Gordon Warme - The Relationship Between Culture and Psychiatric 'Disorders'

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Mad in America

Mental Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 212 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2017

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we interview Dr Gordon Warme. Dr Warme is a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry. He trained with Karl Menninger at the Menninger Clinic in the US and at Heidelberg University in Germany, and has been a faculty member at the Menninger Clinic, the University of Kansas, and has been an academic at the University of Toronto for 40 years.

His most recent book, published in 2016 is Brain Evangelists: How Psychiatry Has Convinced Us to Believe in Its Far-Fetched Science and Dubious Treatments in which he blows the whistle on modern psychiatry, arguing that, in the long history of medicine, biological and chemical "abnormalities" in psychiatric patients have never been identified, and labels such as schizophrenia and depression are misleading metaphors that dehumanize patients.

In the episode we discuss:

How Dr Warme came to specialise in psychiatry.
His experience of being trained by doctors who had a strong psychoanalytic approach.
That Sigmund Freud wanted psychiatry to be scientific, but Dr Warme feels that this led Freud astray.
The relationship between culture and psychiatric 'disorders'.
Watching, describing and talking as important therapeutic skills to develop.
Dr Warme's view of how drugs are used in psychiatry and that he hasn't prescribed for many years.
The Rosenhan Experiment.
Where psychiatry is heading as a profession.

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.
0:13.0	Hello, this is James, and welcome to the Madden America podcast. This week, my guest is Dr. Gordon
0:19.4	Warm. Dr. Warm is a medical doctor specialising in psychiatry.
0:24.0	He trained with Carl Menninger at the Manager Clinic in the US and at Heidelberg University in Germany,
0:30.0	and has been an academic at the University of Toronto for 40 years. Dr. Warm has written five books,
0:36.1	reluctant treasures in 1994, the psychotherapist in 1996,
0:41.1	the cure of folly in 2003, and daggers of the mind, psychiatry and the myth of mental disease
0:46.9	in 2006. His most recent book published in 2016 is Brain Evangelists, How Psychiatry has
0:53.6	convinced us to believe in its far-fetched science and
0:56.2	dubious treatments, in which he blows the whistle on modern psychiatry, arguing that in the long
1:01.5	history of medicine, biological and chemical abnormalities in psychiatric patients have never been
1:06.7	identified, and labels such as schizophrenia and depression are misleading metaphors that dehumanize
1:12.4	patients. Welcome, Dr. Warm. Thank you so much for talking with me for the podcast. Firstly,
1:18.3	for the listeners, I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit about your background and what led
1:22.3	you into psychiatry. Well, I think I have a very ordinary background. It's very common in Canada for people to be immigrants or the children of immigrants. My parents were immigrants. And I grew up in Toronto, in Canada, and had a standard education. I think I was perhaps a little, I think inside myself I was a little bit odd, but I don't think on the outside I looked odd. I had a happy childhood. I played. I had fun. But I was always interested in literature a little more than boys were supposed to be boys were supposed to be rough and tumble
2:02.1	and i did rough and tumble but secretly i was much more interested in things like literature
2:08.2	and philosophy and uh and i went to medical school because of that although i'm sure my
2:16.3	mother thinks i went to medical school because she told me to.
2:20.3	I like being a doctor, a general doctor. In fact, I spent some time in England. I spent a year in
2:26.6	England in London where I did surgery and internal medicine, but I always intend to come back
2:32.6	to Canada and to become a psychiatrist.
2:35.2	The literature, and I still read philosophy.
	...

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