Psychology as Panopticon (Clara B. Jones)

Psychology as Panopticon

Wilhelm Wundt is recogtnized as “the father of psychology,” establishing the first laboratory of experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig in 1859, the same year Darwin's, Origin... was published. This event in Psychology inaugurated the role of the new discipline in viewing Homo sapiens as a subject of study by scientists, challenging Medieval beliefs of humans as distinct from other mammals and as close approximations to god. Psychology as a discipline has morphed into a variety of sub-disciplines, several of which have rejected the field’s quantitatively rigorous beginnings. From a scientific perspective, clinical psychologists, in particular, represent the most fragmented of these sub-disciplines, incorporating hard and soft methodological approaches to the study and practice of the human taxon. Nonetheless, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from a graduate program approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) stands as one of the most powerful doctoral degrees offered in Psychology, and the bearers of this degree may be found in clinical practice as well as in neuroscientific laboratories. Borrowing from Michel Foucault’s discussion of the architecture of power in society and his notion of Panopticon or central authority in the state and its bureaucratic representatives, the discipline of psychology and its morphs, especially clinical psychology, embody the power to name, classify, and treat all manner of behaviors exhibited and repressed by humans of any age and combination of character traits.

I first entered the psychological system of surveillance in my mid-twenties as a young mother of three. At that time, my diagnosis of schizophrenia, a major mental disorder, insured my placement in the medical Panopticon and its variegated prescriptions for treatment and recovery. At this time, I was an undergraduate student with a major in Psychology* at a prominent university in upstate New York where I returned to the classroom without significant delay. Subsequent to this first psychotic episode, I regained what appeared to be a normal life as student, mother, and wife, without considering the possibility that mental illness would define much of my future.

The empirical and collective wisdom of researchers conclude that major mental disorders (mood disorders and schizophrenia) are expressed when a threshold of interactions between genetic predisposition in response to environmental stressors is activated. When I presented with my first episode of mental illness, I was no stranger to stress or to what appeared to be a familial predisposition to psychopathology since my younger brother and sister had multiple hospitalizations before my own problems surfaced. The three of us grew up in a middle class home with distant parents who hired a live-in housekeeper to cook, clean, and assume responsibility for child care. Aside from my maternal grandmother who raised me from birth until the age of five, the housekeeper, herself distant, provided what, according to my memory, was the only stable presence from my childhood to my mid-teens. But, then, many grow up in similar or more dysfunctional circumstances, not necessarily leading to a DSM diagnosis.

I am now in my mid-late sixties with recurrent episodes of “manic-depression” continuing as a component of my life process. During my most recent hospitalization, I lost all assets accumulated during my career, was reduced to homelessness, was fired from my professorship, and was arrested and incarcerated twice. My daughter**, a mother, wife, and professional with significant obligations of her own, identified a long-term private facility in North Carolina that accepted me as a resident. To my knowledge, one of my sons assumed significant financial responsibilities for my well-being, and another son provided the skills necessary to have my status with the courts in Moore County, North Carolina, dismissed. While in jail, I thought of Foucault’s discussion of power and the role of law enforcement, including institutions of correction, as the dominant symbol of the Panopticon. Clearly, the power to name and to diagnose combined with all levels of policing were the primary forces of coercion determining how and when my episodes of psychopathology would and would not be tolerated in the social fabric within which I was living.

In an attempt to objectify my history of mental illness, it seems important to say that, in the midst of depression, mania, or psychosis, one lives in a “black hole” of self-absorption experienced as normal though, concurrently, bizarre. I have experienced more than a dozen episodes of psychopathology exhibited as combinations and re-combinations of mania, (less frequently) depression, and psychosis. During manic events, including my most recent illness, I have spent many thousands of dollars on unnecessary and often extravagant purchases, including cars, jewelry, designer clothing, books, fine art, and crafts. As a result of poor judgment, my assets were reduced to a few items fitting in my car which served as my residence until repossessed, leaving my net worth almost nil. As a homeless person fired from her university professorship in 2008, I learned, even through my fog of mental illness, that the poor are followed closely by the components of the legitimate and marginal Panopticon Network working in concert, ostensibly to maintain social order. The Panopticon Network manifests as a complex social framework of nodes and trajectories and, integrated with the concept of “fitness landscapes,” mean heights across space. The Panopticon Network extends its tentacles into every inhabitable space just as Rudolph Giuliani, as mayor of New York City, once utilized policing to curtail homeless windshield washers in their creative though intrusive attempts to earn a living.

*Influenced by my mother, and, performing well in the discipline, my first love was Botany; however, due, in part, to my connections in the department, Psychology offered me an undergraduate teaching assistantship (with M.E.P. Seligman, one of the great honors of my academic life).

**Due to an unfortunate interaction with my daughter during this time, we have been estranged until today (9/3/2018).

=====================================================================

Personal Calculus, November 2018

1.

1/1 Art is often the subject as well as the context.	1/2 Genotype is destiny in Baltimore.	1/3 In 1973, I walked into the Amazon with a Yagua man I did not know.
2/1 Brian Shimkovits plays “Awesome Tapes from Africa.”	2/2 My father tried to smother me.	2/3 i don't know you, do i?
3/1 My cat howls at the moon.	3/2 Another star is born...	3/3 In 1974, my husband....
4/1 A lover's early death is the greatest gift a woman can receive.	4/2 In 1973, I shot an endangered Saimirion Osá.	4/3 At a party in Ithaca, I saw my psychiatrist pull his son from a chair and slam the boy onto the floor.
5/1 “Why keep on pulling material from 2000-plus years of art history now that we have all these new online cultures?"*	5/2 Ulysses is everything....	5/3 Rita Dove lost the war by calling Helen Vendler, “racist.”
6/1 Afrobots live in ghettos with cats.	6/2 “I like sad things and hateful things and angry things, as they just stick with me more than happy things.”**	6/3 My mother gassed defective kittens in our oven.
7/1 Does what we desire make us who we are?	7/2 I never had good sex and a good man at the same time.	7/3 In 1976, I hiked Talamanca to find the Bribri.

*Jon Rafman

**David Raymond Conroy

2.

I remember when—

—we read Gibran poems in that café near Harvard;

—you and your cat licked milk from a blue bowl perched on the edge of the highest stair leading to the basement;

—Jerry jumped from the cliff in Utah;

—Jamal's Afrobot was struck by a truck on the way to Starbuck's®;

—the Einstein of the negroes was found in Harlem;

—Tyrone's boyfriend flew to Munich to view the Kandinsky;

—the sun didn't rise until noon;

—you ate collards and bluefin tuna;

—Le Bernardin® had no Michelin stars;

—Shemika said she was Swedish;

—Michelle put her hands on the Queen of England;

—my mother's death brought me pleasure;

—the tapir walked into my garden;

—I shot the howler monkey that died;

—'Toya ordered fat back and corn bread at Le Bernardin®;

—Tabebuia bloomed in synchrony;

—The Bell Jar told my story, and Nihilism seemed like a good idea.