We are finding out more about this picture.

Captain America Commie Smasher September 1954

Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology (1999) by Mike Forrest Keen reviews American sociologists through their FBI files.

Talcott Parsons, one of the suspected communist sympathisers, wrote "McCarthyism and American Social Tensions: A Sociologist's View " to explain what was happening.

The Crisis in 1832

Crisis? What crisis?
The change from error and misery to truth and happiness 

Some crises since 1945

Alain Touraine 1984

Kevin McDonald gave a lecture this evening at Middlesex University. From the synopsis, it appears he was outlining his argument that people seek meaningful action, and that that is a key to understanding what happens in society. A paper he has published online discusses Alain Touraine in this context. (See yesterday's blog). Reading this brought to my mind the essay Existential criminal by Ginny Goudy

Bethlem museum of the mind @bethlemmuseum and art gallery @Bethlem_Gallery opened today 

Survivors History Group have been asked to help evaluate it.

Sociology at MIddlesex University is reading Alain Touraine's After the Crisis, 2014. 

They say it offers an insightful sociological analysis of the meaning and impacts of the economic crisis of 2008 and concludes that our future requires not just new economic measures but the deepest possible rethinking of society itself. See also Sociology October 2014  and Saint Simon and Comte on crisis.

Mary Barnes in Bow - 
Report by Dina and Andrew

David Bakan published a book Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition in 1959, and Joseph Berke held a seminar yesterday (15.2.2015) in which he argued that  Hassidism, the Jewish mystical and  religious renewal movement based on the Kabbalah, entered mainstream western culture through psychoanalysis (Information from Steve Tilley in Edinburgh). Berke, an existential psychoanalyst,  is better known through his relationship with Mary Barnes, with whom he had discussions about the early Christianity of the desert fathers. The influence of world religions on modern thought is an enormous subject, but I am trying to outline some of it on the Social Science History timeline.  Try scrolling up and down from the desert father Anthony

Recovery in the Bin have launched their eighteen point manifesto. 

They "reject thenew neoliberal intrusion on the word 'recovery' that has been redefined,and taken over by market forces, humiliating treatment techniques andatomising outcome measurements". 


Trying to understand this has led me to sort out my confusion over the words  conservative and liberal. These lead up to two kinds of new (neo) liberalism: the one shown in the picture, which offered support to people with disabilities, and the one we associate with Margaret Thatcher.

 

See unofficial catalogue about this picture

Yesterday, Dina and Andrew explored the Mary Barnes exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow. 

There are no labels on the paintings. We called this fire and water.


A form like a woman floats on the river (left)

"If I could have expressed what I was feeling so openly, I might have overcome a lot of issues".

"Because you put the feelings outside you, or because you shared them with other people?" 

"I think because I shared them." 

Some pictures in a book about 1930s scientific research disturbed me. I sought the person behind the science and developed my entry on degradation. I see this as an aspect of the sociology of clothes
 

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Mary Barnes wrote about the treasures of darkness (1971) and something sacred (1989).Her life has become an argument for the idea that mental distress (madness - mental illness) is a psychic journey. She described it as a journey to hell (darkness), but one with hidden secrets - the treasures of darkness. I am exploring her ideas on the studymore website and invite you to join me.

Analysing the proposed revolution at http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm#HV15  - with help from Joanna @maddoggiejo

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