on being the unprejudiced observer

[Tanya Marquette]

Dear Sheila

I recall a Robert Bannon workshop in which he was stressing being the unprejudiced observer. This quality was drilled into me as a beginning student, too. Much easier said than done, of course. One of the problems is that one can be non-judgemental when taking a case, but from where does the understanding come?

I know some in the profession that think the presenting sx are all that is necessary to understand the case and reach a conclusion. However, i have seen this fail oftimes due to the lack of understanding of the pt.

So, I would certainly concur with you that in our oh so complicated world, the more conscious one is about 'difference,' the greater our sensitivity becomes, and hopefully, the better practitioner we evolve into. I would say this, not only about feminist perspective and experience, but also regarding ethnic and racial diversity.

I guess I would note that to those who have the knowledge, comes the responsibility to model and teach the rest.

tanya

[Sheila Parks]

dear tanya, your email made me weep. thank you. i certainly agree with you
about racial and ethnic diversity and would add also age,
lesbian/gay/bi/trans,differently abled. i am printing out your email to
save. sheila
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

[Wendy Howard]

> I recall a Robert Bannon workshop in which he was stressing being the

I think in being able to separate the bias from the observation. Barbara's
post quoted various observations of a phenomenon from a perspective that
used certain emotive terms to describe observed behaviour. The emotive
descriptors betray the bias of the quoted writer, but they don't necessarily
invalidate the observation - that certain behaviours can be correlated with
certain stimuli.

Bias can come in many shapes and forms. Perhaps we also need to recognise
that when we ourselves express aversions or preferences for particular ways
of describing various phenomena, we are being informed by our own bias and
are therefore *not* acting as unprejudiced observers.

Regards
Wendy