[This post is--again--inspired by a breathtaking mixed media project of Timothy Kelly's that he will hopefully one day post; and in honor of mother's day. Best viewed on a full screen.] …………….. Every time I tried to talk to my grandfather about my mother before he died, the story was the same: “it was the … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Language
Phenomenological Method (with gravitas)
I’m slowly—admittedly with some trepidation!—beginning to prepare for an INPP talk I’ll be giving at Durham University in July. The task I’ve set myself is to critically unpack the implications of the slippage (this, I feel, is the generous way of putting it) between first and third-person perspective in contemporary phenomenological psychopathology. With this goal … Continue reading »
"Mad Studies" / Language / Phenomenology / Politics / Psychosis / Theory
Voices and ‘psychosis’: dissociation at what cost?
I’ve long been troubled by attempts to dissociate “voices” from other aspects of psychosis, but this concern struck me with particular poignancy a few days ago when I was introducing Chicago Hearing Voices to a group of very marginalized service users (most transitioning off the streets) at a peer-run drop-in center in Uptown. “I don’t … Continue reading »
Language / Politics / Schizophrenia / Theory
Schizophrenia, “Success” and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (SWMNBN)
I have finally reached the point where I can no longer refrain from writing a critical cultural commentary on a certain someone, a certain ‘celebrity consumer academic,’ who I’m confident I do not need to name because of the truly singular position she has come to occupy in public and academic discourse. Following the advice … Continue reading »
"Mad Studies" / First-person account / Language / Politics / Research methodology / Schizophrenia / Theory
On “first person accounts”
As I’ve almost certainly mentioned before, I have extremely ambivalent feelings about “first person accounts”–accounts which, all too often, “reduce [their author] from a whole and usual [thinker/citizen] to a tainted, discounted one.” (Yes, I’m intentionally riffing on Goffman.) The conviction that recovery stories are empowering, to some extent understandably, endures, and yet from the … Continue reading »
"Mad Studies" / Language / Politics / Psychosis / Theory
Mad Pride: Reflections on Sociopolitical Identity & Mental Diversity
I’m pleased to link to a new co-authored commentary (just published) written with my colleagues Mona Shattell and first author Summer Schrader! None of us were completely satisfied with the final draft, but the issue of ‘mad’ identity is extremely fraught and its complexities impossible to adequately cover in such a short space. This is nevertheless … Continue reading »
Madness & writing
Recent exchanges at the Centre for Medical Humanities blog have prompted me to think more vigorously about why I virtually never actually write—particularly in any remotely academic context—from a “place” of madness. (“Madness” employed here in the admittedly narrow sense of that which involves or implicates a fundamental break from the normative or socio-consensual “real.”) … Continue reading »
De Haan and Fuchs on “hyperautomatism”: a brief critical commentary
Yesterday (or the day before), as I already noted, I read De Haan and Fuchs’ essay “The Ghost in the Machine: Disembodiment in Schizophrenia –Two Case Studies.” The main reason I’m writing this very quick critical commentary is because of the superficial kinship between what D and F term “hyperautomaticity” and the idea of mnemonic … Continue reading »
