Demystification

This section of For All That is for articles and material that directly address how some ideas and practices in the helping professions can be more straightforwardly described. In fact it is often in the unpacking of obscure theoretical ideas into what the practitioners actually do in their work that things get clarified. Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, watch what the cook actually does not what her recipe, cookbook, or even she herself, says she does!  

The key idea here is that the more the work of a helping profession is about things that people generally experience in their everyday lives - thinking, feeling, imagining, chatting, doing things, meeting other people - then the more it should be possible to use more ordinary everyday demystified language to describe it.

In contrast, surgeons will naturally need uncommon terminology for their uncommon job inside people's bodies. Psychologists, social workers and psychotherapists should not need strange words and they should be able to link to ideas that ordinary lay people have too. Showing this can be as simple as applying the constructive gossip and curiosity you have for your favourite TV soap-opera, or as complex as a philosophical exercise - sorry! Read the philosopher, John Macmurray, and at first you may not understand him. But he makes ordinary words mean more their usual usage by getting at the deeper meaning we all can get.

  'A Man's a Man for A' That' . . . More on Demystification . . . Links to Other Internet Sites . . . Consumer's Perspective . . . . Professional Thought Disorder . . . . The Potential of Systemic Practice . . . . A Basic Model of Human Functioning . . . . The Limits of the Medical Model . . . . Child Psychiatry's ADHD . . . . Family Therapy:The Rest of the Picture . . . . Demystified Tips and Tactics for "ADHD"    

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