Public Pedagogy

"Is this me talking or the ICK ?"

"Say something, Do something"

"I was a self-declared ally"

"Was the acknowledgement performative or sincere?"

Trauma 101: A Practitioner’s Guide to Trauma Response

Song: Love Like a Sunset Part 1 by Phoenix

Part One: The phenomenon of “internalized sanism” occurs “when psychiatric survivors adopt the same values and perceptions non-survivors use to oppress them” (Corrigan & Watson, 2002, p.106) Part One explores this by interrogating definitions of ‘sanity’ and ‘madness’, while revealing the mind’s battle between self-hatred for one’s own difference and a genuine appreciation for one’s own uniqueness.
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Transcription:

1: What do you think are for Chris sake? Crazy or something? Well you’re not! You’re not. You’re no crazier than the average asshole out walking on the streets and that’s it!

2: I’m telling you these walls are funny. First you hate em, then you get used to them, enough time passes you get so much you depend on em. That’s institutionalized

3: People hate us out there

4: They hate your brilliance, they hate your beauty. They hate us. But we not gon’ hate ourselves

5: Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.

6: I have to remind myself that some birds are not meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

Psychiatric Hollywood

Part One: Some birds are not meant to be caged

Song: Dawn by Cinematic Orchestra

Part Five: Part five challenges subjective beliefs around harm and healing by pitting interpersonal connection up against medication and surgical procedures. It leaves you with an ethical question around psychiatric science for the sake of science and silence: “Which is better - to damage the brain a bit and get them out of the hospital, or do nothing?”
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Transcription:

1: I’m frightened, Alice. I don’t like it in here. It’s terribly crowded. 

2: Arthur, you’re on 7 different medications, surely, they must be doing something

3: You don’t listen do you? I don’t think you ever really hear me. You just ask the same questions every week. How’s your job? Are you having any negative thoughts?

4: You think I’m crazy. And if I say I’m not crazy, well that hardly helps does it? That’s the Kafkaesque genius of it. People tell the world you’re crazy and all your protest to the contrary just confirm what they’re saying

5: Critics may question a procedure intentionally damaging the brain, but which is better? to damage the brain a bit and get them out of the hospital or do nothing?

Part Five: To damage the brain or do nothing

Song: Dawn by Cinematic Orchestra

Part Four: Part four attempts to expose the institution’s motive to silence through drugs, apathy and violence. It deceitfully communicates the politics of control to be a matter of survival, while simultaneously revealing man’s sinful desire for endless power.
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Transcription:

1: You know, mankind's been trying to kill each other off since the beginning of time; now, we finally have the power to finish the job.

2: Violence makes violence

3: Very soon now the drug will cause the subject to experience a deathlike paralysis together with deep feelings of terror and helplessness. One of our early test subjects described it as death’s sense of stifling or drowning

4: There’s no moral order at all. There’s just this: can my violence conquer yours? 

5: They don’t give a shit about people like you Arthur.

6: If Mr. McMurphy doesn't want to take his medication orally, I'm sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way.

7:  And they really don’t give a shit about people like me either

8: It’s no longer about justice, counselor. It’s about politics. And politics is about survival and there is nothing fair about survival

9: Once you’re declared insane, then anything you do is called a part of that insanity. Reasonable protest or denial. Valid fears, paranoia. 
         Survival instincts are defense mechanisms....

 10: What does he want?
           What do all men with power want? More power.

Part Four: Violence makes violence

Song: Dawn by Cinematic Orchestra

Part Three: Part three builds off psychiatry’s categorical ambiguity to interrogate the loose-handed use of prescription drugs and psychiatric ‘advancements’ such as the trans orbital lobotomy. The passive and routine nature of medication is exemplified, while a glimpse of the relationship between violence and treatment is captured.
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Transcription:

1: Hey Ma, you uppers?
           What?
   You’re on uppers! 
            I told you, I’m going to a specialist
   What does he give you Ma? Does he give you pills?
            Of course, he gives me pills, he’s a doctor!
   What kind of pills?
            A purple one, a blue one, an orange one
    I mean, what’s in em’?
            Harry, I’m Sara Goldfarb not Albert Einstein, how am I supposed to know what’s in em’?
2: Medication Time, medication time
3: If you gotta talk, try to be vague. Can you do that?
             I'm a psychiatrist. Believe me, I can be vague.
4: What exactly is the treatment here going to be then?
5. Medication Time, medication time
6: He's a good man, he believes in the work we do here
            And what is that exactly?
       A moral fusion between law and order and clinical care
7: Unless we can bring you back to sanity now, right now, permanent measures will be taken to make sure you never hurt anyone again
8: Medication Time, Medication time
9: The problems of our mental hospitals cannot be met until the backlog of chronically disturbed patients is much more effectively treated than they are at the pleasant moment. I maintain that the proper application of the trans orbital leucotomy will turn our asylums into Old People’s homes.

Part Three: Medication time, medication time

Song: Silent Flight, Sleeping Dawn by Mono

Part Two: Within “Critiques of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the DSM”, Burstow (2005) makes an argument for the arbitrariness of the DSM’s formal categories, revealing the cyclical nature of its definitions and symptoms. Historically the DSM has been weaponized as a way to pathologize affections often associated with women’s behaviour or trauma, including Borderline Personality Disorder and Hysteria.
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Transcription:

1: The real reason you’ve been sent over here is to be evaluated, to determine whether or not you’re mentally ill. This is the real reason. Why do you think they might think that?

2: Excitable, emotional, prone to fantasy...

3: Well, that's me.
             That's everybody

4: "Borderline Personality Disorder. An instability of self-image, relationships and mood... uncertain about goals, impulsive in activities that are self-damaging, such as casual sex... Social contrariness and a generally pessimistic attitude are often observed"

5: Textbook case of female hysteria.

6: Well, that's me.
            That's everybody.

7: Untreatable some say... I beg to differ

Part Two: The real reason you've been sent over here

Audio projects by Annalissa Crisostomo, completed during her graduate studies in Adult Education and Community Development at OISE, University of Toronto
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Creative empowerment through storytelling and 'edutainment'

Art[ivism] & Allyship

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