| Footnotes |
Footnotes:
1 Oppression is the systematic mistreatment of a group of people by the society and/or by another group of people who serve as agents of the society, with the mistreatment encouraged or enforced by the society and its culture.
2 "Liberation" refers to the program and process of freeing one's self and one's group from oppression.
3 "Discharge" is a term used to collectively describe the various complex physical processes which accompany the release of tension from distress recordings of hurtful experiences, including physical pain, discomfort, or emotional distress. These releasing processes are dependably indicated by the physical manifestations of yawning, stretching, or scratching; sobbing, crying, shedding tears; shaking, trembling, perspiration from a cold skin; perspiration from a warm skin; laughter; shouting, violent physical activity (stamping, pounding); interested talking; relaxed talking; reluctant, bored talking (particularly when accompanied by yawns); and "eager," excited recounting of experiences.
"Re-evaluation" refers to the process, which occurs spontaneously after discharge, through which distress recordings are understood and turned into usable information.
4 "Intelligence" as used here refers to the ability to create a new, successful, creative response to fit each new, present situation. "Distress pattern" refers to a rigid set of "thoughts," behaviors, and feelings that is left by an undischarged experience (or experiences) of distress.
5 "Class societies" refer to the structuring of society where one group of people oppresses (exploits) another and has greater access to the resources of that society with the rationalized argument of better organization for production. There are three kinds of class societies: slave societies, feudal societies, and capitalist societies.
6 "Distress recording" refers to all the information (sights, smells, voice-tones, gestures, postures, feelings, etc.) that gets bound together in an unusable glob during a distress experience and then is played over and over (like a record) in an inappropriate response to a similar-enough new situation.
7 "Conditioning" is the psychological term for interrupting the free thinking of an individual by imposing a pattern which leaves the individual inhibited from acting on his or her own thinking and under pressure to succumb to the demands of other individuals.
8 World Health Organization statistics
9 "Restimulation" refers to the "replaying" of a recording of a hurtful experience, which is brought on by a perceived similarity (sometimes insignificant or remote) in the current situation to the past hurtful situation.
10 "Contradict" usually refers to "contradicting distress," meaning helping the client to see that the distress recording is not present-time reality.
11 "Oppressor role" refers to the role of agreeing to carry out oppression. The person in the oppressor role has always been oppressed first. No one is able to assume the oppressor role without having been extremely mistreated themselves as preparation.
12 "Support group" refers to an organizational form which first evolved in Re-evaluation Counseling but which now has spread widely in the world. It consists of a group of people of indeterminate size (could be three to fifty) but probably optimally of around eight people, which meets together on the basis of some commonality between members. People take turns being listened to with a rough agreement having been reached of there being approximately the same amount of time for each person's turn. A stringently organized support group will allow each person to use the turn the way that person wishes and will require him or her to end the turn when the agreed-upon time is up. A common form of the support group is one in which a designated person serves as a counselor to each person having a turn. The designated person may be the person agreed-upon to be the leader of the group. Alternatively, each person may choose a different counselor for his or her turn, or agree ahead of time on the order in which other members of the group will serve as counselors. A useful feature of the support group is that at the end of the meeting, and after the time and place of the next meeting are set, each person says what he or she liked best about the meeting as a whole.
13 See Gene Sharp's book, Making Europe Unconquerable.
14 "Classism" refers to the economic exploitation of one group of people by
another. One group of people who produce value by their work have that value taken away from them by another group of people, with the robbery organized and supported by the society. This economic exploitation, this taking of the wealth produced by some people away from them by others, is the whole motivation of class societies. It is therefore the fundamental oppression.
15 The United States is the most incarceration-prone Western "democracy." Good information about the prison and criminal justice system can be found in The Real War on Crime (1996) Donziger.
16 "Counseling" refers to Re-evaluation Counseling, a well-defined-by-now practice of taking turns listening and allowing and assisting "discharge," which has the effect upon participants of becoming intelligent where they had previously been confused.
17 "Upward trend" refers to tending toward order, toward meaning, toward integration, toward growth, toward intelligence and awareness, and toward independence.
18 "Pseudo-reality" refers to a false picture of reality which is imposed upon us as a substitute for reality. It is a distortion of reality presented to us by oppression, by other people's patterns, by our own patterns, by misinformation, and by the societies in which we live.
19 "Allies" refers to people who are supportive of the good functioning and successful re-emergence of other people. Allies encourage the people to whom they are allies, helping them discharge the distresses that are getting in their way, and assisting them towards functioning well in their daily lives.
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The International Re-evaluation Counseling Communities
719 2nd Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98109 USA
Telephone (206)284-0311 Fax (206)-284-8429
INTERNET:ircc@rc.org
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Table of Contents
(c) copyright 1999
Rational Island Publishers
Reprinted on this site with permission of the copyright owner.
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The International Re-evaluation Counseling Communities
719 2nd Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98109 USA
Telephone (206)284-0311 Fax (206)-284-8429
INTERNET:ircc@rc.org
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