Standards of performance and aesthetics in counselling and beyond

ABSTRACT

In this article I discuss how drug counselling can be transformed through “aesthetic documentation”: a hybrid of art with narrative practice. After outlining the concepts of performance and standards, and a critique of “customising” counselling through formalised feedback, five claims are made about “aesthetic documentation”: The art works are prototypes rather than rigid standardisations; they represent collaboration rather than individualised performance; they both display and enact substantial meaning; they objectify and achieve recognition of clients and professionals; they facilitate flexible, diverse and transformative attributions of meaning and value; they address social problems rather than individualised malfunctions. This may help overcoming stigmatisation, and suggest a kind of trans-disciplinary knowledge that is different from the dominant scientific forms.

KEYWORDS:

• Standards
• aesthetics
• performance
• drugs

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Morten Nissen, PhD, Dr. Psych., is currently professor at the Department of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. He leads the research programme “Rearticulating the Formation of Motivation”, and teaches pedagogical psychology and education science. His research has mainly focused on the theoretical problems of collectivity, practice, standards and subjectivity, as these unfold within experimental practices of social work and pedagogy with young people. This represents a version of critical psychology that emphasises trans-disciplinarity and epistemology of practice. In 2012, he published “The Subjectivity of Participation” (Palgrave).

ORCID

Morten Nissen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4001-9163

Notes

1 See https://player.vimeo.com/video/98728123 (May, 2018).

2 See http://www.stuffsite.org/tiden-gar/ (May, 2018).

3 The portal http://www.stuffsite.org/ emerged from this collaboration (May, 2018).

4 Note that ’social work’ in a Danish context is different from its UK version. For one thing, it is a generic term for a range of professions, including – as is mostly the case here – academically trained psychologist. See, to this Nissen (2012).

5 One ‘aesthetic documentation’ project was called ‘Could Life Be … ’. This is discussed in Nissen (2014).

6 We use the Danish term ‘fremstilling’, which means enacting, rendering, and displaying, but even also creating. Those with an interest in Heidegger’s approach to technology will perhaps note an etymological connection with his concept ’Gestell’ and its derivatives; in fact, “fremstilling” is at once Darstellen (rendering) and Herstellen (production), and thus the practical root of Vorstellen (imagination).

7 Reprinted from https://condenaststore.com/featured/why-does-he-always-get-to-be-the-boy-bruce-eric-kaplan.html

8 In recent science and technology studies, this is an important point; Bruno Latour coined it nicely in the title of his article “The end of the means” (2002).