academic: Academic intellectuals and the psychiatric survivor movement".
Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political
Protest
DOI:10.1080/14742837.2012.696821
ABSTRACT: This paper considers some political and ethical issues associated
with the 'academic
intellectual' who researches social movements. It identifies some of the
'lived contradictions' such a
role encounters and analyses some approaches to addressing these
contradictions. In general, it
concerns the 'politico-ethical stance' of the academic intellectual in
relation to social movements
and, as such, references the 'theory of the intellectual' associated with
the work of Antonio Gramsci.
More specifically, it considers that role in relation to one political
'field' and one type of movement:
a field which we refer to, following the work of Peter Sedgwick, as
'psychopolitics', and a movement
which, since the mid- to late-1980s, has been known as the 'psychiatric
survivor' movement-
psychiatric patients and their allies who campaign for the democratisation
of the mental health
system. In particular, through a comparison of two texts, Nick Crossley's
Contesting Psychiatry and
Kathryn Church's Forbidden Narratives, the paper contrasts different depths
of engagement between
academic intellectuals and the social movements which they research.
Email review by Andrew Roberts 5.11.2012
The article is written in a style that I find difficult to penetrate and
I am grateful to Helen Spandler for helping me to understand it. Helen
points out that it was not
actually written for
survivors , but targetted at a certain kind of
academic
audience. It is, however, about survivors and Mark and Helen are writing
about the problems of engaging with survivors.
I think the article is important - actually, I think it is very
important. So I will try to explain why in my own language. The
article is partly about
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)'s theory that
thinking is as important a human activity as making things. Gramsci
argued that we all think and so we are all
intellectuals. However,
society enables some of us to specialise in being intellectuals.
Groups within society, for example, can give thinkers an opportunity
to develop thoughts by putting us in contact with other thinkers.
Survivors Speak Out, for example, gave
Peter
Campbell
and
Louise Pembroke (two outstanding "movement intellectuals"
identified by Mark
and Helen) opportunities to meet other survivors with whom they
developed their ideas more fully than they would otherwise have been
able to do. Gramsci calls the way society facilitates specialist
thinking naturally like this "organic". However, organic
intellectuals can sometimes develop into an "academic" group (not to
be confused with "academia"), and this has been very important in the
history of ideas. Academic intellectuals are not (on my reading of
Gramsci) agents of the ruling class, as Mark and Helen seem to think,
but a class that has gained a relative autonomy from the groups that
generated it. The academic group preserves an intellectual tradition
that can criticise (pragmatic) group thinking. Pragmatic group
thinking is the group thinking that serves the interests of groups.
There is an idealist tradition of academic intellect that Gramsci
traces back to the ancient Greeks (Plato, Socrates etc) and which
continues through a winding path in history to the critical
philosophy of Rousseau, Kant and Hegal from which Gramsci's own
version of marxism, in part, flows. Gramsci makes an effort to trace
how this was able to survive in a class society and to continue
relatively autonomously as the nature of the ruling class changed.
So, why is this important? In my opinion it is important because it
places intellect where it belongs, in the whole body of society and
not in an elitist part called "academia". It is important because it
preserves the concepts of critical objectivity that allow one to
think about what is "true" and not just adopt a relativist position
that any idea is as good as any other idea. It is important because
it alerts us to where the development of social ideas may be taking
place - in movements of ordinary people. (Who am I calling
"ordinary"!). It is important because it does not rubbish the
intellectual tradition which is (sometimes) preserved by academia,
although in Gramsci's case it was preserved in prison (where the
Fascists put him). Gramsci sees the dialogue between organic
intellect and academic intellect as important for progress.
If you look at Mark and Helen's article, you will see that they have
a different interpretation of the issues to mine. I think they are
most concerned about academia (universities) dialoguing with social
movements and not so much with what Fabian (Tompsett) called "life-
long learning" when we discussed some of this at a London meeting of
the Survivor History Group. Whatever people think about this, I hope
you will agree that Mark and Helen have raised interesting and
important issues. I also think that Nick Crossley's reply raises
interesting and important issues - Some of which I think my email
relates to.