George Atwood - Shattered Worlds, the Experience of Personal Annihilation

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Mad in America

Mental Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 212 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2017

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on MIA Radio, we interview Dr. George Atwood. Dr. Atwood has devoted a substantial part of his life to the study and treatment of what he refers to as 'so-called psychosis'. He has authored or coauthored several books, including The Abyss of madness published in 2011 and more than one hundred articles.

In the episode we discuss:

The story of how Dr. Atwood came to be interested in "so-called psychosis," including what piqued his interest as a high school student, and his work under mentors Austin DesLauriers and Silvan Tomkins.
An overview of his more recent work on intersubjective theory with collaborator and friend, Robert Stolorow.
After studying what he refers to as "madness" for over 50 years, Dr. Atwood offers his perspective that madness is not a disease or illness existing within a person, but a subjective experience of self-dissolution or catastrophe.
How diagnostic classification systems can result in the false reification of mental diseases in a way that obscures individual realities.
The phenomenological approach, or the study of individual human subjective experiences, as offering a hopeful future in a shifting away from "illness" or "disorder" frameworks.
How psychotherapy, as a healing process, includes the relational context between clinician and patient, meriting a dedication to personal histories and contexts rather than overt symptoms.
The history of the term "schizophrenia," and how terms such as these are embedded in a Cartesian medical model.
A few of Dr. Atwood's clinical cases and particularly his perspectives on "so-called psychosis" and "so-called bipolar disorder."

Dr. George Atwood's Personal Website with Works and Lectures

To get in touch with us email: podcasts@madinamerica.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice.
0:13.7	Hello, this is James, and welcome to episode 24 of the Madden America podcast.
0:19.1	This week, Madden America's associate news editor, Zinobia Moral,
0:23.2	interviews respected academic and author Dr. George Atwood.
0:27.6	Hello and welcome. I'm Zinobia Moral and news editor at Madden America News.
0:32.0	For those of you who haven't seen that part of our website before,
0:34.5	we provide daily coverage of the latest mental health research
0:37.7	that challenges the biomedical paradigm in psychology and psychiatry.
0:41.9	Today, I am thrilled to have with me, Dr. George Atwood.
0:45.6	Dr. Atwood has devoted a very substantial part of his life, working to study and treat
0:50.0	what he refers to as so-called psychosis over the past 50 years.
0:55.5	He has authored, or co-authored, particularly with Dr. Robert Stolaro, several books and more than 100 articles,
1:02.1	including his book, The Abyss of Madness, and a well-known article from 2002, Shattered World's
1:07.8	Psychotic States, The Experience of Personal Annihilation.
1:11.7	He has previously offered a critique of traditional diagnostic systems in psychiatry
1:15.4	in his piece, Men on Hooks, featured on our Mad in America website.
1:19.3	Additionally, he taught as a professor at Rutgers University, where many of his lectures are posted
1:24.1	on his website, www.jorgeatwood.com, which will be linked within this podcast. Finally,
1:31.8	he is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society, from the
1:36.4	psychological and social approaches to psychosis. Welcome, Dr. Atwood. Thank you, Zinobia. It's a
1:43.1	pleasure to be here. Yes, It's a pleasure to be here.
1:44.3	Yes, it's a pleasure to have you.
	...

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