After
considerable deliberation, Paul Kiritsis elected Disempowering Support by Stevie Wills as the winner of the third
Dorothea Dix Award. The annual prize will be presented at the monthly meeting
of the Jung Society of Melbourne in due course.
Disempowering Support
accurately describes some of the pejorative and unjust collective attitudes propagated
under the hegemony of a contemporary biomedical model which draws clear and
sometimes rigid boundaries between illness and health, between flourishing and languishing.
The entry was extremely evocative, illustrating the phenomenon of projective
identification in a profound manner; lamentably, the underlying assumptions
about the nature of organic and psychiatric illnesses in the prevailing sociocultural
milieu has set up hierarchal relations between those identified as “healers”
and those “needing to be healed.” The piece vividly illuminates the notion that
all too often, health care providers will mimic automata and unconsciously play
out these roles to the detriment of a self-sufficient, empowered individual who
wishes to play no part in the disempowering
and invalidating role ascribed to her. The inability of the health care
provider to dis-identify from the social role of caregiver coupled with the collective
opinion about dis-ease may in many such cases sabotage, hinder, or blunt the
expression of an individual who doesn’t necessarily perceive herself as sick or
disabled.
When
applied tactlessly and indiscreetly, labels are stigmatizing and deleterious.
They are disempowering and come entangled with preconceived myths about the
nature of illness, the prognosis, and what the trajectory of recovery might
look like. Disempowering Support
grappled with these themes whilst concurrently answering the question posed [Describe your experience with the contemporary
health care system. What in your opinion are some of its major pitfalls? What
needs to change for the sake of collective movement towards wholeness and
psychospiritual health?] to considerable merit. It encompassed everything Paul
was looking for replete with the spiritual
stamp of integrity and authenticity.
Stevie’s entry can be read by clicking on Inaugural Winners under the Dorothea Dix Award tab.
Pictured above: Stevie Wills
