Published: December 2022

Keywords:
Procedures, administrative procedures, protocols, de-colonization, death.

Dick Blackwell

Dick Blackwell is a group analyst, family therapist and organisation consultant in private practice and Consultant Group and Family Psychotherapist at the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile and was founder and director of the Centre for Psychotherapy and Human Rights. Before training as a group analyst he studied business management, physical education and the sociology of ‘race relations’ in the inner city. He has worked in the fields of suicide, psychosis and trauma from torture and political violence, working for a decade in a community mental health psychotherapy project and then for over twenty years at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. He is an associate editor of 'Group Analysis', and the author of one book – Counselling and Psychotherapy with Refugees – co-author of a booklet, Far from the Battle but Still at War: Troubled Refugee Children in School, and has written various articles and chapters on psychotherapy and politics.

The Cultural Awareness Project is a student-led initiative to create an intercultural space in which to enhance awareness and stimulate debate through a series of workshops, seminars and discussions. Trainee art psychotherapists within the STaCS Dept are committed to principles that respect cultural diversity and actively challenge discriminatory assumptions, stereotypes, and interpretations; these sessions strive to contextualise the impact of diversity, without shame and foster future self-reflective practices to deepen understanding of the wider socio-political influences for marginalised communities.

dickblackwell4@gmail.com

Efrossini Moureli

Group Analyst, Family Therapist

efrosista@gmail.com

Abstract

The discussion is about the ways in society that limit imagination and critical thinking. Particular reference is made on the modern tendency to manage human problems in organisations through a battery of policies and procedures (avoiding argument and negotiation between different interests and viewpoints) that contributes to mechanisation, commodification and the limiting of imagination and critical thinking in political, organisational and social life.

Reference also is made on Adorno (Total Administration) Marcuse (One Dimensional Man) and Orwell (Newspeak in 1984) who have previously argued that language and processes of administration and incorporation can constrain thought and limit the possibilities of dissent.