ABSTRACT
The programme of work described in the previous chapters really began as a modest contribution towards bringing the concerns and realities of the lives of a group of otherwise rather neglected and voiceless people back to the centre of practice and planning. While, ultimately, it may have come to embrace science and policy, it began as an attempt to serve, more effectively, mentally ill people receiving psychiatric services. Thus, our starting point for this enterprise was clinical practice: the hurly-burly of everyday work, in that far from perfect setting which we all know as the clinic. We are reminded continually of these imperfections by football commentators who have now colonised (grotesquely) the term ‘clinical’ to describe perfect, clean flawless play: ‘The goal was clinical, Jimmy!’ Could they really mean a horrible combination of basic skills, politicised negotiation, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-trousers guess-work and dumb luck?
