Response to ‘Defacing The Currency?’ by Christopher Scanlon and John Adlam

Abstract

This article deals with social and political matters, which we do not usually address. It is a clear example of group-analytic thinking, applied to an urgent social problem: the plight of the homeless, the dangerous and the disordered, who reject the aid of the ‘helping’ agencies and their workers.

The reference to Diogenes the Cynic, whose borderline position, neither in nor out of society, allowed him to question the political currency of Athens, is a metaphor of our own critical position as group-analysts. The Diogenes paradigm is a way of living, thinking and acting in the fringe, neither fully in society nor completely out of it. This is the place of both the victims of society and its critics.

An ‘inside’ may only exist as a result of the creation of an ‘outside’. The mental health professionals, living in a housed state of mind, are at odds to imagine and understand the un-housed and dis-membered states that these people strive to express by their choice of dwelling place and way of living. This breeds a mutual misunderstanding, only overcome when they listen to each other and develop a dialogue, which brings both parties a new understanding of oneself, the other, and their mutual plight.

This places a heavy load on the mental health practitioners, since it is bound to throw them into a crisis, as they question their own position vis-à-vis an inadequate social system. It is a most painful enterprise, which cannot be done alone, but only as a member of a group. The authors’ answer to this problem is the Diogenes paradigm— understood as a way of critical thinking that favours the meeting of groups of like-minded professionals involved in the inquiry of these deeply traumatizing and excluding processes.

Since the problem is much wider than the plight of the homeless and their would-be helpers, this reviewer believes that the proposal should be amplified to include non-professional community groups. This is not just a question of community psychiatry and social work, but of community survival, and it concerns us all.