Disgrace

The title here doesn't refer to the excellent book (and film) of the same name, but rather, some stupidity from yesterday's Herald Sun:

THE mother of Daniel Valerio has broken 16 years of silence to condemn the State Government for failing to stop systemic child abuse.

Cheryle Butcher was 26 when her youngest son Daniel, 2, was fatally bashed by her de facto husband, Paul Aiton, in one of the most notorious child abuse cases in Australian history.

The case led to the introduction in Victoria of laws requiring police and health and teaching professionals to report suspected child abuse...

Ms Butcher, who said she had had counselling for years, said she blamed herself for Daniel's death.

But she believes she was also failed by an incompetent and poorly resourced child protection authority - a system she said was still failing children today.

"Yes, it was happening in my own house. I am the one who has to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life," she said.

"Unless you are me in that situation, I can't explain it. I had no help, no support...

"Nothing is being done, and kids are still dying. Don't let Daniel die in vain. Get some support systems, make counselling available, build refuges for women. As long as the Government keeps screwing up, it will keep happening."

So let's be clear here. If you're a woman with cow dung for brains, and partnered to a psychopath who is systematically abusing your child, it's the governments responsibility to magically become aware of this and fix everything. Right.

I don't like beating people with the stick of 'personal responsibility' - the concept is bunkum to somebody nurtured on Nietzsche and psychoanalysis - but this mother was complicit in the murder of her son. Governments cannot raise children - only parents, families, and communities can. To expect otherwise is itself a disgrace.

The resources Ms Butcher mentions - counselling, refuges - certainly exist. Any woman in Victoria can be provided with emergency accommodation if it helps her and her kids flee a violent situation. Yes, the resources are limited, and not necessarily brilliant. Yes, there are also some basic things expected of the woman (i.e. don't get shitfaced and assault staff, don't bring your psychopathic ex-partner into the refuge, etc). But the resources are there.

Finally, by way of clarification, I should be clear that I think the Victorian State Government, under both Bracks and Brumby, absolutely pathetic on issues of child protection, health, mental health, disability services, housing, and a range of other things. A large number of politicians and senior public servants ought to be sacked, if not shot, for their criminal neglect of Victoria's most vulnerable. Systems need to be rebuilt without the cronyism and backside-covering that infect Victoria's public service to its core. It does not follow from this, however, that the government can or should miraculously solve everything when you are turning a blind eye to the abuse of children.

Victoria, the Surveillance State

Some of this information has been provided to me via a couple of sources, and is not widely known.

The State Government of Victoria funds, administers, and oversees a sizeable portion of the state’s ‘services’, from hospitals to housing. These welfare state services are spread across a number of Ministerial portfolios, as well as a number of ‘Departments’. As much as the libertarians may complain about it, when things go wrong in Australia, the locals tend to expect the relevant government to do something about it.

In addition to those services directly overseen by the State Government, we also have the so-called Non Government Agencies (NGAs), who are private firms to whom state services are outsourced and sub-contracted. This takes place by way of a competitive tendering process and much red tape, though I suspect some of the state’s more ardent capitalists might question precisely how ‘competitive’ the whole process is. In welfare-related industries, the NGAs in Victoria are auspiced almost entirely by one Christian church/religious group or another. The services themselves are secular, but the infrastructure and so forth are provided by the agency and funded by the Government. The same agencies will often have a fundraising component or some other means of diverting cash into less secular activities.

In short, this means that there are hundreds of thousands of Victorians who will come into these services, in one capacity or another. Not unreasonably, we might expect each particular industry to maintain a database for a range of purposes – to facilitate better ‘service delivery’, communicate, for legal reasons, etc. After all, in Victoria we have legislation governing the privacy of individual’s personal information, and the limits to which such information can be used.

What is less reasonable is that there should be a centralised point at which all this information converges. Such a point has been constructed in the form of a computer program, known variously as CRIS or CRISP (as well as a couple of other acronymic monikers). This program was commissioned by the Victorian Government some years ago, and built by a private programming firm. My information now tells me that the Government has since bought out the program, owns it outright, and intends to market and sell it to other states and countries.

My understanding is that, functionally speaking, the above computer program was a turd. The Government spent ever-increasing amounts of cash to salvage the project, running up a bill that is somewhere in the order of $53 million.

The software itself applies to a range of Government programs, such as housing, disability services, youth justice, child protection, and the various NGA appendages attached to these services.

Now, a NGA worker cannot read the file of a housing worker, who in turn cannot read the file of a youth justice worker, even though each uses the same program, and may be dealing with the same individual. We can safely conclude that this program has nothing to do with improving communication or information sharing.

Secondly, the program is functionally inferior to its predecessors – slower, more prone to bugs, and tends to significantly increase the administrative burden of workers. The implementation of this program therefore must have nothing to do with ‘efficiency’, unless it was designed by half-wits.

The only reasons that I can see for foisting this software onto thousands of workers, and, by extension, hundreds of thousands of members of the public (as the software does not merely take details for individuals, but also for their associates) are firstly, that this information is siphoned back to the central branch of these Government agencies. In effect, a massive database has been created, including information about hundreds of thousands of Victorians. Given the ‘welfare’ orientation of most of these agencies, one can readily appreciate that much of the information is sensitive in nature. What does the Government intend to do with all this information? – I have no idea.

The second reason is much more entrepreneurial. I’m told that the program will be marketed and sold to other states (and possibly countries) on the basis of its promised ‘efficiencies’.

In the meantime, tens of millions of Victorian dollars have been blown on a useless piece of software, whose only virtue is being able to keep masses of people under a kind of surveillance. As I wrote earlier, few know of this nasty piece of work, possibly because the Vic Government is among the country’s more secretive. Who knows, this may even unite libertarians and Foucauldians or, more likely, it will simply allow the screws of Governmental control to turn a little tighter.

So spread the word, comrades, and do anything you can to fight this little tyranny, though it be of a petty, and bureaucratic form.

Eleven theses on Psychoanalysis

In response to a long and interesting thread on Larvatus Prodeo, I think it timely to provide some clarificatory remarks on psychoanalysis, a much-maligned and oft-misunderstood discipline. I will try to be as schematic as possible.

1. Psychoanalysis is radical. The notion of a psychoanalytic unconscious, a part of ourselves that is fundamentally and irreducibly unknowable, beyond any control, and causative of a range of 'symptoms' (from the hysteric's phantom pains, to dreams, to the symptomatic nature of our romantic lives) is radical. Other psychoanalytic notions can make claims of being radical, however, the psychoanalytic unconscious is what gives the discipline its revolutionary character. Whilst Kant, Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others all dipped their toes into the murky waters of a radical unconscious, none were as detachedly systematic, whilst at the same time frighteningly intimate as Freud.

Nonetheless, psychoanalysis is not politically radical, Reich being the obvious exception. Freud rejected Marxist theories of the origins of society, and Lacan too was dismissive of Marxism, at least, until the uprisings in 1968 Paris. It is possible that, being Jewish, many early psychoanalysts thought it impolitic to also be socialist, given the Zeitgeist in which they operated. A strong sense of social justice can be found in psychoanalysis, from Freud's Free Clinics to the low-cost services provided by psychoanalytic schools today. This notwithstanding, Freud, and psychoanalysis is best understood, in 19th Century terms, as neither conservative nor radical, but as liberal-bourgeois.

2. Psychoanalysis is not a science. At least, it is not scientific in the sense by which we understand the term in physics or mathematics. Psychoanalysis is a science of the particular, which means it will never deal in the relatively tidy universals of the 'hard' sciences. All the same, psychoanalysis displays greater rigour, reasoning, and explanatory power than most of the rest of psychology, which is why today's neuroscientists, such as Damasio, or Kendall, are turning to Freud rather than Beck or Skinner.

Those who proffer narrow and dogmatic notions of scientificity (that is, most of academic psychology) will find psychoanalysis wanting. However, psychoanalysis is perfectly 'empirical' - it deals with a series of 'ones' rather than seeking to apply structural equation modelling or alpha-tests to subjects reduced to some kind of statistical totality. Like any of the 'human sciences', psychoanalysis incorporates 'qualitative' methodologies, which, though they eschew statistical methods, nonetheless proceed by way of evidence and reasoned argumentation. Indeed, given the flimsy conceptual foundations of mainstream psychology, the latters' fear and hostility towards psychoanalysis must be explained by means other than a recourse to notions of 'empirical validation'.

3. Psychoanalysis is not an art. The discipline, as least in its clinical guise, is not simply some whimsical expression of its practitioner's fancy. Nonetheless, unlike other 'therapies', true psychoanalysis cannot be 'manualised', that is, broken into a recipe book-style series of prescriptions for a therapist or subject. Psychoanalysis stands closer to the arts than any other of the psychologies, partly because art itself is 'symptomatic' and 'over-determined', but also because psychoanalysis does not suffer from the same knee-jerk rejection of all that is not narrowly scientific that its psychological cousins exhibit.

4. Psychoanalysis is anti-authoritarian. When practised by way of assisting the analysand to interpret his or her own associations, psychoanalysis is far removed from the likes of CBT, and refrains from issuing directives and imperatives. Furthermore, psychoanalysis does not stigmatise and pathologise in the manner of the DSM-IV; after all, in psychoanalysis, neurosis is 'normal', or even a best-case scenario, given that the alternative is psychosis. Clearly, someone like Foucault was not enamoured of psychoanalysis, yet any criticism that he (or Deleuze or Guattari) might have made could be doubly said of the highly authoritarian treatment 'regimes' currently predominating in our healthcare systems

5. There are different schools of psychoanalysis. Few analysts would accept all of Freud's teachings, though virtually all would cite Freud as the founder of their discipline. In the post-Freud era, psychoanalytic schools include the Anna Freudian, ego psychology, Bion's analysis, object relations, Kleinian approaches, Lacanian analysis, and the intersubjective school. In addition, there are various offshoots initially inspired by, but ultimately distinct from psychoanalysis, such as Jungian psychology, the neo-Freudians, and Adler's individual psychology. Whilst some of these approaches differ sharply from each other, there is no more sectarianism that what one would find in any other discipline, and the dominant form of analysis that one learns is often a result of one's time and place, or the orientation of one's school. Still, psychoanalysis is not homogeneous.

6. Psychoanalysis is neither misogynist, nor anti-feminist. Whilst feminism has an uneasy relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, there is a relationship nonetheless. Freud made several problematic statements in relation to feminine psychology, which can be attributed to 3 basic origins:

1. Freud was a (relatively enlightened) product of his times, and consequently gave voice to a number of fairly typical prejudices.
2. The exigencies of some of Freud's theories, and the extent to which he took these theories literally, inevitably led him to some odd conceptual formulations. The Oedipus Complex, when applied to females, is among the more notorious of these.
3. Some of Freud's statements are in fact sexist, and seemingly have no basis in either theoretical or empirical necessity, and cannot be explained away via 19th Century prejudice.

Having established this, it should be remembered that not all feminists are hostile to Freud or psychoanalysis. American analysts such as Nancy Chodorow or Jessica Benjamin are excellent examples of a feminist (and intersubjective) engagement with psychoanalysis.

7. Psychoanalysis is not always encountered in its pure form. Indeed, whilst the neuroscientists and 'cognitive analysts' say that they engage with psychoanalysis, it would be more accurate to describe this engagement as one of colonisation. Psychoanalysis is often subordinate to some other discipline, or else the more radical and subversive aspects of its teaching are neutered. For instance, American ego psychologists, and the CBT practitioners (former analysts) shift the focus from the unconscious to the controllable and knowable conscious. Or take the difficult notion of the death drive, which has been virtually neglected by all post-Freudians other than Klein and Lacan. It is surely no coincidence that psychoanalysis becomes more acceptable, and more 'scientific' to people once it has been stripped of the unconscious, sex, and death.

8. Psychoanalysis is analogous to Marxism. That is to say, as Foucault pointed out, both psychoanalysis and Marxism are discourses that critically interrogate other discourses, often discourses of mastery. In psychoanalysis, discourses of mastery belie the subject of the unconscious, repressing to produce this illusion of 'mastery'. In Marxism, analysis is directed to looking at how class-relations are perpetuated through ideology, and how 'neutral' discourses are often sodden with ideological blindspots. This contributes to both disciplines being 'unacceptable'. Freud's discourse is further unacceptable because it engages meaningfully in those things often presumed to be meaningless, that is, the nonsensical elements of experience normally banished from polite academic company, such as neurotic symptoms, jokes, dreams, and slips of the tongue.

Whilst both psychoanalysis and Marxism undermine discourses of mastery, neither were intended to be applied in a haphazard, reductionist fashion. For instance, whilst a Marxist analysis of 'crime' enable us to observe how class relations and private property underpin our notions of legal transgression, phenomena such as sexual assault can never be exhaustively reduced by an analysis of class relations alone.

9. Psychoanalysis is not post-modern. Despite the protestations of Sokal, and others, there is nothing that Lacan has in common with the likes of Derrida, or Baudrillard, other than a similarly difficult oeuvre. Whilst psychoanalysis is applicable to non-clinical phenomena, there are many examples of what Freud called 'wild analysis' in this field. In addition, Kristeva and Irigary, inspired by analysis, have consciously engaged with the 'post-modern'. It should be remembered, however, that in his New Introductory Lectures, Freud explicitly said that the Weltanschauung of psychoanalysis was scientific and medicinal. All of the major theorists of psychoanalysis have since continued in this tradition, albeit incorporating the concerns of feminism, or linguistics. The struggles of psychoanalysts are not merely confined to obscurantist debates on paper; French analysts, for instance, have documented their battles with an unsympathetic and cynical healthcare system in the journal Lacanian Praxis.

10. Psychoanalysis is not dead. In particular, psychoanalysis thrives in places where Latin languages predominate, from Portugal to Quebec. It is Buenos Aires, and not New York, that actually has the highest per capita amount of psychoanalysts. In fact, psychology in Argentina is taught with mandatory units in philosophy, and does not waste its time with the niceties of statistical analysis. Last year, as I travelled through Europe, it was clear that Freud's 150th birthday was celebrated in London, Berlin, and Vienna. On the other hand, psychoanalysis, as enduring as it is, will never be the dominant paradigm, cumbersome as it is to both the 'normalising' discourse of bureaucratic-medical models, and to consumer capitalism. Historian of psychoanalysis, Eli Zaretsky, said much the same thing in the speeches he gave in Melbourne in 2005.

11. Psychoanalysis is on the side of freedom. This may be paradoxical, given Freud's apparent commitment to a thoroughly determinist model of mental functioning. Nonetheless, if we adopt a notion of freedom that is not simply either/or in nature, we can observe how psychoanalysis helps the analysand obtain freedom by degrees, by replacing ignorance and compulsion with knowledge and awareness.

It is no coincidence that psychoanalysis has been demonised by totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Hitler's Germany, to Stalin's Russia, and is today excluded from authoritarian modes of 'treatment' peddled in consumerist regimes. An anecdote that I heard from an Argentinian Lacanian suggested that Lacan's work found resonance in this latter country precisely because the obscurity of its language kept it from the attention of authorities.

Psychologist have ever but sought to change the human subject, that is, transform him/her into an object, force him/her to identify with a 'therapist', or to become the 'healthy', narcissistic, alienated subject of consumer capitalism.

The point is not to change things, but to interpret them. Through interpreting, change follows in any case, or moreover, analysand interprets for his or her own self. Psychoanalysis teaches the analysand how he or she 'enjoys' his or her symptoms; it does not enjoin the subject to necessarily cease this enjoyment.

Contra los mentirosos, los cerdos y los bastardos…

The Murdoch commentariat, ever-concerned with the welfare of Latin Americans, has decided to train its investigative eye upon the recent decision by the Venezualan government. The Venezualan government has decided not to renew the broadcasting license of the anti-government stations, RCTV and Globovision.

Our good-hearted friends in the employ of Murdoch have, in their humanitarian-inspired shrieking, taken quite an interest in Venezualan president Hugo Chavez, and his supporters, in Australia and elsewhere. Like a semi-retarded seaside caricaturist, who only knows how to draw one cartoon, Tim Bleh seems to blog about Chavez every other day. Matters Venezualan have also been getting the cartoon treatment from Andrew Bolt, well-known for his bleeding-heart sympathies for the downtrodden. And you know a third-world country is getting 'dangerous', and a democratically-elected leader, 'dictatorial', when this unholy trinity is rounded out by some 'fair and balanced' attention by Uncle Rupert's megaphone, Faux News.

Naturally, these champions of Latin American freedom don't feel that Venezuala's neighbour, Colombia, is worthy of the same attention, despite Columbia, (a country that receives more US 'aid' than any other in Latin America) having a horrific modern history. These history includes the mass murder of unionists, 'extrajudicial executions' of civilians, collaboration between military and paramilitary groups and drug cartels (courtesy of US cash), and the murders of indigenous community leaders. Perhaps the deafening silence that we hear from these News Ltd friends of freedom is not so surprising; dead unionists, US support for military, and the suppression of minority groups sounds like a rightard's wet dream.

It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to realise the reason Venezuala is targeted for incessant criticism and disinformation. It is much the same reason that criticism of the US or Israel is shouted down, and 'human rights' is utterly ignored in places such as Colombia or Uzbekistan. Anything remotely resembling 'progressive' politics is subject to condemnation and apocalyptic murmurings. Even a blue-blooded Tory of grazier origins, such as Malcolm Fraser, is derided as a 'leftist' nowadays.

In any case, the fact of Venezuala losing some its anti-government media has received enormous attention. My point in this post is not to defend the dubious manoeuverings of Chavez, but merely to demonstrate that the hysterical rantings of the above 'commentators' has its more measured obverse.

Against the absolute freedom of speech argued for by Chomsky, I personally lean towards the 'freedom needs limits' approach of Žižek. It is obvious that freedom of speech is an inherent requirement of any democracy. Speech, however, is also an act, albeit one that is usually more tepid than 'direct action'. I see no essential reason why the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre, or the right to incite violence against Jews, Muslims or gays ought to be accorded the same privilege as other speech. Nonetheless, there are likewise good reasons for 'anti-government' media to be allowed to exist, given that almost all we directly know of a government is via such media.

(As an aside - these issues are perversely distorted by the lens of ideology. The Flat Earthists scream for the ABC to air The Great Global Warming Swindle, in the interests of 'balance'. Given the status that these sorts of hired hacks have, 'balance' would be best served by airing such things at a rate of one per thousand, and only then, to satisfy the demands of propagandists and cranks.)

Stepping outside of the Murdoch echo-chamber, a number of views contrary to the Blair/Bolt/Fox bile have come to my attention. For instance, Richard Gott of The Guardian provides some facts of the case not available in Australia's media (or even blogosphere):

The debate in Venezuela has less to do with the alleged absence of freedom
of expression than with a perennially tricky issue locally referred to as
"exclusion", a shorthand term for "race" and "racism". RCTV was not just a
politically reactionary organisation which supported the 2002 coup attempt
against a democratically elected government - it was also a white supremacist
channel. Its staff and presenters, in a country largely of black and indigenous
descent, were uniformly white, as were the protagonists of its soap operas and
the advertisements it carried. It was "colonial" television, reflecting the
desires and ambitions of an external power.

The coup of 2002, the content of RCTV's programming, and the interests thereby served, are typically excluded from the facile gibberings of groupthink hacks such as BlairBolt. Gregory Wilpert described Venezuala's situation, in terms of the media, eloquently:

As far as world public opinion is concerned, as reflected in the
international media, the pronouncements of freedom of expression groups, and of
miscellaneous governments, Venezuela has finally taken the ultimate step to
prove its opposition right: that Venezuela is heading towards a dictatorship.
Judging by these pronouncements, freedom of speech is becoming ever more
restricted in Venezuela as a result of the non-renewal of the broadcast license
of the oppositional TV network RCTV. With RCTV going off the air at midnight of
May 27th, the country’s most powerful opposition voice has supposedly been
silenced.

It is generally taken for granted that any silencing of opposition
voices is anti-freedom of speech. But is an opposition voice really being
silenced? Is this the correct metaphor? Is the director of RCTV, Marcel Granier,
actually being silenced? No, a better metaphor is that the megaphone that
Granier (and others) used for the exercise of his free speech is being returned
to its actual owners – a megaphone that he had borrowed, but never owned. Not
only that, he is still allowed to use a smaller megaphone (cable &
satellite).

Whilst protests are floridly depicted on Fox, (and never degraded with 'rent-a-crowd' accusations as they are here), nobody bothers to report that a number of signatories from across Latin America actually support the Venezualan government's decision in the name of democracy, not against it. Even Australia's Guy Rundle, in Crikey, was able to temper the prevailing histrionic, hypocritical imbecility with a few oft-forgotten facts:

Both Matthew Weston and David Lodge (yesterday, comments), in criticising
Jenny Haines for defending the record of Hugo Chavez, argue that Chavez has more
or less abolished free media. This is utterly incorrect. 85% of Venezuelan media
remains in private hands -- a higher proportion than the UK, France or
Australian broadcast TV for that matter. Chavez may be doing a lot from the
executive, but that is what presidential government is about -- and the process
is backed by a solid parliamentary majority. Comparisons to Stalin and Hitler
are hysterical -- Venezuela is a social-democratic, mixed economy (with less
public ownership than Scandinavia), a fair electoral system and a free
press.

This is a country whose elections were subject to international scrutiny, and found to be fair. There are no evidence of human rights abuses in Venezuala, and all of the world's superpowers (and many of their proxies) have demonstrated far more sustained and egregious contempt for human life. Still, as BlairBolt will tell you, better some dead unionists than a democratically-elected 'leftist'. Think of the television.

From Australia, with Love

I saw a fairly bizarre article in the English version of the infamous Russian tabloid, Pravda, the other day. The article, possibly subject to a dubious translation, was written as an anonymous opinion piece entitled 'Why we escaped from Australia'.

As the author explains:

We have escaped recently from Australia because of Secret Police harassment
that has been going on for many years. For people overseas that think that the
Western countries have freedom and democracy, I have bad news: it's only
propaganda and lies.

The author is a bit sketchy on the details of the said harassment, but asserts that his wife is related to a high-profile public figure in Australia, who is himself part of the 'Secret Service' and a government 'fixer'. The author suggests that this was the reason that he and his wife came to ASIO attention:

We were followed and people were clicking their phones in our faces. People
following us also use and have used psychological tactics and disguises both
here and overseas. By the type of PSY Operations used we realized that spooks
had personal information about my wife which could only have been gained by
spies or their agents working over a long period.

The author adds that he tried to seek help through the official media, but eventually gave up:

One of the reasons that pushed us to leave Australia is that despite the
facade of democracy and openness there was no body or Institution that was
interested in hearing our story or offering help. The print media and
broadcasters are simply not interested because 2 or 3 media barons control every
print media outlet and broadcaster and those people work hand in hand with the
Government.

The author is certainly correct as regards this latter statement, as this story does not appear to have entered Australia's mainstream media. On the other hand, an anonymous report making unsubstantiated allegations about ASIO is hardly likely to make it into the press.

So what can we make of this story? I will bypass the irony of the Russian media publishing a piece asserting that Australian authorities are controlling and undemocratic.

On the other hand, significant control has been ceded to 'Secret Service' people, with sedition laws and anti-terrorism legislation generally. Frankly, I am not sufficiently informed to be aware of what ASIO gets up to, and I have not heard any stories of them pursuing Russians for obscure familial connections. On the other hand, I have heard that some Chinese are definitely targeted, but not necessarily the 'average guy' in Box Hill or Cabramatta. Plenty of relatively innocuous Australians must also have been targeted at some point; I recall an article in the Weekend Australian a while ago in which Radio National broadcaster, Murdoch columnist and former communist Philip Adams claimed, with some evidence, that ASIO had a file on him for years.

Then again, the claims made by this Russian author are probably to vague to allow us to form a definitive opinion. Reading through Pravda, it seems that there is often an anti-Western subtext running throughout, with particular emphasis on anti-Bush sentiment, to a level that makes The Age, or even Le Monde, appear like an American-apologist propaganda organ.

Still, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on this. Are ASIO abusing their powers at the behest of the Government? We Australians certainly seem to know much less about the wheelings and dealings of our secret service than say, the Americans know about the CIA. Accountability and secrecy do not exactly go hand in hand.