Dialectical Hermeneutics in Mental Health Nursing

(This is an AI-assisted note to self that was written between seeing a few different clients while on duty. Reflecting in and on practice, I find myself split by my educational and clinical training, between two opposing cultural traditions and practices. At the heart of this are two different "sciences". I take an anthroplogical approach to understanding them, and how the 'split' they are causing me, inevitably impacts on my/our capability for work. I apologise for the inconvenience of posting it here, for the sake of future reference.)

The Split   

At the heart of the relationship between psychology and mental health nursing in the UK lies a dialectical process of recovery, enacted through the therapeutic relationship between nurse and patient. Recovery is not simply the alleviation of symptoms, but a dialogical, ongoing negotiation of meaning — a co-construction of self and world. Mental health nursing, as practiced in the UK, positions this relational process at its centre, viewing care as a mutual act of transformation rather than a unidirectional application of treatment.

This stands in contrast to dominant American psychological traditions, which often situate pathology within the individual, relying on diagnostic categories that abstract the person from their social, cultural, and relational context. In this model, the patient becomes the site of illness, and therapeutic success is measured through psychometric validation and statistical generalisation. Yet such approaches risk overlooking the lived complexity and cultural situatedness of mental distress.

The science of mental health nursing, by contrast, is performative and relational — concerned with how meaning emerges between nurse and patient. The therapeutic relationship functions as a space for the co-construction of a conceptual structure, within which both participants negotiate and make sense of experience. From this perspective, the imposition of predefined medical taxonomies appears limited, even counterproductive. While such systems may originate from qualitative clinical insights, they are validated through quantitative psychometrics that often lack cultural sensitivity and contextual nuance.

A way forward, therefore, lies in developing a dialectical model of psychological understanding that honours relationality, culture, and lived experience. Theory can be grounded in a statistical landscape of productivity and deprivation, but it must remain alive and responsive to the mutual processes of recognition, reflection, and recovery that define nursing practice. Only when UK universities recognise this fact, will mental health nursing be able to offer a more inclusive, responsive, and human science of the mind than is currently available through the neo-liberal structures of the American psychological industry.

The Double Hermeneutic

The split may be resolved through Anthony Giddens’ concept of the double hermeneutic. His concept captures a key tension within the human sciences: the idea that social and psychological knowledge operates on two interpretive levels. First, scientists and practitioners generate abstract conceptual frameworks to interpret human behaviour. Second, these abstracted concepts re-enter the social world, where individuals adopt, reinterpret, and perform them within their own lived contexts. In psychology, this reflexive loop means that theories do not merely describe human experience — they constitute it, influencing how people understand themselves and others.

Within psychometric psychology, this double hermeneutic often functions in a top-down manner. Diagnostic categories and measurement tools, while presented as neutral instruments, shape public and professional understandings of mental health, producing what Ian Hacking calls “looping effects” — where classifications alter the behaviours they classify. The result is a self-reinforcing system of abstraction: concepts tested statistically across populations become reified as universal truths, even though they emerge from specific cultural, linguistic, and institutional contexts.

By contrast, within the therapeutic relationship that defines UK mental health nursing, the double hermeneutic operates dialectically and locally. Here, concepts of distress, recovery, and identity are co-constructed between nurse and patient, emerging through dialogue, empathy, and mutual reflection. The process is interpretive rather than classificatory, privileging lived meaning over standardised measurement. The universal abstractions of psychology meet the grounded, situated knowledge of relational practice, generating a productive tension between theory and experience.

Recognising this double hermeneutic dynamic invites a reorientation of psychological science: rather than imposing taxonomies from above, theory must remain open to revision through practice — allowing the conceptual frameworks of mental health to evolve through the interpretive encounters that constitute care itself.

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

One good example of the double hermeneutic in operation is The Big Five Personality Dimensions — openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These dimensions were developed from self-report questionnaires asking people how much they agree with a certain statement about their thoughts, emotions and behaviours. These were reduced by statistical analysis into a descriptive taxonomy of personality variation that were validated across populations and cultures.

However, as Giddens’ double hermeneutic suggests, such models do not simply represent personality; they also reshape how individuals and institutions understand, value, and regulate it. Once abstracted into measurable traits, the Big Five re-enter social discourse, informing educational, occupational, and clinical judgments about what constitutes a “healthy” or “disordered” personality.

This process becomes particularly pronounced in the construction of personality disorders. The same traits that the Big Five describe as normal variation are often pathologised when expressed beyond socially tolerated thresholds. For example, high conscientiousness may be celebrated as diligence, yet when excessive it becomes “obsessive–compulsive.” Similarly, low agreeableness may be reinterpreted as antisocial or narcissistic; but it becomes "revolutionary" when expressed by the political opponents of a totalitarian regime. The classificatory schema thus performs a moral as well as a scientific function — it legitimises particular ways of being as normative while marginalising others as pathological.

From a developmental perspective, all personality traits emerge through processes of neural selection and pruning during puberty, reflecting each individual child's adaptive response to their unique set of environmental and social demands. Evolutionarily, each trait serves a function: even “maladaptive” traits confer survival advantages in a certain context. Yet, within modern societies, only certain constellations of traits — typically those that support emotional regulation, empathy, and stable adult attachment — are normalised as healthy. The Big Five, when used diagnostically, implicitly encode this social bias, presenting contingent cultural ideals as universal psychological truths.

The result is a powerful double hermeneutic: psychological theory both interprets and prescribes personhood. As individuals internalise these frameworks, they shape their self-understanding and behaviour accordingly, reinforcing the very norms that the taxonomy was meant to describe in a scientifically neutral and objective way.

Splitting and Catastrophising

The cognitive–emotional patterns often associated with personality disorders — such as splitting (the oscillation between idealisation and devaluation of self and/or other) and catastrophising (the tendency to interpret events and relationships in extremes) — can be interpreted through the lens of the Big Five Personality Dimensions, though this translation reveals the limitations of the psychometric method. 

In theory, the Big Five involve constellations of loosely connected words that humans use to describe each other. These words can change in their relationships to each other over time, but the same broad psycho-linguistic dimensions seem to appear over and over again, wherever and whenever they have been studied. This means that it is only within the cultural context of the author that it becomes legitimate to speak about the cognitive tendencies of splitting and catastrophising, being best referenced by the personality dimensions of neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness to experience.

With that qualification in mind, it can be predicted that high neuroticism will capture most of the emotional volatility and sensitivity to threat associated with the cognitive distortions of splitting and catastrophising. Neuroticism is fertile ground for catastrophising when cognitive regulation is weak or stress is high. Splitting, meanwhile, can emerge from the interaction between high neuroticism and low agreeableness, reflecting difficulties in integrating ambivalence within relationships and maintaining stable representations of self and other. Elevated openness may amplify both processes by heightening emotional imagination and perceptual complexity, leading to vivid, rapidly shifting interpretations of events and a dissociation from the social reality observed by others.

However, it may also prove impossible to reduce mental states to personality traits in this way - a theoretical distinction has to be maintained between their respective fluid and static natures. From a dialectical perspective, splitting and catastrophising are not fixed pathologies but dynamic strategies for preserving the coherence of an individual identity in the face of contradictory internal or interpersonal experiences. They are attempts to stabilise and control the meaning of insecure attachments within a triggering (or re-traumatising) context. The Big Five, by abstracting these processes into individual traits, obscures the relational field in which they arise.

Thus, while the Big Five can statistically map the impact of emotional instability, it cannot capture the dialogical logic of recovery that mental health nursing foregrounds — where emotional extremes are understood, contained, and integrated through relationship. Within that therapeutic dialectic, the polarity of splitting itself becomes a site of co-constructed understanding rather than a symptom to be measured. Unfortunately, the therapeutic relationship also becomes the site of contamination, where the 'othering' of split-off fragments of a narcissistic self can be normalised by a staff team. Thus, through poor mental hygiene, blurred boundaries, and the contagion of toxic emotions, mental health nurses may end up splitting the most vulnerable members of the communities that they are supposed to serve. 

The Semantic Differential

While the Big Five Personality Dimensions aim to describe stable, universal structures of personality, they are poorly equipped to account for the polarising affective shifts that characterise splitting and catastrophising. In contrast, Charles Osgood’s Semantic Differential model offers a more dynamic and relational framework. These scales originally introduced to commodify public (voting/purchasing) intentions for the 1950s US advertising industry. They are therefore at the heart of the industrialisation of psychological processes, which has been a feature of global capitalism in the post-War era. 

Rather than reducing personality to latent trait factors, the semantic differential maps the connotative meaning people ascribe to objects in their physical and social environments — typically (but not reliably) along evaluative dimensions such as good–bad, strong–weak, and active–passive, but the actual form and number of dimensions depends on the host culture. These bipolar adjective pairs reveal not only how individuals perceive others, but how affective valuations fluctuate within social and emotional contexts.

In cases of splitting or catastrophising, it is precisely the sudden reversal of evaluative polarity — from idealisation to devaluation, from safety to danger, or from victim to abuser — that defines the psychological process. Within Osgood’s framework, such reversals represent abrupt shifts in the semantic field: the same object or person moves from one pole of meaning to its opposite, reflecting an instability in the integration of affect and cognition. This instability is not a fixed personality trait but a relationally mediated oscillation in the meaning system through which self and other are interpreted.

From this perspective, what psychometric models frame as “emotional dysregulation” can instead be understood as fluctuations in affective valuation within a shared symbolic field. The nurse–patient relationship thus becomes a medium for stabilising these semantic reversals through empathy, dialogue, and attunement. Rather than classifying the patient’s responses as pathological extremes, the therapeutic task involves co-creating a more continuous semantic space — one in which conflicting meanings can coexist without collapse into binary opposites.

In this sense, Osgood’s model resonates more deeply with the dialectical, interpretive ethos of mental health nursing, where recovery is achieved through the gradual re-integration of polarised meanings within the relational encounter itself. Where it struggles is in finding the mediating values between the two extremes, which is where the one-to-one cognitive-behavioural therapies (IAPT), and the Big Five model, do the majority of their narrative restorying work.

Summary and Conclusion

The relationship between psychology and mental health nursing in the UK is ultimately a dialogue between individual experience and collective context — between the intrapsychic and the social. While US psychology provides models for understanding personality traits, such as neuroticism, mental health nursing situates the mental states they give rise to within the lived realities of relationships, communities, and institutions. From a public health perspective, neuroticism, for example, is not distributed equally across society: exposure to chronic stress, precarity, discrimination, crime, and organisational dysfunction amplifies anxiety, vigilance, and emotional reactivity. In this sense, neuroticism becomes both a psychological disposition and a socially produced vulnerability, a double hermeneutic in every sense of the term.

Elevated neuroticism increases susceptibility to expressing cognitive–emotional dysregulation and behavioural impulsivity when triggered by the relevant stressors and perceptual cues. The polarities of splitting and catastrophising are central to the lived experience of neighbourhoods where personality disorders thrive. When experienced collectively — within families, workplaces, or marginalised communities — they risk a pattern of externalising and internalising co-dependencies that will reproduce cycles of fear, mistrust, and toxic emotional contagion across generational divides. At a population level, such dynamics will probably contribute to the social patterning of mental distress, including domestic violence, substance misuse, deliberate self-harm, and inevitably, intentional and unintentional suicide. Thus, neuroticism operates as a social determinant of splitting and catastrophising, whose prevalence and expression are shaped by the structure of relationships through which people live, relate, and work.

For mental health nursing, this realisation can reframe psychological care as both relational and structural, a process and an outcome of toxic interpersonal relationships. Recovery involves not only the therapeutic containment of emotional instability by mental health nurses but also recognition of the societal forces that cultivate it. The NHS primary care system is on the threshold of achieving this insight and being able to respond to it in a meaningful way. Psychometric models such as the Big Five can help map risk, but they must be integrated into a broader, dialectical framework that understands the expression of personality as the interface between individual neurobiology and collective meaning systems. A truly holistic nursing science must therefore unite psychological insight with social awareness — recognising that to heal minds, we must also address the environments that continually shape, stress, and divide us into us and them.

Rethinking Redistribution (3/3): Internal Contradictions

 Introduction

The lumpenproletariat, once derided by Marx as the “dangerous classes”—a social residue of vagabonds, criminals, and the chronically unemployed—has undergone a profound transformation in the historical development of British capitalism. In the wake of two world wars, the decline of industrial capitalism, and the liberalisation of previously criminalised economies, this group has not disappeared but rather evolved.

This AI-generated essay argues that elements of the historical lumpenproletariat in cities like London and Manchester have become a wealth-owning capitalist subclass in their own right. Through sectors such as the drug trade, sex work, private security, and cultural production, they have entered the circuits of capital accumulation. Drawing on Marxist theory and Mao’s notion of internal contradiction, this essay explores how the informal economy both reproduces and destabilises capitalist structures, offering a unique site for analysis of class mutation, cultural commodification, and intra-capitalist struggle.

 

From Lumpenproletariat to Capitalist Subclass

Marx viewed the lumpenproletariat as politically unreliable and economically parasitic, excluded from the productive relations of capital. However, in the context of post-war Britain, especially in deindustrialised urban centres, this class has undergone a mutation. Through engagement in illicit markets, informal labour, and entrepreneurial subcultures, descendants of the lumpenproletariat now control forms of capital and influence that rival the traditional bourgeoisie.

This shift is visible in the rise of street entrepreneurs, organised crime syndicates turned investors, and working-class celebrities who monetise their authentic origins. These figures often leverage symbolic and cultural capital into economic assets, participating in an emergent economy that thrives on identity, risk, and informalisation. While they may still be stigmatised by law or morality, they are no longer excluded from capitalist accumulation—in fact, they exemplify its outermost edges.

 

Cultural Commodification and Identity Capital

Popular culture has played a central role in romanticising and commodifying the image of the ex-lumpen subject. Figures from sports, music, fashion, and film have turned working-class or criminalised identities into profitable brands. This identity capital—presented as “authentic” or “streetwise”—is commodified for mass consumption. While offering avenues of mobility, this process reinforces neoliberal logics of individual success and depoliticises the structural conditions that shape class trajectories.

From the aesthetic of the “roadman” to the mythos of the gangster-turned-entrepreneur, mainstream culture reimagines the lumpen figure not as an outsider but as a savvy capitalist in waiting. This transformation aligns with the commodification of rebellion—what was once politically subversive becomes economically profitable. Brands, record labels, and entertainment platforms reap profits from stylised portrayals of resistance, stripping them of any systemic critique.

 

The Informal Economy as a Capital-Attracting Force

The liberalisation and commercialisation of sectors once considered marginal—recreational substances, sex work, and private security—has created an alternative economy that attracts capital at scale. These sectors offer high returns with low formal oversight, appealing to investors both within and beyond the state. Informal capital now competes with traditional forms of investment, threatening aristocratic holdings and legacy capital.

The emergence of wealth-generating activities in the informal sector presents a unique case of class mobility not tied to traditional wage labour or bourgeois family inheritance. A generation of informal entrepreneurs, often rooted in communities historically excluded from capital, have begun to build transgenerational wealth through alternative pathways. Their activities are often networked, decentralised, and global in scope, reflecting the transnational nature of contemporary capitalism.

This should not be seen as a subversion of capitalism per se. Rather, it illustrates capital’s adaptive logic: its ability to absorb and monetise what was once outside its boundaries. Yet, in doing so, it reveals the fragility of the old order—where once only the aristocracy could own, now the peripheries threaten to outmaneuver the centre.

 

Mao and the Internal Contradiction of Capitalism

Mao Zedong’s theory of internal contradiction provides a powerful lens for understanding this shift. According to Mao, the most fundamental movement of any system is driven by contradictions within it. The UK informal economy—formerly external to capitalist production—now constitutes an internal contradiction. It erodes and competes with established capitalist interests from within, not through revolutionary overthrow, but through economic parasitism and innovation.

The contradiction is dialectical in nature. Capital once excluded the lumpenproletariat as useless or dangerous; now, through systemic crises, deregulation, and neoliberal ideology, it has invited them in—albeit conditionally. This mutation has birthed a new intra-capitalist antagonism: between formal legacy capital (aristocratic landowners, financial elites, legacy corporations) and informal emergent capital (ex-lumpen entrepreneurs, cultural producers, illicit traders).

This contradiction creates instability within the system. Informal capital is often less predictable, less disciplined, and more volatile. It challenges the centralised power of traditional institutions and introduces new networks of influence. Yet, it also reproduces capitalist exploitation, often in harsher and more precarious forms—where workers are unprotected, surveillance is decentralised, and the law serves market flexibility.

 

Conclusion: Mutation, Not Liberation

This transformation should not be mistaken for liberation. The rise of a wealth-owning ex-lumpen class is not inherently progressive. While it exposes the instability and flexibility of class under late capitalism, it also risks reinforcing capitalist ideologies of competition, hierarchy, and accumulation. What was once marginal and potentially radical is now incorporated and often reactionary.

However, recognising this internal contradiction offers new insights into the fragility and adaptability of the capitalist system—and the potential, still latent, for politicised class reformation. The informal economy today is not a shadow of capitalism but a dialectical force within it. It represents both an expression of capitalist decay and a space in which new contradictions are forged—contradictions that may one day produce a genuinely transformative politics.

Rethinking Redistribution (2/3): Bankrupt Local Councils

Introduction

Local councils facing Section 114 notices—effectively declaring bankruptcy—require structural, investment-led solutions rather than short-term bailouts or austerity. In this second in a series of AI-assisted articles, I argue that Regional Development Banks (RDBs) offer a strategic and outcomes-based framework to restore solvency while building long-term wellbeing through investment in QALY-linked infrastructure and services.

1. Convert Deficit Spending into Long-Term Investment via QALY Bonds

RDBs could help councils convert short-term overspending on reactive services into long-term capital investment via QALY-linked bonds. These would finance health-optimised housing or social infrastructure, with returns paid from future public sector savings.

2. Underwrite or Refinance Toxic Legacy Debt

RDBs could buy out and refinance councils’ high-interest legacy debt (e.g., LOBOs, PFIs) with low-interest, long-term loans tied to QALY improvements and community regeneration goals.

3. Enable Councils to Monetise Preventative Interventions

RDBs can fund preventative services—like youth support or mental health outreach—that generate long-term savings for the NHS, police, and social care. Councils receive “QALY dividends” from the cost savings.

4. Finance Local Income-Generating Assets

RDBs could fund municipally owned infrastructure (e.g., housing, green energy) that generates income while boosting local wellbeing. These assets could form the backbone of a council’s long-term fiscal recovery.

5. Establish “Local QALY Recovery Plans”

In place of austerity-based recovery plans, Section 114 councils would co-develop outcome-focused recovery strategies with RDBs and NHS partners. These plans would direct investment toward services that boost Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs).

6. Use RDBs to Match Councils with Blended Capital

RDBs can serve as brokers for councils, matching them with capital from NHS, pension funds, and social investors under a unified outcomes investment plan.

7. Embed QALY-GDP Principles in the Section 114 Process

Section 114 rules could be reformed to allow outcome-based investment and mandate recovery planning with measurable QALY and social impact metrics.

Benefits of the RDB-Based Model

Fiscal Recovery: Restructures debt and restores service capacity.

Investment-Led Growth: Turns fiscal crisis into a renewal opportunity.

Better Health Outcomes: Tackles root causes of overspending.

Shared Accountability: Aligns local institutions behind common goals.

Local Empowerment: Enables councils to invest, not just cut.

Policy Changes Required

Amend the Local Government Finance Act to permit outcome-based borrowing during fiscal crises.

Mandate Treasury to support and underwrite RDBs.

Establish a QALY Outcomes Regulator.

Enable NHS ICSs and DWP to pool budgets with councils for joint outcomes-based investment.

Conclusion

Regional Development Banks offer a powerful, regenerative approach to council insolvency. Instead of austerity, they provide a mechanism to restore fiscal health through long-term, QALY-driven investment in people and places. This is a practical pathway to a healthier, more resilient local government system.

Rethinking Redistribution (1/3): Getting Left Behind

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This AI-assisted paper proposes a transformative economic model for the UK, integrating GDP (Gross Domestic Product) with QALY (Quality-Adjusted Life Years) to reframe wealth creation around harm reduction, wellbeing, and social resilience. This shift would directly link economic performance to human outcomes, redistribute investment through regional banks, and accelerate sustainable growth through a 10-point national strategy.

Current Challenge:

• The UK faces high inequality, regional stagnation, and growing health disparities.
• GDP growth alone no longer captures the public value of economic policy.

Proposed Solution:

• Introduce a GDP-QALY framework that links economic success with measurable improvements in health and well-being.
• Redistribute wealth via mandatory pension bond investment into regional public banks that fund local QALY-generating initiatives.

 

TECHNOCRATIC MECHANISMS

1. QALY-Indexed Public Investment Criteria

• Treasury Green Book reform to include QALY per £1bn as a core appraisal metric.
• Prioritise infrastructure, housing, and transport projects with highest health/wellbeing return.

2. QALY-Based Fiscal Transfers

• Adjust council and devolved authority budgets based on local improvements in healthy life expectancy, mental health, and chronic illness.

3. QALY-Linked Sovereign and Municipal Bonds

• Create investment instruments tied to QALY outcomes (e.g. youth wellbeing, elderly care, clean air).

4. QALY-Responsive Corporate Incentives

• Tax reliefs for businesses that demonstrate measurable well-being impact.

5. Wellbeing-Weighted Procurement and Tax Reform

• Prioritise social value in public contracts.
• Introduce VAT and NI adjustments based on QALY impact of goods/services.

6. Regional Pension Investment in Public Banks

• Replace some taxation with mandatory long-term investment in regional pension bonds funding local QALY-positive ventures.

 

 

SUPERCHARGING GROWTH

1. Establish a National Wellbeing Investment Bank: Co-invest in QALY-focused projects in housing, care, education, and health tech.

2. Education as a Human Capital Accelerator: Free lifelong learning tied to local employment and wellbeing metrics.

3. Green QALY Deal: Align decarbonisation with QALY creation: retrofits, active transport, green space.

4. Anchor Institutions as Local Growth Engines: NHS, universities, councils to direct local procurement and employment towards health-positive SMEs.

5. Tax Reform for Preventative Value: Incentivise upstream prevention and penalise QALY-negative market sectors.

6. Innovation Strategy for Public Good: Direct R&D toward dementia, loneliness, care innovation, and workplace wellbeing.

7. Devolve QALY Sovereignty: Allow regions to reinvest savings from reduced NHS and welfare burdens.

8. Monetise Prevention: Enable councils and charities to earn returns from harm reduction.

9. Universal Basic Services (UBS): Expand housing, transport, digital access, and mental health supports.

10. International Leadership on QALY Economics: Brand the UK as a global hub for wellbeing-based finance and policy.

 

CONCLUSIONS

The UK's future prosperity depends on redefining growth as both economic and human. By linking GDP to QALY outcomes, Britain can move from inequality-driven stagnation to a regenerative, health-centred economy. This framework empowers all levels of government, aligns public and private sectors with human flourishing, and places wellbeing at the heart of a 21st-century growth model.

 

STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION

(Can be conceptualised as an infographic with the following flow)

a) GDP-QALY Link Established

b) Treasury + Regional Banks Align Spending

c) Local Authorities Fund Health-Positive Projects

d) Businesses Become Incentivised for Social Value

e) Citizens See Real Returns in Life Quality

f) Economic Growth + QALY Increase Reported Quarterly

g) Global Brand for Inclusive Regenerative Growth 

The Evolution of the English White Working-Class Male Identity

(This blog was written with the assistance of ChatGPT. This tool can assist authors who are already aware of the conceptual content they want to write about, but lack the time and financial resources to be able to produce a finished article. The intentions of the author are provided through a series of prompts that guide the machine. The machine then draws upon its extensive training literature to build the article based on a process of pattern-matching. These new technologies enable white working class males a means of constructing their own identities through writing blogs and publishing them on social media platforms.)  

Introduction

If nothing else, the current Trump presidency has shifted the media spotlight onto white working-class male identities in the Anglo-Saxon English speaking world. In England, this identity has undergone significant transformation over the past two centuries, shaped by the tides of industrialization, deindustrialization, class politics, cultural shifts, and more recently, globalisation and identity politics.

However, the white working-class male identity in England has never been static, it reflects the changing economic roles, political allegiances, family structures, and cultural values of the nation throughout history. This blog will argue that the identity is not simply the product of industrialisation or economic conditions. Rather, it emerges from a deep historical sediment, layered with ideals, values, and social roles inherited from England’s foundational cultural and legal institutions.

Arguably then, the evolution of this identity can be better understood through three core historical pillars: Anglo-Saxon common law, which emphasized local autonomy, kinship, and justice; Norman chivalry, which introduced ideals of duty, loyalty, and martial honour; and the Protestant work ethic, which stressed industriousness, thrift, and moral uprightness.

Anglo-Saxon Common Law: Roots of Localism and Communal Masculinity (AD450 to 1066)

Before the Norman Conquest in 1066, Anglo-Saxon England was governed not by centralised monarchic power, but by a system of customary law deeply embedded in local communities. Common law during this period was unwritten, customary, and based on collective decision-making in local courts (hundred courts and moot courts), where free men – often the heads of households or kin groups – took part in resolving disputes.

This participatory legal structure shaped early ideas of male responsibility and honour. The white male subject was expected to defend the community, uphold justice, and be accountable to peers. Honour was public; shame and compensation were communal matters. Kinship and loyalty to the "folk" (people) held primacy over allegiance to distant authority.

Though modern working-class life is far removed from these early forms, the cultural memory of local autonomy, fairness, and mutual responsibility has echoed through generations. In industrial and post-industrial contexts, this translated into the solidarity of the workplace, unionism, and a deep suspicion of elite interference or imposed authority. The idea that a "real man" is someone who stands by his mates, speaks plainly, and defends what’s right has roots in these ancient legal and moral codes.

Norman Chivalry: Honour, Service, and Hierarchical Masculinity (1066 to 1517)

The Norman Conquest brought a dramatic shift: centralised monarchy, feudal hierarchy, and a new warrior aristocracy. While chivalry as an ethos initially belonged to knights and nobles, its core values – duty, courage, loyalty, and honour – eventually permeated the broader culture, influencing ideals of masculinity across the social spectrum.

For the working classes, particularly those in rural or martial labour (e.g., yeomen, soldiers, sailors), chivalric masculinity filtered down as a moral framework. A man was measured not only by his strength, but by his loyalty to family, community, and crown. In service and subordination, there was honour; this carried through to the militarised identities of many working-class men who served in England’s various wars.

During the industrial era, a version of this chivalric ethic re-emerged: the "respectable working man" who worked hard, provided for his family, and remained loyal to his class and country. The soldier-worker image – valorised especially during and after World Wars – echoed the medieval knight’s sense of duty and sacrifice, albeit in radically different material conditions.

Moreover, paternal authority, a hallmark of feudal and chivalric culture, shaped domestic expectations. Working-class fathers often saw themselves as protectors and moral guides of their households, with strength and self-discipline held in high regard. This has fed into modern cultural ideals of the "strong but silent" working-class man.

The Protestant Work Ethic: Industry, Morality, and Masculine Self-Control (1517 to 1760)

The Protestant Reformation, particularly in its Calvinist and Puritan variants, revolutionised English moral thought. The "Protestant work ethic", as famously described by sociologist Max Weber, promoted hard work, thrift, discipline, and moral rectitude as signs of both religious virtue and social value. In England, particularly from the 17th century onward, this ethic fused with capitalist development and laid the foundation for modern labour ideals.

Although originally a bourgeois ideal, this ethic became deeply embedded in working-class culture by the 19th century. As industrialisation expanded, the working-class male was expected to be sober, punctual, industrious, and morally upright. Respectability was not just about economic survival but also about proving one's worth in a stratified society.

The Protestant ethic also discouraged idleness, emotional expression, and hedonism – traits which were associated with failure or vice. These ideals contributed to a gendered culture in which the male role was defined by labour, discipline, and emotional restraint. Public emotion was seen as weakness; dignity was found in endurance.

Even when working-class men deviated from this ethic – through drinking, gambling, or rebellion – these acts often took on symbolic meaning as resistance to an oppressive moral order. Still, the underlying pressure to "be a man" by working hard and enduring hardship remained a key element of identity.

Industrial Roots of the Working Class Identity (1760 to 1914)

The archetype of the white working-class male emerged during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. As England industrialised, men from rural areas moved to urban centres like Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield to work in factories, mines, docks, and steelworks. Labour was physically demanding, dangerous, and often poorly paid, but it was a cornerstone of masculinity: strength, endurance, and stoicism became defining traits of male identity.

Work was central not only to economic survival but to social identity. The man was typically the sole breadwinner, while women were relegated to the domestic sphere. Class solidarity grew out of shared hardship and unionised labour, and a sense of pride in skilled manual work was prevalent. Politically, many working-class men aligned with the Labour movement and trade unions, seeing themselves as part of a broader class struggle.

Wartime Masculinity and National Service (1914 to 1945)

World War I and II significantly shaped working-class masculinity. Millions of men were conscripted, and military service reinforced ideals of bravery, sacrifice, and nationalism. Returning soldiers were often idealised as heroes, though many returned to poverty, unemployment, and trauma. The post-WWI period saw the rise of the Labour Party as a political force, supported heavily by the working-class vote, particularly after the Representation of the People Act 1918 granted voting rights to many more working-class men.

In this period, the white working-class male identity was firmly linked to notions of duty, hard work, and national pride. National Service, compulsory until 1960, further institutionalised these ideals for post-war generations.

Post-War Consensus and Cultural Stability (1945 to 1967)

The period after World War II saw the rise of the welfare state and an improved standard of living for much of the working class. Mass council housing, nationalised industries, and the NHS contributed to a sense of collective progress. Employment in heavy industry and manufacturing was still dominant, and jobs were relatively stable.

The white working-class male in this era retained traditional masculine traits: he was often the provider, physically tough, and rooted in local community life, especially through the pub, football, and family. Trade unions were powerful, and union membership was a source of pride and identity. Popular culture – from "kitchen sink" dramas to music halls and early rock-and-roll – often depicted or celebrated working-class life.

Deindustrialisation and Identity Crisis (1967 to 1994)

The 'Summer of Love' in 1967, the economic shocks of the 1970s, followed by Margaret Thatcher's neoliberal policies in the 1980s, marked a series of turning points. The closure of coal mines, steelworks, shipyards, and other traditional industries devastated many working-class communities, particularly in the North and Midlands. Unemployment soared, and long-standing social structures began to collapse.

For many white working-class men, this period represented not just economic decline but a profound identity crisis. With the erosion of manufacturing jobs came the loss of pride, purpose, and community. The trade union movement, once a bastion of collective masculinity, was significantly weakened after events like the 1984–85 miners' strike. Traditional notions of masculinity – built on labour, loyalty, and resilience – began to appear outdated or under threat.

This period also saw the rise of new working-class subcultures – skinheads, mods, punks – often as expressions of frustration, resistance, or cultural displacement. In some cases, working-class men were drawn to far-right politics or nationalist ideologies, partly in response to perceived threats from Soviet Communism, radical feminism, homosexuality, immigration and multiculturalism.

Cultural Marginalisation and Political Alienation (1994 to 2016)

By the 1990s and early 2000s, the white working-class male was increasingly portrayed in the media as "left behind" or culturally obsolete. With the decline of blue-collar work and the rise of the service economy, many men found themselves in insecure, low-paid jobs, if employed at all. Their traditional role as provider was undermined by economic restructuring and shifts in gender roles.

Culturally, white working-class men became the subject of satire, criticism, or moral panic – typified in the "lad culture" of the 1990s or the "chav" stereotype of the 2000s. Films like Trainspotting, The Full Monty, and Billy Elliot explored themes of masculinity, unemployment, and social change. At the same time, many working-class communities felt politically abandoned, particularly from 1994 to 2010 by New Labour, which increasingly focused on middle-class voters and liberal cosmopolitan values.

The result was a growing sense of political alienation and cultural invisibility. Traditional institutions like unions, working men's clubs, and local industries no longer provided the collective spaces where identity was formed and reinforced.

Resurgence, Resentment, and Populism (2016 to Present)

In recent years, the white working-class male identity has been invoked in political debates surrounding Brexit, immigration, and nationalism. The 2016 Brexit vote, in which many working-class constituencies voted Leave, was widely interpreted as a revolt by "left behind" communities against metropolitan elites, austerity, and cultural marginalisation.

This group has often been positioned – rightly or wrongly – as hostile to progressive values, especially around race, gender, and sexual identity. Some white working-class men have responded with resentment toward perceived double standards in diversity and inclusion policies, feeling that their grievances are overlooked or vilified.

At the same time, others have sought new expressions of masculinity – whether through involvement in mental health movements, community projects, or adapting to non-traditional work in care or service sectors. Popular media has diversified representations of working-class masculinity, showing greater emotional depth, vulnerability, and complexity – as seen in TV shows like This Is England, Shameless, or Top Boy.

Summary and Conclusions

Today, the white working-class male identity in England exists in tension: caught between nostalgia for lost certainties and the pressures of a rapidly changing world. Economic precarity, educational disadvantage, and declining life expectancy in some regions reflect ongoing structural challenges. Simultaneously, conversations around masculinity are evolving, with increasing scrutiny on mental health, gender roles, and toxic behaviours.

In the 20th century, especially after the Second World War, white working-class men could still find purpose through labour, family, and national service – all structured by inherited ideas of honour, duty, and effort. But with deindustrialisation in the late 20th century, the economic foundations of male identity collapsed. Work no longer provided meaning, discipline gave way to precarity, and traditional forms of authority (the union, the army, the church, the family) declined in influence.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union there has been a growing recognition of internal diversity within the working class. Not all white working-class men share the same values or experiences; identities are shaped by regional, generational, and personal factors. The old model of the strong, silent, industrial breadwinner is giving way to more plural and fluid understandings of what it means to be a working-class man in 21st-century England.

The result has been a crisis of continuity. With no clear economic role and diminishing cultural status, many working-class men have found themselves cut off from historical identities that once grounded them. Yet echoes of those traditions remain: in notions of fair play, in attachment to localism and nationhood, in emotional restraint, in honour cultures, and in the persistent belief that "a man’s worth is proven through work."

For example, the revival of right-wing populist parties across Europe – particularly visible in Brexit politics in England – shows how residual elements of Anglo-Saxon local justice (anti-elite sentiment), chivalric loyalty (national pride), and Protestant morality (emphasis on responsibility and effort) have continued to inform the way many white working-class men understand themselves and their place in the world.

Thus, while these value systems may have adapted to changing economic conditions, they have not disappeared. They continue to shape expectations around work, duty, loyalty, emotional expression, and fairness. Understanding this history is essential not only to explaining the present, but to imagining inclusive and constructive paths forward for those whose identities have been forged in the fires of both tradition and transformation. These values are not just there to guide white working-class males, they are there for all the people who choose to be guided by them.

While the current identity is often portrayed in narrow or reductive terms – as reactive, stagnant, or obsolete - especially by outsiders, a deeper historical view reveals a more complex and layered story. The ideals shaping white working-class masculinity in England draw from long and persistent cultural lineage - and what this lineage has drawn from, it has shown it can learn from, and in many ways go on to replace. 

As England continues to navigate questions of economic inequality, political representation, and demographic conflict, among a spectrum of identities, the evolution of our moral values remains central to understanding the nation's past, present, and future. The pragmatic adaptation of traditional values to current contingencies is at the foundational of a new ideology and a new self-confidence; this should ultimately lead to a plethora of new identities that are constructed for and by the English people.

Let’s us pray that these are less constrained by the traditional hierarchies and surface tensions of race, gender and class than they have been in the past!

F.A. Cup Winners 2025

European Qualifications

Crystal Palace won the FACup for the first time in their history this year. However, the automatic qualification for the UEFA Europa League has been challenged. One of the club's Directors, John Textor, owns the majority of shares in another club in the same competition. Thus, CPFC have fallen foul of a competition rule which states no individual should have a controlling influence in more than one club. 

The irony of the situation is that he has been wanting to sell his shares in the club for over a year, precisely because he did not feel he had enough of an influence in the clubs running. As it stands, his Eagle Holdings company owns 43% of the shares, but this only Converts into a 25% share of the vote. Thus, control of the club is shared with two other US investment capitalists, Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who own another 25% each, and the Club's homegrown Chairman, Steve Parish, who has the final 25% as the 'golden share'.

Business Intelligence

This week a deal has been muted in  the press that might resolve the situation. John Textor has found a buyer in the form of Woody Johnson the owner of New York Jets. While Harris, Blitzer, Parish and Textor have accumulated their wealth through business deals, Johnson's business model is hard to define. Johnson largely inherited his wealth from his great-grandfather's pharmaceutical business, before diversifying into capital investments and republican politics. 

Johnson bought the New York Jets about 10 years ago but relinquished control to his brother Chris when he became the US Ambassador to the UK in 2017. He had been a major donor and fundraiser for Trump, and was rewarded with a senior post overseeing Brexit, for the 'prosperity and security' of US investors in the EU and UK. He is purported to be worth $9.9bn, which in terms of his spending power, puts him on a par with Harris on $10bn, above Blitzer and Textor on about $3.5bn, and well ahead of Parish on £50m.

Philanthropic Values

Woody Johnson is currently reported as having Parish's blessing in his attempt to buy Textor out for about £190m. This is well under the initial £240m that Textor was looking for last year, but still represents a £100m return on 4 years hard work. Textor's final noble acquiescence follows a season of boardroom defeats, sporting victories, and relentless targetting by regulatory authorities. 

With the benefit of hindsight, Textor's business model may now be seen as having broken new ground; attempting to increase the market share of major football clubs in different national leagues, through sharing intelligence and resources for competitive success. Textor himself wanted to leverage any favourable media exposure through monetising his brands, and continually diversifying their commercial outlets. Blitzer and Harris seemed to follow suit.

Textor's multi-club vision promised great things for talent development, and he has had some success at Botafogo in Brazil, RWB Molenbeek in Belgium, and Olympique Lyon in France. But until this year it had born little fruit for Crystal Palace. He has managed to facilitate loans for some Academy players to his other clubs, but only one of those loanees has really gone on to have a successful career. That was the young Republic of Ireland defender, Jake O'Brien.

O'Brien joined Crystal Palace as an Academy player from Cork City. After excelling at U23 level, O'Brien was loaned to RWB Lowenbeek, helping them gain promotion to the Belgian top league. O'Brien was then due a starting position in the Palace first team when he was unexpectedly moved on to Olympique Lyon, for €1m,  the next season. O'Brien helped Lyon get to the Cup final that year, scoring the only goal in an honorable 2-1 defeat, and was sold on to Everton for €19.5m for his troubles. 

That move preceeded Textor going public with his desire to ditch Palace at the start of last season. He announced his plan to takeover Everton as majority share holder prematurely. In the end his bid failed and he found himself in the back row at the Cup Final celebrations. Thus, despite perhaps instilling some belief in the club that they had the ability to succeed if they wanted it enough, very little of what Textor has done at Palace could be said to have had any "decisive influence" on the way the club has been run.

In comparison, Harris and Blitzer were probably always more focussed than Textor on exploiting a public-private partnership model for sport, that idealises the health and wellbeing of its role models for mass consumption, whilst seeking to construct a fan base from the deprived communities of South London, and/or exploiting them as platforms for media and advertising revenues. In this sense they are aligned somewhere between Textor and Johnson, in the tradition of US philanthropic capitalists like Carnegie, Rockerfellar, Ford, Hoover, and Gates. 

The philanthropic capitalists model grew out of the New England puritan movement that saw business success as being a return on spiritual, if not religious, investment in the greater good. These businessmen became quasi-political operators who invested in large scale infrastructure projects, to stimulate a virtuous circle within local economies, growing their own internal revenues, through extending the external market share of the communitues they invested in. 

Sporting Accumen

A business model that sells the virtues of sporting competition through the mass media will obviously rely heavily on brand recognition for the column inches that sporting success can bring. But a balance has to be struck in branding the club as its fans or its players, balancing the running of an aggressive political operation behind the image of a more desireable wholesome family club. Perhaps the most obvious evidence for this is that while Johnson, Blitzer and Harris have invested in multi-million shared-use state-of-the-art stadiums for the New York Jets and Washington Commanders respectively, they have bankrolled charitable foundations representing the more ethical side of American pragmatism, for their respective NFL clubs.

As social entrepreneurs, these American businessmen have all courted triumph and disaster through the high-risk, low-reward structures of their sporting endeavours. Arguably, however, Harris, Blitzer and Textor have had much more success during their volatile relationship at Crystal Palace than Woody Johnson has had in the spotlight as the sole owner of NY Jets. Harris and Blitzer always seem to prefer the relative safety of the boardroom, adopting a strictly hands-off approach to field-of-play matters. This may have helped them focus on growing the business, in contrast to Textor who always seemed to be more interested in catching the headlines than connecting with the fanbase. 

Textor could have been accused of making himself the brand at the expense of the club. The Palace board were able to tolerate each other up to a point. But when Textor realised he would be unable to unseat Parish and take majority ownership, the regal marriage of convenience was basically over. If Textor's industry was about creating news for social capital, whether that be over match-fixing in Brazil, or state monopolies in France, Johnson is looking more like a banker for US heritage money. While Textor is a master of escalating anxieties in the same way that Donald Trump does, Woody Johnson is much more likely to be cleaning up the mess that such Presidential cascades leaves behind. 

Johnson is a trusted pair of hands who could do well to play his cards as a silent partner. He has often tried to provide soundbites in the same key as Trump, but his grasp of the master narrative has failed to strike the right chord with Jets fans. A lack of tactical insight at post-match interviews, and rumoured use of gaming profiles to guide recruitment strategies, has been trolled as naivety about the sport. Whether true or not, such press will quickly lose an owner the trust and confidence of their most important constituents, the people who pay to watch his team win games. After 25 years at the helm of the NY Jets, Johnson's team are now known as 'the most unsuccessful club in NFL history'. Johnson would therefore seem to have his work cut-out, at least for a season or two, the Eagles can expect a few gaffs in his rookie year.

London Connections

Although Johnson has undoubtedly experienced problems in his role as owner of NY Jets, there is plenty that Harris, Blitzer, and Parish could learn from him, if he replaces Textor on the Board at Crystal Palace. The club have faced a number of obstacles over eight long years to finally get planning permission from Croydon Council for a £200m redevelopment of their 100 year old Main Stand. A trans-Atlantic diplomat like Johnson might have some additional bargaining chips to bring to the table. 

As it stands, the costs of the project have already doubled under Parish's leadership. This drag on success, in the context of Croydon Council disclosing huge debts and a dependence on central givernment to subsidise their most basic public service functions, starts to smell of corruption. The delays have not stopped the Council praising the Club, along with several other educational establishments, as being "renowned anchor institutions" in an area that has a growing reputation as "the capital of South London". But wherever power chokes the raw ambition of young talent, serious questions really need to be asked.  

Now that Crystal Palace have the chance of bringing in extra revenue to the area through participation in the UEFA Europa League, surely personal connections with the current US President could only help maximise the opportunities that are now possible. Official reports have confirmed that European Cup Competitions are driving growth in profits and inequalities across all European leagues, so the need for the influence of US-style philanthropic investment has never been greater. Yes, it is true that Johnson is linked through the MetLife Stadium, to the UEFA Club World Cup 2025 and FIFA World Cup in 2026, but he has no other investments in any other soccer club. So the problems posed to UEFA by Textor's multi-club model will cease to apply, should Johnson succeed. 

Johnson was interested in buying West Ham at one point, and bid $2bn for Chelsea in the past. This probably has to be read in the context of other efforts to reduce Russian (ex-Soviet) influence in European sports at the time. Needless to say, Johnson probably has additional revenue to spend on players if he needs to, and his track record as an Ambassador for US interests overseas remains untarnished. Despite the negative press he has received in the US sporting press, the UK press are saying that he visited the Club on several occasions while living in London. He knows that his shares will only buy him a 25% voting share at the club, and a quick sale is part of the deal. The seat may be available to him at a much reduced price, but this is an inevitable reflection of the political capital at his disposal. Thus, he may not be the new Sporting Director, or a sort of False Messiah like so many others before him, but I can see why Parish has given the green light to the move. 

Communication is......?

(This post is intended for a specific audience who already possesses knowledge of the concepts I am referring to. If you do not know what these concepts are, this message is not intended for your consumption.)

INFORMATION

All modern computation is based on calculating the amount of information that can flow through a communication channel. Some information is lost in the system, i.e., through friction with the internal walls of the system. The amount that can be communicated successfully is often referred to as the carrying capacity of the system, while the part that ends up being lost is often called entropy. This computational theory essentially posits that information is the opposite of entropy, and that these two properties are situated at opposite ends of a scale of probabilities. If the interpretation of a message completely matches the intended meaning of a message, then the conditional probability of the message being received = 1, whereas a complete mismatch = 0. Thus, any error rate expressed as a conditional probability between zero and one is attributable to either: a) the random noise of the communication channel; or b) differences between the knowledge structures held by the sender and the receiver, that are being used to encode and decode the information being communicated, respectively. 

However, the binary nature of the units used to calculate the accuracy of any interpretation of a message presents something of a philosophical paradox for people who believe that truth and falsity are something that exists independently of the observer. If you think about it, a conditional probability of one renders the communication of the message completely redundant, because it adds nothing new to what was already known by the receiver before the message was sent by the author. On the other hand, where the conditional probability of the message being received is zero, the intended meaning is completely lost, and the message will be indecipherable, as in the case of total randomness. This effectively means that as our understanding of any communication starts to reach absolute truth or falsity, the communication of the message becomes a completely meaningless waste of energy. Thus, the target for maximising a communication's utility, or usefulness, to human beings as biological entities, must be a partial understanding, that has only a 0.5-0.75 conditional probability of being correct. Thus, anything between a 50:50 or 75:25 split between recognising existing knowledge and inferring new knowledge into a message must be the most desirable state for any of our communication channels to be in.

This position assumes that all forms of communication require the expenditure of energy. This is a branch of science that involves the thermodynamics of conducting materials. It has led to the evolution of 'quantum computers' and materials that can transmit electrical impulses (quanta) at superlow temperatures. This is necessary to eradicate any interference from the noise of the entropic heat bath that normally surrounds us. This science tells us that any form of organised energy is information. And the amount of information being held within a system is referred to as its kinetic energy, which may be different for different systems at different times within the evolution of the communication process. Where a potential gradient exists across the threshold of two different systems, the laws of thermodynamics tell us that the energy will flow from the higher to the lower energy level system. Thus, the ability of living organisms to maintain knoweldge structures that reproduce themselves through verbal communication, presents us with something of a paradox: according to the laws of thermodynamics, everything should end in an entropic soup of total randomness, but as human beings, we appear to be consistently heading in the opposite direction, towards greater and greater forms of organisation and understanding.

In the 1970s and 80s, scientists began to realise that the randomness we perceive may not always be the entropy we try to defend ourselves against. Chaotic dynamics may also appear within a system. Chaos looks like random bits of information, but actually, chaos is a higher order of organisation. Chaotic dynamics only appear when the drivers of the system force more information through the system than the carrying capacity of the communication channels allows. It doesn't break the system; in fact, it can create new capacities that didn't exist previously. Because chaotic dynamics only appear in systems that have amplified/damped feedback within them, we can control them in the same way feedback is controlled through the amplification system of a rock guitar. This means it can be decoded by those who possess the codes for its encryption. Unfortunately, for anyone else, it might just look like randomness and be ignored or excluded from their conscious attention. As a super-organised state that is incredibly hard to decipher, Chaos can be used to encrypt really valuable things like Bitcoin. Given that the evolution of encoding and decoding systems goes hand in hand, it may not be long before Bitcoins start to go missing in the ether, but we probably won't know where, or how, or why for a long time after that. 

LOGIC

Regardless of the mathematics involved, when we want to understand what communication is, the information flow between a sender and receiver becomes the starting point for further understanding. So here is my logic, or philosophy, for understanding communication as a process in nursing theory. To understand this process, it is not necessary to understand the carrying capacity of a communication channel; we can leave that area of mathematics to the computational scientists.

1. According to one interpretation of the wave-particle conundrum of quantum physics, the Observed Reduction (OR) of otherwise irreconcilable superpositions can occur at a cellular level. Conception might therefore be the point at which the possibilities of quantum mechanics become the embodied actualities of classical physics, and consciousness (within a simultaneity plane) becomes possible

2. Communication cannot occur without consciousness, and consciousness cannot occur without communication. Thus, the two phenomena are identical processes: the limit of our consciousness is the limit of our ability to communicate.

3. Where communication between two or more points occurs, a mutual consciousness can be inferred between two or more identities, where an identity is defined as being a position, occupying a specific time and place in space-time.

4. Identity Work is defined as a geometrical translation of one position through another position and back onto itself. This process is carried out by healthcare professionals in the form of autological research that is commonly referred to as "Reflective Practice"

5. Identity Work begins at the Mirror Stage of development and becomes a hardwired process after puberty, which enables an observer to perceive themselves through the reactions of others to their communications

6. Communication involves energy being transmitted as information in a message between an author and an audience in a process that crosses a potential gradient, at rates that depend on the medium but always less than instantaneously, causing a cusp catastrophic change of state, that is equivalent to a lightning strike, or the behavioural impulse of a living organism

7. All transmissions of energy as information occur within the same simultaneity plane (where information is defined as negative entropy, i.e., non-randomness)

8. Some of the fastest impulses in the animal kingdom are the behavioural reflexes. These occur during the activation of the autonomic nervous system and can spread in a communication flow through Emotional Contagion. This is how a flock of birds and a shoal of fish can move in unison.

9. Behavioural reflexes occur within the context of emotions that may be differentiated via a basic palette of six facial and body signals that Darwin originally identified as happiness, sadness, disgust, joy, anger, and fear.

10. Beliefs (expressed as a subjective probability) prioritise one emotional reaction to a set of circumstances over all other possible emotional reactions

12. Empathy allows the intransigence of a belief system to be challenged by considering other possible emotional reactions to the same set of circumstances

13. Empathy involves the meaning of a message being interpreted according to the relative positions of the other identities involved in the communication of a message, i.e. the author(s) and their audience(s) 

14. Because of empathy, simple collective cultural interpretations prioritising one emotional reaction to a set of circumstances over others will always eventually conflict with the majority of complex individual autobiographical ones

15. Empathic social systems will always evolve towards more complex emotional states, from simple ones 

16. As evolution moves beyond the basic palette of the six elementary emotions, its belief systems must become less universal, more species-specific, and more idiosyncratic to the complexities of the individual emotional experiences involved

17. The brain evolved to bridge the simultaneity plane through the development of memory capacities

18. Memory capacities have learnt how to store sensory information long enough for it to be integrated into meaningful conceptual categories and rule-based routines called "algorithms"

19. Language probably originated as a means of communicating between members of the same species as they move relative to one another, through space and time

20. Language will probably always lag behind the development of more complex emotions, and facilitate their construction into more stable belief systems

EMPATHY

All of the above are involved in the evolution of our capacity for empathy. Empathy involves the non-verbal communication of emotions. It is fundamental to the delivery of all healthcare processes because not all patients are able to communicate the source of their suffering at initial inspection, so clinicians rely upon the non-verbal communications of the patient to infer the meaning of their symptoms correctly. Individual clinicians may possess more or less of the trait of empathy at the start of their training. This may change over time. 

More risk-averse, stress-intolerant organisations tend to hamper the communication of emotions by constantly relying on the suppression of negative information to manage the power differentials within their hierarchies. This may be effective in the short term, but it is a counterproductive strategy for the longer-term management of stress and emotions. It causes a dissociation between our emotional experiences and the narratives the organisations give us to explain and explore them. This generally leads to systemic malfunction and eventual collapse of individual clinicians, ward teams, and the care pathways they operate within.

The ability to record our thoughts and convert our feelings into words has helped us externalise our memory processes and regulate our emotions. Narratives that are passed down through generations become an important part of our cultural myths and symbols. They form an integral part of our identities, and the promisery notes we trade as the symbolic representations of trust and truth. The inability to identify and restructure our emotions through the use of our language is called Alexithymia. This deficit is higher in our more neurodiverse communities, where it could be argued, emotional dysregulation has been selected for, as a means of survival.

LANGUAGE

Language conforms to the laws of thermodynamics in a statistical way. In English, the more common words we use - pronouns, logical operators, articles - use a smaller number of digits because they have a much higher frequency than the less common words - nouns, verbs, etc. Thus, in German, it is common for a noun to be represented by the combination of nouns from a lower level of conceptual specialisation; the more complex concepts therefore, have a longer representation in terms of the number of digits. In English, the dividing line between structural and content words is about 5 digits. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 5 plus or minus 2 is also supposed to be the size of the short-term memory's capacity for remembering a series of objects. Research suggests that when people verbalise their thoughts and feelings, the combination of high and low frequency structural and content words they use tends to balance out to a relatively constant homeostatic average. This represents the 50:50, or 75:25, balance referred to earlier, where the maximum amount of new knowledge that can be imparted through a communication channel ultimately depends on the carrying capacity of the system. 

In this context, the formal thought disorder (FTD) of schizophrenia would appear to be an expression of the same pressure of speech that is seen in bipolar disorder, only at a higher or lower level of organisation than normal speech would allow. During a manic phase of information processing, more information is being forced through the language system than it can manage. The capacity can be reduced by many different factors, all of which could eventually cause a chaotic form of language to emerge, that is referred to as FTD. FTD references the lack of a coherent structure, or grammar, that can knit together loose and overlapping conceptual categories that have fluid/permeable boundaries. This system is driven by a need for survival, and/or a deficit in the capacity to communicate needs/risks. The processing demands on the brain create a dissociation between the mind and the body. At this point, there may be a loss of empathy within and between identities. This is what we refer to as 'madness': It represents a breakdown in the normal structures and processes that we rely on for the performance of the identities that have been constructed by and for us, through participation in the organisations that we exist within. 

As proof of concept, it is possible to consider pronouns as linguistic tools that are used to position identities, relative to each other, within their respective geo-political and socio-temporal hierarchies. Pronouns, singular and plural, appear in English so frequently that the number of letters is restricted to between 1 and 3, and occasionally up to 5 characters long. If the pronouns identify the subject of the sentence, adverbs and adjectives are added next to link the subject with an object. They have an average length of 5 characters with a fairly modest range around that of between 3 and 7 characters. Most of these words code the identity, the subject, as having, being, or doing something to something or someone else. The object of the sentence is then realised in a noun or verb phrase, that contain an average of about 5 to 7 characters, but with a long, long tail, up to about 10 characters. Anthroplogical research suggests the average length of these words has increased over time, with the evolution of more and more complex ideologies. These words are essentially symbolic labels for learned concepts, that exist as memories in the minds of their users. They are used to provide the meaningful content of a sentence, rather than the shorter words that provide the majority of the structure. 

This organisation, of nodal content within a structure of relational arcs, together facilitate the transfer of information as networks of interconnected knowledge. Add to these basic subject-object sentences, a grammar that embeds the author of the message, the actors, and their audience, within a past, present and future, with a history of possessions, and obligations, relative to each other, and suddenly the social logic of the linguistic framework is complete. Violations of this logic, violate the spatial, temporal, and social relationships upon which the audience base their collective understanding, and cultural perspectives. Thus, any transgression of the logic incurs a loss in believability, a loss of faith in the authenticity of the author, and the value of their constructions. Whereas, the author who adheres to this logical framework, continues to make sense, and they command an authority and truth that accumulates value, because it can be trusted in, implicitly by their audience.

MENTAL HEALTH

Obviously, the absence of resources that we need to maintain our mental health is much harder to identify and quantify than the presence of the physical resources we need to maintain our physical health. But this is the job that mental health nurses have to do, and a lot more of us will be required to do a lot more of in the future. As we progress to ever greater levels of human understanding and civilisation, hopefully we will start to understand more about the origin of any 'errors' within our communication systems, and those we currently stigmatise and label, with harmful words and narratives, in a misguided attempt to lock them out of the perfection that we endlessly crave for ourselves.

Accumulating Human Capital: Things Being 'In Their Place'

Between the triggering of our Neuroticism by a stimulus, 

And our Conscientiousness and Agreeableness suppressing a response, 

A certain amount of Identity Work must take place, 

That involves the ‘Internalisation of the Aggressor’, 

Where this does not take place, you are likely to find, an increase in Psychoticism, 

Although this can be expressed/suppressed differently in different populations, 

Depending on the cultural boundaries that have evolved, 

Keeping the social matrix of all other identities, occupying their positions, 

And the ‘relationships of production’ that exist between them, 

In their place. 

  

Whereas cognitive behaviour therapy normally only relies on an analysis 

of self/other, good/bad, whole/part, general/specific, object relations, 

The addition of an internal/external impulse into this matrix, 

Creates the context for opposing interpretations of a/the master/slave complex, 

Precisely because when/where a/the ‘internalisation of the aggressor’ takes place, 

Preserves a/the adult/child relationship, within broader/deeper social dominance hierarchies, 

Unconsciously triggering and suppressing each others' trauma memories, 

In a double-bind construction of artificial/social imaginary-realities, 

Pending the accumulation of more and more socially desirable personality traits, 

In their place.

REFERENCES:

Jarvis, G. Eric. (2025). Cultural variations in psychosis: Recent research and clinical implications. Transcultural psychiatry. 13634615251324088. 10.1177/13634615251324088. This article introduces a thematic issue of Transcultural Psychiatry dedicated to understanding the role of culture in the expression and treatment of psychotic symptoms. While many clinicians and researchers view psychotic disorders as brain diseases firmly rooted in neurological processes and requiring medical treatments to resolve, the papers in this issue propose something different: that psychotic symptoms are refracted through the lens of culture with the result being socially and culturally constructed disorders that have as much to do with the attitudes and knowledge systems of the observer as the lived experience of patients. Hence, expression of psychotic symptoms and disorders represent the result of a negotiated space between individual distress and the values and norms of the wider society. This thematic issue touches on several important points: critical perspectives of high rates of psychosis in migrants, the lack of culturally adapted research and clinical tools in psychosis work, new methods to engage people with psychosis from diverse backgrounds, and cultural issues related to the etiology of psychosis, interpretation of symptoms, and help–seeking. There remain many important topics at the intersection of culture and psychosis not covered by this thematic issue, including stigma and psychosis, delusion formation in cultural context, the history of psychosis concepts, and insight in psychosis. Yet, despite these omissions, the articles in this issue, as a whole, foster recognition of the limits of standard approaches to psychosis and advocate for culturally adapted assessments and interventions, which if implemented from a position of cultural humility, carry the long–term potential of revolutionizing the field.

Xavier, Salome & Iyer, Srividya. (2025). Reflections on the explanations of higher psychosis rates among migrant and ethnic minority populations: A critical discourse analysis. Transcultural Psychiatry. 10.1177/13634615251326020. A growing number of studies suggest that migrant and ethnic minority populations are at higher risk for being diagnosed with psychosis. However, the reasons why have been disputed. This study aims to explore different interpretations of the observed higher rates of psychosis diagnosis among immigrants and ethnic minorities in some parts of the world. We sought to examine these interpretations through a critical lens, acknowledging the social underpinnings of discourses and their power to shape real-world practices. Peer-reviewed editorials, commentaries and letters regarding the topics of interest were retrieved from database searches and subjected to a pattern-based critical discourse analysis. Across a 30-year span of literature, conceptualizations and explanations of higher psychosis rates amongst migrant and minoritized populations evolved in relation to the larger social context, at times opposing one another. Three discursive themes were identified, reflecting intersecting explanations: institutional racism in psychiatry; psychiatry as a scientific discipline that sees and treats all patients equally; and the social locus of high rates. Tensions surrounding psychiatry as a field, including issues of evidence, biological reductionism, and the conceptualization of psychiatric nosological categories have played out within the evolution of this discourse. Exploring how discursive constructions in relation to psychosis and minoritization have been shaped by historical and social factors, we consider the role of local and global dynamics of social power in favouring one explanatory model over another and how these may have affected efforts to prevent and better treat psychosis amongst immigrant and minoritized groups.

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