Danger to freedom from the helping professions: psychiatry, psychology and social work

Psychiatry, psychology and social work should serve as enhancers of freedom, but in certain circumstances they constitute a danger to the freedom of individuals and groups in society. Psychiatrists in the Soviet Union have served as punishers of dissent, and others, in various parts of the world, have been involved in abuses of psychosurgery. Psychologists have participated in dubious uses of aversion therapy and have applied their scientific knowledge to designing and implementing advanced torture techniques. Those psychiatrists and psychologists who sell their skills to the highest bidder, without regard for humankind, are termed PSYCHOCRATS. Social work does not constitute a direct danger to freedom but has generally failed to act as an enhancer of freedom for the poor and powerless.     

Alcohol and Power on Palm Island

By analysing the circumstances surrounding criminal behaviour on Palm Island, a close association is found between alcohol abuse and crimes of disorderly behaviour and violence. It is argued that one of the reasons for this association is alcohol's capacity to provide an experience of personalized power and in the case of Australian Aborigines this effect of alcohol is enhanced by the role played by alcohol throughout the history of Aboriginal legislation. Viewed in this way, the prevention of Aboriginal alcohol abuse becomes a political rather than an educational issue.     

SIMMEL'S FORMS OF EXPERIENCING: THE ADVENTURE AS SYMBOLIC WORK

Simmel says the content of experience does not make the adventure, the form does! To help clarify this remark, the Simmelian adventurer here is recast, following leads from Mead, Burke, and the pragmatists, as an ephemeral role incumbent engaged in symbolic work. The adventure is presented in terms of symbolic conversions of the content of life's experiences—physical things, social things, events, and persons—into objects of adventure. The form of experiencing engages the adventurer in symbolic work in which she or he symbolically synthesizes, antagonizes, and compromises Simmel's fundamental categories of life: certainty-uncertainty, chance-necessity, and passivity-activity.