In the Meantime...

So the PhD proposal has been received and it is working its way through the system...

...in the meantime I have begun a new project working for a Malaysian NGO offering medical and humanitarian relief to disaster zones. They have retained me to develop and implement a psychosocial programme.

So far I have presented a successful project plan, implementation rationale and timeline to create and implement an internal and external psychosocial strategy and training. This will include a methodology, field manual, filed work and extensive training of staff and volunteers. I haven’t quite figured how this will fit with my PhD.

May have to either a. adjust the PhD focus, b. Put a limit on the project time. Need to give it all careful consideration as it could potentially affect quite a lot of people.

Mission Impossible

Or not...for the proposal is complete and couriering its way across the air to London. Hopefully to be received this week with a view to a decision in about four weeks.

Regardless of the outcome, the satisfaction of completing it was wonderful. I was able to consolidate many years of thinking and study linking Dharma and Cognitive Behavioural theory, Laing and Cooper and even mentioned Tom's scary friends at the CCHR.

So now I am enjoying the luxury of not having to write for a while and reading for sport.

If I go ahead with the PhD then I may continue this blog...for now I will leave you with some words of wisdom from Ronnie:

‘The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds’

Something Amazing Happened!

My good friend Rob emailed me to ask me what had happend with my proposal because there was nothing on the blog. The good news is I have been so busy writing and reading that I completely forgot about the blog.

Amazingly I am at the proofing stage of the final draft and hope to post the proposal tomorrow. It is larger that required but was something I needed to do to consoilidate my reading and refecting. So fingers crossed...

Freud would be pleased!

Started reading Dostoevsky’s, the Brothers Karamazov, it is very hard to put down. If ever there was an award for pretentious displacement activity, other than keeping a blog, then this would be it!

For the proposal, I have been reading cognitive formulations of psychosis (extremely convincing) and Laing. Actually, Laing is now on my top 3 people I would like to meet, I think he was misunderstood and feared due to what he pointed at and represented one of the great thinkers of the last 50 years. I do not agree with everything he says but he seems more relevant to psychiatry today than ever.

Been on fire today viz a viz writing really starting get there and really enjoying the reading around it. Set myself a deadline of next Friday, 2 November 2007. Eeeek!

A united voice

I visited a NGO, self-advocacy group for people with learning disabilities today. Their approach is state of the art compared to mental health practice in Malaysia. It is an organisation run by serves users and the non-service user staff report to the ‘bosses’ it is soaked in empowerment and anti-oppressive practice. They follow the strategy ‘nothing for us without us’ – extremely inspiring!

And so to the writing. Today I further developed my thinking on the rise of CBT and the implications for social work and the service user. All roads lead back to Laing as a defence against the rational-scientific reduction of the human being by the expert.

Received the Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (thank Ganesha for Amazon), which included all additional reading on a CD, fuelling the temptation to study the MA...

The desert of the real itself...

...or for the unconscious Baudrillard fan, hoofing their popcorn to the words of ‘welcome to the desert of the real’. The blue pill has been swallowed and Alice is running for the door unfortunately only to bang her head as she is too large to fit and thankfully, this isn’t a blog about writing a PhD. No nothing as grand, it’s simply about endeavouring to submit an initial proposal. Desperate I know but I am trying to write it whilst in Malaysia so not many virtual colleagues to share my wining with.

Ah, the blessed PhD. Don’t tell me you have never thought about it? That oasis of academic prestige, a wonderwall of egotistic contribution to the endless avalanche of knowledge as a vain attempt to receive a father’s long lost approval. Finally a way to out fox the shrink on the team by becoming a real doctor. Not some time traveller of pseudo psychotic ramblings but a Pertwee, a Baker a Craig. Actually Craig was a double ‘0’ but that’s a whole other proposal!

So far through a haze of self-doubt and insecurity I have put together around 4,500 words. The question is are they worth the paper? The paper is based on the concept of postpsychiatry and the importance of social work when interacting and listening to the experts by experience of people labelled ‘schizophrenic’...