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Positive affect as coercive strategy:[...] the role of psychology in UK government workfare programs

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
2015 Jun;41(1):40-7. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2014-010622.
Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes.
Friedli L1, Stearn R2.

Abstract
Eligibility for social security benefits in many advanced economies is dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour (workfare). Increasingly, these activities include interventions intended to modify attitudes, beliefs and personality, notably through the imposition of positive affect. Labour on the self in order to achieve characteristics said to increase employability is now widely promoted. This work and the discourse on it are central to the experience of many claimants and contribute to the view that unemployment is evidence of both personal failure and psychological deficit. The use of psychology in the delivery of workfare functions to erase the experience and effects of social and economic inequalities, to construct a psychological ideal that links unemployment to psychological deficit, and so to authorise the extension of state-and state-contracted-surveillance to psychological characteristics. This paper describes the coercive and punitive nature of many psycho-policy interventions and considers the implications of psycho-policy for the disadvantaged and excluded populations who are its primary targets. We draw on personal testimonies of people experiencing workfare, policy analysis and social media records of campaigns opposed to workfare in order to explore the extent of psycho-compulsion in workfare. This is an area that has received little attention in the academic literature but that raises issues of ethics and professional accountability and challenges the field of medical humanities to reflect more critically on its relationship to psychology.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26052120
http://mh.bmj.com/content/41/1/40.full

Hmm...
 
Messages
15,786
The whole approach sounds pretty sick and abusive:

Friedli & Stearn said:
‘Soft outcomes’ disarticulate work and wages by treating a job as something that may be gained by possessing the right attitude to work (an attitude for which one must labour) and work as something to be valued because it evinces and activates the right attitude in the (potential) employee—rather than because it allows one to purchase a living. At the same time, the means by which soft outcomes are regulated (sanctions: for failures in attitude and in compliance with the actions demanded by active labour market measures) link together more closely than ever a person's failure to manifest the right attitude and their inability to afford to purchase a living.

Efforts to achieve these ‘soft outcomes’ are evident in the course content of mandatory training programmes run by major workfare contractors like A4e and Ingeus and are increasingly apparent in the personal testimonies of claimants:
  • I've been claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance for about 8 weeks. I haven’t sworn or shouted at anyone. I have had 3 advisor interviews already; yesterday my adviser asked me to see their psychologist. I did not consent. I've been told that I shouldn't look into things too deeply...& that I am asking too many questions.81
  • The choice was to accept psych eval, or go straight to MWA.81
  • You've got all these hooks on you…it's your way of being…you need to shift the way you look at it. You've got all this anger and frustration and that's stopping you from getting a job. It comes across in your CV.82
  • I duly attended the offices of A4e and (along with 6 other “customers”) was treated to INSPIRE. This turned out to be a session on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) run by an outside company claiming to be “Master Practitioners in NLP”. I was “mandated” to attend under threat of loss of benefits and was effectively unable to leave the session because of the same ever present threat.83
  • My ‘advisor’ said I needed to see a psychologist because I was tearful and anxious after having my JSA cut for 4 weeks despite having a young child to look after by myself. When I said I did not trust anyone who finds it acceptable to starve others as a punishment, he told me that I was paranoid and again, needed to see a psychologist.84
 

Scarecrow

Revolting Peasant
Messages
1,904
Location
Scotland
The whole approach sounds pretty sick and abusive:
  • I duly attended the offices of A4e and (along with 6 other “customers”) was treated to INSPIRE. This turned out to be a session on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) run by an outside company claiming to be “Master Practitioners in NLP”. I was “mandated” to attend under threat of loss of benefits and was effectively unable to leave the session because of the same ever present threat.83
Yet it's heartening to see that others remain in gainful employment providing such a useful service as NLP. Where is the tongue in cheek smiley? Never mind. This one will do. :vomit:
 

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
Yet it's heartening to see that others remain in gainful employment providing such a useful service as NLP

Yes, the likes of A4e, Seetek and Ingeus (now part of a larger US firm) make a lot of money out this. And Googling A4e returns some interesting, not to say alarming, results (major fraud, anyone?).

What on earth is it costing the DWP to contract to companies like A4e who then subcontract NLP "master practitioner" outfits ... ?

The campaign group Refuted has been raising this stuff for a while: https://wwwrefuteddotorgdotuk.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/sanctionshappy/

 

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
p.s. searching on "inspire nlp", the top result is for this outfit: http://www.inspire360.co.uk/our-services/nlp-training/nlp-master-practitioner/

I just love the introduction for their Master Practitioner training course:

The NLP Master Practitioner training takes World leading personal change technology to a whole new level. It opens up your entire potential, and equips you to take your clients depth of change to a whole new level.

Apart from the repetition of "whole new level" in the the space of two short sentences, not to mention the inexplicable capitalisation of "World" or the missing apostrophe after "clients", I'm struck by the reference to "personal change technology". What's that, then?
 

worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
And actual language used by UK government ministers at times have been almost direct quotes from the start f the Third Reich

arbeit_macht_frei.jpg



And this one uses the actual words of our Prime Minister from a recent speech

brothercammy.png
 

Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
Too horrified once again to even put together a response but @SilverbladeTE summed it up pretty well. I can't fathom what is going on in the UK and all we see in the media here in the US are stories about the Royal Family. No one knows this stuff is going on, it is hidden so well.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
No. It wouldn't surprise me if he was aware that this was an area where he was vulnerable, and was trying to position himself though.
I predict if a cure (or major treatment) is found Wessely will put himself at the front and centre of the media spotlight, waxing lyrical about how wonderful science is and how 'we' have discovered this fantastic new therapy.

A man for all seasons is a man for none at all.
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
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5,902
Location
South Australia
I predict if a cure (or major treatment) is found Wessely will put himself at the front and centre of the media spotlight, waxing lyrical about how wonderful science is and how 'we' have discovered this fantastic new therapy.

To be honest, I'd still love to see that happen.