248 Timothy J. Beck and Jacob W. Glazier
otherwise encapsulated notions of self and identity that psychology has
historically positioned as its target of intervention.
As cases in point, groups like the Hearing Voices Network (2019) and
Open Dialogue (Seikkula & Olson, 2003) represent alternative forms of
support, awareness, and resources for individuals who experience what
psychiatrists might call ‘auditory hallucinations.’ This provides options for
support outside of traditional mental health contexts for those who have
been diagnosed with disorders like schizophrenia or acute psychosis. Other
social movements, like neurodiversity (McWade et al., 2015) and the
psychiatric survivors (Crossley & Crossley, 2001), have formed around
similar values of creating alternatives to corporatized biomedical models of
mental health. They make significant use of online forums, blogs, and
other virtual mediums to share information and subtend their collectives.
Here, the emphasis is on networked care, education, and self-advocacy
rather than clinical intervention.
The forms of subjectivity constructed through such self-advocacy
networks can be very different than the one offered by Western psy-
disciplines, despite the ways such groups make use of the latter’s concepts
and diagnostic constructs for unique social purposes. Members of the
neurodiversity movement, for instance, might refer to themselves as
Autistic, as a form of identity-first language, rather than using the term
‘person with autism’ (Sinclair, 2013). In other words, through the
decentralization of clinical concepts and practices, the rigid labels and
categories that were once solely under the purview of the psychiatric
expert have become more flexible and less stigmatized even if they still
foster certain group formations and communities to come together. This
creates possibilities for thinking through identities in terms of how they
intersect in ways that challenge conventional assumptions in psychological
science (Goff & Kahn, 2013), which has particular implications for
decolonial theory and practice (Kurtis & Adams, 2016). Here,
intersectionality refers to the way the social perceptions of and
expectations for various identities attached to an individual affect one
another in highly complex ways. And yet, drawing on concerns raised by
McGuire (2017) and Karter & Kamens (2019), possibilities for neoliberal