Mark Cresswell | Bath Spa University (original) (raw)

Papers by Mark Cresswell

The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2014

This paper considers the role and function of Left academics within ‘elite’ (i.e. Russell Group) ... more This paper considers the role and function of Left academics within ‘elite’ (i.e. Russell Group) universities within the UK. Deploying Marxist theory and critical realism, it analyses the ‘dialectical contradictions’ experienced in such a role and reflects upon productive strategies for resisting the hegemony of neo-liberalism within those milieus

Mental Health Review Journal, 2017

To critique Spandler and McKeown's recent advocacy of a Truth and Reconciliation process in psych... more To critique Spandler and McKeown's recent advocacy of a Truth and Reconciliation process in psychiatry. Approach: A critique of a recent article in Mental Health Review Journal. Findings: That Spandler and McKeown's advocacy of a Truth and Reconciliation process in psychiatry can be criticised from a number of interrelated practical, political and ethical perspectives. Value: The present critique contributes to the ongoing debate about the desirability of a Truth and Reconciliation process in psychiatry.

UK ‘‘Psychiatric Survivors’’—a variety of activist groups comprising individuals who have been on... more UK ‘‘Psychiatric Survivors’’—a variety of activist groups comprising individuals who have been on the ‘‘receiving end’ ’ of psychiatric treatment—have, since the mid-1980s, mounted a challenge to the psychiatric system. ‘‘Survivors’’ have formulated their own knowledge-base concerning a range of human problems hitherto regarded as the province of ‘‘official’ ’ psychiatry only. ‘‘Official’ ’ knowledge stresses scientific classification, professional expertise, and statistical evidence: ‘‘Survivor’ ’ knowledge, by contrast, emphasises individual experience, the traumas of the life-course, and the personal testimony of the survivor as itself expert data. This paper focuses upon the truth-claims enacted by the ‘‘testimony of the survivor’ ’ and the relation of ‘‘testimony’ ’ to political practice. Specifically, I analyse a key text containing the testimonies of female survivors whose behaviour has been officially labelled as ‘‘deliberate self-harm’’; that is, women who harm themselves, ...

Mental health today (Brighton, England), 2008

Social Movement Studies, 2013

This paper considers some political and ethical issues associated with the 'academic intellectual... more This paper considers some political and ethical issues associated with the 'academic intellectual' who researches social movements. It identifies some of the 'lived contradictions' such a role encounters and analyses some approaches to addressing these contradictions. In general, it concerns the 'politico-ethical stance' of the academic intellectual in relation to social movements and, as such, references the 'theory of the intellectual' associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci. More specifically, it considers that role in relation to one political 'field' and one type of movement: a field which we refer to, following the work of Peter Sedgwick, as 'psychopolitics', and a movement which, since the mid-to-late 1980s, has been known as the 'psychiatric survivor' movement-psychiatric patients and their allies who campaign for the democratisation of the mental health system. In particular, through a comparison of two texts, Nick Crossley's Contesting Psychiatry and Kathryn Church's Forbidden Narratives, the paper contrasts different depths of engagement between academic intellectuals and the social movements which they research.

Social Policy and Society, 2009

Human rights may be categorised as belonging to ‘three generations’: political, social and ‘solid... more Human rights may be categorised as belonging to ‘three generations’: political, social and ‘solidarity’ rights. This paper considers this schema theoretically, deploying the example of the ‘psychiatric survivor’ movement in Britain in support of its central claims. Psychiatric survivors comprise groups of psychiatric patients who have campaigned both for political and social rights in addition to a singular form of ‘right’, which is referred to here as ‘experiential’. The paper clarifies the meaning of the ‘experiential right’ and, drawing upon aspects of social theory, considers how it is to be understood in the context of the ‘three generations’ schema.

Sociological Inquiry, 2003

... 1980a. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French... more ... 1980a. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite. Brighton: The Harvester Press. . ... Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Pp. 3517 in On Sexuality, edited by Angela Richards. Freud Library, vol. ...

Social Theory & Health, 2009

Social Theory & Health, 2016

Journal of British Cinema and Television

This article considers certain historical and theoretical aspects of Ken Loach's 1971 film ab... more This article considers certain historical and theoretical aspects of Ken Loach's 1971 film about mental illness, Family Life. Historically, it explores the film's influences, particularly that of the 1960s ‘anti-psychiatry’ and counter-cultural figure, R. D. Laing. To this end, the article examines in detail a contemporaneous critique of Family Life, namely Peter Sedgwick's hostile review for Socialist Worker in 1972. In the light of this critique, the article then reconsiders, theoretically, Loach's strategies of socialist-realist representation in Family Life, particularly as they relate to, firstly, mental illness and institutional psychiatry; and secondly, the distinction drawn by Raymond Williams between artistic and political forms of representation.

Medicine, Science and the Law

This article provides a critical viewpoint on Loughran’s recent work in Medicine, Science and the... more This article provides a critical viewpoint on Loughran’s recent work in Medicine, Science and the Law on the causes of the rise in the police’s use of section 136 (s136) of the Mental Health Act 1983 (Loughran M. Detention under section 136: why is it increasing? Med Sci Law 2018; 58: 268–274). The rate of this rise seems significant: by 2014, it was five times more likely that a person in England would be detained in a hospital under s136 than it was in 2000, and the trend has continued to the present day. This viewpoint considers the significance of the s136 rise from the theoretical perspective of causal analysis.

Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry

Discriminatory attitudes directed at women who nonfatally self-harm have been documented in psych... more Discriminatory attitudes directed at women who nonfatally self-harm have been documented in psychiatric wards and medical settings, especially in Accident and Emergency departments. Such attitudes constitute a “moral code,” which surrounds the act of self-harm and subjects it to negative comparison to accidents, physical illness, and completed suicide. What is less clear, however, are the characteristics of that moral code which governs self-harm in prisons, despite the fact that high rates of self-harm in women’s prisons are well known. Reporting the findings of a research project in one English prison, this article identifies the characteristics of that “moral code” and the way it affects the experiences of women in prison.

Film-Philosophy

This paper asks questions about 'trauma' and its cultural representation specifically, tr... more This paper asks questions about 'trauma' and its cultural representation specifically, trauma's representation in the cinema. In this respect, it compares and contrasts the work of Robert Bresson, in particular his 1967 masterpiece, Mouchette , with contemporary Hollywood film. James Mangold's 1999 'Oscar-winning' Girl, Interrupted offers an interesting example for cultural comparison. In both Mouchette and Girl, Interrupted the subject matter includes, amongst other traumatic experiences, rape, childhood abuse and suicide. The paper ponders the question of whether such aspects of trauma can ever be authentically represented on film; or, whether, on the contrary, through the deployment of cultural stereotypes, cinematic representation tends rather to reproduce the very forms of structural power which are, in the first place, trauma's primary cause. Bresson emerges from this analysis in a favourable light for, whereas Mangold stereotypes victims of trauma and represents traumatic experience itself as inevitable and over-determined, Bresson always retains for the victim a sense of critical agency. By contrasting key scenes from both films, the paper suggests that contemporary popular cinema (the 'Hollywood-ized' form), working in tandem with institutions of social control, such as psychiatry, does not subvert but, in fact, reproduces patterns of structural power. This argument has particular significance for the cultural representation of women. The paper is theoretically framed by Simone Weil's reflections on both 'representation' and 'structural power'.

Critical and Radical Social Work

Recent years have seen a resurgence in radical mental health politics and accompanying social mov... more Recent years have seen a resurgence in radical mental health politics and accompanying social movements. This article identifies two tendencies. The first, the Mad Studies tendency, indicts psychiatry as a branch of medicine and asserts a politics of identity based upon the experience of 'madness'. The second, the Psychopolitics tendency, defends the value of welfare and medicine and asserts a politics of alliance between service users and mental health workers. Using three recent texts, Mad matters (2013), Psychiatry disrupted (2014) and Madness, distress and the politics of disablement (2015), this article analyses the solidarities and tensions that exist within and between these tendencies.

Journal of Critical Realism, 2016

This article engages Bhaskar's category of 'absence' and Foucault's notion of the 'problematisati... more This article engages Bhaskar's category of 'absence' and Foucault's notion of the 'problematisation' in the context of explaining a historical emergence of political activism within the UK. Its contribution is at the interface of critical realism and social movement studies. The particular social movement considered is that of 'psychiatric survivors' in the form of the 'politics of self-harm'. The politics of selfharm refers to acts of self-injurious behaviour, such as drug over-dosage or selflaceration, which do not result in death and which subsequently bring individuals to the attention of psychiatric services. For many years survivors have protested about the harmful treatment ('iatrogenesis') they receive from such services and have campaigned for their reform and for new, non-psychiatric understandings of the meaning of self-harm. The article explains how such activism emerged in the late-1980s.

Social Theory & Health

This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick’s Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of... more This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick’s Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. Psychopolitics offered an indictment of ‘antipsychiatry’ the failure of which, Sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of ‘mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. ‘The radical who is only a radical nihilist’, Sedgwick observed, ‘is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. Sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of ‘mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed ‘to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. The paper contextualizes Psychopolitics within the ‘crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside Sedgwick’s continuing relevance. It considers the dilemma that the discourse of ‘mental illness’ – Sedgwick’s critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental healt...

Critical and Radical Social Work, 2015

This chapter explores the possibility of alliances between mental health workers and psychiatric ... more This chapter explores the possibility of alliances between mental health workers and psychiatric survivor movements – a focus that has received little scholarly attention to date. Particular attention is paid to alliances between survivors and public sector trade unions in the UK. These alliances are replete with what, in a more general context, Wendy Brown (2000) has called perils and possibilities. The possibilities of such alliances will be framed in terms of the need to defend, as well as transform, health and welfare institutions from threats presented by neoliberalism and bio-psychiatry, as well as the need for a creative renewal of the activism of both the labour and survivor movements. Models of reciprocal community trade unionism and relational organizing will be presented as a potential way of developing “deeply engaged” and reciprocally beneficial relationships (Tattersall 2006) that, we believe, are necessary for the transformation of the mental health system.

Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 2010

Deliberate self-harm"-acts of self-poisoning (overdosing) or self-injury (e.g., cutting) that do ... more Deliberate self-harm"-acts of self-poisoning (overdosing) or self-injury (e.g., cutting) that do not result in death-has historically provoked a moral judgment in those professionals who treat it. Such judgments negatively value the act of self-harm and lead to the discriminatory treatment of self-harmers in accident and emergency departments and upon psychiatric wards. This article argues that the treatment of self-harmers in such environments has its origins in a "moral code" that negatively values the act of self-harm in comparison to (a) suicide, (b) the accident victim, and (c) individuals considered to be "genuinely" physically ill. The article fulfi lls two functions. First, it tracks the history of "medicine's moral code" as it surrounds self-harm in the British context during the period 1950-2000. Then it turns to examine the ways in which patients groups-so-called psychiatric survivors-resisted such discriminatory treatment in the period 1988-2000. Such resistance, the article concludes, creates the opportunity for a democratic dialogue to develop between patient groups and service providers that could potentially ameliorate the deleterious effects of medicine's moral code. The article's tone is polemical and is expressly written from a perspective sympathetic to the political claims of "survivors," which the authors conclude forms a central component in the development of democratic practices within medicine and psychiatry.

UK 'Psychiatric Survivors'-a social movement grouping consisting of individuals who have been on ... more UK 'Psychiatric Survivors'-a social movement grouping consisting of individuals who have been on the 'receiving end' of psychiatric treatment-have, since the mid-1980's, constituted a challenge to the psychiatric system. 'Survivors' have formulated their own knowledge-base concerning a range of human problems hitherto regarded as the province of 'official' psychiatry only. 'Official' knowledge stresses 'scientific' classification, professional expertise, and statistical evidence; 'Survivor' knowledge, by contrast, emphasises individual experience, the traumas of the lifecourse, and the personal testimony of the survivor as itself expert data. This paper focuses upon the 'testimony of the survivor' as an ingredient of survivor-knowledge. Specifically, I explore the public discursive outputs of female survivors whose behaviour has been officially labelled as 'deliberate self-harm'; that is, women who harm themselves, through self-poisoning or self-laceration, and subsequently receive medical/psychiatric treatment. The main focus is upon the political functions of testimony-the ways in which survivor-knowledge challenges the power of psychiatry.