In recent years, the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) — developed by Lucy Johnstone and Mary Boyle for the British Psychological Society — has opened up a new conversation about how we understand emotional distress.
Rather than viewing distress as an illness within individuals, the PTMF invites us to see it as an understandable response to experiences of power, threat, and meaning.
Many people and initiatives feel connected to this way of thinking. It opens up possibilities for developing new ways of understanding and relating — moving beyond diagnosis toward meaning, context, and connection.
This is why we are beginning a shared reading journey through the PTMF — to learn, reflect, and imagine how these ideas might come alive in creative, community-based, and peer-led spaces.
Below you’ll find an eight-part reading plan. Each session focuses on one part of the book and includes guiding questions to support reflection and conversation.
Whether you read with others, with friends, or on your own, we invite you to approach this journey not as study, but as exploration — a way of discovering new forms of connection, expression, and understanding.
RECASAS Exploratory Reading Plan
Based on The Power Threat Meaning Framework (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018)
Overall goal:
To explore how the PTMF can inform creative, peer-led, and nonclinical approaches to emotional distress.
Session 1 – Introduction & Overview
Reading: Document Summary + Introduction (pp. 5–18)
Focus: Why the PTMF was created, the paradigm shift away from diagnosis.
Reflection:
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What resonates most with your experience?
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How does this framework challenge traditional ideas of illness and recovery?
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What would it feel like to enter a space shaped by these ideas?
Session 2 – Problems of Psychiatric Diagnosis
Reading: Chapter 1 (pp. 19–36)
Focus: The limits of diagnosis and the role of language and power.
Reflection:
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How have labels shaped people’s stories — including your own?
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What might a post-diagnostic language sound like?
Session 3 – Philosophical and Conceptual Principles
Reading: Chapter 2 (pp. 37–74)
Focus: Beyond the DSM mindset; reclaiming meaning, agency, and relationship.
Reflection:
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What does “agency” mean in healing?
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How can community spaces embody a different view of being human?
Session 4 – Meaning and Narrative
Reading: Chapter 3 (pp. 75–91)
Focus: Culture, shame, and the stories we tell.
Reflection:
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Whose stories are heard, and whose are silenced?
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How can storytelling and art restore meaning?
Session 5 – The Social Context
Reading: Chapter 4 (pp. 92–151)
Focus: The role of adversity, inequality, and ideology.
Reflection:
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How do power and threat operate in your world?
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Why does society need new forms of community and support?
Session 6 – The Role of Biology
Reading: Chapter 5 (pp. 152–181)
Focus: Biology as mediator, not cause.
Reflection:
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How can we honor the body without reducing distress to disease?
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What does embodied healing mean to you?
Session 7 – Describing Patterns within the PTMF
Reading: Chapter 6 (pp. 182–254)
Focus: Power → Threat → Meaning → Threat Response.
Reflection:
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Which of the four PTMF questions speaks to you most deeply?
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How can these ideas be integrated into creative or community spaces?
Session 8 – Ways Forward
Reading: Chapter 8 (pp. 262–317)
Focus: From theory to action — peer work, policy, and community.
Reflection:
- What could “ways forward” look like for us – individually and collectively – as we move forward?
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How might you personally help bring these ideas to life?
After the Reading Journey
At the end of this journey, we invite participants to create something inspired by the PTMF questions — a short text, poem, drawing, or photo. These creative responses can become part of a shared exploration of how we begin to rethink emotional distress, connection, and meaning.
If you would like to read the original publication, it’s freely available here: https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/division-clinical-psychology/power-threat-meaning-framework
