The Political Language of the Helping Professions Murray Edelman

resort to irritating or allegedly illegal methods. We commonly regard the last as a political act and the first two as therapeutic; but all of them are easily perceived as either political or therapeutic. How they are classified depends upon the assumptions of the observer, not upon the behavior he is judging. Some psychologists reject the &dquo;reinforcement of deviant behavior&dquo; rationale on the ground that it pays no attention to all the special cognitive and symbolizing abilities of the human mind, equating people with rats; they believe such treatment too easily ignores reasonable grounds for anger and depresses the self esteem of people who already suffer from too little of it, contributing to further &dquo;deviance,&dquo; not to health. In this view the &dquo;treatment&dquo; is self-serving political repression, rationalized