#201
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NounsareVerbs posted:
DM now that you are an officially free adult (tm) under contract with the constitution of the United States of America - have you thought about getting training in education or advocacy and working with teens who need understanding adults?



have you read pedagogy of the oppressed?

#202
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i wonder just how much these places can be traced back to therapeutic cults of the 1960s. i was just reading how a synanon "graduate" founded CEDU.
#203
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I have not, but I can tell by the critiques that it will be a valuable read. My ethic is to do what I can maintain the self-determination of the student. This is awfully hard to do with inaccurate liberal curriculum. I feel especially for wise history/government teachers who must deal with propagandist standards. It wont be as big of a mess for me, since I'll be teaching Drama and English. I think stories speak for themselves and people who approach the language and dramatic arts with sincerity will trend into allies of the people. I am a zenist first and a marxist second though.
#204
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jools posted:
i wonder just how much these places can be traced back to therapeutic cults of the 1960s. i was just reading how a synanon "graduate" founded CEDU.



i think a lot probably. some of the groups active in learning about them are Swedish and Danish, so it has apparently disseminated across cultures. the easiest way to follow it would be to look for things like themes of healing/personal transformation/anti-drug stuff.

perhaps it is tied to the subsequent crisis and reconstitution of capitalism? i think there could be some stuff going on there culturally

NounsareVerbs posted:
I have not, but I can tell by the critiques that it will be a valuable read. My ethic is to do what I can maintain the self-determination of the student. This is awfully hard to do with inaccurate liberal curriculum. I feel especially for wise history/government teachers who must deal with propagandist standards. It wont be as big of a mess for me, since I'll be teaching Drama and English. I think stories speak for themselves and people who approach the language and dramatic arts with sincerity will trend into allies of the people. I am a zenist first and a marxist second though.



i just started reading it and it's great

#205
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i'm looking into the after effects and it's kinda weird because there's not a lot in terms of points of reference. the typical example is a soldier, but the soldier tends to be culturally Valued and considered honorable. what makes things so difficult afterwards is precisely that it is not considered honorable.

Fanon is really relevant in addition to Patterson. let me further illuminate the concept of personality as related by Arendt:

Persona, at any event, originally referred to the actor's mask that covered his individual "personal" face and indicated to the spectator the role and the part of the actor in the play. But in this mask, which was designed and determined by the play, there existed a broad opening at the place of the mouth through which the individual, undisguised voice of the actor could sound. It was from this sounding through that the word persona was derived: person-are, to "sound through," is the verb of which persona, the mask, is the noun. And the Romans themselves were the first to use the noun in the metaphorical sense; in Roman law, persona was somebody who possessed civil rights, in sharp distinction from the word homo, denoting someone who was nothing but a member of the human species, different, to be sure, from an animal but without any specific qualities or distinction, so that homo, like the Greek anthropos, was frequently used contemptuously to designate people not protected by any law.

...The Roman mask corresponds with great precision to our own way of appearing in a society where we are not citizens, that is, not equalized by the public space established and reserved for political speech and political acts, but where we are accepted as individuals in our own right and yet by no means human beings as such. We always appear in a world which is a stage and are recognized according to the roles which our professions assign us, as physicians or lawyers, as authors or publishers, as teachers or students, and so on. It is through this role, sounding through it, as it were, that something else manifests itself, something entirely idiosyncratic and undefinable and still unmistakably identifiable, so that we are not confused by a sudden change in roles, when for instance a student arrives at his goal which was to become a teacher, or when a hostess, whom we socially know as a physician, serves drinks instead of taking care of her patients.



the concept of personality relates to affect, to which Fanon is very attentive. there's also the issue of mastering competencies and fulfilling roles. on the bright side, phenomenology has been very helpful both in reconstructing my memory and finding ways to cope with the lingering after effects (after affect?). as far as i can tell, they have to do with reconditioning of stress responses and the autonomic nervous system.

#206
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wow, now that i think about it they really are sort of like colonies. there's an induction process where you're depersonalized. here are some websites with stories:

http://tales-from-the-black-school.blogspot.com/
http://www.helpsavetroubledteens.com/our-stories.html

My "inprocessing" experience probably does not differ much from that of my peers. They took my clothes, my music, my books, and my personal writings. This was all tough, but the moment that stands out emotionally was when a staff member cut off a piece of hemp jewelry that I had tied on to my ankle three years prior. I know this may not sound atrocious by any means but to have someone directly strip you of your self-image like that at 16 years old is devastating. I do remember that it was the first time I felt stripped of my personal identity, a very important thing as I understand it now, to a 16 year old boy. Remembering this moment evokes a very negative feeling within me even today. I know now that it was the beginning of my defeat.



i'm not particularly upset by it, but i had an ear piercing taken out. they cut your hair and choose what clothes you wear too. at the same time, you enter a kind of state of shock when you realize that nobody is going to be able to help you. discussion of your life beforehand is discouraged (including ordinary interests) as you're assigned a new identity and then re-socialized in terms of the facility.

the re-socialization actually involves gradually letting you off the facility if you're compliant enough, visits with family members, and even visits back home. the really striking thing is that you have no way of actually navigating the surrounding environment socially. people in the surrounding area know the place exists and tend to not want to be around the "bad kids".

Mircae Eliade posted:
For religious man, space is not homogeneous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of' space are qualitatively different from others. "Draw not nigh hither," says the Lord to Moses; "put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (Exodus, 3, 5). There is, then, a sacred space, and hence a strong, significant space; there are other spaces that are not sacred and so are without structure or consistency, amorphous. Nor is this all. For religious man, this spatial nonhomogeneity finds expression in the experience of an opposition between space' that is sacred--the only real and real-ly existing space--and all other space, the formless expanse surrounding it.

It must be said at once that the religious experience of the nonhomogeneity of space is a primordial experience homologizable to a founding of the world. It is not a matter of theoretical speculation, but of a primary religious experience that precedes all reflection on the world. For it is the break effected in space that allows the world to be constituted, because it reveals the fixed point, the central axis for all future orientation. When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.

So it is clear to what a degree the discovery--that is, the revelation--of a sacred space possesses existential value for religious man; for nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation--and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point. It is for this reason that religious man has always sought to fix his abode at the "center of the world." If the world is to be lived in, it must be founded--and no world can come to birth in the chaos of the homogeneity and relativity of profane space. The discovery or projection of a fixed point--the center--is equivalent to the creation of the world; and we shall soon give some examples that will unmistakably show the cosmogonic value of the ritual orientation and construction of sacred space.

....

One of the outstanding characteristics of traditional societies is the opposition that they assume between their inhabited territory and the unknown and indeterminate space that surrounds it. The former is the world (more precisely, our world), the cosmos; everything outside it is no longer a cosmos but a sort of "other world," a foreign, chaotic space, peopled by ghosts, demons, "foreigners" (who are assimilated to demons and the souls of the dead). At first sight this cleavage in space appears to be due to the opposition between an inhabited and organized--hence cosmicized--territory and the unknown space that extends beyond its frontiers; on one side there is a cosmos, on the other a chaos. But we shall see that if every inhabited territory is a cosmos, this is precisely because it was first consecrated, because, in one way or another, it is the work of the gods or is in communication with the world of the gods. The world (that is, our world) is a universe within which the sacred has already manifested itself, in which, consequently, the break-through from plane to plane has become possible and repeatable. It is not difficult to see why the religious moment implies the cosmogonic moment. The sacred reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes orientation possible; hence it founds the world in the sense that it fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world.



it becomes the only space in which you understand how to appear as yourself (your "new self" anyways).

#207
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Incoming world-disclosure with a little more stuff from my friend:

With most people I'm close to, they know some extent of my history when it comes to places like REDACTED, and they know I worked for CAFETY to try and regulate the industry, people are usually either suspicious of my mental stability or pity me...trying to give me generic life advice, etc. It usually takes them a while to see that I've got a good grasp on it, people who try to tell me how to handle things or give me family advice end up deferring to my judgement, because they realize it's a lot more complex than they know and that I have a better understanding than they initially give me credit for.

If you wanted to mention me when you talk about this with others, mentioning that you're not the only person who has these sorts of anxieties or social complications from the Utah experience, you totally can. It does help when others know it's a bigger problem that changes a lot of people and not so much a personal issue that rests only with you.



I've spoken to a few doctors who were especially interested in my case for reasons that seem similar to the academic's that you've talked to, same with CAFETY. A big part of it is I think they understand to an extent that they don't understand what it's like from our perspectives, and that being in that situation with the family dynamics that we have makes treating one person away from the family in an intensive setting very tricky and complicated.

Initially they can seem confused or they seem to respond like the situations are so ridiculous that we must somehow be exaggerating some part of it, but like you mentioned, the more the story expands out with greater context and details, the more the complexities become apparent and they become increasingly interested. Plus, being able to recall such information clearly and in great detail adds to the impression that you really are an intelligent and thoughtful person, a lot of people would be incredibly upset or obviously nervous about discussing a lot of the things we had to become familiar with discussing multiple times every week, so seeing that level of clarity during a conversation only adds credibility.



e: and

...they made me take off a choker I had tied on for over two years, that was really hard and I didn't want to do it...they also wouldn't let me wear a lot of my band t-shirts, which most of my shirts were. Being forced to be a blank canvas, not having that outlet of expression. Especially when it came to listening to music, that was torture, I needed music.



Edited by dm ()

#208
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she mentioned you spoke with academics? what kind and how did those encounters go?
#209
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apparently i'm working on something like an ethnography i guess. it was a little disorienting at first, but it's going pretty well. i think this thread has contributed to it, but i'm not quite sure.
#210
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e: nm

Edited by dm ()

#211
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http://nospank.net/jrc.pdf

Mother of fucking Christ welcome to the 21st century you defiant disorder brats, this is what you get for disrespecting my authoritah. Sending in an application to teach here right now.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT

JRC employs a general use of Level III aversive behavioral interventions to students
for behaviors that are not aggressive, health dangerous or destructive, such as
nagging, swearing and failing to maintain a neat appearance.



The most common Level III aversive procedure used at JRC is skin shock in
which one or more electrical stimulations are administered to a student after he or she
engages in a targeted behavior. Skin shocks are delivered through a graduated
electronic deceleration (GED) device that consists of a transmitter operated by staff and a receiver worn by the JRC student.



At JRC, an additional form of electrical circuitry is used to automatically
administer a series of aversives (e.g., skin shocks) as soon as a behavior is initiated.
Shocks are administered at regular intervals (e.g., one every three seconds). The
automatic negative reinforcement shocks terminate as soon as the behavior stops
occurring. This device is not operated by JRC staff. For example, some students are
made to sit on a GED cushion seat that will automatically administer a skin shock for the
targeted behavior of “standing up”, while others wear waist holsters that will administer
a skin shock if the student pulls his/her hands out of the holster.



A combination of mechanical restraint and GED skin shock is also used to
administer a consequence to students that attempt to remove the GED from their
bodies. In instances where this combined aversive approach is used, the student, over
a period of time specified on his or her behavior program, is mechanically restrained on
a platform and GED shocks are applied at varying intervals.

#212
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"The center was founded as the Behavior Research Institute in 1971 by Matthew L. Israel, a psychologist who trained with B. F. Skinner. In 1994 the center changed its name to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center "to honor the memory of the judge helped to preserve program from extinction at the hands of state licensing officials in the 1980’s." It has 900 employees and annual revenues exceeding $56 million, charging $220,000 a year for each student."

Edited by thirdplace ()

#213
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i'd take the tazer too if I didn't have to look at that color scheme all day.
#214
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NounsareVerbs posted:
i'd take the tazer too if I didn't have to look at that color scheme all day.

the only thing they're worse at than GIF transparencies is "human decency"

#215
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JRC has a policy on modifying contingencies due to the special “pleading” of
students. Part of the treatment program for students involves deliberately setting up
unfair or mistaken directions or decelerative (application of a skin shock with a GED
device) consequences for the students. The student is expected to handle these
unfair situations successfully and not ‘plead’ or appeal to a psychologist or clinician
regarding his/her treatment. In instances where the student “pleads” to the
psychologist or clinician, there are consequences imposed on the student.



#216
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220 thousand dollars lmao
#217
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NounsareVerbs posted:

JRC has a policy on modifying contingencies due to the special “pleading” of
students. Part of the treatment program for students involves deliberately setting up
unfair or mistaken directions or decelerative (application of a skin shock with a GED
device) consequences for the students. The student is expected to handle these
unfair situations successfully and not ‘plead’ or appeal to a psychologist or clinician
regarding his/her treatment. In instances where the student “pleads” to the
psychologist or clinician, there are consequences imposed on the student.



ahahaha we were assigned in mass to these hack therapists who were in on the whole thing. casting what was going on in general in a negative light in the not-really-confidential "therapy" was grounds for punishment. there was no shocking though

#218
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dm posted:
if you absolutely need a medical paradigm, this is more like what you're looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_fugue



this is a little better after talking to my friend, though there is no diagnosis or anything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

#219
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got back in contact with another friend that i also briefly had contact with when i left. all three of us were friends there together.
#220
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k, so both friends were on the same unit apparently have some problems with autism that you wouldn't notice unless you knew what to look for. this stuff exacerbated it really badly because their "treatment" consisted of just sedating the shit out of them. friend 2 ended up having some problems with meth for a while after she got out but is off of it now and doing fairly well
#221
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Autism treatment is about learning coping strategies to engage in needed social behaviors - I'm guessing your friend is probably (however many years) behind on learning those skills. Now that they are an adult, there will be very little free or decent treatment available anywhere

I have a friend that's been diagnosed with depersonalization. He finds music to be therapeutic.
#222
[account deactivated]
#223
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No just a soulless husk.
#224
penitent
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im a soulless husk what drugs can i get prescribed
#225
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thats actually what you take drugs to become so congratulations youre now ready to be a productive citizen
#226
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My drug is making money and I stack mad paper from wall to wall so...
#227
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aerdil posted:
thats actually what you take drugs to become so congratulations youre now ready to be a productive citizen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fUxeKtcVU7w#t=21s

#228
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NounsareVerbs posted:
Autism treatment is about learning coping strategies to engage in needed social behaviors - I'm guessing your friend is probably (however many years) behind on learning those skills. Now that they are an adult, there will be very little free or decent treatment available anywhere

I have a friend that's been diagnosed with depersonalization. He finds music to be therapeutic.



It's not quite that simple. I mean the place is still open and everything and I'm still forced to interact with people as if nothing ever happened for the most part, which sucks pretty badly in terms of trying to have a coherent sense of identity, much less motivation in general. All three of us got our plans for higher education damaged pretty badly by it even though we're all perfectly capable.

One of them aptly characterized it as being like a prison that follows you around.

#229
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yeah because most people who leave prison do so with a bright open future of social acceptance and upper management careers ahead of them. lol are you fucking kidding me?

god forbid a bunch of privileged white Mormon trust fund babies have to experience 1/10th of what its like to be a black man in America. the only thing wrong with these facilities is that they ever let people out. the problem with every gulag is that they never go far enough

Edited by blinkandwheeze ()

#230
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Julie_Bombplot posted:



your fractal is a swastika. coincidence ????

#231
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Julie_Bombplot posted:
yeah because most people who leave prison do so with a bright open future of social acceptance and upper management careers ahead of them. lol are you fucking kidding me?

god forbid a bunch of privileged white Mormon trust fund babies have to experience 1/10th of what its like to be a black man in America. the only thing wrong with these facilities is that they ever let people out. the problem with every gulag is that they never go far enough



i've been trolled about this before and it just doesn't bother me. i mean look at the stuff i posted on the first few pages. you act like that's not exactly the promotional material they use

#232
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it's almost like being in a position to cast doubt on what you say is exactly how they get away with it

e: that doesn't mean i'm not open to criticism that's worthwhile

Edited by dm ()

#233
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What is making you anxious about launching a campaign against the place?
#234
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a lot of stuff, but mainly still needing more time to get a lot of stuff in order atm. liminality is permeating everything
#235
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going on a campaign against them would be a lot easier if my friends and family who should have been there for me at the time didn't treat me like a fucking leper every time i try to bring it up to this very day. as long as i shut the fuck up about it and pretend i have relationships with them that i don't, they're as supportive as can be
#236
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dm posted:
yeah, but the majority of the adult world doesn't have to worry about insulting tpaine's lyrical skills right now.

she offered before and the reason she can trust me now is that i didn't take her up on it. neither of us has mentioned it explicitly and i'm giving her cover, but she said some stuff indicating she was embarrassed about it.



this time i'm going to take her up on it after we settle some details concerning certain special sexual needs that she has

#237
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that's a p good euphemism for having sex yo i might have to use that
#238
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this thread is now CLOSED by special request from dm. good luck in the future buddy!