As I’ve almost certainly mentioned before, I have extremely ambivalent feelings about “first person accounts”–accounts which, all too often, “reduce [their author] from a whole and usual [thinker/citizen] to a tainted, discounted one.” (Yes, I’m intentionally riffing on Goffman.) The conviction that recovery stories are empowering, to some extent understandably, endures, and yet from the vantage point of an academic trainee immersed in the discourse of the health and social sciences, the painful, almost tragic, irony of this “empowerment” is all too clear. Viz: the theoretical chasm–truly a chasm–between “generalizable” and “non-generalizable” knowledge (FPAs will only ever be the latter, not the former, although they may “inform” it).
My indirect (“oblique”) purpose here is to explain why I decided not to publish the [my] Schizophrenia Bulletin “first person account” available here (“Externalizing Injustice: Madness is Never Here“). Let me be very clear that I am not attacking or criticizing first person accounts and narratives, but rather cynically commenting on their devalued status in the reigning social science “hierarchy of discourse.” I have a secret (or not so secret) desire to shame the research establishment, but no matter how keen this desire is, I know or think I know–I have thoroughly internalized the post-positivistic panopticon, if you will–that it is just not the way to win the game.
Hi – I appreciated your “ambivalent” stance on the value of first person accounts and do see that within the existing discourse they do have the capacity to “other” the teller in ways that (ironically) can reduce the self-narrator to a character in relation to concepts and ideas. However, I think exploration of that relation to the epistemologies that have written our stories is vitally important. Yet, it feels important to me that there be some critical awareness of one’s motivations in self-reflection.
I do think that FPAs are (erroneously) used toward broad generalizations, both in the minds of the self-narrator and in their use to support particular paradigmatic constructs. An example of this would be Elyn Saks’ FPA and its use by medical model lobbyists to give evidence of schizophrenia as a “terrible” and “dark” “illness.”
There are a lot of ins and outs on this topic. Far too many for a single comment. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to think critically about the function of the first person account.
Thanks, F. I think I probably was too oblique in this post, but I’m not worried about FPA writer’s claims or positions so much as I am about the way they are “read” by the social and health sciences ‘establishment’ (wherein so-called “anecdotal” arguments are relentlessly devalued). I guess the struggle is: do you just say “fuck the game” (the master’s tools can never be used to tear down the master’s house) or decide to play, albeit as subversively as possible? (And did I ever send you the link to the (fantastic!) recently published Costa et al. (2012) piece? Go here: ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/SSJ/article/…/2896 or google “Recovering Our Stories: A Small Act of Resistance.”
Dear N
Thank you so much for sharing “Externalizing Injustice: Madness is Never Here” especially despite your reservations about doing so. This account, alongside others you have posted here, raises powerful questions about the ways in which “the first person account” as a genre is produced and consumed, mobilised and valued. I am running two modules in a Doctor of Clinical Social Work Programme in the US in February and will be recommending this post as essential reading for students in that programme. Will keep you posted on how the discussion fares!
all my best wishes
angela
Dear Nev and others, Around 25 years ago when I was still “traveling” in and out of mental institutions and had more labels then a can of vegetables an amazing idea struck me soon after reading a sunday Chicago Sun-Times Parade magazine article by a retired Chicago Bear football player Lionel Aldridge.On 2 full pages he described certain events in his life showing how his “mental emotional illness ” actions on the street played out and how a doctor relieved his symtoms with a low dose of a medication.His description was like an imprint that I recognized clearly.When I moved to Oregon and was hospitalized there,when the new doctor asked me what meds they gave me in Chicago I lied and was able to try the meds that helped Aldridge.The med worked for me for quite a while.Soon afterwards I realized if FPA’s in a database included how a person acted when distressed and however they found relief could be put into a computer and accessed with an easily searchable key word program,and available in every library in the USA,suffering humanity in their better moments would be able to find a matching imprint and access actual lived experience solutions for their problem close to anywhere they lived for free and have regained control over their own lives while bypassing the establishment control.It could actually work for any health problem.What do you think? Best Wishes to all ,fred