As my evening coffee was brewing last night, I took a little time to think over one of my favorite recent reads: this article, Therapy Was Never Secular, by hannah baer in Jewish Currents. In the article, baer –– a student/practitioner of psychoanalysis –– makes a multifold argument in favor of acknowledging the role of the spiritual in therapeutic practice. More specifically, she points out the antisemitic demonization of psychoanalysis, inasmuch as psychoanalysis was and continues to be rooted in Jewish theological and cultural traditions. She expresses rightful concern over an isolationist, hypermodern, and scientized view of disability that has become increasingly mainstream with the rise of therapy apps and technologized “wellness” initiatives. Noting that the Jewish roots of psychoanalysis are necessarily rooted in the communal and collective, baer outlines the necessity of a spiritually, collectively-informed healing practice (and as such, I add, praxis) that reflects what it really means to be alive. To live is to be multiple, to be messy, and to be interconnected across spacetime. Under this intersubjective paradigm, the idea that I can CBT my Madmind into submission is pretty laughable. Or deeply frightening, if an authority mandates it.
If you'll forgive the very quick gloss of a truly fabulous article, I want to link this piece up to an article of discourse that, rather embarrassingly, surfaces every few social media cycles, much to the irritation of many who practice/think with disability studies (here is an illuminating twitter thread that partially inspired this post). I am referring to the reductionist binary of "Medical Model" versus "Social Model" of disability. Between disabled people claiming that they are "pro-Medical Model" simply because they believe correctly that pain and distress are material realities, to those claiming that there ought to be (or even could be) a centrist middle-ground between these two (of many!) models, we've backed ourself into an unfortunate game of telephone that we can't quite seem to hang up. All of this, despite the fact that debates over models of disability predate my own existence in the world, and that we are all very, very tired.
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