RANTing OUt The Devil

by Kathleen M. Hill ISBN 13: 978 1 84747 018 8
Published: 2006
Pages: 277

Description

Ranting out the Devil is a compilation of reflections on discovery pertinent to health and human service industry unique to mental health. Ranting represents my journal of healing from an episode of tumultuous mental distress into an engaged, functioning recovery. My evolving internalised state of peace and wellness abreacted out of Ranting's dynamics for understanding, acceptance and activism impacting against life's loss. I combined survivor art with Ranting to express purpose, meaning and value, because reasoning is the combined action of both the intellect and emotion processing a viable conclusion and the greatest part of reason is creativity that touches that most alive part of us - the depth of our personal power. This book provides an extremely emotive and honest account of Kathleen's view of mental health professionals. She has empowered many patients who have suffered in hospital. She has provided mental health patients with a voice.

About the Author

Kathleen is an inspirational figure in the global service user movement. Kathleen lives in Canada, thus showing Chipmunka's global appeal.

Book Extract

" Abusive 'Helping' Professionals who offend do so by using cognitive distortions to meet personal needs, protect themselves from aversive self-awareness, and overcome internal inhibitions against coercively engaging consumers of services into re-traumatizing activity with paternalistic authority. These offenders carefully groom their victims by systematically separating them from their families and peers, and socializing them into a life-style of solitary confinement found otherwise only on 'death row'. Offenders justify the abuse by making excuses and redefining their actions as empathy and mutuality. Throughout the process, offenders exploit the power imbalance inherent in all human service professional, provider-consumer relationships. "With abuse, you suffer loss of soul, loss of self and loss of meaning" K.W. (Survivor) from Community Retraumatization http: //www.annafoundation.org/CR.html

"Patient memoirs are a kind of protest literature, like slave narratives or witness testimonies." Gail A. Hornstein

Nemesis

Daughter of Night; Daughter of Moral Conscience

In Greek mythology Nemesis was the winged goddess of retributive justice, righteous anger, divine vengeance, and usually a victorious rival. She inflicted the justice of the gods on the proud and those who flaunted the law avenging those who were wronged. Originally, an abstraction of righteous indignation against evil, this idea was later personified as Nemesis, goddess of divine justice and vengeance. Her anger is directed toward human transgressions of the natural, right order of things and the hubris behind it. Nemesis pursues the insolent and the wicked with inflexible vengeance. Her cult is thought to have originated from Smyrna. She is also considered to have been the mother of Helene after impregnation during her rape by Zeus. Excerpted from http: //ww.theoi.com)

Asylum, Haven, Refuge, Sanctuary

I once saw a picture on the Internet of a vanquished Afghan woman (reared by the Taliban and living in a war zone) holding her pre-school daughter in her arms. She wanted someone to help her: She wanted to go to an insane asylum, because she could no longer cope: She said, "I think I am going crazy!" Although our circumstances are different, her statement, a direct quote of mine, reminded me of myself back in '94.