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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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trying to develop some realistic approaches to it.

The concept of therapy for Northside, therefore, had to be much broader, much more comprehensive, in taking into account realities of a community that would make any sensitive human being mad, angry, and acting out.

Well, you know, that was difficult for the average middle class affluent white person, whose concept of therapy was, you know, to pay a therapist or a psychiatrist or counsellor to deal with the acting out problems of the middle class child on West End Avenue or --

We had a hell of a fight, to get this, to me, embarrassingly simple notion accepted, by the traditional professionals. In fact, Mamie is still fighting. One of the things that she did when we went down to Washington day before yesterday was to stop by the American Association for Pysychiatric Associations. When I went up to check in at the hotel, she stopped off to talk to some of the officials there, to try to explain to them her idea of the extent to which the fiscal crisis is requiring us to re-examine the medical model, like everything, you know, and to --

By the way, the medical model is damned expensive. The monopoly of the medical profession, you know, the economic monopoly they have means that you have to pay psychiatrists two, three times what you pay other personnel, to try to help people.

So the struggle isn't over. The thing that fascinates me is seeing the extent to which professions put their own interests ahead of the need of human beings for help. And that includes the psychiatric profession, you know.





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