“The Power Threat Meaning Framework”: A New Perspective on Mental Distress
In January, 2018, the clinical psychology division of the British Psychology Society published a very important paper. The document is titled The Power Threat Meaning Framework and is subtitled:
“Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis.”
To read more of the article - https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/05/power-threat-meaning-framework-new-perspective-on-mental-distress/
My comment:
Unresolved and denied psychic emotional conflicts are the insanity of humanity – period.
The article above illuminates some of the psychic emotional conflicts of ‘psychiatry’.
“Psychiatry in search of an identity”.
Psychiatry never was science. But nor is much else that might be science allowed to operate AS science under corporate technocracy – in any field. I include pharmaceutical ‘medicine’.
But insofar as science seeks to manipulate or control outcomes rather than uncover them, it operates the subordination of the means to achieve its goal, in reversal of the laws of cause and effect – as a result of seeking identity in effects instead of being naturally identified in shared worth.
Power as threat operates to prevent true shared meaning.
This sense of blocked, denied, deprived or conflicted power in powerlessness operates intra-personally and inter-personally. A coercive social order tends to operate upon naming and blaming as the basis for shaming. This is no less so under ‘scientific jargon’ of a personal ‘diagnosis’, treatment plan, and assigned status of invalidity-dependency – all ‘normalised’ to mask the agenda behind presentations of presumed knowledge of the world, life, its purpose and meaning.
Unhealed healers cannot BUT seek to use others to ‘resolve’ or play out their own psychic emotional conflicts – and the the group-think of self-interest operates a collective reinforcement against the exposure of needs – seen as weakness.
Experiential education is needed to move us (including ‘therapists) out of mental schemes and systems of judgement, to exploration of our own lives – in the uncovering and working through of our own blind spots, fears and false self presumptions – so as to grow in compassionate presence in ourselves and thus with others. The Corporately captured State will not allow such freedom to be developed and grown. The Economy will pull out support from it, and the Law will be interpreted or changed to make it criminal to operate outside ‘standard practice’ as set by power, threat and imposed meaning. However, this is just such a situation in which to expose our ‘power issues’ of fear defined belief and reaction. The threat-meaning framework of society is the carrot and stick of ‘acceptance or rejection’; worth or invalidity, power or powerlessness – as externally defined and assigned – and self-subjected.
A truly compassionate presence is discerning of the felt truth in the qualities and nature of any situation or communication, and remains vigilant against false sympathies that operate destructively in teaching weakness and dependency under the seeming ‘help and protection’ of expertise that may in effect be a blind template of technical specifications.
The honouring of the will of the other or ‘patient’ is not the protection of their ‘feelings’ but of their capacity to make choices and learn, grow and recognize and align in more truly aligned choices for who they are the exploration and uncovering of. Serving the true needs of another is the only way to find our own are met.
The head of thinking is never going to define and control life – nor direct the resolving of life conflicts. But insofar as we try to do this, we consign true causes to the dark by invoking magical appeals to their ‘diagnosis and ‘treatment’. Magical because the problems are not addressed at Cause – but as the manipulation and redistribution of effects.
There are already many facets of wisdom approach to serving the need for healing in those who are no longer able to mask, manage or normalise their suffering and so it becomes more obviously a call for help.
The ability to attend and abide with the apparently chaotic is the non reactivity of preset (subjective) judgements. The attempt to subordinate or indeed sacrifice a relational intimacy of ‘listening’ and response to proscribed technical procedures, is fear-driven control. But of course the tendency to ‘play god’ over others is where such fears originate. But that which is masked over or suppressed is no less active in its underlying distortion of communication – as embodying a framework of power-threat defence-meanings instead of truly meaningful relationship and communication.
Every instance of relationship is a unique event. Running on templates of the past as in ‘auto-pilot’ is holding the quality of being to the past and inducing conflict within presence. Yet it is recognising this that enables its release – in therapist and patient alike. Naming to blame, as an act of power over – is making Presence powerless in our lives. And so our development of power masks a blind powerlessness under guilt-driven threat – BELIEVED and lived as if true.
Before writing the above I initially responded to the article in the following:
Split meanings operate power struggle in which victim/follower and victimiser/leader play out shifting roles.
Meaning – with a capital M – is pre-split or indeed wholeness of being. The ‘broke and fixit’ or ‘Humpty and all the king’s men’ model engages attention under the ‘divide and rule out’ device. Otherwise the pain of the split mind constitutes a breaking of the rules, and is assigned to be ‘fixed’ or walled out (denied voice).
The meaning of a power as threat is generally the trigger to fight or flight, and even at biology level this ‘sympathetic’ nervous response is known to suppress all else to focus in heightened perceptions of associated (past) dangers, involving extreme suppression (hiding or playing dead) and extreme release (fight or flight).
But the subjection of the mind under a power that it is unconscious or unaware of is the nature of the human conditioning or human condition of masked self under split thinking. The persona or ‘masking self’ is necessary to a human experience – but the patterns of defences and strategies that are developed varies greatly – and yet operate a collective entanglement of invested meanings given identity.
Our true responsibility for the accepting and sharing of meaning, is personal cultural significance as coherency of being. But a fear-protective denial of responsibility operates masking in forms of a hidden or private agenda. This split thinking is amplified in Orwell’s doublespeak – but is pervasive to ‘accepted reality under narrative control’ – where people are fear-trained to conform and comply without conscious awareness that what they take to be their freedom is slavery and so freedom is rejected and recoiled from as if it is slavery.
While these reflections on ‘power threat meaning’ may seem off topic, I hold that the true meaning of power is corrupted – and I live towards correcting it. Power does not corrupt and limitless power is incorruptible – but in my usage here is power perfectly shared – and not split into victim and victimiser.
This is a shift in perspective and not a struggle within or under fear.
and to this commenter
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/05/power-threat-meaning-framework-new-perspective-on-mental-distress/#comment-130848
The difference is whether sovereign will is respected.
A technocratic system of control does not allow for will excepting as quantifiable delusions of conditioned response. It is the insanity when we sacrifice life and lives to it instead of using it (system) only in service to life recognised and professed or witnessed.
The very attempt to ‘officially’ define a fresh perspective can indeed work against healing while seeming to be a new crusade on its behalf.
