Healers, change agents and spiritual luminaries have by their very nature been rouges and non-conformists. From the tribal origins of the indigenous shaman who was often feared and isolated fromand by the community, the crazy wisdom of the taoist wanderer or zen buddist monk and the more recent example of the theraputic genius of Milton Erikson M.D., an individual that refused to be drawn into the dominante discourses around pathology and illness in psychiatry throughout the 20th century.

Those truley gifted in healing and the facilitation of transformation and change, both on an individual or broader cultural level have often had to sit outside of the status quo. They have had to engage the madness of the 'fool' of the Tarot, because to sit in conformity with the expected, the 'normal' the safely measured boundaries of the acceptable, is to be contained within the walls and context in which the problem or disturbance commonly evolved in the first place. Change fundamentally requires movement into a new paradigm, a different logical level and a facilitator of change needs to be able to move between perspectives and the ridged boundaries of conformity, to open up new avenues of possibility for the person, relationship or community to which they are charged to serve.

Problems and disturbances only exist because of a splitting of awareness, a sectioning off. A seperation of what is acceptable and ok and what is not, in ourselves, in others and in our communities. The healer, the change agent, blurs those fixed boundaries and facilitates an intergration of opposites, this is how change, transformation and evolution can take place.

Todays mental health crisis and the system developed in its response is a representation of this fracturing of consciousness. The ongoing pathologising, medicalisation of psychological states; while acknowledging how painful and difficult they actually are; only serves to repress and isolate symptoms of a desire for transformation, the message that a culture in pain is trying to send. To medicate that which we do not accept, that which does not serve the cultural values of consumption and individualism is to repress the opportunity for transformation on a much larger and more profound scale, and is to maintain the status quo.

Hence I call those who heal and facilitate change, those who desire change and transformation in the people they work with and within the communities they serve, to challenge and step outside of the status quo, to free themeslves from the fear of non-conformity and recognise the need for crazy change agents, the need for crazy wisdom, the need to embrace that which sits beyond the purely rational, standardised pseudo-science of much psychology and therapy. As stated by Family Therapist Bradford Keeny in an interview with Dr Paul Gibney:

'Fear is what promotes the mass production and replication of in-the-box performance.

Therapists are stuck in the same dilemma as their clients—both need the courage

to step forward into the unknown, where creativity and life reside'.............

Psychotherapy in Australia, Vol. 18, No. 3, May 2012: 62-71