Wounds Explication

Distantiation

(usually via segregation and also congregation.)

Distantiation- Being placed at a distance from society. Old Mental Hospitals were in isolated places following on from leper colonies and plague houses. Poor people are pushed to the edges of towns in social housing, or conversely may be forced into the city centre where few valued people live. Homes for persons with developmental disability or Mental Health problems may be pushed out into the country or into industrial areas as there are fewer problems with complaints from valued neighbours.

Segregation- Being placed in a separate area, not necessarily distant from valued persons. Wall in North Oxford separating council from private estate. Walled enclosures for highly valued housing. Shopping centres excluding beggars etc.. Council estates built with limited road connections to nearby valued housing. Creation of Race/Culture Ghettos. Creation of Poverty Ghettos in Inner Cities.

Congregation-Being placed in close proximity to others with low social value. Examples include most of the above.

Loss of Control

(perhaps even autonomy and freedom.)

Of environment, community tenure, possessions, simple human rights, economic rights, legal rights.

Discontinuity with the physical environment and objects.

Frequent moves. Lack of physical security of tenure. Loss of objects owned on move.

This was particularly apparent in the old institutions, with people moved at will between wards and villas, losing possessions and familiar surroundings.

It is still apparent- frequent moves in low cost housing for the borderline homeless. Movement between community homes at the whim of the organisation. Asylum seekers being ‘dispersed’.

Social and Relationship Discontinuity

(even abandonment)

Same examples as above, but with reference to friendship groups.

At its extremes such discontinuity may lead to total abandonment by friends or family.

Absence or loss of natural/freely-given relationships

(and substitution of artificial ones)

Most valued people can count on having freely given relationships- attentive parents and other kin, life partners, reciprocating relationships with friends and acquaintances, neighbours willing to ‘do favours’ and help out.

People who are not valued are likely to have a deficit of such natural relationships and to become dependent on artificial and purchased relationships with social workers, nurses, befrienders, charity workers etc.

Examples:

‘Your husband/wife’s funding has been withdrawn’

MIND scheme for be-frienders where you pay their transport costs

Disappearance of paid workers as their career progresses

Deindividualisation

Not being treated as an individual. Having meaning to people only as a member of a group- and that group most often being a devalued group.

Involuntary Material Poverty

(material/financial exploitation)

Not only immediate poverty- not having money for essentials, but also the results of long-term poverty- lack of material possessions which most valued people take for granted.

Impoverishment of experience

(especially that of the typical, valued world)

Exclusion from participation in valued events and gatherings. Loss of normal schooling, loss of work relationships, loss of being an ‘ordinary neighbour’, loss of membership of valued social groupings etc..

Exclusion From Higher Order Value Systems

(knowledge of, and participation in religions and other systems that give meaning and direction to life, and provide community)

Exclusion from religious groups (not in the image of God). Exclusion from high value social groupings by which valued people come to define themselves- clubs, societies, fraternal organisations, local action groups, political parties, educational institutions etc.

Having One’s Life ‘Wasted’

Being denied throughout their lives the experiences that allow valued people to ‘tell a life story’ that is full of meaning and value- learning and exams, valued work, family, children.

No real achievements, no-one important to share and appreciate. ‘Les temps arretez’ Not like everyone else.

Being the Object of Brutalisation

(‘killing thoughts’, and deathmaking)

Wolfensberger asserts that ‘modern society’ is particularly likely to cause death and brutalisation to devalued people. I am not sure that a close reading of social history and anthropology supports this contention.

However, it is undeniable that devalued people are disproportionately likely to suffer brutalisation in any age or culture. Such people are at risk of being the subject of ‘killing thoughts’ and deathmaking (as Wolfensberger terms the killing or the assisting people to die).

Wolfensberger takes a strong ‘right-to-life’ stance for all human matter from foetus to near-death in Old Age or following trauma or infection in all ages. He sees medicalised abortion as part of death-making, as well as most euthanasia and withdrawal of life support. In this, his social views are extreme for the USA, and even more so from a European perspective. It is not necessary to share or even accept his views on these matters to understand SRV and death-making.

Additionally he cites:

· large scale placement of devalued people on deadly prescription psycho-active drugs

· abandonment to death in ghetto populations

· dumping of devalued people into unsupported ‘community’ living

as death-making.

Commentary on the Other Reactions

Feeling like being an alien in the world

If one is excluded and distanced from the valued world, one is likely to feel that one is not part of that world, and so alien to that world, and to take on the role of alien.

A sense of worthlessness, dislike of self, despair

If other people persistently treat you as worthless and unlikable, one is likely to internalise these feelings and to view oneself in the same way.

Insecurity

If ones social and physical world is unpredictable then lack of security is a mjor problem and feelings of insecurity become unmanageable.

Failure sets and avoidance mentalities

If one is told that one is hopeless, and one continues to fail, then one begins to see oneself as likely to fail at everything and so to avoid any chance of failure by avoiding such situations.

Awareness of being a source of anguish to those who love one.

It is easy to see ones main role as causer of problems to other people and so to begin to despise oneself as one might despise other such problem causers.

Searching for the abandoner

Loss of important significant others (parents, social partners, friends) is common among the devalued. Unrealistic searches (real and imaginary) for the person desired may become a major part of ones life.

Fantasy and inventions about relationships

that do not exist, and may never have existed.

Creation in the mind of parents who were famous or otherwise valued, or the creation in the mind of sexual/social partners who never existed is a sound mental mechanism to protect the ego against the harm done by being friendless and loveless.

Seeking/demanding physical contact, perhaps insatiably

Lack of physical and social contact may lead to inappropriate demanding and sexualised behaviour.

Problematic testing of genuineness of relationships

personal and social, particularly new ones

Experience of frequent (often inadvertent) rejection by care staff and other paid or unpaid ‘workers’ may result in one becoming obsessed with testing new relationships to destruction- ‘Will they still like me, even if I act abominably?’

Turning the hurt into resentment

hatred towards privileged people, benefactors, society, God

Another mental mechanism that protects the damged ego is inappropriate blaming of others (whether responsible for the plight or not).

Withdrawing from human contact, perhaps even from reality.

Withdrawal is another means of avoiding hurt.

Rage, perhaps violence.

It is not surprising that people who are so wounded and unvalued should react with rage, aggression and violence.

A sapping of energy

both physical and mental- resulting in a lowering of intelligent behaviour, and possibly even of intelligence.

The amount of effort required of devalued people to just maintain their existence at a barely acceptable level may be so great that all other effort is avoided, and growth, learning and development become further impaired, despite being actually possible.