♀️🔮05 January 2024
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Interesting article on Longstreet, scallywags, and Liberal Republicanism during reconstruction.
…
14:02
05 January 2024
Preliminary
Freewrite
Quotes & Commentary on Conclusion
Conclusion
quote
“Almost three decades [before the publication of A History of Self Harm in Britain in 2015], Howard Kushner write of his unease at increasingly neurological understandings of behavior such as suicide. He argues that ‘[o]ne feature of neuropathological approaches, however, seems unaffected by this increaasing sophistication: the more scientifically complex these investigations become, the more they tend to ignore the social and historical context in which the behavior that they seek to explain takes place.’ In these accounts, neurology displaces social context. In characteristically forthright terms, in 2014 Roger Cooter describes the turn to neurological explanations as ‘like becoming the victim of mind parasites’ because these explanations foreclose the ability to think critically about the social and cultural context of the explanations themselves: they are presented as universally true and outside of culture or history.”192
commentary:
In a word: positivism. the prioritization of the quantitative over the qualitative. The invisibilization of culture, history, sociality. The naturalization, all pervastion, of science and especially neurology.
SUMMARY
…in the early 1950s facilities for the treatment of poisoning, psychological scrutiny and psychiatric social work (PSW) expertise all converge at an observation ward in Edinburgh. This results in psychological scrutiny of physically injured patients, but also in the rooting of psychopathology (through the conceptual apparatus of John Bowlby) in childhood emotional edeprivation in so-called broken homes. Psychiatrist Ivor Batchelor and PSW Margaret Napier operate in tandem to construct a vision of psychological maladjustment and low stress tolerance in the background of these attempted suicide patients. This is largely achieved thorugh intensive questioning and assiduous follow-up by PSWs. A similar object of concern is publicised around the same time in London observation wards by Erwin Stengel and co-workers (principally PSW Nancy Cook). This attempted suicide is agaain part of a crossover between mental and general medicine, but more focused upon a present-centered (often unconcious) appeal, in response to social difficulties. 195
commentary
following relatively straightfoward notions of attempted-but-failed-suicide, the study of trauma during and after the world wars, the establishment of the NHS and replacement of assylums with general hospitals and eventually observation wards and with it new aparatuses of funding (which alters the landscape for policy justifications) and a general trend towards social and state responsibility for addressing psychiatric problems, in the early 1950s new psychiatric objects of study and treatment emerge.
[where does parasuicide come in?]
Edinburgh vs London
early 1950s Edinburgh: broken homes, maladjustment, childhood emotional deprivation leads to contemporary low stress tolerance, studied through extended questioning and follow up visits.
Question: is the early Edinburgh understood as a concious appeal?
1950s London: focused on present-centeed and often unconcious appeal, in response to social difficulties
late 1950s Suicide and attempted suicide are decriminalised
Commentary: in Edinburgh, there is a social dimension to causation but not neccessarily opperation. because one is neglected, one hurts themselves. escape? appeal? read earlier chapter
Commentary: in London, the response is again social, though present rather then past. but theres a notion of one automatically reaching out, rather than regulating oneself internally as we see later under the neoliberal neurological/neurochemcial regime one …
Reflection: ugh i’m not sure. i *think* that there’s a conceptual tidal lock around an atomized self, whtehre its a self regulating atom or a self advocating atom, as opposed to my intervention, that self harm occurs in a social relationship to the self where there may be advocacy and regulation but also adversity and self disruption, judication …
Consider: see especially self punishment [later in the chapter], technologies of the self in Foucault by way of Mahmood
…
early 1960s Edinburgh: MRC sets up a unit under Kessel who studies attempted suicide, which he renames renamed self-poisoning.
“collaborating extensively with PSWs, Kessel roots the causes of self-poisoning firmly in the present, and as a concsious appeal, in an all-encompassing category of distress, centered upon a feminised vision of the home and supposed marital disharmony.” 195
..
“the growing self-evidence of the social constellation (in a society here the state’s social responsibilities are much larger than today) remains a product of much intellectual and practical effort. it means that a broadly causative social setting is increasingly presumed around a casulaty admission for poisoning. this presumption makes the behavioural category increasingly stable, public and availiable as an intelligible human response to interpersoanl difficulties. This broader self-evidence fuels new terminological offereings, with ‘parasuicide’ the latest neoligism, proposed in 1969.” top of 196
Commentary: there’s difinitely something appealing in the neoliberal neurological neurochemical model of self regulation and individual self sufficiency which allows one to say,, no, i’m not calling for help, i am not doing this manipulatively nor as an unconcious agency-less appeal, rather i am doing it for my own reasons [remember! Self-harm works!] which allows for a positon to challenge the rather gendered mysoginistic
but what is lacking is inquiry into the qualitative why self harm works, the internal dynamic of a intrasocial person, which goes beyond Magic Brain Chemicals which science can measure but not situate.
////////////////
“Alongside (and entangled with) this story runs that of self cutting from the early 1960s. Self -cutting (especially of the wrists and arms) has long featured as a seeming methodological quirk in self-poisoning and parasuicide studies, presenting at hospitals as aproximately 5% of self damage. In these general hospital-based studies, self-cutting or self-lacerating are not seen as motivated differently to self poisoioning. However, self-cutting also emerges in the context of psychiatric inpatient institutions. Influenced by North American psychoanalytic inpatieent literature, aBritish corpus of studies on self-cutting, self mutilation or wrist cutting emerges. This is initially seen as related to the strictures and constraints of the inpatient environment and provokes much interest and concern due to its highly distressing and contagious epidemic nature.” 196
commentary: see article on self cutting as epidemic in youth inpatient treatment.. self cutting as epidemic means its necessarily social—spreading from person to person, necessarily plural.
“however, as the 1960s pass into the 1970s, a sense emerges from these inpatient studies that self-cutting is motivated by internal, emotional psychopathology groudned in a sense of intolerable psychic tension. This remains strong in the current literature on self-cutting. as karen skegg reports in 2005 in the Lancet, this is not a clear-cut [no pun intended i’m sure] disavbowl of communication, but instead the relative dominance of internal, emotional and tension-based factors: ‘Reported motivations for adult superficial self-mutilation include: to relieve tension, to provide distraction from painful feelings, as self punishment, to decrease dissociative symptoms, and to block upsettting memories, and to communicate distress to others.
196
commentary: really key passage here. questions to consider:
why relive tension and decrease dissociative symptoms (in my case, these often acompany need to function in public, such as in class or at work, around friends or to avoid getting fired). so socially orientated motivations and the relieving tension model can sit together side by side quite well. contrast to drinking alchohal, which can relieve tension but does not leave one so clear headed as cutting
self punishment implies a deep intrapersonal social logic, see also self hate, anger, not necessirily as easilly related to (possibly shared) moral standing but rather indicative of internal relations of conflict.
cutting as sacrament, corrective penance, end-in-itself punishment,technology of self…
“re-reading of self cutting” 196
commentary: self cutting, as symptom and behavior alike, is a kind of writing, a kind of text.
beginning with a study conducted by Hawton in the mid 70s and published in 78, “the idea that self-cutting ad self-poisoning are differently motivated behaviors begins to gain traction. Self cutting becomes stabilized as a method of internal affective regulation, whilst self poisoning is rendered more ambigious: it features both as a genuine suicide attempt and socially directed self-damage.
196-197
commentary: 2 dichotomies: internal affective regulation against social contexts, and genuine sucidal attempts against social messaging.
“as much as the rise of self-cutting might resonate — somewhat perversely — with neo-liberal ideas of self-reliance, and be part of the retreat of the state from social welfare spending…there are still specific, mundane, administrative practices that correspond to the retreat of self-poisoing from national significance. 197
commentary: yes.
METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTION
see quote from Dispatches 02 Pentember and commentary from 03 Pentember
THE RISE OF NEUROLOGY
*or, everything is messy and complicated but neurology sure does love affect regulation which sure does love individualism*
commentary: narrative allows us to parse intrapersonal sociality, self reflection, AND interpersonal social relationships, interaction …see especially Lent, Terra Ignota, Mark 5.
“...we see that self-cutting is botha residual and a newly emergent category. It is understood--gradually and unevenly—as a method of affective self-regulation rather than social communication. This opens the way to neurological explanations of the behavior. This happens because neurological explanations focus upon the individual’s nervous system as a privileged site of understanding. The reason that it is only a small step from ‘individual tension’ to ‘neurochemestry’ is that both approaches, or concepts, take the individual at their starting points. [“at” sic]. A communicative attempt, in contrast, focuses upon a social situation in which various people are embedded. However, even this contrast has recently become unstable, as there is work that investigates the ‘neurology of social cognition’ as well as sociological work on the discipline of neuroscience (upon which this book has drawn). However, the point stands that internal emotional turmoil maps much more easily onto neurological understandingss than does psychosocial communication. 200
commentary: caveats, but the point remains
“Michael simpson is among the first to speculate upon a biological basis for the behavior of self cuttingin 1976, but he is notably cautious in ascribing behavior any secure biological basis. In 2001, Fiona Garrdener (a psychoanalytially trained therapist) writes in a cutious and equivicol vein about ‘self-harm’: ‘[t]he behavior can be coercive, in that self-harming produces a wanted response from others; second, itis is relieving, in that is produces a lightening of mood, either through biochemical alterations and the associated release of endorphins (the body’s own analgesics), or conditioning, or symbolically.” 200-201
commentary: coercive, biochemical, conditioning, and symbolically. what does the last of these imply?
Action Item: track down Gardner’s Self-Harm: A psychotherapeutic approach, hove, brunner-rutledge (2001)
“ adler and Adler are clear about their desire to ‘demedicalise’ self-cutting, understanding it instead through sociological concepts such as deviance and social reinforcement. it should be noted that sociological and psychological explanations persist — based upon learning and paper group influence and yet remain based upon ideas of emotional regulation. this is not a dichotomous split. however, over the past decade there have been many efforts to understand self-harm through neruochemical and neurological frames of reference. Health communications scholar warren bareiss concludes that media narratives of self-injury consistently downplay possible social causes of self-injury in in favor of a model that understands self-injury as a personal choice. This idea of an individualised, personal choice meshes well with neurochemical understandings, as well as with market-based ideology that is centered upon a rational, autonomoyus consumer. [////] This is a complex and nuanced picture, where social — and sociological— explanations can co-exist with ideas of internal tension and can also feed into neurological explanations.
question: does this help with my orbital tidal lock argument?
202
Next up:
NEO-LIBERALISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND BIOMEDICINE 202
(yayyyy)
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Action Items
Find notes (legal pads) on Foucualt, Millard, Schmitt
Find phenomonological article
Find article on adolescent cutting among inpatients
Look at Mahmood
reread chapter on Edinburgh and London 50s and 60s to figure out
was edinburgh in the early 50s understood as conscious appeal?
follow up on parasuicide