Bojan Srbinovski // “San Junipero,” the fourth episode of the third season of the techno-dystopian television series Black Mirror, opens with a series of distractions. It is the year 1987, and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” is playing on the radio. Yorkie, one of the episode’s protagonists, walks out onto the street…
Tag: therapy
My Body Was Not Made of Photographic Paper: An Examination of Cancer in the Works of Jo Spence
Diana Novaceanu // With the Wellcome Collection hosting the “Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery” exhibit this autumn, the public is presented with works dealing with the medicalized body and its reclamation. Both artists manage to disrupt the male gaze and the medical gaze. For British photographer, activist and writer Jo Spence (1934- 1992)…
Authentic Empathy & Therapeutic Alliances (Part 2)
In a previous Synapsis post, I introduced the notion of the Therapeutic Alliance (TA) – an active ingredient of psychopathology and psychotherapy. I discussed the antecedence of therapeutic relationships formed between victim service providers (VSPs) and male victims of sexual assault (e.g. rape, molestation, sodomy, etc.). My interest? Their therapeutic and extra-therapeutic rehabilitation and healing, and how this process (a continuum of healing, more or less) is impacted by social stigma. Male victims infrequently seek care, making further scholarship in this domain problematical, but welcoming.