Therapy in the Age of Abandonment: A Conversation with Psychological Anthropologist Talia Weiner

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Mad in America

Mental Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 212 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Talia Weiner is a psychological anthropologist, licensed professional counselor, and assistant professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia.

As a medical and psychological anthropologist, her work focuses on the intersection of social-structural forces and how those forces show up in lived experience, particularly in relation to mental health care. Weiner studies these and other topics with students in the Clinical Ethnography Lab within the University of West Georgia's psychology program.

Weiner has an upcoming book titled Therapeutic Inequalities: Mood Disorder Self-Management in Chicago, scheduled for release Jan. 6, 2026, through NYU Press's Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Practice series.

In this interview, Weiner discusses how conservative sociopolitical trends influence psychology and mental health care—how, for example, people with bipolar disorder are expected to monitor and manage themselves in ways that are not only unrealistic but also blur the lines between self and disease.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.
0:14.2	Hello, everyone, and welcome to Madden America. Our guest today is Talia Weiner.
0:20.1	Talia is a critical psychologist, a psychological and
0:23.9	medical anthropologist, and a licensed professional counselor. She currently works as a professor
0:30.2	in psychology at my alma mater, the University of West Georgia. In addition to teaching classes
0:36.8	at West Georgia and running the clinical
0:39.0	ethnography lab, Talia is engaged in ongoing research into both the structural and sociopolitical,
0:47.9	as well as the lived experience dimensions of mental health. Talia has an upcoming book to be published through NYU Press's
0:58.9	Anthropologies of American Medicine, Culture, Power, and Practice series. The title of that book is
1:07.1	Therapeutic Inequality's Mood Disorder self-management in Chicago.
1:12.6	I asked Talia if she would speak with me today about this book and her work in general.
1:19.7	So thank you for speaking with me today, Talia.
1:22.5	Thank you.
1:23.6	To start off, tell us a little bit about your trajectory in psychology. You know, the psychology
1:30.2	slash anthropology slash human development program at the University of Chicago looks really unique.
1:37.4	So what is your, what has your sort of journey been like? And then what are your kind of central
1:42.1	concerns in your work? Thank you so much, Micah.
1:45.5	I really admire Mad in America, and it's great to get to have this conversation with you as
1:50.6	alumnus of West Georgia psychology.
1:53.8	Okay, so the journey before, during, and after my PhD, I'm going to start by going back
1:59.1	a couple of decades here to my undergraduate.
2:03.1	I went to Swarthmore College, which was a small liberal arts college. I double majored in
	...

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