Epistemic injustice.

So, I've woken up in the middle of the night determined to delete this blog so many times! 

Usually I revert all the posts to drafts so they will be unavailable, and then I find the courage from somewhere to un-draft them. 

What causes my discomfort?

There are five grave errors a therapist must not commit.

1. To proceed in working with clients, whilst not having the skills, knowledge and character to work safely and effectively. 
2. To fail to behave in a way that safeguards public safety and maintains confidence in the psychotherapy profession. 
3. To be dishonest. 
4. Behave in a way that causes harm or distress to a client. 
5. Breach client confidentiality

I'm unsure about 2. To fail to behave in a way that safeguards public safety and maintains confidence in the psychotherapy profession.

I think I am highlighting a glitch in therapy, seeking out the cause and effect of factor X. I'm doing it in public because whatever factor X turns out to be, I believe such things feed off shame and secrecy. 

Basically I hope that being open, increases awareness, and supports 'public safety'. 

But I feel uncertain, asking myself again should have complained to his ethical body, dilemma, instead of putting my experience out in the public domain?

Am I eroding confidence in the psychotherapy profession - washing dirty linen in public? And if I am, obviously part of me thinks that I am doing this, so why am I ? 

The answer is epistemic injustice.

Of which there are two kinds...

Testimonial injustice occurs when a hearer doesn't take seriously what they have been told. There is an editing of the speaker's emotional content or tone, and dismissal of their credibility. The speaker's information is minimized and misdirected 'oh you are just upset because of x,y,z!'  Prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to the information spoken or enacted by the speaker.

Hermeneutical injustice [+]  occurs before speaking; knowledge that might have been useful is denied to the speaker. This is a structural phenomenon. The outcome is to put someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their experiences.  

“a significant area of one’s social experience (is) obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource”  (Fricker:2007: 154-155).

The dismissal and withholding of information named as epistemic injustice, is an effect of ideology, and our ideologies arise in relation to where we are in relation to social reality since what we believe to be right // wrong is acquired as a set of concepts - um....as if we learn to play the game. 

Wittgenstein points out that what we see as rational is encoded through language games - we are now back to ARGs...to the transmission of information to prove a narrative versus the NaARG (not an alternate reality game) in which transmission of information takes place to create tentative, refutable narratives!

What I'm saying to myself is, if I keep quiet I am behaving in accord with an ideology that has harmed me...but if I keep these words on the internet, I'm transmitting information which could be used to support or refute my view that I was harmed by bad therapy. I mean I don't have control over how you read this.

And that is how it should be...

So for now, no deleting.

Meanwhile...

My son was asking me about my relationship with my husband yesterday. As a consequence I woke up this morning from a nightmare - husband and I were in his car. In the nightmare I was rendered practically dysfunctional, unable to think or understand where I was, or talk to people. It was horrible actually. And an accurate replay of how I felt in that year of gaslighting. The dream helped me to realise that a lot of my son's psychotic behaviour was a similar amplification, arising from the feeling that if they understood they would care...and experiencing the opposite. The cognitive dissonance engendered by the realisation that they don't care or understand leads to an amplification of communication, crying, pleading, and a sense of peril, fear and confusion. Or to the opposite. To dissociation and despair.

The middle path, avoiding panic or erasure requires a person to create another view of their predicament, one that will depend upon that person having alternative resources, or their ability to generate a better personal ARG...

The dream brought home to me once again that my husband has the gift (!) of responding to other people's distress or anger as if it is meaningless by not responding at all, or of imposing his meaning upon it, or using his fist to shut the other person down.

In the light of all this I updated my definition of abuse:

Any mode of interaction by one person, or a group of people that causes another person or people to experience meaningless - to them - physical, emotional or psychological pain. Neglect becomes abuse when there is a refusal to acknowledge the sufferer's experience, and change the mode of interaction.

This statement seems true enough, neglect in particular, is maintained through epistemic injustice.