Dean Whittington – The Perpetual Treadmill

The Adlerian Society UK presents

Adlerian Society London Lecture: The Perpetual Treadmill – Why institutions have been silent

Lecturer: Dr Dean Whittington

The Perpetual Treadmill Why institutions have been silent. Following on from the scandals of Rotherham and Oxford, plus the revelations of systemic child abuse amongst celebrities, along with the revealing of institutional abuse in children’s homes and boarding schools, “The Perpetual Treadmill” analyses why a psychiatric, criminal justice, substance use and homeless treatment systemic silence has been the norm. Institutions and the individuals in each had a social investment in keeping themselves in operation, not to resolve a client’s predicament. Agencies have failed to engender emotional recovery based on an Adlerian sense of positing a teleological goal of being someone other than who you currently are. Instead each functions according to the tenets of Max Weber’s (1922) concept of the “iron cage of bureaucracy.” Each merely describes a person’s predicament and provides an institutional label. Alternatively I focus on how making a human connection sparks a positive change in the person on the receiving end. By describing an alternative, the current stasis becomes visible. I will provide a critique of the philosophy of the various rationalist, empirical and positivistic ideologies to detail how an academic investment has crushed those who were duly inspected and researched. Previously clients’ personal narratives have been relentlessly discarded and I detail why “complex trauma” has been institutionally silenced. This entails returning to Adler to steer a new path.

The lecturer: Dr. Dean Whittington is a psychotherapist who has worked for twenty two years in substance use and homelessness and the author of “Beaten into Violence,” “Bath of Steel” and “The Perpetual Treadmill” with a forthcoming book “The Psychology of Difference” coming out in 2015.