The People We Could Be: Hegemony, Alienation and Consciousness

When, around 2009, I created Imeus (‘I’, ‘me’, ‘us’), a ‘mental health’ community website, the intention was to provide a space where power was flattened and distributed, everyone had a stake in the site, and was involved in its management. It was an alternative to how power and social relations worked in the ‘mental health’ system.

Though there weren’t a great deal of members, those who did join loved it. It was a good little community, where I always looked forward to seeing what was going on there. For some, it could have been the first time in their lives they’d experienced such an approach. Dialogue was vibrant, enthusiastic, and engaged in ways it hadn’t been on other fora.

The ‘mental health’ community I tapped into for members back then, though it needed encouragement, wasn’t as lost as the present variant and soon embraced the ethos of the site. The experiment didn’t last long, but I considered the site to be a success in what it offered people and how they took to it.

But the mistake I made was to confine my response to the bad lot represented by what the psychiatric system dishes out. I’d offered members a meaningfully different, worthwhile space, but that wasn’t comprehensive enough. It concentrated on a response to psychiatry, though didn’t venture out of that enough.

I’ve been thinking of setting up a new resource, giving people an alternative to the psychiatric-capitalist hegemony, with options to disengage from psychiatric services and return to their GPs, not least because of the detrimental effect the former has on its users.

That this would likely be a mountain to climb is instructive. Bad as the level of awareness in the mainstream ‘mental health’ community was back in 2009, it’s even worse now. The contradictory consciousness, where people know that something’s up but are mystified by it, is entrenched and seemingly impenetrable. I don’t think I could get the numbers with the approach I used years ago.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying. From where I’m standing, the situation’s crying out for resources that are free, accessible, and that reach the intended audience in a convincing way. And there’s options for tapping existing fora that may prove fruitful.

My thinking is that it’d be a resource that shows the mechanics of how the capitalist-psychiatric hegemony came about, why it persists, what the alternatives are, and why these are better for people’s everyday and long-term welfare.

It’d also be a resource that would be the staging post for people to develop their imaginations, critical consciousness, and assembly — to get together, engage and construct alternative possible futures.

For example, where things have been depoliticised, they’d be politicised; where things give the impression of being apolitical, the politics would be demystified and exposed, opening the door to what else may be on offer. Where things are made out to be ahistorical, lay out the context to show they’re not natural, inevitable or permanent. Not so much what has happened, but more what could happen.

Information on a whole range of matters would need to be detailed for users, with a considered approach to prefigurative politics, where people can embrace how they interact and cohere on the basis of how things could be. The natural home for this is radical leftist politics, as opposed to the fundamentally right wing approaches of capitalism and psychiatry. That’s where the better arguments are, not least for people who’ve experienced subjugation, marginalisation and other social ills.

Psychiatrists say ‘what’s wrong with you’. Psychologists say ‘what happened to you’. Neither are enough. Not nearly enough. Take the meds that are often dished out at unrealistic doses and you’re in for a whole heap of complications that aren’t exactly a thorough solution. Tell your story — on the basis of the options I’m aware of — and it’s an incomplete, narrow picture, full of false promise, where you take a limited depiction and go back out into the same failing world with a narrative that’s ill-prepared to do your life and times justice or motivate you to change the things that really matter. Both questions from these disciplines are set up to have limited success.

People need the chance to locate themselves in society, history and politics, and know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Offer a perspective that demonstrates that being part of the ‘mental health’ community is no way to live, abandon their ‘mentally ill’ identity, and join in with the wider world. The option of aligning with the subjugated, dominated, and oppressed beyond the psychiatric system, leads the way to ideas about and the desire for fundamental change. A much better narrative.

Why appeal for reform of a psychiatric system that’ll only ever tinker at the edges? Why not just put it down to a system that doesn’t work, won’t ever work, and explore better options? Psychologists try to improve all that, but they’re never going to overturn the power that psychiatry has.

What could better resources look like? For social class and capitalism, provide leftist critique and critical theory. For the patriarchy, read feminism. For racism (and the ‘boomerang effect’), offer resources to get people aware of decolonial and post colonial debates and histories. Give people alternative ideas, messages, and options to be. Give them a new language to discuss why so many don’t get anywhere far with current approaches in psychology and psychiatry and get a more equitable debate going.

Many of the current debates are repetitive and myopic. Alternatively, the untapped potential of a community of people who could make a difference fills me with inspiration. What ideas could these people uncover in the right circumstances? What new ways of doing things would be on offer from people who’d know the implications of having had the wrong things done to them?

‘What’s wrong with you?’ and ‘what happened to you?’ don’t lead to any substantial answers that’ll change much. Sometimes it just looks like a tussle between psychiatrists and psychologists, away from the bulk of the people who need access to debates and resources that reach them, speak to them, and offer them a radically different choice. Where’s the impetus to successfully reach out to those who need it?

I’ve been thinking about alienation lately. Aren’t the vast majority of us somehow alienated from ourselves, other people, our world, and our potential as human beings? Even our esteemed psychiatrists and psychologists? When I think of alienation, the questions that arise point to ways forward: how, why, what, where, who — what are the possibilities not merely for me, but for everyone? There’s a language and a politics there waiting to be mined.

The simple idea of alienation points to a more substantial view of the way things are, implies that it shouldn’t be that way, and gets people thinking that we need to do better. From there, letting people’s imaginations and motivations run wild would only do them the world of good.

Looking via the perspective of alienation, and the questions it raises, has transformed my narrative and the lens through which I look upon the world. It humanises people in ways extant narrative approaches fail to do — it gives a fuller context to them and offers them a form of justice and dignity sadly lacking — a real sense that we’re in this together. It’s a multicoloured story of humanity in a world of black and white tales, which are ultimately about atomised individuals; if that’s prefigurative politics, is it any wonder so many people are left stranded?

What’s more, starting off with an appreciation of the world based on the starting point of alienation has a boomerang effect for how I see myself, how I locate myself in time, space and place, and it gets me thinking of people’s real needs and how they might be addressed. On the basis of the right prefigurative politics, rather than setting people up to fail, you’re setting up people — who’ve often been taught learned helplessness from official approaches — to keep trying.

I kept trying when the odds were against me. In March, I was in a terrible state. Bad drugs at bad doses. Suicidality and despair. Iatrogenesis. Before I signalled my intention to leave the psychiatric system I’d had to put up an almighty fight to bring about the improvements in me that have taken place. It’s fortunate that I did a lot of work with cumulative self-talk prior to March and, from there, my thinking and approach have been getting into better shape to the point that things are now better than I could have expected. Other people can do this, too. It’s just that, at the moment, so many of them don’t quite know this.

Judging from my experience with Imeus, starting off with an effective hub of resources to initiate a debate for people tragically starved of it could be the springboard for those who couldn’t see a way out not only looking with fresh eyes, but addressing their alienation with contributions they had within them all along. After being exposed to the hegemony they’ve encountered, the difference it could potentially make leads me to wonder.

Though I’d like to get my teeth into setting up such a resource, I can’t see myself doing it. Distancing myself from the psychiatric system means effectively giving up service user and survivor identities. I no longer see myself as part of the ‘mental health’ community. It’s better for my welfare that way, and brings me into closer alignment with a broader life beyond it. Continuing to think too long about offering the system’s users a way out would keep me returning to those roles too much.

Besides, I was on fire when I set up Imeus all those years ago. I’m older now, and I don’t think I now have the drive or the technical proficiency to do it. I could try, if I manage to instigate an initial spur, and leaving it in good hands would be a possibility.

Regardless, I can feel it in my bones that something that gives people a start to take things up for themselves has got legs in it, of that I’ve got no doubt. The challenge is getting them to see that they’re more than up to it.