In a 1963 clipping from the New York Daily Mirror, passers-by were asked, “If a Woman Needs It, Should She Be Spanked?” Strangely, none of the four interviewed were women.
It’s this kind of selection bias the Icarus Project stands against. The Project is a San Francisco-based collective promoting the voices of the mentally-ill.. They organize peer support, create on-line art galleries, and rally clients to speak out on their own behalf. One thing they don’t do? They don’t accept the idea that mental illnesses are solely impairments.
The Icarus Project’s logo: falling or flying?
Normally, mental health staff face-palm over calls to, “challenge standard definitions of psychic difference as essentially diseased, disordered, broken, faulty, and existing within the bounds of DSM-IV diagnosis.” Too often, treating mental health issues as a “dangerous gift” means a client goes off their meds, lands in the hospital, and disrupts their progress towards recovery. The Icarians’ language is counter-cultural, but there’s nothing mindless in their anti-authoritarianism. They aren’t against meds, diagnosis or treatment – only the belief we mental health professionals know the whole story. This balance is reflected in their name; Icarus, you’ll remember, perished when he flew too close to the sun.
Sophie Crumb’s self-care flyer for The Icarus Project
Talk of “societal oppression” and “urban shamanism” may induce woozy flashbacks of 1970s identity-politics and the backlash that followed. Should we worry their printable pamphlets on self-mutilation don’t urge clients to stop? A close reading shows the pamphlet promotes harm reduction, including many safer substitutes Marsha Linehan would endorse. When project members critique profit-seeking drug companies’ influence on mental health treatment, they have company in the highest and most respected levels of psychology.
The project celebrates an impressive tenth anniversary this year. Whereas decentralized collectives usually veer from dialectical moderation to the ditches of extremism, Icarus continues to walk a narrow path: meds and therapy are okay, self-care and community are crucial, and mental illness, while no blessing, is not necessarily a curse. This quote from Scatter sums up the project best:
Our society still seems to be in the early stages of the dialogue where you’re either “for” or “against” the mental health system. Like either you swallow the antidepressant ads on television as modern-day gospel and start giving your dog Prozac, or you’re convinced we’re living in Brave New World and all the psych drugs are just part of a big conspiracy to keep us from being self-reliant and realizing our true potential. I think it’s really about time we start carving some more of the middle ground with stories from outside the mainstream and creating a new language for ourselves that reflects all the complexity and brilliance that we hold inside.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Whole Earth Catalog provided tools for those ready to challenge social and economic norms. Today, Icarus does the same for those who question psychiatric norms. It also challenges mental health professionals to make “empowering clients” and “person-centered diagnosis” more than platitudes. “Mentally disturbed,” is synonymous with “unreliable witness”, and yet no one else can tell us what the experience is like. If Freud hadn’t analyzed himself, would there be a field of psychology today?
@ 2012 Jonathan Miller All Rights Reserved
