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"Er resten ons nog maar enkele decennia om de trend naar steeds meer menselijke ellende en verwoesting van onze planeet te keren ..." Zo opende de Unie van bezorgde Wetenschappers december 1992 haar manifest World Scientist warning to Humanity. Dit manifest werd uitgebracht in Washington door meer dan anderhalf duizend vooraanstaande onderzoekers, waaronder 99 Nobelprijswinnaars. Mensen en natuur, zo gaat het rapport verder, koersen af op een frontale botsing. Denk aan de aantasting van de ozonlaag, de luchtvervuiling, de waterverspilling, de vergiftiging van de oceanen, de ontbossing en de achteruitgang van de landbouwgronden. De geïndustrialiseerde landen worden door de wetenschappers als de grootste vervuilers genoemd. De verontruste wetenschappers roepen op tot actie tegen milieuvervuiling, energieverspilling, tegen toenemende armoede, ongelijke rechten van vrouwen en tegen geweld. Opmerkelijk is dat binnen de internationale wetenschappelijke gemeenschap op het moment een uitzonderlijke mate van consensus bestaat over de stelling dat natuurlijke systemen de belasting van de mens niet meer kunnen verwerken.

De kritiek die van de zijde van postmodernen wordt uitgeoefend op alle vormen van vooruitgangsgeloof prikkelde mijn nieuwsgierigheid, in het bijzonder waar deze kritiek steun aan de vredesbeweging als een zinloze, zo niet huichelachtige, mensonwaardige, activiteit zou bestempelen. In hoeverre zou deze postmoderne kritiek verwantschap vertonen met pre-moderne, traditionele vermaningen en bedreigingen uit de mond van hen die elk streven naar wereldvrede als absurd en staatsgevaarlijk bestempelden? Zijn de postmodernen de vijanden van alle vormen van emancipatie, de nieuwe vrienden van oude conservatieve machthebbers, een soort neo-fascisten?

In this dissertation, I explore the political meaning of disruptive, and even violent, interventions of youth with a migrant background in the public domain of France and the Netherlands. I relate two qualitative case studies– carried out in one French and one Dutch neighborhood– to a theoretical analysis of the political potential of seemingly senseless events of civil unrest. The urban areas where my research takes place can be characterized as deprived neighborhoods, because of their rundown physical appearance and the range of socio-economic problems inhabitants have to deal with. These areas, and other comparable “problem neighborhoods” have the reputation of being a breeding ground for criminality and aggressive street culture. Urban riots and other spontaneous disturbances of the public order which start in such areas, and during which commodity goods are stolen, public property is demolished and fellow inhabitants are harassed, seem to lack any political sense. Other than countercultural or protest groups with a clear political ideology, like social movements and identity-based interest groups, the youth involved in such events are not seen as political agents, because no spokespeople are put forward to address the press and no banners are carried. The emergence of such spontaneous disorder is often ascribed by the media and politicians to the individual deviancy of the young people involved, as became explicitly apparent in the reception of the riots around Paris in 2005 and the riots around London in 2012. In the first reactions to these events, young rioters were criminalized and pathologized, while the relation to the social and political structures of the society in which they are embedded was often overlooked.

The main argument of this study concerns the central relation between anthropology, poetics and ethics. It is the ontological problem – which can easily be summarized by the question “who is this Being for whom being is in question” – that silently binds these sections together. What “we are” does not tell us “what we ought to do or not do” (unless our ideology is socio- or neurobiologically determined); prescriptive rules do not follow from descriptive insights. This makes the relation between anthropology and ethics a precarious one. It is in the poetic response to the aporetics of being that the ethical position can be co-clarified: the good life must be imagined before it can be lived. Here, the biggest challenge lays in the simple counter-assertion that identity, and, thus, narratives and ethics, do not matter because their aporetic status can never be overcome and, therefore, we need to let go of their importance. Ricoeur’s philosophy must be understood as an attempt to fundamentally dismiss this assertion.

Dit boek gaat over de relevantie, de moeite en de mogelijkheden van het ontwikkelen van morele en professionele leerprocessen in de alledaagse politiepraktijk. Politiewerk is moreel geladen werk. In duizenden dagelijkse contacten ‘knutselen’ politiemensen gevraagd en ongevraagd aan het goede samenleven. Hoe kunnen politiemensen leren goed politiewerk te ontwikkelen; dat is de leidende vraag van dit boek. Het adjectief ‘goed’ verwijst daarbij niet slechts naar effectiviteit of efficiency, maar ook naar de vraag of ‘het deugt’, naar de waarden die in het werk in het geding zijn; naar wat er in dat alledaagse knutselwerk op het spel staat. De inzet om in professionele contexten deugend werk te leren ontwikkelen, wordt aangeduid met de term normatieve professionalisering. Dit boek is een proeve van normatieve professionalsering. Het is een verslag van en een reflectie op de persoonlijke inzet van de auteur om in de alledaagse praktijk de vraag naar goed politiewerk vruchtbaar te maken. Dat is geen moeiteloos proces. Het stellen van de vraag naar goed werk blijkt niet vanzelfsprekend. Hoe kan het dat een ogenschijnlijk zo voor de hand liggende vraag naar goed werk, nauwelijks gesteld wordt? Wat staat normatieve professionalsering in de weg en hoe kan er desondanks ruimte voor gemaakt worden? En waarom moet dat eigenlijk? In gesprek met de praktijk en met relevante theorie werpt de auteur licht op deze vragen. Duidelijk wordt dat de alledaagse praktijk een onderbenutte bron voor waardevolle ontwikkeling is. De auteur pleit voor ‘verheffing van het alledaagse’ en ontwikkelt daartoe het concept van ‘belang-stellend ontwikkelen’. Het gaat daarbij enerzijds om oprechte belangstelling voor wat zich in de dagelijkse praktijk aandient, en anderzijds om het stellen van een belang. De praktijkontwikkeling kan niet aan het toeval worden overgelaten. Telkens moet de morele horizon van de professie zelf in het geding worden gebracht. Hiermee komt ook praktijkontwikkeling als leiderschapsopgave in beeld. Die opgave tot praktijkontwikkeling heeft niets tobberigs. Het leren van de praktijk doet deugd. De auteur spreekt van ‘de gein van het leren’.

Both within and outside organizations, employees and managers, or citizens and politicians ask, and sometimes demand, swift solutions to all kinds of problems. This concerns small and simple problems, but also addresses complex and ambiguous situations, where people are confronted with impediments, even pain. In many cases professionals, such as managers, politicians, and consultants take actions that make life easier. Think of the introduction of ERP systems or the merging of two large companies. This is not always the case, e.g. redesigning work processes and introducing ERP-systems in a heavily politicized organization. Other examples of ambiguous and complex events can be found in many other fields such as social youth care where many organizations try to work together, but where a tragedy occurs more than once each year. Another example is the integration of people from other countries. This is a hard and untamed politicized issue where solutions are hard to find. When I – as a consultant – get involved in such complex and ambiguous situations, I feel a tension between satisfying the principal and many other people involved and trying to convince the people that this situation is not easy or maybe even impossible to solve. On the one hand, I want to avoid the ambiguity, the unpredictability, and the fact that I am dealing with a complex of many things, within which many people interact with each other. It is as if I am looking for something to tame the cognitive and normative unpredictable sides of what is happening. At the same time I want to be as professional as possible and by trusting my knowledge and experience regarding the complex nature of many events, I try to postpone my first response.

The NWO-programme ”the societal aspects of genomics”, has called for stronger means of collaboration and deliberative involvement between the various stakeholders of genomics research. Within the project group assembled at the University for Humanistics, this call was translated to the ‘lingua democratica’, in which the prerequisites of such deliberative efforts were put to scrutiny. The contribution of this thesis has taken a more or less abstract angle to this task, and sought to develop a vocabulary that can be shared amongst various stakeholders with different backgrounds, interests and stakes for any complex theme, although genomics has more or less been in focus throughout the research. As ‘complexity thinking’ is currently a theme in both the ‘hard’ sciences as the social sciences and the humanities, and has always been an issue for professionals, this concept was pivotal in achieving such an inclusive angle. However, in order to prevent that complexity would become fragmented due to disciplinary boundaries, it is essential that those aspects of complexity that seem to return in many discussions would be made clear, and stand out with respect to the complexities of specialisation. The thesis has argued that the concept of ‘patterns’ applies for these aspects, and they form the backbone of the vocabulary that has been developed. Especially patterns of feedback have been given much attention, as this concept is pivotal for many complex themes. However, although patterns are implicitly or explicitly used in many areas, there is little methodological (and philosophical) underpinning of what they are and why they are able to do what they do. As a result, quite some attention has been given to these issues, and how they relate to concepts such as ‘information’,‘order’ and complexity itself. From these explorations, the actual vocabulary was developed, including the methodological means to use this vocabulary. This has taken the shape of a recursive development of a so-called pattern-library, which has crossed disciplinary boundaries, from technological areas, through biology, psychology and the social sciences, to a topic that is typical of the humanities. This journey across the divide of C.P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ is both a test for a lingua democratica, as well as aimed to demonstrate how delicate, and balanced such a path must be in order to be effective, especially if one aims to retain certain coherence along the way. Finally, the methodology has been applied in a very practical way, to a current development that hinges strongly on research in genomics, which is trans-humanist movement.

What distinguishes therapists who enabled their traumatized clients to be fully heard and appropriately address their traumatic histories, from their no less generally competent and empathic colleagues in whose workrooms silence reigns with regard to (interpersonal) traumatization? This question has given rise to the author's conceptualization of a priori countertransference that may determine therapists' attitudes and perception even before meeting actual clients. The life stories of participating trauma therapists and forty years of an English language professional journal, published in Israel, have been analyzed in order to uncover and map personal, familial and societal factors that may contribute to a priori countertransference. The interviewed therapists work with Holocaust survivors and the Second Generation and/or people who have had to endure sexual abuse. These specializations present two examples of devastating, public and secret, interpersonal traumatization. It has been widely documented that these, and related traumas have, over decades, been ignored in otherwise satisfactory psychotherapy. The societal context – historically, trauma awareness has fluctuated greatly both within the mental health profession and society at large – is here provided by Israel, where both the participating therapists and the author live. It provides an excellent study ground for societal influences because it is a multicultural society and has not yet achieved existential security. Thus it can serve as a microcosm of challenges therapists may face anywhere. Hopefully, the outlined sources of possible a priori countertransference will provide a structure on which to base ongoing self-monitoring by practicing therapists as well as professional training programs.

De realiteit in de psychiatrie is complex, de neiging om deze realiteit te dichotomiseren en vervolgens te reduceren zodat te onderzoeken fenomenen in maar één hokje passen is aantrekkelijk, maar doet geen recht aan de werkelijkheid. Een leidend principe voor het schrijven van dit proefschrift is de zorg om reductionistische tendensen in de hedendaagse Nederlandse psychiatrie, zowel wetenschappelijk als contextueel van karakter. Ik probeer begrippen te vinden die onderscheidingen kunnen overbruggen en reductionisme tegengaan en doe dit alles binnen een bepaald kader; ik ben op zoek naar relevante grondslagen om het dagelijks handelen van de psychiater op te baseren. Met dit in het achterhoofd, analyseer ik in deel I kennis afkomstig uit de (sociale) neurowetenschappen en de genetica die helpt om verschillende, in de psychiatrie gangbare onderscheidingen te overbruggen en mijn pleidooi voor een integrale psychiatrie, gebaseerd op meerdere wetenschappelijke grondslagen, te onderstrepen. In deel II doe ik hetzelfde op het terrein van de context waarin de hulpverlening plaats vindt. Ik richt me daarbij op specifieke, persoonsgebonden grondslagen voor de psychiater, gerelateerd aan de context waarin de hulpverlening plaatsvindt, de visie op herstel, de eigen mogelijkheden, betekenisverlening en waarden van de patiënt. - Reality is complex in psychiatry. It is enticing to dichotomise this reality in order to reduce it, making the phenomena to be studied fit in just one compartment, but it does no justice to reality. A leading principle while writing this dissertation was my concern about reductionist tendencies within present-day Dutch psychiatry, which are both scientifically and contextually in character. I am looking for concepts to bridge those distinctions and to combat reductionism. In doing this, I am operating within a particular framework: I am looking for relevant foundations on which to base the daily actions of the psychiatrist. With this in mind, in Part I, I analyse knowledge originating from (social) neuroscience and genetics that helps to bridge the various distinctions common in psychiatry, and also helps to underscore my argument for an integral psychiatry, based on several scientific foundations. In Part II, I repeat this exercise with regard to the context in which assistance is provided. Here, I focus on specific, personal foundations for the psychiatrist, related to the context in which assistance is given, the view on recovery, personal capacities, the attribution of meaning, and the patient’s values.

De openbare geestelijke gezondheidszorg (OGGz) staat sterk in de belangstelling. Recente gezinsdrama’s laten zien dat assertieve en gecoördineerde hulp moeilijk van de grond komt. Gert Schout deed aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen onderzoek naar de wisselwerking tussen zorgvermijding en zorgverlamming. Op basis daarvan pleit hij voor schaalverkleining en minder regels in de zorg. Schout promoveert op 14 juni 2007. Zorgvermijders zijn mensen die de zorg niet opzoeken en soms zelfs uit de weg gaan. Het kan hier gaan om mensen die in de war thuiszitten, psychiatrische problemen, schulden of een alcoholprobleem hebben. ‘Het zijn meestal sociaal kwetsbaren die een netwerk ontberen en gemarginaliseerd en uitgesloten zijn’, zegt Schout. Het gaat volgens hem om massieve en ernstige problemen. Schattingen naar het aantal zorgvermijders lopen uiteen van 24.000 tot 110.000 mensen. ‘En het probleem van uitsluiting groeit. Onze samenleving is een diensteneconomie aan het worden die steeds meer sociale wendbaarheid vereist. Sociaal kwetsbare mensen belanden daardoor makkelijk in de marge.’

The object of the study was the corporate culture. The researcher has focused on the humanisation process that set the changes in motion. This humanisation process has been investigated from different viewpoints: 1. A description based on stories told by different parties 2. Based on policy documents 3. Based on a survey among members of a panel (N=50) 4. Based on a survey among members of security (N=15) 5. Open interviews (N=25, 10 patients, 10 members of staff and 5 people from outside the organisation)