*Radical Education Reading Forum*: two short talks by British social
materialist psychologist David Smail (see reading below)

When:
Monday, 26th of January, 7.15-9.15 pm

Where:
The Common house, Unit 5E, 5 Pundersons Gardens, Bethnal Green,E2 9QG

The suggested readings are:
“Social Power and Psychological Distress”(2002)
http://www.davidsmail.info/talk02b.htm “Psychology and Power:
Understanding Human Action” (2001) http://www.davidsmail.info/talk01.htm

In this session we’d like to reflect on the role that psychic care has
in our
pedagogical practices and on the philosophical and ultimately political
implications
of the different approaches to the psyche. In the teaching and learning
process,
so much depends upon the quality of the relationships of those involved,
and
yet educators often find themselves responding to challenging situations
with
their ‘guts’, relying on layman ideas around what motivates positive
conducts
or trigger harmful behaviors. While teachers might be introduced to some
elements of
psychology during their training, it is important to reflect on the fact
that the
field of psychology is not a unified one, but it is segmented into a
plethora of
different schools of thought that offer diverse – at times contrasting -
understandings of mental health, the self and human conduct,which can
result in very
different ways to offer care and support within a pedagogical process.

David Smail, who has died aged 76, was a leading clinical psychologist
and
an influential writer, whose work exposed the damaging psychological
effects of
an increasingly competitive and unequal society. His book Illusion and
Reality: The
Meaning of Anxiety (1984) was an early analysis of how inequality spawns
chronic
insecurity, especially among those with the least power and control. In
Taking Care: An Alternative to Therapy (1987) David analysed
psychological expertise, showing how
the mythology of "the talking cure" reflects a society obsessed with
imputations of
personal blame and responsibility, and how this benefits the powerful.
David wrote that
Margaret Thatcher taught him more than anyone else about the misuse of
political power
as the basis of personal suffering. In The Origins of Unhappiness (1993)
he described
how, during the 1980s, he found himself working more and more with
individuals
afflicted by distress that they attributed to their own failures to
adjust to the
changing times. David saw that their malaise was in fact produced by the
toxic social
and economic policies of Thatcherism. (From the Guardian obituary
17/08/2014)