Self and Society Volume 44 Issue 4

The following lists the contents of Self and Society, Volume 44 Issue 4.
Each article can be downloaded as a PDF, but only if you are logged in as an AHP subscriber.
The table of contents for this issue can be downloaded as a PDF file.

Editorial:
Authors: Richard House, David Kalisch, Gillian Proctor
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Guest Editor’s Introduction: Paul Goodman (1911–1972)
Author: Martin Levy
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Article:
Historicizing sixties counterculture via Paul Goodman and the Beats
Author: Luke Walker
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Abstract:

In this article, I explore Paul Goodman’s ambivalent relationship with Allen Ginsberg as a fellow elder statesman of the sixties, and argue that his conflicted attitude towards the Beats is reflective of broader tensions within the radical cultures of the period. Finally, I also suggest that by exploring points in common between Goodman and the Beats, we can gain a better understanding of the links between 1960s counterculture and its precursor and successor movements, from Romanticism to Green politics.

Compulsory Miseducation: how far has Paul Goodman’s 1962 book affected education around the world?
Author: David Gribble
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Abstract:

After more than 50 years, Paul Goodman’s Compulsory Miseducation (1962) has not lost its relevance. Many of his targets – testing, compulsory and/or uniform curricula, over-mighty administrators, an excessive emphasis on classroom-based learning – are still with us, notably here in the UK, notwithstanding several changes of government. However, there are places that Goodman would probably have approved of, such as Moo Baan Dek children’s village in Thailand, and Room 13 at Caol Primary School in Scotland.

Paul Goodman and the Gestalt theory of self
Author: Peter Philippson
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Abstract:

Paul Goodman contributed to the Gestalt theory of self in a number of ways, not least by extending some of Fritz Perls’ founding insights and further distancing the theory from its psychoanalytical underpinning. His seminal text Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (co-authored with Perls and Ralph Hefferline, 1951) introduced the ideas of ‘creative adjustment’ and the ‘autonomous criterion’, which are central to his own, more nuanced perspective.

From ‘bisexual’ to ‘queer’: the radical sexuality of Paul Goodman
Author: Craig M. Loftin
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Abstract:

This article explores the nature of Paul Goodman’s sexuality within his historical context, arguing that his radical queerness influenced his social and political radicalism in important ways. His unrepentant homosexuality allowed him to identify as a social rebel, and it also broadened his understanding of the human condition. His visibility as a self-identified ‘queer’ provided a model for the early 1970s American gay liberation movement. Goodman’s conservative attitudes about gender, however, also encouraged the sexism found in many 1960s American social movements.

Wooden huts, anyone? Paul Goodman’s The Community of Scholars after (more than) 50 years
Author: Martin Levy
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Abstract:

Arguably, administrators are killing our universities. More than 50 years ago, leading American intellectual Paul Goodman counselled secession. Is it time to revisit this option?

Where goes a ‘Neolithic conservative’?
Author: Michael C. Fisher
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Abstract:

Paul Goodman’s politics have long been misunderstood, in part because he was a startlingly original thinker. Buried in the cultural chaos of the 1960s, Goodman’s legacy as a radical anarchist is often overlooked, or simply forgotten. What he meant by ‘Neolithic conservatism’ provides a key to remembering his significance. Against the shallow charge that his anarchism tended toward neo-conservativism, Goodman’s critique of the New Left sheds light on the political fault-lines of his time and our own.

Three poems by Paul Goodman
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Interview:
British guitarist John McLaughlin in conversation
Authors: John McLaughlin, Richard House, David Kalisch
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Review II
Authors: Richard House, David Kalisch
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Musical chairs
Author: Julian Nangle
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The language of feeling
Author: Robert Sardello
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Article:
Psycho politics, neoliberal governmentality and austerity
Author: Philip Thomas
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Abstract:

Benefit claimants have been at the focal point of neoliberal economic policy under successive governments for nearly twenty-five years, but the banking crisis of 2008 reinvigorated government attempts to cut benefit spending. This has deepened divisions and inequalities in British society, as disabled people and those with mental health problems unable to work, are coerced by an increasingly authoritarian regime to seek low-paid work or unsuitable jobs based in zero hours contracts. One consequence of these developments is a resurgence of interest in the ideas of Peter Sedgwick, whose book Psycho Politics, set out a Marxist critique of antipsychiatry (including Foucault's early work) and the consequences of neoliberalism for people with mental health problems.

Happiness and the capture of subjectivity
Author: Atkinson
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Abstract:

The happiness movement is part of a growing trend in developed capitalist societies of separating the experience of suffering and anxiety from its socio-economic context. In their recent book, Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies, Layard and Clark emphasise the genetic roots of depression and anxiety, which they want to characterise as the mental ill-health of the individual, the primary source of unhappiness and a scandal of unrecognised and untreated disease burden in the UK. The author argues that taken out of context, happiness is a facile concept that is invalid as a common good and a goal of political policy. Far more familiar in modern capitalist societies is the marketing of happiness as the ever-elusive reward of continuous consumption. Separating the subjectivity of individual suffering from the social complexities of lived experience exposes us to new possibilities of neoliberal ideological capture – social management through the marketisation of suffering as consumer demand serviced by an industry of happiness and positive-thinking providers.

‘I dare not lean to my conceit’: Growth in the understanding of contemplative experience in The Cloud of Unknowing
Author: Collins
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Abstract:

In this article the nature of the contemplative experience of ‘unknowing’ is explored, as it is depicted in the classic of Western contemplative literature, The Cloud of Unknowing. Attention is given to the fact that the Cloud author changed his description of unknowing over time, in a manner reflecting growth and deepening of his understanding of the nature of contemplative experience. The article's author also includes mention of a pair of personal meditative experiences, in underscoring the likelihood that considerable humility and open-mindedness are called for in the modern-day incorporation of ‘mindfulness’ in psychotherapy and programs of well-being.

Turning the tide of hemispheric shift: the case of non-conscious learning
Author: Grethe Hooper Hansen
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Abstract:

This is an article about the ever-deeper descent of the Western world into extreme left-hemisphericity, both through government-controlled state education and the recently revealed double-bind of public schools. Hope of reversing extreme left-hemispheric brain dominance comes from the new style of education in Finland based on a system of paraconscious learning developed by Bulgarian psychiatrist Georgi Lozanov.

A note on the repression of dialogue in Israel/Palestine
Author: Andrew Samuels
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‘I am a humanistic psychologist’
Author: Aron Gersh
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On Nikolas Rose's Governing the soul
Author: Scott
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Author: Rose
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On John Lees' The Future of Psychological Therapy
Author: Martin Pollecoff
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Review II by Adrian Hemmings
Author: Adrian Hemmings
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A response to Martin Pollecoff and Adrian Hemmings
Author: John Lees
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The Establishment on the couch: a psychological exploration of class wounding – in the counselling room and society
Author: Hank Earl
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Conference Report:
‘Closing the Gap’ TUC conference, Salford, 29 April 2016: Mental health beyond austerity: a ‘mental wealth’ approach to post-austerity policy-making
Authors: Richard House, Rich Moth, Debbie Porteous, Guy Jamieson
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Obituary:
Ursula by Gaie Houston
Authors: Malcolm Parlett, Gaye Houston
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Savage Strategy
Author: Peter Ryan
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The AHP chair’s page
Author: Lucy Scurfield
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Stuart’s political diary
Author: Stuart Morgan-Ayres
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On Depressive Realism and humanistic therapy
Author: Jim Robinson
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Book Review:
Therapy and the counter-tradition: the edge of philosophy
Author: Marcia Gamsu
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Attending to the soul
Author: Claire Wirsig
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In the land of Austeria
Author: Paul Atkinson
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Grief, love, and joy
Author: Nick Duffell
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The post card: from Socrates to Freud and beyond
Author: Shani Bans
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Erratum:
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