| |||||
 | A Feminine Economy of Caring: Gifts and Wrapping | ||||
 |
| ||||
Introduction What I hope to present to you today is not a model of nursing, or a model of caring. There are surely enough models already in existence to embrace the delivery of psychiatric care – none better, in my humble opinion, than my revered colleague, Professor Phil Barker’s Tidal Model – which quite clearly acknowledges the person’s lived experiences and, by way of a therapeutic collaboration, empowers that person to navigate his or her own recovery. Nor am I advocating a particular kind of therapy. Again, I would respectfully suggest that there are ample therapeutic approaches that enable professional carers to engage with people in psychological distress – some of which a sizeable number of you will have experienced and will still be experiencing – first hand. What I do want to focus on within the next forty-five minutes is what I can only think to call a ‘mind-set’. That which drives us, the professional carers, to ‘do’ or to ‘be’ with people in emotional distress in a particular way. Whatever model we do follow – if, indeed, we do – and whichever therapeutic interventions we do employ, how do our belief systems, prejudices and, of course, the influences of our organisation, subtly … and, sometimes, not so subtly … shape the way in which we react or respond to a person who is psychologically disabled. When we are faced with the unpredictability of someone’s psychosis – or the heart-wrenching sadness of someone’s deep depression – or the threat of violence or self-destruction – what is it within us that really … I mean really … galvanises our response? Let me try and set the scene for you by telling a short story – a story that I think you will all be able to relate to in some way. Daniel found himself being steered down an unfamiliar corridor. Haunted by the echo of his own footsteps, a deathly feeling consumed him as the blue haze that had suddenly misted his sight threatened to consume him. The nurse who had guided him to his destination reached for the door handle and the click of the latch as she pushed it open seemed to provide Daniel with the strength to gather himself and walk through it. Rattling with fear, he realised that several others were already sitting in a semi-circle in the room. He was aware of them, but he did not see them. He saw only the man in the grey suit - a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous, brutal face - who greeted him formally and offered him what seemed to be the only vacant seat. He heard the door click again but could not look to see if his guide had stayed. The man in the grey suit introduced himself as Doctor O'Brien and then began to introduce Daniel to the others. Their names slipped through his ears and vanished irretrievably into the ether of the room. There was a silence that crashed inside Daniel's head and an intense feeling of shame flushed his whole body. "At the moment", continued the grey-suited man, "you are not very well, Daniel. That's why you are here. Our main concern is to get you well again as quickly as possible, so that you can return home and begin to live a normal life again. I guess that's what you want, too?" His voice was gentle and patient and business-like. Despite his impassive manner, he had momentarily rescued Daniel’s attention from the demons that had captured his soul. He fixed his questioning gaze onto Daniel's eyes who, whilst avoiding making contact with them, somehow found the courage to respond affirmatively. "Good! And you will get better, Daniel. This is the best place for you to be at the moment; I'm glad you've agreed to stay with us. Now, the Nurses tell me that you’re hearing voices in your head … telling you to harm yourself?" "No!" responded Daniel, looking bewildered. And this was true – he had been communicating with his Executioner who, by way of satellite vaporisation, had determined what Daniel’s mission should be, but he never heard voices in his head. "Nevertheless! I think we’ll make sure that there’s always one of the Nurses nearby to keep you safe, Daniel, until you start to feel better". "Yes!" stuttered Daniel. The man in the grey suit’s words meant nothing to him at all – but Daniel sensed that a compliant response would satisfy him. "Well, I’m going to start you on some medication that should help you to feel a lot calmer and, later in the day, my registrar, Dr. Charrington will come to have quite a long chat with you so she can get a clearer picture of what's been happening. How does that sound?" "Yes", answered Daniel, aiming his answer at the man in the grey suit's shoes. "Splendid! Any questions?" continued the man who was obviously in charge. "No", Daniel quickly retorted. "OK, that's fine. You can go now, Daniel". As the anxiety of having to stand up and find his way out of the room shot through him, he felt a hand softly placing itself on his arm and heard a reassuring, familiar voice saying "This way, Daniel". It was his guide - she had followed him into the room. Once outside, he tried to make sense of what had happened in the room. But he could make no sense of it at all. "Take no heed, Daniel", whispered a familiar voice, which Daniel immediately recognised as his Executioner. He froze on the spot and fixed his gaze on the nothingness in front of him. "Are you OK, Daniel?" enquired the Nurse who was shepherding him back to the Ward. Her words caught Daniel’s senses a glancing blow and then ricocheted away into infinity. "You have come here for a purpose, Daniel", commanded his Executioner. "You have failed us all & the consequences are that your family will now die. Justice demands that you, Daniel, must die too. You are a murderer … prepare to murder yourself!" Sentence had been passed. Fear pulsed around his veins, matched only in intensity by the guilt that tore at his soul, consuming him from within. "Yes!" he replied to his incorporeal controller. The Nurse at his side took hold of his arm and her slow step forward was enough to reactivate Daniel’s legs in unison with hers. She knew he was hearing the voices but struggled to know how she should be. "We’ll soon have you feeling better, Daniel". She wanted to reassure him – she felt anxious, impotent and unconnected to him. "Is your mum coming to see you this afternoon?" Daniel stopped in his tracks once more and his eyes beamed out his bewilderment at her naivety. ‘Does she not know?’ He was shocked that she had asked him such a contentious question. He looked straight ahead and begun to walk again. "No!" he pronounced, rather brusquely. ‘Who exactly is this Nurse woman?’ he panicked … ‘Has she been planted here to torment me? How much does she really know? Is she an envoy from the Executioner’s Team whose assignment is to make sure that his mission is carried out?’ A nameless dread began to gnaw at Daniel through every single organ inside his body. Frequently, psychiatric care is delivered through surveillance: either overtly under the watchful eyes of the nursing sentinel or, more covertly, through clinic appointments and home visits. When psychiatric care is driven by vigilance, a heavy shadow is cast which intimidates the patient and blocks out sunrays of hope. It involves a nurse-patient relationship generated by a philosophy of caring based on sameness and repetition. The feelings of power predominantly belong to the nurse, as she uses her badge of office to impose the controlling structure of the organisation onto every patient. The nurse is meeting the needs of the organisation, which prevents her from getting to know the patient. The nurse, herself, has become dazzled and blinded by the powerful beam of the organisational searchlight. And, when you wrap the patient in vigilance, how can you possibly expect to engage with him, trust with him, share with him? You will always be the invigilator, the security officer. He will ever be the suspect, the accused, the prisoner. Of course, being with the other – the patient – can be a fairly unpredictable and risky business. And, as I’m sure you are aware, risk reduction has become the condom that we professionals automatically slip on in order to practice safely. Sadly, this protective barrier that we have learned to put on in the dark also blocks out the potential for a really productive therapeutic alliance. Walk into any acute psychiatric unit and you will encounter an observation policy in the process of being implemented. Here, caring manifests as physical presence and, in the name of risk reduction, perpetual one-to-one shadowing of an emotionally disturbed person. Caring on such occasions constitutes the policing of a human being with the sole intention of controlling that person's behaviour – often through physical restraint. In certain circumstances, being with can be interpreted as being held down by several nurses, completely immobilised. Sadly, as opposed to offering in-service training on interpersonal skills – which nurses don’t seem to receive enough of in their basic, pre-registration training – short courses on control and restraint have become a priority for all staff working in acute units. Physical determinism – or force, as it is more commonly known – is an acceptable form of being with the psychiatrised other. If only ‘C & R’ stood for ‘charity and respect’. Charity, that is, in the biblical sense … love, in other words. "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity". Corinthians, 13, verse 13 There is an incongruity within the psychiatric nurse’s role as she offers therapy from within a climate of surveillance. And it is not easy for the psychiatric nurse to break free from such an oppressive model of practice, where the benchmark of wellness is to become as sane as those who impose this value system in the guise of treatments – treatments that include the removal of a person’s liberty, the imposition of stigmatising labels, and a life-sentence of systematic clinic appointments and intrusive home visits. The patient is taken over and disempowered by the knowledge of the professional ‘doer’. We draw borders, produce exclusion zones and re-describe people’s experiences in our own ‘colour of saying’. Too often, the lived experience of the patient becomes blurred and brutalised to the extent that the experience itself is lost. What could have been a life-changing learning experience becomes a non-experience. The extremely limited ‘margin of liberty’ of those patients renders them defenceless against us, the medical agents. Classifications, treatments and procedures are turning us professionals into governors of the human soul. How can the psychiatric nurse genuinely be with the patient when she openly shoulders the baggage of such an oppressive and controlling regime? Nick Fox, who is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Sheffield, ties together the vigil of caring with Michel Foucault’s work on power and knowledge. According to Foucault, knowledge gives birth to power and, in relation to the nursing vigil, nursing care becomes care-as-discipline. Instead of empowering patients to be and to grow out of their mental difficulties, they are disempowered by being subjected to and inscribed by a form of caring that possesses and controls. According to the French philosopher, writer and feminist Hélène Cixous, it is a relationship that is characterised and driven by masculine gains: authority, recognition and control. It is caring that is delivered with conditions: I will care for you and I will keep you from harming yourself and I will give you treatment that will eradicate your madness and make you sane again – like me – but I must profit, too. You must reciprocate and give something back to me. Allow me to prove myself; show off my skills and clever ways of speaking; allow me to impose my interpretation of how you need to be and what you need to be; confirm my existence as one who knows; let me look after you and, therefore, prove your dependence upon me; become passive so that I can come out on top and prove to you that I’m indispensable and worth this salary that I’m being paid. And, above all – you must get ‘better’. Here, such a package of psychiatric caring contains what Caputo describes as "the hypocrisy of taking under the guise of giving". Let me pause, here, to make an important point. I am not advocating that people should never be observed, never be restrained, never compulsorily detained. When a person is gripped in the jaws of psychosis and driven to harm or kill himself or his others, I believe the most caring gesture under such circumstances is to prevent him from inflicting such harm. And I’m not merely focusing on the most severely mentally unwell people who need &, with the benefit of insight following their psychiatric crisis, would probably wish to be contained in a safe environment. I refer, also, to the psychiatric care that is given out to each and every individual human being who is suffering and struggling to some degree through having become psychologically and emotionally disabled. Let us be aware that the vast majority of people who need or seek psychiatric care receive it from outside the hospital walls. What I am talking about are ‘psychiatric provisions’. Where from within you does your caring come from? When you are responding to someone’s psychiatric crisis, what is it that powers your response? Who are you really responding for? What is your agency? What is – your caring economy? If you spring-cleaned the cellars and the attics and the cupboards of your heart, would you find gifts to be given? Or a dusty pile of IOUs that you are still waiting to reclaim? So, how can any psychiatric nurse – or any other psychiatric practitioner – escape the manacles that have been clamped around her wrists courtesy of a discourse that disempowers and controls both herself and the patient? And how can psychiatric nurses break free from a culture that reinforces separateness – us, the professionals and them, the patients – and carries an expectation that not only will the patient comply and do as he’s told but, at some stage, he will reward our ministrations by getting better? In stark contrast to a profit-based, masculine economy of caring, Cixous offers the feminine relationship-as-gift, where she "with open hands, gives herself – pleasure, happiness, increased value, enhanced self image" without ever trying "to recover her expenses". Even within the most panoptical institutional setting, there is room for the person who is patient to grow by way of his relationship with others. Each and every time care is gift-wrapped with kindness and consideration, a climate of possibility has been created between nurse and other. The other has been liberated enough to make choices rather than following the prescriptive route markers of a depersonalising system. He has become ‘deterritorialised’: his quarantine has been lifted and new ‘lines of flight’ drawn to wherever he chooses. "You are suffering from schizophrenia", "You need to take this medication" and "You need to stay in hospital for a while" may constitute professional recommendations delivered in the patient’s ‘best interests’. Yet they are really no more than paternalistic impositions and, as such, are loaded with control. There is no negotiation, no shared understandings and, often, no room for manoeuvre. People are actively discouraged and often prevented from plotting their own routes to recovery. Interventions carry the agendas and prejudices of the psychiatric provider and, as such, they negate the experiences of the other. The person who is patient remains unrecognised in his distress and, as such, is unable to live it and survive it. The feminine gift of caring, quite simply, involves an undefended and unconditional giving: a gift that radiates and bestows increased value and celebrates difference and change. Rather than demanding the sameness of a reciprocal gift (I will do this for you but that makes you indebted to me so I really would like something back in exchange), it suggests an unwrapping and opening out of experience. If anything is expected in return it is only the ‘common wages’ of the relationship itself: solidarity, rapport and an acceptance of the human limitations of each other. It is an ethos that all psychiatric nurses and professional carers can adopt: a gift of caring "which offers promise rather than fulfilling it, offers possibility in place of certainty, multiplicity in place of repetition, difference in place of identity" (Fox, p.96). The gift of caring is both genuine and generous: it is wrapped with tenderness and is just what the person needs at that moment in time. Once the gift is given, the nurse must step back a pace, in reverence. She must not pressurise the other into thinking he must respond. She is still with the patient but has given him breathing space to be and become. Cixous describes a feminine, gift-relationship like this: (extract from ‘Sorties’, The Newly Born Woman) "Feminine light doesn’t come from above, doesn’t fall, doesn’t strike, doesn’t go through. It radiates, it is a slow, sweet, difficult, absolutely unstoppable, painful rising that reaches and impregnates lands, that filters, that wells up, that finally tears open, wets and spreads apart what is dull and thick, the stolid volumes. Fighting off opacity from deep within. This light doesn’t plant, it spawns. And I see that she looks very closely with this light and she sees the veins and nerves of matter … her rising is not erection. But diffusion. She is not the shaft. She is the vessel ... She has no grand narrative or philosophy or science that underpins all her actions. She is a free agent who goes wherever she wishes, she is not limited to the one and only view of what is – she is plural – her love of life is a multiple love. Masculine Economy of Caring So, let me take you through what I’ve called the Masculine economy of caring again and the main characteristics of this safe, structured way of caring:
A Feminine Economy of Caring A liberated kind of caring … which can be quite scary for the person who is providing such caring.
Which gives us … Caring as a Gift
The Gift of Giving Economies of Caring Of course, gifts can – and sometimes are – refused. What do we do then? When the gift of our presence is clearly not wanted? When our well-intended interventions are rejected out of hand? When our substantiveness is experienced as oppression? Well – we need do nothing … other than to offer a further gift … by way of the other cheek. Any therapeutic alliance must sit upon an open plain – a freedom that always risks the possibility of rejection. Otherwise, it is masculine, conditional and coercive. We must accept and tolerate the frustrations we may initially feel when our gifts of caring are not interpreted as such. And, more than this, we should check our motivations and question our beliefs – ask ourselves, ‘have I got this right?’ And, we must accept that some gifts may only be recognised as such long after they have been given. And, when we are faced with some of our most difficult challenges – for example, when a person – driven by an almost unbelievable fear - hurls himself towards you – intent on destroying you – how on earth can you gift-wrap your interventions in such a situation? Surely this is the acid test of whether or not any of my suggestions are viable? Well, I offer you the feminine concept of ‘holding’ – not in the literal sense that the person would be held and immobilised to protect him and others from harm – but in the metaphorical sense that he would be grounded by a holding steeped in sensitivity. A holding that preserves when a person is confused, fearful or fragmented by psychosis. It is a form of holding that combines the substantiveness, feet-on-the-ground of the feminine, with the strictness, cruel to be kindness, primary occupation provided by the good-enough mother. The person would be, metaphorically, wrapped in a blanket of human devotion. And, unsurprisingly, perhaps, it is Donald Winnicott’s words that I choose to illustrate such a holding. "A child is playing in the garden. An aeroplane flies low overhead. This can be hurtful even to an adult. No explanation is valuable for the child. What is valuable is that you hold the child close to yourself, and the child uses the fact that you are not scared beyond recovery, and is soon off and away, playing again". The person was not ‘restrained’ in order to control him, to gain mastery over him, to prove your superiority over him, to exact revenge. His immobilisation was total and effective – yet, given to him from within a feminine economy of caring with – an economy that expected no return other than the inevitable human relief and satisfaction at having saved a person or people from being hurt. Now, if we are to believe Jacques Derrida, then it is possible to offer the gift of death. Indeed, Derrida has argued that, as our deaths are the only thing we truly possess – the only thing that cannot be taken away from us – our own deaths are the only gifts we can ever give! Well, Derrida is a deconstructionist. He likes to pull theories apart, disprove them, and offer alternatives … sometimes in quite a playful manner. So I would like to do the same. I can think of how us psychiatric professionals can offer the gift of our death to those who are on the receiving end of psychiatric caring. First of all, through the medium of self-sacrifice. By the giving of ourselves in certain situations when it would certainly be much easier to withhold, or to flee. For example, when we are faced with our own fears and anxieties generated by the distress or behaviours of the other. And, secondly, by killing off our attitudes and beliefs when we realise they don’t fit any more, instead of holding on for dear life to our existing, much more comfortable prejudices … such as ‘we know best’, ‘it must be right because it’s evidence-based’, ‘she is ill and, therefore, helpless’, ‘she takes drugs and misuses alcohol and, therefore, must have a personality disorder’. Sometimes, we need to be brave and kill off those disabling beliefs and judgements that serve to protect us from being just as human, just as vulnerable, just as likely to become as mad as our others. Thirdly, the gift of death can be seen as an acknowledgement of the other’s mortality and, as such, his existence. Instead of merely trying to eradicate suicidal or murderous intentions of the other, we must also accept their potential for happening and talk to the person about those feelings. Otherwise, we are in danger of murdering the lived experience of the other. Finally, we must eventually say ‘goodbye’ to the other and tolerate the death of our relationship. Not to do so – to hang onto him … to hamper or delay his opportunity for independence … places us firmly within the masculine realm of controlling and possessing. Caputo talks about the paradox of ‘grieving delight’, which he sees as ‘the celebration of being with the other and of the other’s ‘difference’ … tempered by the grief we feel by way of the other’s pain and, ultimately, by having to let that other ‘go’. Perhaps that provides a fitting summary to this section on the gift of death? Let me take you back to that unfamiliar corridor, where Daniel was escorted to meet the multi-disciplinary team fairly soon after he’d been admitted to the ward. Rattling with fear, Daniel’s eyes rapidly flashed into every angle of the room. As far as he could see and hear, there was no one around. Delicate shades of green seemed to soothe him a little. A vaguely familiar smell entered his nostrils – it was beeswax and it reminded him of his father’s furniture and the old wooden dining table that sat proudly, centre-stage in his kitchen. His guide was silent, calm, smiling – she slowly moved over to the music deck and scanned the amenity card over the infrared panel … & then handed the card to Daniel. Haunting yet comforting strains began to flow from the deck and Daniel’s eyes widened in a mixture of pleasure and bewilderment. "I remembered that you’d said this was your favourite piece of music of all time, Daniel", said his guide, in a sort of whispered, contained excitement. He looked and saw no lies in her eyes, just deep brown, gentle pools that had captured tiny pin-points of light from the warmly glowing studio lamps. Daniel began to accept his new surroundings. He moved cautiously towards the cool drinks dispenser and jerked a paper cup down from the rack. Still persecuted by his inner vigilance, he took some time before he finally filled his container with chilled apple juice. He slowly raised the cup to his lips and inhaled the pungent, sugary aroma before tasting the cold, appley sweetness on his tongue. Again, he turned to his guide, suddenly, quite desperately needing to know that she was not about to betray him. Her silence surged softly backwards over him. She watched Daniel’s broad chest falling back into a breathing rhythm once more. She could touch the fear that lived inside his soul, the fear that leapt like a jack-in-the-box triggered by the paranoid army of impulses that patrolled every junction of his whole being. The minutes marched by. Daniel’s guide, whom he now felt able to call Laura, had taken him through the door into the central atrium and he became aware of muted voices behind the other doors. Laura showed him the Studio photographic profiles, displayed together on one of the walls. Among a sea of strangers, Daniel’s gaze fell on the only face he recognised. A grateful smile dawned momentarily on both Daniel & Laura’s faces, as they silently shared the humour that sometimes surfaces from the sheer relief of a mundane moment. Daniel began to make his way back to his own room. Laura felt a shift in his tenor. His edginess had suddenly returned. His eyes darted in every direction and he was desperate to create space between himself and Laura. He was being distracted and tormented by a force that she could not identify. Laura gently approached him – stopping at the invisible threshold that separates the comfort zone from threat of attack. "Daniel – you seem troubled. I can sense that someone is speaking to you – someone I can neither see nor hear". She paused… "Someone who is saying things to you that you would rather not hear?" She waited … anxious but quite willing to tolerate her own anxiety. "Yes!" Daniel’s response was overloaded with anxiety. "Is it someone you know, Daniel? Is the voice a familiar one?" "It is the Executioner". "Are you able to share with me what he is saying to you? What it is that makes you so fearful?" "He says that I have been sentenced and that, now, I must die". "Oh, Daniel – does the Executioner say why he has imposed the death sentence upon you?" "Because I have failed … failed everyone". Laura eased herself down into the chair. "Whatever the Executioner says, Daniel, and however that makes you feel, you don’t have to face it all on your own. I’m here to be with you whenever you wish, & I do so want to be here with you. You may feel very alone but you need never be alone whilst you are here". Daniel heard Laura’s words but could not really believe in them – yet she had made contact with him and he knew that she existed … she was at least neutral in the cold, savage war that raged all around him. Driven by her compassion for Daniel – and guided by the written words in his Ulysses contract, Laura’s every breath exuded her unwavering trust in his ability to recover – to defeat and transcend the demons that had shanghaied his reasoning and frequently dragged him into the parallel dimension that we tend to call madness. At times, she would freeze, speechless … and thoughtless – save for the heart-gnawing thought of knowing nothing. Naked and frozen to the bone; yet never once attempting to cover up her vulnerability. She would continue to suffer, exposed to the biting winds of Daniel’s pain … until the warmth of her pure giving had penetrated the icy psychosis that clung like a hoar frost to Daniel’s innards. And the distance between them would melt away as their horizons quietly merged – and their understandings became one shared understanding. Ten long weeks went by and Daniel’s lived experiences changed from the initial Calvary inflicted by his Executioner to a quite dramatic sea-change after around the seventh week of his stay in the Studio. Now, he was the same Daniel but different. Outside, a sneapy spring chill had given way to a gentle early summer breeze. Daniel had survived a hell that he never wanted to endure ever again. Yet he knew so much more about himself – about who he was and who he had become – a more sophisticated knowing about himself in relation to his others. Ten weeks ago he had encountered his mortality – his own death had hovered over him like a pendulum so close that it grazed the membranes of his heart. Now, ‘Death hath no Dominion’ for Daniel. Rather than treating Daniel’s death sentence as a bio-chemically-induced hallucination and, as such, phantom – abstract – unreal, Laura and her colleagues chose to accept Daniel’s version of reality and, with it, the absolute dread and the hopelessness that accompanied it. As a consequence, Daniel was empowered to live his experience and, ultimately, to survive it. Despite being shackled by psychiatric legislation, he had been liberated enough to plot his own recovery course. As Winston so poignantly declares in Orwell’s classic ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows". It does not matter whether it is objectively true that two plus two is four; all that matters is that we all – each and every one of us – have the freedom to say so. Laura’s gift of caring with Daniel was offered from within a feminine economy of caring. Her gifts were unconditional and, oh, so precious: validation – ‘I acknowledge this is your experience … this is how it is for you’; acceptance – ‘I will not try to redescribe your experience in a scientific, alternative terminology’; openness – ‘this is how I understand your experience at the moment … but if you tell me that’s not how it is for you, I am more than willing to change my own way of knowing to try and accommodate yours. Daniel had survived. He had been healed from within. Now he could enjoy the most precious gifts of all that Laura and her colleagues had bestowed upon him: the gifts of ‘hope’ … and ‘self-actualisation’. Daniel … had become. A poem of a meeting
every time or once-upon-a-time i am with a person an infinite amount of stars shine in our room. it becomes a poem of a meeting with flecks of stardust spinning in corridors of earthshine. how we both need the couple of our other: the join of warm would-glue that bubbles on blue energy. my desire is to wonder with and forget myself: cross the invitation into the other like a sun-wrapped strand of webspin wafts on the breeze and suddenly vanishes into a new, invisible dimension: i am in the other. i am an unconditional gift lifted from the doorstep, unwrapped and opened, i am willing to give my i to the Thou of the other, to communion with for no wages, just the jouissance of becoming together alone, beyond, in a space of difference, in the exchange of the middle. two craftpersons: one piece of craftwork grafted from our neither-nor souls: a lived experience that unfolds: a hybrid moment. and when the dawning breaks I discover myself and my other (just as I am the other’s other) sitting under one sun sharing the same cloudburst. i have journeyed in the other and feel the other’s footprints, we are further together and our invisible smiles from the pit of our innards fly like kites in the sky
Bibliography Barker, P. (2001) The Tidal Model: the development of personal caring within the chaos paradigm 8 pages, The Tidal Model, Internet, 25th May 2001, available: http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/drphilbarker/Phil_Barker~2/Tidal_paper.html
Barker, P. & Kerr, B. (2001) The process of psychotherapy: a journey of discovery Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Caputo, J.D. (1997) The prayers and tears of Jacques Derrida: religion without religion Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Cixous, H. & Clément, C. (1996) The newly born woman London: Tauris.
Cixous, C. & Calle-Gruber, M. (1997) Hélène Cixous, Rootprints: memory and life writing London: Routledge.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1988) A thousand plateaus London: Athlone.
Derrida, J. (1995) The gift of death Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1997) Politics of friendship London: Verso.
Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1980) The eye of power In Gordon, C. (Ed.) Michel Foucault: power/knowledge London: Harvester.
Fox, N.J. (1999) Beyond Health; postmodernism and embodiment London: Free Association Books.
Horner, R. (2001) Rethinking God as gift: Marion, Derrida, and the limits of phenomenology New York: Fordham University Press.
Orwell, G. (1989) Nineteen-Eighty-Four Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Wilkin, P. (2002) The craft of psychiatric mental health nursing practice In Barker, P. (Ed.) Textbook of psychiatric and mental health nursing London: Arnold (In Press).
Winnicott, D.W. (1989) Talking to parents Wokingham: Addison-Wesley.
| |||||
