!publish! pms...

content/session/antipsychiatrymadpride.md

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+---
+title: Antipsychiatry, Mad Pride, and a History of Survivor-Led Organizing
+---
+
+Here we want to look at some critical perspectives that come out of the experience of attempting to 'treat' or being treated within the psychiatric context. 
+
+# Recommended Reading
+
+- a psychiatric survivor anti-violence framework from PDAC
+		* https://www.academia.edu/20268560/Clearing_a_Path_A_Psychiatric_Survivor_Anti-Violence_Framework, page 31
+
+- Mad Pride Manifesto 2019
+		* http://orgullboig.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Mad-Pride-Manifesto-19-ENG.pdf
+
+- “Voices and Visions – a Straight Talking Introduction” & “A Guide to Coping and Recovery”, Voice Collective
+  - http://www.voicecollective.co.uk/about-voices/voices-and-visions-a-straight-talking-introduction/
+  - http://www.voicecollective.co.uk/about-voices/voices-and-visions-a-guide-to-coping-and-recovery/
+  - Voice Collective is a UK-wide, London-based project that supports children and young people who hear voices, see visions, have other     ‘unusual’ sensory experiences or beliefs. We also offer support for     parents/families, and training for youth workers, social workers, mental     health professionals and other supporters. 
+
+- Compassion for Voices: A Tale of Courage and Hope”, Compassion for Voices
+  - http://compassionforvoices.com/videos/compassion-for-voices-film
+  - A website to support and promote compassionate approaches to voices and other experiences. Workshops, trainings, resources. This short film outlines their approach. 
+
+- Watch "PROTEST PSYCHIATRY - protesting the American Psychiatric Association (APA)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGcL6ntKuR0&feature=emb_title to hear firsthand what some of the folks there have to say 
+
+# Further Reading
+
+- Cooper, David. “The Invention of Non-Psychiatry” in Schizo-Culture. Semiotext(e), 2014.  
+  - https://viscerapvd.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/nonpsychiatry.pdf
+  - "Schizophrenia has no existence but that of an exploitable     fiction. Madness exists as the delusion that consists in really uttering     an unsayable truth in an unspeakable situation."
+	
+- Mental Health, Maddness, and Psychiatry: A Study Guide and Annotated Bibliography, Belli Research Institute
+  - https://belliresearchinstitute.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/psych_bibliography.pdf
+  - UNIT 6. Alternative approaches, reformers, antipsychiatry, and defectors from within 
+  - UNIT 7.Survivors, users, outsiders, and the push for new practices 
+	
+- Deleuze, Gilles. “Schizophrenia and Society” in Two Regimes of Madness. Semiotext(e), 2007. 
+  - http://research.uvu.edu/albrecht-crane/486R/schizophrenia_and_society.pdf
+  - Is the schizo just unable to place or name their desire? or is it a process wreaking havoc on the continuity of society and if so, isn't that exactly what we need more of? How to support the figure of the schizo while avoiding their internal breakdown. Some ongoing questions in the form of pretty theory that's admittedly dense, but with a certain poetry and madness to it as well.
+  
+# Discussion
+
+- Are mental health crises or atypical behavior characterized differently by survivors of psychiatric treatment than in some of the other texts we've looked at? 
+- What are some of the pillars of the anti-psychiatry movement? 

content/session/badcare.md

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+---
+title: Bad Care
+---
+
+The purpose of this session is to examine the relationships between power and care. A first and obvious dynamic in this relationship is negligence. The study quoted in the readings, on oppression, environmental stress and the long term effects of these on the brain and body shows how western science and research into 'global health' has negelected to look at the interelations between social, physical and mental health. As pirates, we can take this critique much further by insisting that industrial society is profoundly sick and proceed from that premise.
+
+The essay 'Unraveling the Biopsychiatric Knot' focusses specifically on the relationship between neoliberalism and the biomedical/psychiatric approach to 'mental disorders' as codified in diagnostic manuals like the DSM. Again, we might want to go further than this acount and question the social 'safety nets' that neoliberalism has supposedly taken away. What were these 'safety nets', who were they for and who did they exclude? Who benefited and who paid for them? Who administrated them and to what end? 
+
+An interesting text that departs from these positions is the 'Reclaim Your Mind' manifesto. Insurrectionary anarchist theory and practice is a useful addition, not because it supplies all of the answers to the questions we have been posing, but it opens up some new directions to take.
+
+# Recommended Reading
+
+- excerpt from 'Stress, Oppression & Women’s Mental Health: A Discussion of the Health Consequences of Injustice'- Elizabeth McGibbon & Charmaine McPherson
+		* https://textb.org/t/piratecarepmsbadcare/
+
+- "Unraveling the Biopsychiatric Knot"- Sascha Altman Du Brul
+  - https://textb.org/t/piratecarepmsbadcare/
+  - Reclaim Your Mind: Manifesto 
+
+- An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill
+  - https://darkmatter.noblogs.org/files/2012/04/reclaimyourmind-bw.pdf
+
+- Porpentine, "Hot Allostatic Load"
+  - https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/
+  - Build out of trash. A personal account of experiences with disposability and exile in queer/feminist scenes and the lasting emotional-physical damage abuse causes.
+  
+# Further Reading
+
+- PMS Issue 1 intro 
+- Belli Research Institute - UNIT 3.YOU CAN’T DIAGNOSE IN A VACUUM: HOW DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEMS RELATE TO CATEGORIES OF POWER
+  - UNIT 4.Captured, treated, or cured
+  - https://belliresearchinstitute.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/psych_bibliography.pdf
+  
+# Discussion
+
+- What forms of 'bad care' have you and those around you encountered?
+  - How does this relate to ideology and whose material interests do those ideologies serve?
+- What are some ways in which interpersonal bad care is informed by and mimics institutional bad care?

content/session/casestudiesaspirations.md

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+---
+title: Case Studies, Aspirations, and Provocations
+---
+
+The forms of care that we want to see don't exist yet, so we can't cite them, but we are trying. Here are some of the things that keep us going when we are feeling down, that inspire us to act when we feel trapped, or that motivate us to find each other. We want to build the aspirational supportive queer commune, too, but where can we put it? What does it look like to turn illness into weapon? What is missing and what will the future of autonomous support look like?
+
+# Recommended Reading
+
+- Sick Women Theory
+  - Sick Woman Theory http://maskmagazine.com/not-again/struggle/sick-woman-theory
+  - Not every form of resistance will take place in the streets, because it can't. "Sick Woman Theory is an insistence that most modes of political protest are internalized, lived, embodied, suffering, and no doubt invisible." Care for ourselves and one another as protest and as refusal of the capitalist logic that declares all of us who are "sick" (physically ill, mentally ill, traumatized, oppressed) to be disposable, not meant to survive.
+        
+- This Cat
+  - https://dg6xfr3y1xvv2.cloudfront.net/liartownusa-living-my-truth-postcard-ITEM-5925061bdce3c-555.jpg
+  - Basically, we saw this cat just when we needed to, and we hope you have the same experience. Such an inspiration.
+
+- "Descending into Madness: an anarchist-nihilist diary of anti-psychiatry", Flower Bomb
+  - https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/flower-bomb-descending-into-madness-an-anarchist-nihilist-diary-of-anti-psychiatry
+  - An analysis of personal experiences within the psychiatric system and survival outside of it, from a nihilist and anti-civ perspective
+
+- "I-don't-bash-back-I-shoot-first", anonymous
+  - https://downandoutdistro.noblogs.org/files/2019/02/ShootfirstBooklet.pdf
+  - Practical suggestions for turning your queer affinity group into a queer gang.
+
+- "Hack your rage and anger in the keys", Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK)
+  - http://www.spkpfh.de/Hack_your_rage_and_anger_in_the_keys.htm
+  - The historic German collective that coined the phrase 'Turn Illness Into Weapon' here outlines some of their powerful lingo and theory against the health dictatorship. They have a lot of other great texts throughout the years that speak to many of the theoretical issues addressed in this syllabus, but directly from the perspective of the mad. 
+        
+- https://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/scullc34.html
+  - Skullcap saved my life, no joke. We get a lot of inspiration from plants, but all the things you can learn from them don't always translate into text so seamlessly. This one is an all around great nervine that will chill you out in that mild way that you might need when you're bouncing off the walls or stirring with thoughts.
+  
+# Further Reading
+
+- 'Everything is Going to Shit Anyways' FAG MOB
+  - https://downandoutdistro.noblogs.org/files/2019/02/fmob3.pdf
+  - Insurrecto queer nihilist graffiti as a chokepoint for our collective love and rage
+
+- A few articles from Herbs for Mental Health
+  - An overview of the different ways that plants can support mental/emotional health https://herbsformentalhealth.com/10-types-of-healing-plants-for-mental-health-and-emotional-wellbeing/
+  - ...and a discussion of non-psychiatric, community and nature focused tools for living with the ongoing stress and trauma of oppression. https://herbsformentalhealth.com/continuing-traumatic-stress-disorder/
+  
+# Discussion
+
+- How can we help you? How can we help each other? What do you need? What does your crew need to keep going, to keep fighting, in this world that might otherwise want us to shut the fuck up?
+- What do we still need to figure out? Are you going to get in touch with us to start materializing all of our crazy dreams of emotional support?

content/session/psychiatryandcontrol.md

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+---
+title: "Psychiatry and Control: Collaboration with the State, the Border, the Prison"
+---
+
+Here we want to explore some of the ways that the practice of psyciatry is connected to other regimes of control, such as the state apparatus, the border regime, and the prison industrial complex. When defying power is seen as a disorder unto itself, the logic of psychiatry upholds the systems that organize our social life while reinforcing and exacerbating structural inequalities.
+
+# Recommended Reading
+
+- Le Guin, Ursula K., The Dispossessed, Chapter 6, pages 232-234
+  - https://memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/0f7a728b-dba1-49d3-bd92-e0b5183f20df
+  -	This excerpt from The Dispossessed focuses on the character Tirin, who either disagreed with society or fell mentally ill, or both. Bedak and Shevek discuss the asylum as a prison. 
+
+- "Locking up the Mad", Madness: A Brief History, Roy Porter (pg. 89-122)
+  - https://slowrotation.memoryoftheworld.org/Roy%20Porter/Madness_%20A%20Brief%20History%20(12940)/Madness_%20A%20Brief%20History%20-%20Roy%20Porter.pdf
+  
+- The Hiawatha Asylum
+  - https://web.archive.org/web/20110711164717/http://www.hiawathadiary.com/HiawathaAsylum.html
+  -	The story of the Hiawatha Asylum is one of few recorded examples of 'mental illness' being weaponized by colonizers to silence and inflict harm upon a population. In this case, indigenous people deemed insane, were kept at this facility in South Dakota with unasnitary and inhumane conditions, many not able to go outside. 
+
+- "Soaring Beyond the Walls" 
+  - https://ia903104.us.archive.org/24/items/ZineArchive/soaring-beyond-the-walls.pdf
+  - This short and straightforward zine poses some somatic exercises to help us better connect with our bodies while under stress, or in the difficult situations we might find ourselves in when we live in this sick world. 
+	
+# Further Reading
+
+- https://restforresistance.com/zine/resting-in-unsafe-spaces
+  - Rest for Resistance is a collective of seven trans people of color organizing to uplift marginalized communities that rarely get access to adequate healthcare and support. They published this essay by Ky Peterson, a black trans man currently incarcerated for defending himself against a violent attacker. It looks at the value of rest in an unsafe space.
+
+- CAHOOTS
+  - https://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots/
+	
+- Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
+  - https://monoskop.org/images/1/14/Foucault_Michel_Madness_and_Civilization_A_History_of_Insanity_in_the_Age_of_Reason.pdf
+  
+# Discussion
+
+- The Dispossessed poses an image of an anarcho-syndicalist society, with all its beauty and its setbacks. There are no prisons, and in the absense of a formal court system, social ostracization is powerful. What is your opinion of Tirin's fate? What do you think about the prospect of abolishing the asylum and the prison altogether? How might questions of 'mental illness' be negotiated in a society without incarcertion or institutionalization?
+
+- "Soaring Beyond the Walls" outlines some somatic exercises that folks can do even from within the confines of a cell to connect with our bodies and negotiate whats ahead of us. What are some other possible ways that we might act in solidarity with those on the inside who might be lacking in the connection and emotional support we all crave?

content/session/takewhatyouneed.md

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+---
+title: Take What You Need and Compost the Rest
+---
+
+# Dangerous Spaces
+
+> "Fuck therapy, I just want to fight back" - a queer homeless comrade in the PNW
+
+> "Action dries your tears" - a PMS slogan that we heard from some Greek comrades
+
+This section explicates some of the reasons why we just can't stand to exist like this anymore and we're going to do something about it. You will not be able to silence us with your violence. We are not the crazy ones, you are. We've got nothing but healthy responses to a sick world.
+
+- A Modest Proposal from Some Crazy Bitches
+  - https://downandoutdistro.noblogs.org/files/2019/02/dangerous.pdf, page 30
+  - A communique from "one of many future autonomous cells of crazy bitches," encouraging direct confrontation and vengeance against rapists and rape apologists.
+
+- Healing and Fighting: a false dichotemy
+  - http://www.anti-politics.org/distro/2009/fight_back-read.pdf (pages 21-25)
+  - An anti-civ piece discussing how fighting back against our oppressors is a necessary part of healing, comparing the connection between healing and struggle to the body's process of fighting an infection.
+
+- 'Hurting Yourself', Icarus Project
+  - https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/6714401/hurting-yourself-the-icarus-project
+  - A harm reduction resource for those who self-harm.
+
+- Profesto of the Prostitutes War Group
+  - https://prostituteswargroup.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/pro-festo-of-the-prostitutes-war-group/
+  - Sex workers rejecting reformist, legalizing solutions and instead putting their skills towards insurrection and social war.
+
+- Queers read this
+  - https://untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2013/10/queers-read-this.pdf (anger pages 3-4)
+  - notes on the justifiability of anger
+
+# Discussion
+
+- So, what are some things you'd like to destroy? (Don't worry about the how right now, just name what needs attacking!)
+- What do you do with your anger? Where in your life do you feel like you can express it and where do you keep it hidden? Where do you direct it?
+- Has safety ever felt attainable to you? When safety isn't an option, what do you try for instead?
+- Have you ever experienced fighting back in a way that feels more healing than burnout-inducing? What strategies, tools, approaches, and relationships made it so? In an experience where that wasn't the case, what could have gone differently?