Vincenzo Di Nicola
I am a Full Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at The George Washington University
President, World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP)
Founder & President, Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry (CASP)
Briefly, I am a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a philosopher.
I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist investigating children's psychic trauma (see "Trauma and Event" research interest), a family therapist (see "Relational psychology" research interest) working with immigrant and refugee families using my model of cultural family therapy (see "Cultural Family Therapy," "Therapeutic Translation," "Cultural Translation" research interests), and a critical thinker trained in philosophy to investigate psychiatry, therapy and society (see "Trauma and Event," "Evental Psychiatry" research interests).
A parallel world of activities is in my literary pursuits in literary fiction and non-fiction and poetry (see "Fernando Pessoa," "Vincenzo Di Nicola" research interests).
Specialties: Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Family Therapy, Relational Psychology & Therapy, Social and Cultural Psychiatry, Trauma studies, Philosophy (see "Alain Badiou," "Giorgio Agamben," "Slavoj Zizek," "Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek," and "Michel Foucault" research interests).
President, World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP)
Founder & President, Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry (CASP)
Briefly, I am a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a philosopher.
I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist investigating children's psychic trauma (see "Trauma and Event" research interest), a family therapist (see "Relational psychology" research interest) working with immigrant and refugee families using my model of cultural family therapy (see "Cultural Family Therapy," "Therapeutic Translation," "Cultural Translation" research interests), and a critical thinker trained in philosophy to investigate psychiatry, therapy and society (see "Trauma and Event," "Evental Psychiatry" research interests).
A parallel world of activities is in my literary pursuits in literary fiction and non-fiction and poetry (see "Fernando Pessoa," "Vincenzo Di Nicola" research interests).
Specialties: Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Family Therapy, Relational Psychology & Therapy, Social and Cultural Psychiatry, Trauma studies, Philosophy (see "Alain Badiou," "Giorgio Agamben," "Slavoj Zizek," "Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek," and "Michel Foucault" research interests).
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Books by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Contributors: Vincenzo Di Nicola (Poetry), Arsinée Donoyan (Photography), Stanzi Vaubel (Afterword)
Description
Two Kinds of People begins at a crossroads. Faced with two possible paths, what kind of person are you? Choose your direction, left or right, because there are only two kinds of people. At the crossroads, you stand looking around, and as you do, the road begins to abstract itself, the clarity of this duality fading as the two paths fill with different shading, color, the layers becoming visible to you. Yet, you haven’t even taken a step, still frozen, between your two choices. Slowly, the stiffness turns into poise, as your awareness opens outwards, allowing you to take in the poetry of the moment. These words guide you:
… here’s to chaos,
here’s to spontaneity and spunk
mixing gaily
And to more stolen apples,
taken freely –
Yes. Please. To more of this!
This book of poetry invites you into the subtle porosity of the present, found in small moments: on street corners, between strangers, friends, and in the many ingredients you might add to your borscht soup. The poetry reminds, gently, that there is
; only this world / … ; only today / … ; only we two, face to face
and as you return to the present and recall that you must make a choice between one thing and the other, it is only to realize that you are now in a vast field, without any clear paths in sight. So you must chart your own way forward now, encountering the textures, tastes, smells, and sounds with every step."
~ from the "Afterword" by Stanzi Vaubel, PhD
Back cover blurb
A formidable journey beyond an old Montreal train station. Beginning with a dichotomous quote, Di Nicola embarks on a stroll akin to his philosophical predecessors — Kant in Konigsberg; the Nietzsche of The Wanderer and His Shadow; Heidegger in the Black Forest; and Camus writing The Stranger in Montmartre. As we walk with Di Nicola, we meet René, Ludwig, and Franz and enter his architectural and poetic space through his philosophical pondering, to find bliss in the eyes of a baby girl.
~ Andrei Novac
Playfully, the philosopher-poet engages Montreal’s Mile End in a serious dialogue. We are guided through dialectically opposed notions, past gentling nuances as the quartier provides a context for ever-deepening layers of meaning which arise from the poet’s fascination with all that charges his imagination. As ever, I am intrigued and delighted by Di Nicola’s catholic interests and wry humour.
~ Jan Jorgensen
Cultural family therapy (CFT) is a synthesis of family therapy and transcultural psychiatry.[3][4]
CFT is an interweaving of "stories" (family predicaments expressed in narratives of family life) and "tools" (clinical methods for working with and making sense of these stories in cultural context). By interweaving stories and tools, CFT is aimed at understanding and change. Neither one alone suffices, as each of them produces only part of the solution.
The book recounts over two dozen family "stories" varying from brief vignettes and cameo portraits to longer, more detailed multigenerational narratives.
Nine "conceptual tools" for CFT are described. "Tools" refers to the actions and thoughts of therapists, part of their toolkit. Some are actions (like "spirals"), others are like lenses (such as "masks").
Authors: Di Nicola, Vincenzo, Stoyanov, Drozdstoj
Offers a critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry
Co-authors have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy
Written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research and practice
For students and specialists alike
Abstract
The field of academic psychiatry is in crisis, everywhere. It is not merely a health crisis of resource scarcity or distribution, competing claims and practice models, or level of development from one country to another, but a deeper, more fundamental crisis about the very definition and the theoretical basis of psychiatry. The kinds of questions that represent this crisis include whether psychiatry is a social science (like psychology or anthropology), whether it is better understood as part of the humanities (like philosophy, history, and literature), or if the future of psychiatry is best assured as a branch of medicine (based on genetics and neuroscience)? In fact, the question often debated since the beginning of modern psychiatry concerns the biomedical model so that part of psychiatry’s perpetual self-questioning is to what extent it is or is not a branch of medicine. This unique and bold volume offers a representative and critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry with deeply informed transdisciplinary readings of the literature and practices of the field by two professors of psychiatry who are active in practice and engaged in research and have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy. In alternating chapters presenting contrasting arguments for the future of psychiatry, the two authors conclude with a dialogue between them to flesh out the theoretical, research, and practical implications of psychiatry’s current crisis, outlining areas of divergence, consensus, and fruitful collaborations to revision psychiatry today. The volume is scrupulously documented but written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research, and practice for the student and practitioner alike in the social and human sciences and in medicine, psychiatry, and the neurosciences.
About the Authors
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA is Professor of Psychiatry, University of Montreal, Chief of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Montreal University Institute of Mental Health (Canada), and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at The George Washington University (USA). Di Nicola has advanced training in psychology, psychiatry and philosophy and co-directs a graduate course on psychiatry and the humanities. He was nominated Academician, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Di Nicola is Founder & President, Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry, and President-Elect, World Association of Social Psychiatry. He has won numerous awards for research and leadership in psychiatry and is the author of A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, & Therapy (Norton, 1997) and the award-winning Letters to a Young Therapist (Atropos, 2011).
Drozdstoy Stoyanov, MD, PhD, DSc, PgCert, IDFAPA is Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Leader of the Translational Neuroscience Division in the Research Institute at the Medical University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. Stoyanov is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, USA and project partner of the Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health & Social Care, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK. Significant activities include being Vice-President, European Society for Person-Centred Healthcare; Vice-Chair of Philosophy SIG, Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, UK; Member, Section of Philosophy and Humanities of World Psychiatric Association; and Member, Standing Committee on Training, Section of Psychiatry, European Union of Medical Specialists. Professor Stoyanov is an International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Hardcover ISBN 978-3-030-55139-1 eBook ISBN 978-3-030-55140-7
"Crowd Theory" is a twitter novella whose avatars post 140-character microblogs. Pitting individualist I_Scrivener against social psychiatrist Dr. Krishna Dhere, author of Crowd Theory, the Bible of The Collective, a dangerous intellectual game begins. The two stage a debate for very high stakes - suicide: the surrender of Scrivener's identity to merge with The Collective.
Between them, these novellas chart the territory between saudade - the portentous Portuguese longing for the past, and Futurism - the fervent Italian artistic movement that celebrated speed, a break with the past, and presaged Fascism.
Between the could have been of "After Fernando" and the it may yet be of "Crowd Theory" hovers the unsecured present.
And between the novellas is a selection of "pomes 4 pilgrims - the kite's argument with the string."
Awarded the prestigious Prix Camille-Laurin of the Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec - the Camille Laurin Prize of the Quebec Psychiatric Association.
"Um Estranho na Família" amplia as fronteiras das perspectivas culturais para o trabalho com famílias na época pós-moderna, oferecendo conceitos úteis e novos, e instrumentos criativos para decifrar o complexo relacionamento entre a cultura e as famílias. O autor captura, ainda, as emoções e a imaginação do leitor a respeito dos encontros ricos e criativos que são possíveis entre os terapeutas e os clientes de diversas culturas.
The author draws together several emerging trends in therapy and the human sciences: narrative approaches, transcultural psychiatry, studies of autobiographical memory and the distributed and saturated self, translation theory and sociolinguistics. He offers an understanding of the "situated nature" of human problems and tools for translating the family's culture and idioms into a common language in a culturally responsive and collaborative way.
Each chapter is both theoretical and practical, far-reaching and grounded in the experiences of families in therapy. The chapters of Part I, Meeting Strangers, introduce themes of cultural family therapy, a synthesis of family therapy and transcultural psychiatry that reframes the presenting issue in therapy as the "presenting culture." Here DiNicola both critiques family therapy's unexamined use of cultural concepts and introduces fresh conceptual tools, such as spirals, masks, and roles, that facilitate the therapist's engagement with the family culture.
Part II, On the Threshold: Language, Identity, and Cultural Change, introduces a number of "changelings," "liminal people," and "orphans." Between or on the thresholds of two or more cultures, they struggle with issues around language and translation, identity and cultural change. The overbearing influence of Western concepts is seen in DiNicola's examination of the psychological, social, and cultural implications of the myth of independence.
Part III, Families as Storying Cultures, demonstrates in extended cases the power of narrative and of metaphor to transform experience. The final chapter is a moving memoir of the author's fascinating journey to Brazil to meet his father for the first time.
The author's aim is "to open space for people who have been treated like minor characters in the drama of family therapy." In doing so, he puts onto center stage all sorts of strangers in society, families of diversity, and their human predicaments, inviting his readers to engage in the full richness and complexity of culture, families, and therapy.
Book Chapters by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Springer link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-56744-5_25
Springer link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-56744-5_26
I am convinced that your efforts will bring us closer to the day when psychiatry will, at last, become a truly human psychiatry.
– Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to Laing & Cooper’s Reason and Violence (1964)
Nothing is closer to the heart of a therapist across all our clinical professions than the notion of change. Like the title of my first book, A Stranger in the Family (Di Nicola, 1997), “changing the subject” is a polysemous phrase that invokes several layers of change. Family Therapy (FT) changed the subject by changing the frame of therapy, placing the individual in a family context, invoking systems theory. My model of cultural family therapy (CFT) changed the subject by placing the family itself in the larger context of culture. These approaches also changed the subject of our work – both the identified patient (IP) and the family system or culture. Now, I propose to change the subject again, identifying three gaps in relational theory and therapy: a theory of the subject (how we define persons), a theory of therapy (how to conduct therapy), and most important, a theory of change (how change or innovation occurs). While we have many competing theories of these tasks, there no consensus among therapists. To address these gaps, I invoke the event as a new model, based on the philosophy of Alain Badiou (Badiou & Tarby, 2013). Faced with a predicament (crisis, rupture), two potential outcomes arise: trauma or event. Trauma closes down the possibilities of life, while event opens them up. By drawing a clear line, marking a before and after, the event changes a world – as an individual (subject), a family (system, culture), or an entire community (the world). Thus, the Event speaks to the very definition of being – beyond attitudes, behaviour, cognitions, and emotions – to what being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein in German) means. The three conditions for the Event are: (1) being there (Dasein in German) to witness the event, (2) naming the event, and (3) fidelity to the event, which radically changes the subject by identifying with the event. Recalling the story of Antonella (Di Nicola, 2021), an Italian immigrant to Canada referred by an Italian family therapist, I conduct an evental analysis to examine her lifeworld (Lebenswelt in German), her search for meaning and identity. Then through evental therapy (individual, couple, and family meetings), I bear witness to the event of her life. Reaching beyond the human world to become a dog breeder, Antonella resolves her ambivalent attachments to become – “at last,” as Sartre said – a genuinely human subject with an identity and a purpose in life.
References:
Alain Badiou with Fabien Tarby. Philosophy and the Event, trans. by Louise Burchill. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013.
Vincenzo Di Nicola. A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy. Foreword by M Andolfi, MD. New York & London: WW Norton & Co., 1997.
Vincenzo Di Nicola. Antonella – “A stranger in the family”: A case study of eating disorders across cultures. In: DS Stoyanov, CW Van Staden, G Stanghellini, M Wong & KWM Fulford (Eds), International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice: Case Studies and Commentaries. New York: Springer International, 2021, pp. 27-35.
The story of Antonella illustrates the way in which cultural and other values impact on the presentation and treatment of eating disorders. Displaced from her European home culture to live in Canada, Antonella presents with an eating disorder and a fluctuating tableau of anxiety and mood symptoms linked to her lack of a sense of identity. These arose against a background of her adoption as a foundling child in Italy and her attachment problems with her adoptive family generating chronically unfixed and unstable identities, resulting in her cross-cultural marriage as both flight and refuge followed by intense conflicts. Her predicament is resolved only when after an extended period in cultural family therapy she establishes a deep cross-species identification by becoming a breeder of husky dogs. The wider implications of Antonella’s story for understanding the relationship between cultural values and mental health are briefly considered.
Keywords
Eating disorders Anorexia multiforme Cultural values Uniqueness of the individual Role of animals Cross-species identification Cultural family therapy
Cite this chapter as:
Di Nicola V. (2021) Antonella: ‘A Stranger in the Family’—A Case Study of Eating Disorders Across Cultures. In: Stoyanov D., Fulford B., Stanghellini G., Van Staden W., Wong M.T. (eds) International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47852-0_3
Vincenzo Di Nicola and Suzan Song
World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP) Textbook of Social Psychiatry
Oxford University Press, forthcoming
Abstract
This chapter addresses the role of the family in the mental, social and relational wellbeing of migrants – immigrants, refugees, and displaced children, adolescents, and adults (hereafter referred to as “migrants”). Starting with a review of the ecosocial changes in a family after migration to new countries, cultures, and contexts, we will then discuss how clinicians can respond to the unique challenges for displaced families using a family-based approach. This requires a basic epistemological shift towards families and communities when dealing with migration and trauma. The key notion is that families are the crucible for socialization and belonging and crucial resources for the care, support, and healing of its members.
First, it is important to understand the difference between individual and family functioning, using relational psychology. The family genogram is presented as an information-gathering tool (McGoldrick, et al., 2008). A brief overview of this approach based in systems theory, family therapy, and other relational therapies is offered, noting that these approaches were founded on more or less stable social and cultural contexts. The first challenge for clinicians with displaced persons is to add a socio-cultural dimension to sensitize them to working with families across cultures (see Di Nicola, 1985a, 1985b, 1997, 1998), appreciating changing definitions of families, and understanding families in light of globalization and Global Mental Health (Cohen, et al., 2013; Patel & Prince, 2010; Di Nicola, 2012). A cultural genogram helps the clinician understand the family’s culture of origin. The second challenge is to appreciate how family functioning is affected by disasters and conflicts leading to displacement, including migration and refugee status. These dislocations not only disrupt family functioning in the culture of origin (enculturation), but demand adaptation to other cultures (acculturation). This is often not a unitary process but a sequential one, requiring multiple adaptations, leading to the creation of a new, synthetic refugee culture.
Some of the clinical challenges for the clinician include family fragmentation (Sluzki, 1979, 1992) and new family configurations, exposure to traumatic incidents, and differential effects of fragmentation and trauma across the domains of age (with unique challenges for refugee youth, elderly and special needs), gender (with special sensitivity to how LGBTQ issues morph across culture), culture (including language, religion, and social class), and other aspects of identity and belonging. Critical issues include the need to balance dealing with loss while promoting healthy adaptations to new realities, using the resources of the family, including all of its members and the community of care in its new contexts.
Keywords: family assessment, family therapy, migrant and refugee families, displaced persons, globalization, Global Mental Health, trauma
An Emergent Epistemology
Summary
In this essay, I discuss the sociopolitical notion of the Global South as a bridge between globalization and the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement. A brief history of the Global South reveals that it is wider and deeper than economic and geopolitical notions such as the Third World, the developing world and the Non-Aligned Movement, across a broad swathe of history and culture. I then turn to globalization and its critics, examining critiques of economics, human rights, and problems associated with humanitarian services. A feature of GMH, “the health gap” is contrasted with “the epistemic gap,” a divide between the epistemologies of the North and emergent Southern epistemologies. Three key features of the Global South – conviviality, porosity and syncretism – are discussed with examples from my practice of cultural consultations in child psychiatry and family therapy in Haiti and Brazil.
Keywords: Globalization, the Global South, Global Mental Health (GMH), Southern epistemologies, syncretism, conviviality, porosity
In questa raccolta di memorie in quattro atti, l’autore, un neuropsichiatra infantile e psicoterapeuta familiare italiano che vive in Canada, ripercorre i suoi episodici confronti con il padre dal loro primo incontro fino alla morte del genitore. Il primo episodio ricorda la prima volta che, ormai adulto, ha incontrato il padre italiano in Brasile. L’autore ha raccontato per la rivista Terapia Familiare di quell’incontro emozionante con un pezzo dal titolo “Estranei non più” (Di Nicola, 1995). Dopo quasi 20 anni di incontri sporadici con il padre, nel secondo episodio egli rivisita la relazione con suo padre e la sua famiglia brasiliana dopo la morte del padre. Sospeso ed episodico da un verso, provocatorio e profondo da un altro, il terzo episodio descrive l’enigma della vita di questo padre con la metafora de “La terza sponda del fiume”, riferito a un classico racconto breve di autore brasiliano (Guimarães Rosa, 1962). Verso la fine della sua vita, con un’ultima sorprendente rivelazione sul mistero della sua assenza, il padre permette all’autore di riconoscere retrospettivamente quanto essi siano stati familiare eppure sconosciuti l’uno all’altro. Nel quarto episodio, questa serie di incontri sporadici eppure intensi con l’uomo che è diventato l’intimo sconosciuto, questi si accomoda nella consapevolezza del figlio che il padre non è null’altro che un evento nella sua vita, un evento che schiude possibilità e che tutto trasforma. Le memorie si chiudono con un corteo di riflessioni utili per i terapeuti sul pensiero lento e sulla terapia eventuale che non ha altro oggetto se non se stessa.
Parole chiave: memorie familiari, relazioni padri-figli, intimi sconosciuti, dilemma relazionale, terapia della soglia, vivere vitam, evento, soggetto, pensiero lento, terapia dell’evento.
SUMMARY
In this memoir told in four episodes, the author, an Italian child psychiatrist and family psychotherapist who lives in Canada, revisits his episodic encounters with his father from their first meeting to his father’s death. The first episode recalls how he met his Italian father for the first time in Brazil as an adult. He wrote a memoir for Terapia Familiare about that emotional encounter entitled, “Strangers No More”/“Estranei non più” (Di Nicola, 1995). After almost 20 years of sporadic father-son and family encounters, the author revisits his relationship with his father and his Brazilian family following his father’s death in the second episode. Deferred and episodic on one hand, provocative and profound on the other, the third episode describes the enigma of his father’s life with the metaphor of “The Third Bank of the River,” after a classic Brazilian short story (Guimarães Rosa, 1962). Towards the end of his life, with a final, startling revelation about the mysteries of his absence, his father allows the author to recognize retrospectively that they have been familiar but unknown to each other. In the fourth episode, this series of episodic yet profound encounters with the man who became an intimate stranger is understood as nothing less than an event in the author’s life, opening possibilities, transforming everything. The memoir closes with a coda of reflections for therapists on slow thought and evental therapy that has no other object than itself.
Key words: family memoir, father-son relationships, intimate strangers, predicament, threshold therapy, vivere vitam, event, subject, slow thought, evental therapy.
Contributors: Vincenzo Di Nicola (Poetry), Arsinée Donoyan (Photography), Stanzi Vaubel (Afterword)
Description
Two Kinds of People begins at a crossroads. Faced with two possible paths, what kind of person are you? Choose your direction, left or right, because there are only two kinds of people. At the crossroads, you stand looking around, and as you do, the road begins to abstract itself, the clarity of this duality fading as the two paths fill with different shading, color, the layers becoming visible to you. Yet, you haven’t even taken a step, still frozen, between your two choices. Slowly, the stiffness turns into poise, as your awareness opens outwards, allowing you to take in the poetry of the moment. These words guide you:
… here’s to chaos,
here’s to spontaneity and spunk
mixing gaily
And to more stolen apples,
taken freely –
Yes. Please. To more of this!
This book of poetry invites you into the subtle porosity of the present, found in small moments: on street corners, between strangers, friends, and in the many ingredients you might add to your borscht soup. The poetry reminds, gently, that there is
; only this world / … ; only today / … ; only we two, face to face
and as you return to the present and recall that you must make a choice between one thing and the other, it is only to realize that you are now in a vast field, without any clear paths in sight. So you must chart your own way forward now, encountering the textures, tastes, smells, and sounds with every step."
~ from the "Afterword" by Stanzi Vaubel, PhD
Back cover blurb
A formidable journey beyond an old Montreal train station. Beginning with a dichotomous quote, Di Nicola embarks on a stroll akin to his philosophical predecessors — Kant in Konigsberg; the Nietzsche of The Wanderer and His Shadow; Heidegger in the Black Forest; and Camus writing The Stranger in Montmartre. As we walk with Di Nicola, we meet René, Ludwig, and Franz and enter his architectural and poetic space through his philosophical pondering, to find bliss in the eyes of a baby girl.
~ Andrei Novac
Playfully, the philosopher-poet engages Montreal’s Mile End in a serious dialogue. We are guided through dialectically opposed notions, past gentling nuances as the quartier provides a context for ever-deepening layers of meaning which arise from the poet’s fascination with all that charges his imagination. As ever, I am intrigued and delighted by Di Nicola’s catholic interests and wry humour.
~ Jan Jorgensen
Cultural family therapy (CFT) is a synthesis of family therapy and transcultural psychiatry.[3][4]
CFT is an interweaving of "stories" (family predicaments expressed in narratives of family life) and "tools" (clinical methods for working with and making sense of these stories in cultural context). By interweaving stories and tools, CFT is aimed at understanding and change. Neither one alone suffices, as each of them produces only part of the solution.
The book recounts over two dozen family "stories" varying from brief vignettes and cameo portraits to longer, more detailed multigenerational narratives.
Nine "conceptual tools" for CFT are described. "Tools" refers to the actions and thoughts of therapists, part of their toolkit. Some are actions (like "spirals"), others are like lenses (such as "masks").
Authors: Di Nicola, Vincenzo, Stoyanov, Drozdstoj
Offers a critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry
Co-authors have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy
Written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research and practice
For students and specialists alike
Abstract
The field of academic psychiatry is in crisis, everywhere. It is not merely a health crisis of resource scarcity or distribution, competing claims and practice models, or level of development from one country to another, but a deeper, more fundamental crisis about the very definition and the theoretical basis of psychiatry. The kinds of questions that represent this crisis include whether psychiatry is a social science (like psychology or anthropology), whether it is better understood as part of the humanities (like philosophy, history, and literature), or if the future of psychiatry is best assured as a branch of medicine (based on genetics and neuroscience)? In fact, the question often debated since the beginning of modern psychiatry concerns the biomedical model so that part of psychiatry’s perpetual self-questioning is to what extent it is or is not a branch of medicine. This unique and bold volume offers a representative and critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry with deeply informed transdisciplinary readings of the literature and practices of the field by two professors of psychiatry who are active in practice and engaged in research and have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy. In alternating chapters presenting contrasting arguments for the future of psychiatry, the two authors conclude with a dialogue between them to flesh out the theoretical, research, and practical implications of psychiatry’s current crisis, outlining areas of divergence, consensus, and fruitful collaborations to revision psychiatry today. The volume is scrupulously documented but written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research, and practice for the student and practitioner alike in the social and human sciences and in medicine, psychiatry, and the neurosciences.
About the Authors
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA is Professor of Psychiatry, University of Montreal, Chief of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Montreal University Institute of Mental Health (Canada), and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at The George Washington University (USA). Di Nicola has advanced training in psychology, psychiatry and philosophy and co-directs a graduate course on psychiatry and the humanities. He was nominated Academician, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Di Nicola is Founder & President, Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry, and President-Elect, World Association of Social Psychiatry. He has won numerous awards for research and leadership in psychiatry and is the author of A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, & Therapy (Norton, 1997) and the award-winning Letters to a Young Therapist (Atropos, 2011).
Drozdstoy Stoyanov, MD, PhD, DSc, PgCert, IDFAPA is Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Leader of the Translational Neuroscience Division in the Research Institute at the Medical University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. Stoyanov is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, USA and project partner of the Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health & Social Care, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK. Significant activities include being Vice-President, European Society for Person-Centred Healthcare; Vice-Chair of Philosophy SIG, Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, UK; Member, Section of Philosophy and Humanities of World Psychiatric Association; and Member, Standing Committee on Training, Section of Psychiatry, European Union of Medical Specialists. Professor Stoyanov is an International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Hardcover ISBN 978-3-030-55139-1 eBook ISBN 978-3-030-55140-7
"Crowd Theory" is a twitter novella whose avatars post 140-character microblogs. Pitting individualist I_Scrivener against social psychiatrist Dr. Krishna Dhere, author of Crowd Theory, the Bible of The Collective, a dangerous intellectual game begins. The two stage a debate for very high stakes - suicide: the surrender of Scrivener's identity to merge with The Collective.
Between them, these novellas chart the territory between saudade - the portentous Portuguese longing for the past, and Futurism - the fervent Italian artistic movement that celebrated speed, a break with the past, and presaged Fascism.
Between the could have been of "After Fernando" and the it may yet be of "Crowd Theory" hovers the unsecured present.
And between the novellas is a selection of "pomes 4 pilgrims - the kite's argument with the string."
Awarded the prestigious Prix Camille-Laurin of the Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec - the Camille Laurin Prize of the Quebec Psychiatric Association.
"Um Estranho na Família" amplia as fronteiras das perspectivas culturais para o trabalho com famílias na época pós-moderna, oferecendo conceitos úteis e novos, e instrumentos criativos para decifrar o complexo relacionamento entre a cultura e as famílias. O autor captura, ainda, as emoções e a imaginação do leitor a respeito dos encontros ricos e criativos que são possíveis entre os terapeutas e os clientes de diversas culturas.
The author draws together several emerging trends in therapy and the human sciences: narrative approaches, transcultural psychiatry, studies of autobiographical memory and the distributed and saturated self, translation theory and sociolinguistics. He offers an understanding of the "situated nature" of human problems and tools for translating the family's culture and idioms into a common language in a culturally responsive and collaborative way.
Each chapter is both theoretical and practical, far-reaching and grounded in the experiences of families in therapy. The chapters of Part I, Meeting Strangers, introduce themes of cultural family therapy, a synthesis of family therapy and transcultural psychiatry that reframes the presenting issue in therapy as the "presenting culture." Here DiNicola both critiques family therapy's unexamined use of cultural concepts and introduces fresh conceptual tools, such as spirals, masks, and roles, that facilitate the therapist's engagement with the family culture.
Part II, On the Threshold: Language, Identity, and Cultural Change, introduces a number of "changelings," "liminal people," and "orphans." Between or on the thresholds of two or more cultures, they struggle with issues around language and translation, identity and cultural change. The overbearing influence of Western concepts is seen in DiNicola's examination of the psychological, social, and cultural implications of the myth of independence.
Part III, Families as Storying Cultures, demonstrates in extended cases the power of narrative and of metaphor to transform experience. The final chapter is a moving memoir of the author's fascinating journey to Brazil to meet his father for the first time.
The author's aim is "to open space for people who have been treated like minor characters in the drama of family therapy." In doing so, he puts onto center stage all sorts of strangers in society, families of diversity, and their human predicaments, inviting his readers to engage in the full richness and complexity of culture, families, and therapy.
Springer link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-56744-5_25
Springer link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-56744-5_26
I am convinced that your efforts will bring us closer to the day when psychiatry will, at last, become a truly human psychiatry.
– Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to Laing & Cooper’s Reason and Violence (1964)
Nothing is closer to the heart of a therapist across all our clinical professions than the notion of change. Like the title of my first book, A Stranger in the Family (Di Nicola, 1997), “changing the subject” is a polysemous phrase that invokes several layers of change. Family Therapy (FT) changed the subject by changing the frame of therapy, placing the individual in a family context, invoking systems theory. My model of cultural family therapy (CFT) changed the subject by placing the family itself in the larger context of culture. These approaches also changed the subject of our work – both the identified patient (IP) and the family system or culture. Now, I propose to change the subject again, identifying three gaps in relational theory and therapy: a theory of the subject (how we define persons), a theory of therapy (how to conduct therapy), and most important, a theory of change (how change or innovation occurs). While we have many competing theories of these tasks, there no consensus among therapists. To address these gaps, I invoke the event as a new model, based on the philosophy of Alain Badiou (Badiou & Tarby, 2013). Faced with a predicament (crisis, rupture), two potential outcomes arise: trauma or event. Trauma closes down the possibilities of life, while event opens them up. By drawing a clear line, marking a before and after, the event changes a world – as an individual (subject), a family (system, culture), or an entire community (the world). Thus, the Event speaks to the very definition of being – beyond attitudes, behaviour, cognitions, and emotions – to what being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein in German) means. The three conditions for the Event are: (1) being there (Dasein in German) to witness the event, (2) naming the event, and (3) fidelity to the event, which radically changes the subject by identifying with the event. Recalling the story of Antonella (Di Nicola, 2021), an Italian immigrant to Canada referred by an Italian family therapist, I conduct an evental analysis to examine her lifeworld (Lebenswelt in German), her search for meaning and identity. Then through evental therapy (individual, couple, and family meetings), I bear witness to the event of her life. Reaching beyond the human world to become a dog breeder, Antonella resolves her ambivalent attachments to become – “at last,” as Sartre said – a genuinely human subject with an identity and a purpose in life.
References:
Alain Badiou with Fabien Tarby. Philosophy and the Event, trans. by Louise Burchill. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013.
Vincenzo Di Nicola. A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy. Foreword by M Andolfi, MD. New York & London: WW Norton & Co., 1997.
Vincenzo Di Nicola. Antonella – “A stranger in the family”: A case study of eating disorders across cultures. In: DS Stoyanov, CW Van Staden, G Stanghellini, M Wong & KWM Fulford (Eds), International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice: Case Studies and Commentaries. New York: Springer International, 2021, pp. 27-35.
The story of Antonella illustrates the way in which cultural and other values impact on the presentation and treatment of eating disorders. Displaced from her European home culture to live in Canada, Antonella presents with an eating disorder and a fluctuating tableau of anxiety and mood symptoms linked to her lack of a sense of identity. These arose against a background of her adoption as a foundling child in Italy and her attachment problems with her adoptive family generating chronically unfixed and unstable identities, resulting in her cross-cultural marriage as both flight and refuge followed by intense conflicts. Her predicament is resolved only when after an extended period in cultural family therapy she establishes a deep cross-species identification by becoming a breeder of husky dogs. The wider implications of Antonella’s story for understanding the relationship between cultural values and mental health are briefly considered.
Keywords
Eating disorders Anorexia multiforme Cultural values Uniqueness of the individual Role of animals Cross-species identification Cultural family therapy
Cite this chapter as:
Di Nicola V. (2021) Antonella: ‘A Stranger in the Family’—A Case Study of Eating Disorders Across Cultures. In: Stoyanov D., Fulford B., Stanghellini G., Van Staden W., Wong M.T. (eds) International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47852-0_3
Vincenzo Di Nicola and Suzan Song
World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP) Textbook of Social Psychiatry
Oxford University Press, forthcoming
Abstract
This chapter addresses the role of the family in the mental, social and relational wellbeing of migrants – immigrants, refugees, and displaced children, adolescents, and adults (hereafter referred to as “migrants”). Starting with a review of the ecosocial changes in a family after migration to new countries, cultures, and contexts, we will then discuss how clinicians can respond to the unique challenges for displaced families using a family-based approach. This requires a basic epistemological shift towards families and communities when dealing with migration and trauma. The key notion is that families are the crucible for socialization and belonging and crucial resources for the care, support, and healing of its members.
First, it is important to understand the difference between individual and family functioning, using relational psychology. The family genogram is presented as an information-gathering tool (McGoldrick, et al., 2008). A brief overview of this approach based in systems theory, family therapy, and other relational therapies is offered, noting that these approaches were founded on more or less stable social and cultural contexts. The first challenge for clinicians with displaced persons is to add a socio-cultural dimension to sensitize them to working with families across cultures (see Di Nicola, 1985a, 1985b, 1997, 1998), appreciating changing definitions of families, and understanding families in light of globalization and Global Mental Health (Cohen, et al., 2013; Patel & Prince, 2010; Di Nicola, 2012). A cultural genogram helps the clinician understand the family’s culture of origin. The second challenge is to appreciate how family functioning is affected by disasters and conflicts leading to displacement, including migration and refugee status. These dislocations not only disrupt family functioning in the culture of origin (enculturation), but demand adaptation to other cultures (acculturation). This is often not a unitary process but a sequential one, requiring multiple adaptations, leading to the creation of a new, synthetic refugee culture.
Some of the clinical challenges for the clinician include family fragmentation (Sluzki, 1979, 1992) and new family configurations, exposure to traumatic incidents, and differential effects of fragmentation and trauma across the domains of age (with unique challenges for refugee youth, elderly and special needs), gender (with special sensitivity to how LGBTQ issues morph across culture), culture (including language, religion, and social class), and other aspects of identity and belonging. Critical issues include the need to balance dealing with loss while promoting healthy adaptations to new realities, using the resources of the family, including all of its members and the community of care in its new contexts.
Keywords: family assessment, family therapy, migrant and refugee families, displaced persons, globalization, Global Mental Health, trauma
An Emergent Epistemology
Summary
In this essay, I discuss the sociopolitical notion of the Global South as a bridge between globalization and the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement. A brief history of the Global South reveals that it is wider and deeper than economic and geopolitical notions such as the Third World, the developing world and the Non-Aligned Movement, across a broad swathe of history and culture. I then turn to globalization and its critics, examining critiques of economics, human rights, and problems associated with humanitarian services. A feature of GMH, “the health gap” is contrasted with “the epistemic gap,” a divide between the epistemologies of the North and emergent Southern epistemologies. Three key features of the Global South – conviviality, porosity and syncretism – are discussed with examples from my practice of cultural consultations in child psychiatry and family therapy in Haiti and Brazil.
Keywords: Globalization, the Global South, Global Mental Health (GMH), Southern epistemologies, syncretism, conviviality, porosity
In questa raccolta di memorie in quattro atti, l’autore, un neuropsichiatra infantile e psicoterapeuta familiare italiano che vive in Canada, ripercorre i suoi episodici confronti con il padre dal loro primo incontro fino alla morte del genitore. Il primo episodio ricorda la prima volta che, ormai adulto, ha incontrato il padre italiano in Brasile. L’autore ha raccontato per la rivista Terapia Familiare di quell’incontro emozionante con un pezzo dal titolo “Estranei non più” (Di Nicola, 1995). Dopo quasi 20 anni di incontri sporadici con il padre, nel secondo episodio egli rivisita la relazione con suo padre e la sua famiglia brasiliana dopo la morte del padre. Sospeso ed episodico da un verso, provocatorio e profondo da un altro, il terzo episodio descrive l’enigma della vita di questo padre con la metafora de “La terza sponda del fiume”, riferito a un classico racconto breve di autore brasiliano (Guimarães Rosa, 1962). Verso la fine della sua vita, con un’ultima sorprendente rivelazione sul mistero della sua assenza, il padre permette all’autore di riconoscere retrospettivamente quanto essi siano stati familiare eppure sconosciuti l’uno all’altro. Nel quarto episodio, questa serie di incontri sporadici eppure intensi con l’uomo che è diventato l’intimo sconosciuto, questi si accomoda nella consapevolezza del figlio che il padre non è null’altro che un evento nella sua vita, un evento che schiude possibilità e che tutto trasforma. Le memorie si chiudono con un corteo di riflessioni utili per i terapeuti sul pensiero lento e sulla terapia eventuale che non ha altro oggetto se non se stessa.
Parole chiave: memorie familiari, relazioni padri-figli, intimi sconosciuti, dilemma relazionale, terapia della soglia, vivere vitam, evento, soggetto, pensiero lento, terapia dell’evento.
SUMMARY
In this memoir told in four episodes, the author, an Italian child psychiatrist and family psychotherapist who lives in Canada, revisits his episodic encounters with his father from their first meeting to his father’s death. The first episode recalls how he met his Italian father for the first time in Brazil as an adult. He wrote a memoir for Terapia Familiare about that emotional encounter entitled, “Strangers No More”/“Estranei non più” (Di Nicola, 1995). After almost 20 years of sporadic father-son and family encounters, the author revisits his relationship with his father and his Brazilian family following his father’s death in the second episode. Deferred and episodic on one hand, provocative and profound on the other, the third episode describes the enigma of his father’s life with the metaphor of “The Third Bank of the River,” after a classic Brazilian short story (Guimarães Rosa, 1962). Towards the end of his life, with a final, startling revelation about the mysteries of his absence, his father allows the author to recognize retrospectively that they have been familiar but unknown to each other. In the fourth episode, this series of episodic yet profound encounters with the man who became an intimate stranger is understood as nothing less than an event in the author’s life, opening possibilities, transforming everything. The memoir closes with a coda of reflections for therapists on slow thought and evental therapy that has no other object than itself.
Key words: family memoir, father-son relationships, intimate strangers, predicament, threshold therapy, vivere vitam, event, subject, slow thought, evental therapy.
The event is proposed as an alternative to such pedagogical trauma. The event in thinkers as diverse as Derrida, Lacan and Zizek has already occured and we are just repeating, substituting symptoms. This is an almost deterministic, structural view of the event. In Foucault, the event may be imagined as discourse, an articulation of dispositifs or apparatuses. In Agamben, the event is even more indeterminate, located in a zone of indifference, potentiality, beautifully described as porosity in Benjamin’s essay on Naples.
Badiou opens the ultimate possibility: an ontology based on the event, including the event defined in the broadest, least deterministic and most radically open way, giving way to "novation." With this, we can imagine a pedagogy of the event. This is a Badiouian pedagogy. Without a theory of the event and of change, there can neither be the genuine transmission of knowledge nor the possibility of novation, new explorations of knowledge by bringing new things into the world.
A pedagogy that prepares us for novation and is open to the event which creates the possibilities of genuine subjects who are faithful to the event is a pedagogy of truth. A pedagogy of the event is a pedagogy of truth. Such a pedagogy will not invoke tradition as authority and traumatically shut down possibilities but will rather open possibilities, in what Badiou calls novation, to create a pedagogy of truth.
Émile Nelligan (1879-1941) Our Contemporary: Between Freedom and Constraint
Résumé
Introduction Cet essai revient sur le cas d’Émile Nelligan, le poète le plus célèbre du Québec et le patient le plus célèbre de l’Institut. Écrire une étude de cas clinique doit être pertinent pour le public cible d’une revue médicale scientifique. Cela permet de transmettre des informations cliniques importantes pour l’optimisation de la prise en charge médicale des patients. Mais que faire avec un poète ? Et quel style adopter pour ne pas le trahir – ni en tant que poète, ni en tant que patient ?
Méthode Le style est libre. Il faut d’abord lire le poète et ensuite consulter les différentes archives et les auteurs qui l’ont déjà étudié. Nous retraçons le parcours de Nelligan, prodige poétique, jusqu’à son internement dans un asile de Montréal, tout cela avant ses 20 ans.
Présentation du cas Un aperçu des faits marquants de la vie familiale de Nelligan, de son éducation, de sa poésie et du début de sa démence précoce. Ensuite, de façon narrative, nous choisissons des dyades : psychiatrie/antipsychiatrie, liberté/contrainte, folie/créativité, déterminants développementaux/sociaux de la santé, et « deux solitudes » de la société québécoise.
Implications Nelligan était déchiré entre les dualités des deux solitudes, la liberté et les contraintes ; la lumière et l’obscurité. Et nous proposons de le lire comme notre contemporain pour la psychiatrie, pour la littérature et pour l’identité québécoise.
Mots-clés : Émile Nelligan, poésie, psychiatrie, démence précoce, schizophrénie, identité, le contemporain
Abstract
Introduction This essay reviews the case of Émile Nelligan, Quebec’s most celebrated poet and the Institute’s most famous patient. Writing a clinical case study should be relevant for readers of a scientific medical journal. This allows the transfer of important clinical knowledge for optimal medical care of patients. Yet, how do we approach a poet? What method can we adopt to avoid betraying him—neither as a poet nor as a patient?
Method The approach is open. We must start by reading the poet and consult the different archives and authors who have already studied him. We trace the journey from Nelligan as a poetic prodigy to being interned in a Montreal asylum, all before he turned 20.
Case Presentation An overview of the salient facts of Nelligan’s family life, education, poetry, and the onset of his dementia praecox. Arguments are reviewed for Nelligan as a case study of the tension between psychiatry/antipsychiatry, freedom/constraint, madness/creativity, developmental/social determinants of health, as well as the “two solitudes” of Quebec society.
Implications A reading of Nelligan torn between the dualities of the two solitudes, liberty and constraint; light and darkness; and what it means to read him as our contemporary for psychiatry, for literature and for Quebec identity.
Keywords: Émile Nelligan, poetry, psychiatry, dementia praecox, schizophrenia, identity, the contemporary
World Social Psychiatry 6(1):p 6-13, Jan–Apr 2024. | DOI: 10.4103/wsp.wsp_71_23
Una conversazione poetica tra uno psicologo israelo-palestinese, uno psichiatra italo-canadese e un pastore canadese in tempi di guerra
"Non poesia di guerra, ma poesia di vita"
Reflexiones sobre una vida en los estudios de trauma
Abstracto
Este breve ensayo aborda el trauma desde tres perspectivas: psiquiatría infantil y familiar, atención informada sobre el trauma y psiquiatría y filosofía social. Se presenta brevemente la tragedia del Rey Lear como marco para comprender la tragedia y el trauma. Para terminar, el autor aboga por un enfoque matizado del trauma que sea selectivo pero que responda a las rupturas que crean trauma y tragedia en nuestras vidas.
Palabras clave: trauma, tragedia, Determinantes Sociales de la Salud (DSS), Experiencias Adversas en la Infancia (EAI), Trastornos de Estrés Postraumático (TEPT), historia de trauma
A Poetic Conversation Among a Palestinian Israeli Psychologist, an Italian Canadian Psychiatrist, and a Canadian United Church Pastor in a Time of War
"Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary"
Editors: Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar,
Federico Demaria, & Alberto Acosta
Global Mental Health & Psychiatry Review
Vol 4, No 1, 17-19.
Homo animal tam familial est quam politicum
Man is an animal that is as familial as it is political
Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family: The Crisis of Initiation (pp. ix-xix) by Daniel Tutt
Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2022 The Palgrave Lacan Series
ISBN 978-3-030-94069-0 ISBN 978-3-030-94070-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94070-6
Link: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm%3A978-3-030-94070-6%2F1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR237DedMIt_PwYgwTseqDpfn0H47MBhSFpPq4acNHfYThQ8UsYJHaEARjc
Por Vincenzo Di Nicola
Después de unas vacaciones de trabajo en Brasil en agosto, me tomé un tiempo libre de mi columna para reiniciar el año académico y recibir a dos amigos y familiares terapeutas de la Ciudad de México aquí en Montreal. Tengo varias entrevistas programadas para este otoño, incluyendo a Adalberto Barreto, MD, sobre la terapia comunitaria integradora (TIC) en Brasil 1 y a Javier Vicencio, MD, sobre su centro de terapia familiar en la Ciudad de México, así como a Andrew McLuhan sobre el legado de su abuelo, al pionero académico canadiense en medios Marshall McLuhan y al historiador canadiense Matthew Smith sobre la historia de la psiquiatría comunitaria. Ahora quisiera sentar las bases para las preguntas que estos encuentros plantean para la psiquiatría social específicamente y para las disciplinas psicológicas en general.
Home page teaser: Experience is an end in itself, not measured in time or goals.
Column: "Second Thoughts ... About Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy"
Link: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/slow-thought-in-a-fast-city
Slow Thought in a Fast City
May 15, 2024
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FCAHS, DLFAPA, DFCPA
Get ready for something unique and extraordinary, more than I even could have wished for! It
caught my breath and brought me to tears. Take these lines from Dr. Di Nicola’s piece:
· “Not poetry of war, but poetry of life.”
· “The words I might have spoken are now a choking silence as I think of you and your loved ones, of all the families and remnants of families, trapped within the maelstrom.”
Then there are these lines, which shook me to my soul since I have recently experienced hurting others unintentionally more often, whether from my insensitivity or the sensitivities of our circumstances:
• If I speak I will hurt you
not by intention
but by the complexities of being
other
You probably know the cautioning statement: “Be careful what you wish for.” It implies that a
wish coming true may not turn out to be what you expected, from being anticlimactic to an
example of the law of unexpected consequences. Ever since the current conflagration in Israel and Gaza erupted on the dawn of October 7, I was wishing that Jewish and Muslim mental health professionals could continue to work together and even expand their collegiality and cross-cultural patient care. However, I soon learned that didn’t seem to be the case, and more often relationships were turning into mutual blame, criticism, and disintegration. I decided then to put out a call for successful examples, one of which was presented in the column “We Answer the Call for a Joint Jewish and Muslim Psychiatrist Statement,” by Ahmed Hankir, MD, and me.
Now we have another most moving example, full of depth, involving a Jewish psychiatrist,
a Palestinian Israeli psychologist, and a Christian pastor, all also poets. In an earlier parallel process, over the last few years I’ve been involved in editing books on Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, Christianity and Psychiatry (all for Springer). If I imagined those volumes talking to one another, I would wish it would be in an interaction just like these writers have had—a reflection of their religions, professions, and themselves at their very best complementary essence.
It is time to revise that original wish statement to: Be grateful for your wish being fulfilled. In terms of timing, I am also grateful that this “Thanksgiving Special” is written right before the American Thanksgiving weekend. It is also the weekly Torah (Old Testament) portion where Jacob, to become one of Judaism’s 3 patriarchs, during ongoing conflict with his brother, wakes up from a dream with awe and surprise, realizing the divine was present. And so I awoke and was reminded this morning as I finishing readying this interchange. Most fortunately, Jacob’s conflict with Esau was later resolved well. May our current Mideast one do so similarity.
Now my wish is for you to go on and savor this piece and let us know what you think.
– H. Steven Moffic, MD
Review of "Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Science, the Humanities, and Neuroscience" (2021) by Vincenzo Di Nicola & Drozdstoy Stoyanov
Capital Psychiatry Summer Issue, 2023, 4(2): 44-45
https://lnkd.in/ef6v7idj
Of Tempests, Boats, and Lifesavers –
The New Language of the Plague
Abstract
In this third essay as a physician-philosopher for Global Mental Health & Psychiatry Review (see Di Nicola, 2021a, 2021b), I explore how we are talking about COVID-19 in the light of biomedicine, planetary health, history and literature, and its impact across many spheres, calling for clarity and honesty in the discourse about our predicament.
Key words: Epidemic, pandemic, endemic, syndemic, plague, vaccine hesitancy
A Letter from Prison, A Voice from the Grave
In this apprehensive tale of philosophical fiction, Vincenzo Di Nicola takes the reader on a visit to Rome’s famous Protestant Cemetery where strangers to Italy’s mainstream Catholic culture interact above and below ground in a mix of Romantic poetry, radical politics, and psychiatric reforms. In his reflections, Di Nicola unpacks the spectrality of this haunted encounter.
Capital Psychiatry, Fall 2021, 2(4): 32-35
Available online:
https://bluetoad.com/publication/?m=65729&i=724931&p=32&ver=html5
The Origins of Biopolitics and the Coronavirus Syndemic
An essay-review of Roberto Esposito’s trilogy Bios – Communitas – Immunitas
Abstract
This essay-review by a physician-philosopher addresses the origins of the debate over immunity in the coronavirus crisis by examining the terms immunity and community in law and politics through the innovative trilogy of philosopher Roberto Esposito, how they are used in medicine today, and how they can be deployed to construct an affirmative biopolitics, avoiding a narrow medical scientism on one hand and authoritarian political power on the other. With its origin in the obligations of office and the gratitude of the gift, we must preserve the protection of immunity against the predations of impunity.
Key words: Immunity, community, syndemics, affirmative biopolitics, Roberto Esposito
Key words: Plato’s cave, COVID-19 pandemic, sensory deprivation, confinement, social distancing, biopolitics
Book Review Section
Psiquiatría en la medicina [Psychiatry in Medicine] Edited by Bernardo Ng, Enrique Chavez-Léon, and Martha Ontiveros Uribe Ciudad de México: APM Ediciones y Convenciones em Psiquiatría 2016, pp. 695
Reviewed by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Book Review Section
Psiquiatría en la medicina [Psychiatry in Medicine]
Edited by Bernardo Ng, Enrique Chavez-Léon, and Martha Ontiveros Uribe
Ciudad de México: APM Ediciones y Convenciones em Psiquiatría
2016, pp. 695
Reviewed by Vincenzo Di Nicola
This volume and the approach it outlines is well-named and described in its straight-forward and declarative title: Psychiatry in Medicine. The entire volume is strongly in the tradition of Psychosomatic Medicine and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (see Gitlin, Levenson, and Lyketsos, 2004, cited in the text) and is a resource for the emerging tradition of Collaborative Mental Health Care (Canadian Collaborative Mental Health Initiative, 2006). All the editors and some three dozen contributors to this volume are noted psychiatrists and mental health professionals from Mexico.
Challenges for Social Psychiatry"
by Vincenzo Di Nicola
WASP Newsletter
December 2020, pp. 3-5
World Association of Social Psychiatry
At the 23rd WASP World Congress of Social Psychiatry
Bucharest, Romania — October 25–28, 2019
Journal de l'AMPQ (Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec)
December 2020
By Vincenzo Di Nicola
https://browserclient.twixlmedia.com/0e2b6ea5a5ed054522a51c41065db68c/2020-d%C3%A9cembre-en-journal/15-en-dec-2020-highlights-casp
Publié au Journal de l'AMPQ (Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec)
Décembre 2020
Par Vincenzo Di Nicola
https://browserclient.twixlmedia.com/0e2b6ea5a5ed054522a51c41065db68c/2020-d%C3%A9cembre-fr-journal/15-fr-dec-2020-highlights-casp
This beautifully crafted volume, published in 2018, announces a manifesto for healing a violent world. It is in fact, not one but three manifestos – “Healing a Violent World,” “Healing the Healer,” and “Healing Power of Justice.” Each one is followed by a poem by Marjorie Agosin, ably translated from the Spanish by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman. The heart of the matter is these three manifestos which create a humanistic tapestry, compassionately stated, and deeply informed by the science and art of psychiatric medicine, while the tapestry is embroidered with original artwork by Nisha Sajnani and framed by the richly allusive poetry of Marjorie Agosin with a lovely Afterword in which she declares that:
“Throughout history, the poet has been able to illustrate the indescribable and has been able to illuminate the malignancy of our time, weaving metaphors and images with the enchant-ment of lyricism.” (p. 44)
Mollica touches on the themes that have animated his career: the trauma story and the wounded healer which were the core of his previous volumes, Healing Invisible Wounds (2006) and Textbook of Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery (2012). Each manifesto is rich and nuanced and carries a core message. “Manifesto I” recognizes the trauma around us and the need to heal a violent world. Key notions include the trauma story, the wounded healer, and the need for personal healing or self-care. This Manifesto’s most stirring phrase in my reading is: “Except in beauty, there is no healing. Beauty is the salve and ointment that creates our healing space and healing relationships.” (P.5). “Manifesto II” asserts hope to deal with the enor-mity of the world’s crises. The key words here are hope and empathy, along with gratitude to the wounded healer. It’s deepest affirmation is this: “Empathy is a biological miracle uniting all living creatures and the planet earth itself.” (P. 14). Manifesto III embraces the healing power of justice. The key here is the foundation of justice in beauty: “Justice is beautiful as it creates harmony and symmetry in the world that resonates with all animals, plants, and people. Injustice is ugly ...” (P. 28). The accompanying essays enrich Mollica’s core message of beauty and caring for others in the healing context of relationships.
This is a volume to read slowly, aloud if possible, inspired as it is by poetry and sacred texts; a volume that instructs as it heals; a volume to cherish. It sums up the masterful life and career of a healer, synthesizing the compassionate mission of psychiatric med-icine with a paean to justice and beauty. It should not surprise that Mollica has a Master’s degree in Religious Arts from Yale. With its humanistic message and call for healing, Mollica’s Manifesto joins the corpus of devotional literature resonant with Teresa d’Ávila’s The Interior Castle and Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.
GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH & PSYCHIATRY REVIEW, Vol. 1 No. 2, Spring/Summer 2020, pp. 6-7.
"A Canadian Perspective on the Biomedical and Psychosocial Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families"
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA
This brief article reviews what we know about COVID-19 in children and its psychosocial impacts on their health and mental health.
An overview of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, with an emphasis of its impact on children and families. The article examines the impacts of three public health practices: - Social distancing - Confinement - Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) - "The longest shadow"
The 23rd World Congress of Social Psychiatry, Bucharest, Romania, October 25-28, 2019
& World Social Psychiatry
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA
Founder & President, Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry/
Association canadienne de psychiatrie sociale
Chief, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Montreal University Institute for Mental Health
Professor, University of Montreal and The George Washington University
To highlight the re-establishment of the Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry this year, I have been invited to present a review article in the inaugural issue of the new psychiatric journal, World Social Psychiatry, to be launched at the World Congress of Social Psychiatry, Bucharest, Romania, October 25-28, 2019. Inspired by a Zulu saying which gets to the heart of the argument, my article is called, “ ‘A Person Is a Person Through Other Persons’: A Social Psychiatry Manifesto for the 21st Century.”
A critical issue for our field is how to define contemporary social psychiatry for our times. In my forthcoming article, I address this definitional task by breaking it down into three major questions for social psychiatry and conclude with a call for action, a manifesto for the 21st century social psychiatry: (1) What is social about psychiatry? I address definitional problems that arise, such as binary thinking, and the need for a common language. (2) What are the theory and practice of social psychiatry? Issues include social psychiatry’s core principles, values, and operational criteria; the social determinants of health and the Global Mental Health (GMH) Movement; and the need for translational research. This part of the review establishes the minimal criteria for a coherent theory of social psychiatry and the view of persons that emerges from such a theory, the social self. (3) Why the time has come for a manifesto for social psychiatry. I outline the parameters for a theory of social psychiatry, based on both the social self and the social determinants of health, to offer an inclusive social definition of health, concluding with a call for action, a manifesto for the 21st century social psychiatry.
In a parallel activity at the World Congress, an international symposium with the theme of defining social psychiatry in the 21st century will bring together eminent psychiatrists from several continents to address this important task for the field of social psychiatry. Professors Adalberto Barreto from Brazil, BS Chavan from India, Oye Gureje from Nigeria, and Yueqin Huang from China will offer their seminal studies and privileged perspectives to open what we hope will be a lively discussion chaired by President-Elect Rachid Bennegadi from France and myself, President of the Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry.
References:
Di Nicola V. Family, psychosocial, and cultural determinants of health. In: E Sorel (Ed), 21st Century Global Mental Health. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2012, pp. 119-150.
Di Nicola V. “A person is a person through other persons”: A social psychiatry manifesto for the 21st century. World Social Psychiatry 2019;Sept-Dec1(1):1-14.
The Canadian Association of Social Psychiatry/l’Association Canadienne de Psychiatrie Sociale (CASP/ACPS) has been admitted to the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP) with a warm welcome from WASP President Roy Kallivayalil and the Executive Committee. Reflecting Canada’s two official languages, English and French, CASP/ACPS is a bilingual association with Founding Members across Canada, from Quebec in the East to Ontario in Central Canada, and British Columbia in the West.
In this one, I address the questions of a child in therapy and talk about the absurdity and the necessity of trying to do impossible things in therapy and in life.
Online: https://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=413805&article_id=2804048&view=articleBrowser&ver=html5#{%22issue_id%22:%22364142%22,%22view%22:%22articleBrowser%22,%22article_id%22:%222656304%22}
(1) Gary Chaimowitz addresses issues facing psychiatry, ranging from improved funding of psychiatrists commensurate with their training and skill set to funding of research into innovation in psychiatry, including telepsychiatry and the use of artificial intelligence/Big data in psychiatry. Research into the links among the social determinants of health and mental health, interventional psychiatry, and the use of psychedelics in psychiatry are priorities. (2) Hygiea Casiano, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and forensic psychiatrist, will discuss trends and challenges confronting young people as they navigate the world of social media. Multiple aspects of the impacts of exposure to social media will be explored, including the rise of self-diagnosis, the impact of social media on psychiatric disorders, and easy access by dangerous "influencers" who target Canadian youth. (3) Catherine Hickey is a geriatric psychiatrist and medical educator committed to multidisciplinary care. Practising in the oldest province in Canada, she will review population change, the unprecedented demands of an aging population with chronic health conditions and complex psychosocial needs, and the unparalleled opportunity to redefine what it means to be a Canadian psychiatrist today. As moderator, Vincenzo Di Nicola, a socially-oriented psychiatrist, will offer bridging comments and animate a discussion with the participants.
ABRATEF
Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
16 de agosto de 2024
Workshop 19: “Trauma e Evento em Crianças, Jovens e Famílias”
Palestrante: Professor Doutor Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD
Ementa:
Este workshop oferece aos participantes uma nova visão de trauma vivenciado por crianças e jovens à luz da teoria do evento baseado sobre o pensamento do filósofo francês Alain Badiou e elaborado pelo Professor Vincenzo Di Nicola, psiquiatra e psicoterapeuta de criança e de família especializado em traumas, e filósofo social. Vamos integrar a terapia sistêmica com a terapia social dentro do quadro filosófico do evento (ou acontecimento) para entender o significado de trauma hoje. Além da filosofia, a tarefa do terapeuta é a de escutar a historia do trauma para testemunhar e honrar as experiências traumatizantes. Por conseguinte, quando for possível, é preciso cuidar de pessoas traumatizadas e curar o sofrimento que acompanha o trauma ao nível individual, familiar, comunitário e social. Os participantes serão convidados a identificar uma narrativa de trauma – seja pessoal, clínica ou nas artes (por exemplo, um filme ou um romance).
Bibliografia Básica:
DI NICOLA, V., Um Estranho na Família: Cultura, Famílias e Terapia, (traduzido por MA Ve¬rissimo Veronese). Prefácio por Luiz Carlos Osorio, MD. Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil: Editora Artes Medicas Sul Ltda., 1998.
DI NICOLA, V., Estranhos íntimos: Episódios com meu pai. Revista Brasileira de Terapia Familiar, agosto 2018, 7(1): 65-77.
DI NICOLA, V. “Pensamento Lento, Um Manifesto” (traduzido por Patrícia Manozzo Colossi). Revista Universo Psi, 2020, 2(1): 123-133.
ABRATEF
Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
16 de agosto de 2024
Conferência 4: “Por uma Psiquiatria e Terapia Social Clínica”
Palestrante: Professor Doutor Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD
Ementa:
Aplicando a pedagogia do evento, esta conferência oferece aos participantes uma oportunidade de abranger novos rumos para inovar a psiquiatria social e o trabalho relacional, tal terapia familiar e atividades comunitárias. Vamos privilegiar as práticas e projetos dos participantes para elaborar novos termos e práticas inovadores a fim de criarmos uma psicoterapia social clínica.
Bibliografia Básica:
DI NICOLA, V., A linguagem pós-moderna da terapia. A ligação entre cultura e a família. Revista Familía: Temas de Terapia Familiar e Ciências Sociais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil, 1994, 1(6).
DI NICOLA, V., Um Estranho na Família: Cultura, Famílias e Terapia, (traduzido por MA Ve¬rissimo Veronese). Prefácio por Luiz Carlos Osorio, MD. Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil: Editora Artes Medicas Sul Ltda., 1998.
DI NICOLA, V., Carta a um jovem terapeuta: “Pessoas iniciam terapia para não mudar.” Revista Pensando Famílias, 2012, 16(1): 15-27.
DI NICOLA, V., Estranhos íntimos: Episódios com meu pai. Revista Brasileira de Terapia Familiar, agosto 2018, 7(1): 65-77.
DI NICOLA, V. Pensamento lento, um manifesto (traduzido por Patrícia Manozzo Colossi). Revista Universo Psi, 2020, 2(1): 123-133.
Overview:
1. People come into therapy in order not to change - When does therapy begin?
2. Therapeutic temperaments - Who conducts therapy and why?
3. The family as a unique culture - Relational psychology and relational therapy. 4. Changing the subject - How does therapy work?
5. One hundred years of invisibility - The evolution of therapy from the 19th-century discovery of the unconscious to the 21st-century values of diversity, decolonization and change.
6. Making meaning - Making sense, technique, and doing good: Relational ethics. 7. And on the seventh day, the Lord rested - When therapy is over: The myth of closure, flow, and slowness in therapy.
This workshop integrates the author's model of working with families across cultures presented in "A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, and Therapy" (1997) and elaborated in his "Letters to a Young Therapist" (2011) with more recent work on trauma-informed therapy in "Trauma and Transcendence" (Capretto & Boynton, eds., 2018), and his "Slow thought manifesto" (2019).
Douglas Urness considers continuing professional development (CPD), advocacy and collegiality as the starting point for continuity and renewal. Professional and public polarizations now make collegiality crucially important.
Gary Chaimowitz addresses key issues facing psychiatry in the next decade, ranging from critical challenges in health care organization and delivery (access to care, privatization, quality of care, human resources) and Canadian psychiatry’s collegial relationships among ourselves (including work stress and physician burnout) and with others (clinical psychologists, allied professions, interdisciplinary and international collaborations) to social issues (e.g., environmental anxiety) and advocacy (i.e., equality, diversity and inclusiveness).
Hygiea Casiano values resiliency and using positive psychiatry techniques to build healthier institutions and communities. This value orientation is particularly impressive given her role in forensic child and adolescent psychiatry, working with youth confronting trauma and self-harm.
The moderator, Vincenzo Di Nicola, a socially-oriented child and adolescent psychiatrist, offers bridging comments on these perspectives in Canadian psychiatry and animates a discussion with symposium participants.
References
Canadian Institute for Health Information. Measuring access to priority health services [Product release]. Accessed February 6, 2023.
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The Crisis is Real. https://www.camh.ca/en/driving-change/the-crisis-is-real. Accessed February 6, 2023.
Di Nicola V, Stoyanov D. Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Science, The Humanities, and Neuroscience. Foreword by KWM Fulford, MD, Afterword by A Frances, MD. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2021.
Jeste DV, Palmer BW, Rettew DC, Boardman S. Positive psychiatry: its time has come. J Clin Psychiatry. 2015 Jun;76(6):675-83.
We may discern three eras in this history
* Classification era: Emil Kraepelin (1893), Eugen Bleuler (1908), Karl Jaspers (1913), Kurt Schneider (1939)
* Social context era: Norman Cameron, Gregory Bateson, R D Laing, Silvano Arieti
* Family studies era: Mara Selvini Palazzoli’s “Road map to Schizo-land” (Di Nicola, 1984)
* A new era is emerging with the Social Determinants of Health (CSDH).
Vincenzo Di Nicola
President, World Association of Social Psychiatry
* This paper is a contribution to a WASP Symposium on "Social Psychiatry and Public Health" at the Diamond Jubilee International Conference on Mental Health
Chandigarh, India – 15 Sept 2023
Overview and Goals:
1. Review social psychiatry’s powerful populational studies on psychiatric epidemiology and Social Determinants of Health & Mental Health (SDH/MH)
2. Promote translational research of social psychiatric studies – redefining health in social terms
3. Provide ground-level prescriptions aimed at prevention, promotion, intervention, and adaptation
Pre-Congresso da Associação Brasileira de Psiquiatria Social
em parceria com a Associação Brasileira de Terapia Comunitária
Brasília, DF, Brasil
14 de agosto de 2023
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Fundador e Presidente da Associação Canadense de Psiquiatria Social (CASP) e
Presidente da Associação Mundial de Psiquiatria Social (2022-2025) (WASP)
Título: “TUDO PELO SOCIAL”: A Psiquiatria É e Deve Ser Social
Resumo:
“Tudo pelo social”
– José Sarney, Presidente do Brasil
“O Sul Global: uma epistemologia emergente para a psiquiatria social”
– Vincenzo Di Nicola
As promessas do social. Presidente Sarney prometeu “Tudo pelo social” mas entregou nada pelo povo! “Não tem saúde sem a saúde mental,” declara a Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS). Palavras lindas! Vamos além de promessas e palavras. Eu digo que é impossível pensar a saúde física e mental sem conhecer e viver o social.
Estamos aqui no Sul Global. Mas pra mim, o Sul Global não é um lugar geográfico e nem uma condição económica, mas uma identidade, uma realidade social, vivida e experienciada pelo povo. No meu ensaio sócio-político, “O Sul Global: uma epistemologia emergente emergente para a psiquiatria social” (Di Nicola, 2020), eu reconheço que já estamos na nova epistemologia.
Seja numa favela do Rio, num bidonville de Paris, num bairro pobre do Haiti, ou no Canadá, onde também temos pobreza e miséria, o sul está sempre ao meu lado se tenho a coragem de ver e viver essa realidade.
Hoje, a saúde mental da sociedade mundial é a saúde do sul. Com as suas riquezas humanas e culturais e os seus desafios econômicos e planetários. Pra mim o maior desafio vivendo no norte mas pensando no sul não é questão só de recursos materiais e de questões políticos- econômicos, mas da imaginação. A imaginação do norte ficou empobrecida. Podemos e devemos pensar não de um passado saudoso que nunca existiu ou deste presente imperfeito lamentável mas de um futuro contrafactual. Esse futuro deve ir além da realidade e das possibilidades atuais para imaginar e assim criar uma nova realidade.
Como presidente da Associação Mundial da Psiquiatria Social, eu dediquei a minha energia às três populações vulneráveis – crianças, mulheres e famílias. Sim, existem muitos outros grupos vulneráveis mas em cada grupo, as crianças, as mães e as outras pessoas dependente sobre a família estão sempre ainda mais vulneráveis e carentes.
Tudo pelo social – mas dessa vez, é pra valer!
Round table: From social control to a humanistic approach to mental disorders
Title: “Changing the Subject” – From Systems to Culture to the Event
Presenter: Vincenzo Di Nicola
Professor Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil MD PhD FRCPC DLFAPA DFCPA FCAHS, is a psychologist, child & family psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and philosopher at the University of Montreal, Canada, and consults internationally as a visiting professor, educator, and specialist in the areas of child and family psychiatry, trauma, and social and cultural psychiatry. Known for his work on cultural family therapy, A Stranger in the Family (1997), and Letters to a Young Therapist (2012), Prof. Di Nicola was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and is President of the World Association of Social Psychiatry.
Email: vincenzodinicola@gmail.com
Abstract:
Je suis convaincu que vos efforts contribuent à nous rapprocher du temps où la psychiatrie sera, enfin, humaine.
I am convinced that your efforts will bring us closer to the day when psychiatry will, at last, become a truly human psychiatry.
– Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to Laing & Cooper’s Reason and Violence (1964)
Nothing is closer to the heart of a therapist across all our clinical professions than the notion of change. Like the title of my first book, A Stranger in the Family (Di Nicola, 1997), “changing the subject” is a polysemous phrase that invokes several layers of change. Family Therapy (FT) changed the subject by changing the frame of therapy, placing the individual in a family context, invoking systems theory. My model of cultural family therapy (CFT) changed the subject by placing the family itself in the larger context of culture. These approaches also changed the subject of our work – both the identified patient (IP) and the family system or culture. Now, I propose to change the subject again, identifying three gaps in relational theory and therapy: a theory of the subject (how we define persons), a theory of therapy (how to conduct therapy), and most important, a theory of change (how change or innovation occurs). While we have many competing theories of these tasks, there no consensus among therapists. To address these gaps, I invoke the event as a new model, based on the philosophy of Alain Badiou (Badiou & Tarby, 2013). Faced with a predicament (crisis, rupture), two potential outcomes arise: trauma or event. Trauma closes down the possibilities of life, while event opens them up. By drawing a clear line, marking a before and after, the event changes a world – as an individual (subject), a family (system, culture), or an entire community (the world). Thus, the Event speaks to the very definition of being – beyond attitudes, behaviour, cognitions, and emotions – to what being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein in German) means. The three conditions for the Event are: (1) being there (Dasein in German) to witness the event, (2) naming the event, and (3) fidelity to the event, which radically changes the subject by identifying with the event. Recalling the story of Antonella (Di Nicola, 2021), an Italian immigrant to Canada referred by an Italian family therapist, I conduct an evental analysis to examine her lifeworld (Lebenswelt in German), her search for meaning and identity. Then through evental therapy (individual, couple, and family meetings), I bear witness to the event of her life. Reaching beyond the human world to become a dog breeder, Antonella resolves her ambivalent attachments to become – “at last,” as Sartre said – a genuinely human subject with an identity and a purpose in life.
References:
Alain Badiou with Fabien Tarby. Philosophy and the Event, trans. by Louise Burchill. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013.
Vincenzo Di Nicola. A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy. Foreword by M Andolfi, MD. New York & London: WW Norton & Co., 1997.
Vincenzo Di Nicola. Antonella – “A stranger in the family”: A case study of eating disorders across cultures. In: DS Stoyanov, CW Van Staden, G Stanghellini, M Wong & KWM Fulford (Eds), International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice: Case Studies and Commentaries. New York: Springer International, 2021, pp. 27-35.
Abstract
Prof. Di Nicola’s Honoris causa docendi eloquentia (inaugural honorary speech) for the Licentia Docendi ad Honorem (LD) (the Honorary Chair) Magister ad Honorem (MA Sc) (Honorary Professor) in June 2021 was entitled, “The Place of the Person in Social Psychiatry: A Synthesis of Person-centered Medicine with Social Psychiatry in the Time of the New Coronavirus Syndemic,” addressed three themes: (1) the place of the person in social psychiatry linking it with the person-centered paradigm for medicine, health, and social care; (2) the struggle for a person-centered vision of health and social care; and (3) the challenges of the coronavirus syndemic or combination of biological and social epidemics, for both medicine and society. Prof. Di Nicola concluded with a call for a synthesis of social psychiatry with person-centered medicine, balancing evidence-based medicine with values-based practice (Fulford, 2008), by embracing the emerging epistemology of the Global South (Di Nicola, 2020) and an eco-social perspective. This presentation elaborates three more areas to promote the integration of Social Psychiatry (Di Nicola, 2019) with Person-centered Medicine: (1) how to integrate Social Psychiatry’s epidemiological data base – the Social Determinants of Health (SDH)(CSDH, 2008) and the Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) Study (Fellitti, et al., 2010) – with clinical psychiatry; (2) how to reconcile the collectivist approach of Social Psychiatry (Di Nicola, 2021) and epidemiology with the individual perspective of Person-centered Medicine and clinical practice using the insights of social science (e.g., the distributed self, Gergen, 2001) and neuroscience (e.g., mirror neurons, Gallese, 2008); (3) presentation of social and clinical vignettes from the COVID-19 syndemic about isolation and loneliness (Di Nicola & Daly, 2020; Di Nicola, 2021; Jeste, et al., 2020) and another social plague of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)(Oram, et al., 2022) - and the antidote: belonging, which is to Social Psychiatry what attachment is to Child Psychiatry (Di Nicola, 2023).
References
CSDH. Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health. Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2008.
Di Nicola V. “A person is a person through other persons”: A social psychiatry manifesto for the 21st century. World Soc Psychiatry. 2019;1(1):8-21.
Di Nicola V. The Global South: An Emergent Epistemology for Social Psychiatry. World Soc Psychiatry 2020;2:20-6.
Di Nicola V. From Plato’s cave to the Covid-19 pandemic: Confinement, social distancing, and biopolitics. Global Mental Health & Psychiatry Review. 2021;2(2):8-9.
Di Nicola V, Daly N. Growing up in a pandemic: Biomedical and psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on children and families. World Soc Psychiatry. 2020;2(2):148-51.
Di Nicola V. Perspective—“There is no such thing as society”: The pervasive myth of the atomistic individual in psychology and psychiatry. Follow-up and reply to commentaries on Di Nicola’s “A social psychiatry manifesto for the 21st century.” World Soc Psychiatry, 2021;3(2):60-64.
Di Nicola V. Belonging is to Social Psychiatry what Attachment is to Child Psychiatry. World Soc Psychiatry 2023;5:4-6.
Felitti VJ, Anda RF. The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to adult medical disease, psychiatric disorders and sexual behavior: Implications for health care. In: Lanius RA, Vermetten E, Pain C, editors. The Impact of Early Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2010. p. 77-87.
Fulford KWM. Values-based practice: A new partner to evidence-based practice and a first for psychiatry? Mens Sana Monogr 2008;6:10-21.
Gallese V. Mirror neurons and the social nature of language: The neural exploitation hypothesis. Soc Neurosci 2008;3:317-33.
Gergen, K.S. The Saturated Self, Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books. 1991; 2nd. ed. 2001.
Jeste DV, Lee EE, Cacioppo S. Battling the modern behavioral epidemic of loneliness: Suggestions for research and interventions. JAMA Psychiatry 2020;77:553-4.
Oram S, Fisher H, Minnis H, Seedat S, Walby, S, Hegarty K, et al. The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on intimate partner violence and mental health: Advancing mental health services, research, and policy. The Lancet Psychiatry 2022;9:487-524. 10.1016/S2215-0366(22)00008-6.
Objetivos:
Na conclusão da palestra, os participantes
saberão como …
Definir e descrever as necessidades das crianças
Conhecer outras formas de família nas transições socioculturais
Entender as etapas do novo ciclo da vida familiar
Social and Forensic Consequences of the Coronavirus”
Abstract:
My title is a play on the word “prisoners” that forensic psychiatry deals with but, in fact, hearkens back to Plato's analogy of the cave with its prisoners in a situation of sensory deprivation. The confinement and social distancing strategies adopted almost universally across the planet to deal with the viral pandemic effectively imprisoned entire populations, leading to social isolation and sensory deprivation.
My talk will focus on the impacts of coronavirus syndemic on children and families and highlight the impacts of the isolating strategies of social distancing and confinement using the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study as a model.
These strategies increase the risks for everyone but even more so for more dependent and vulnerable populations, especially children, creating what I call an "experimental child." The developmental impacts may be best understood through the new field of social neuroscience, an allied field of social psychiatry. The term for these wider consequences of the pandemic, triggering parallel social impacts beyond the viral disease, is syndemic which will be defined and described.
And among children, those who are already at risk are becoming even more vulnerable with consequences for normal development and social functioning and higher levels of anxiety, mental and relational disturbances with potential forensic consequences as well. The long-term consequences will require prospective longitudinal studies for decades to come, with a careful eye on all aspects of social and neurobiological
functioning from school failure to higher delinquency and crime rates. This will require greater resources for following entire populations and targeting those at greater risk for prevention at every level - primary, secondary and tertiary.
Key words: Plato's cave, pandemic, syndemic, confinement, social distancing, sensory deprivation, social isolation, Social Determinant of Health (SDoH), Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study
References:
Di Nicola V. From Plato’s cave to the Covid-19 pandemic: Confinement, social distancing, and biopolitics. Global Mental Health & Psychiatry Review, 2021, 2(2): 8-9.
Di Nicola V, Daly N. Growing up in a pandemic: Biomedical and psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on children and families. Special Theme Issue: COVID-19 Pandemic and Social Psychiatry. World Social Psychiatry, 2020, 2(2): 148-151.
Felitti VJ, Anda RF. The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to adult medical disease, psychiatric disorders and sexual behavior: implications for health care. In: Lanius RA, Vermetten E, Pain C, eds. The Impact of Early Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2010:77-87.
Hawke LD, Barbic SP, Voineskos A, et al. Impacts of COVID-19 on youth mental health, substance use, and well-being: a rapid survey of clinical and community samples. Can J Psychiatry 2020;65:701–9.
Horton R. Offline: COVID-19 is not a pandemic. Lancet 2020; 396: 874.
Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK). Country in the grip of a mental health crisis with children worst affected, new analysis finds. Available online:
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2021/04/08/country-in-the-grip-of-a-mental-health-crisis-with-children-worst-affected-new-analysis-finds. Last accessed: March 18, 2023.
Syndemic (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndemic
“Take Your Time:
Seven Lessons for Young Therapists”
In these seven lessons for young therapists, a practising psychiatrist and psychotherapist with more than 40 years’ experience surveys what therapy is about and how it works, from behaviour therapy and family therapy to psychodynamic psychotherapy. Ranging from what to read and how to begin therapy, the lessons cover therapeutic temperaments and technique, the myth of independence and individual psychology, the nature of change, the evolution of therapy, the search for meaning and relational ethics, and finally, when therapy is over.
1. People come into therapy in order not to change – When does therapy begin?
2. Therapeutic temperaments – Who conducts therapy and why?
3. The family as a unique culture – Relational psychology and relational therapy.
4. Changing the subject – How does therapy work?
5. One hundred years of invisibility – The evolution of therapy from the 19th-century era of the symptom through the 20th-century era of therapy to the 21st-century era of change.
6. Making meaning – Making sense, technique, and doing good: Relational ethics.
7. “And on the seventh day, the Lord rested …” – When therapy is over: The myth of closure, flow, and slowness in therapy.
This plenary address integrates the author’s model of working with families across cultures presented in A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, and Therapy (1997) and elaborated in his Letters to a Young Therapist (2011) with his more recent work on trauma in Trauma and Transcendence (Capretto & Boynton, eds., 2018), and “Take Your Time,” his Slow thought manifesto (2019).
"What Can Psychotherapists Learn From the Social Sciences?"
Chair: Césare Alfonso
Panelists:
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Arvind Rajagopalan
Renato Antunes dos Santos
International Federation for Psychotherapy
23rd World Congress of Psychotherapy
Casablanca, Morocco
10 February 2023
Points covered:
My first contribution was my model of Cultural Family Therapy (CFT)
A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, & Therapy (1997)
Next, I articulated overarching principles of the psychotherapies
Letters to a Young Therapist (2011)
Now, we are re-visioning psychotherapy through philosophy
Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event
Conference: “Recovery from Mental Illness: Challenges and Solutions from Across the Globe”
Joint Congress of the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP) and the Faculty of Rehabilitation and Social Psychiatry, Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych, UK)
London, UK, January 17, 2023
“Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families”
Northwest Ohio Psychological Association, Toledo, OH
November 15, 2024.
Learning Objectives:
After this presentation, participants will be able to:
1. To document child maltreatment (CM), abuse and trauma as examples of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Social Determinants of Health (SDH)
2. To illustrate the clinical impacts of ACEs and SDHs on lifelong health and mental health
3. To plan family-based Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) for CM
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31598.83522
The overall objective of this webinar is to harness the powerful data of populational studies to patients in clinical practice. This is effectively a plan for applying social psychiatry to the clinic –a call for “Clinical Social Psychiatry.” This objective will be addressed through three goals with seven steps:
(A) Review social psychiatry’s powerful populational studies on psychiatric epidemiology and Social Determinants of Health & Mental Health (SDH/MH) 1. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Studies
2. Global Mental Health (GMH) – Treatment Gaps
3. Epidemiology to reflect the burden of disease
(B) Promote translational research of social psychiatric studies – redefining health in social terms
4a. Translational research to redefine health
4b. Mental health in a social context (C) Provide ground-level prescriptions aimed at prevention, promotion, intervention, and adaptation
5. Mental health services to be delivered where people live
6. Shared care/integrated care/collaborative care
7. We can’t do everything – address common and pressing problems
Keywords: Populational studies, social determinants of health & mental health (SDH/MH), translational research, ground-level prescriptions
VINCENZO DI NICOLA, MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, FCAHS
Université de Montréal
Centre hospitalier universitaire
Dr-Georges-L.-Dumont
Moncton, NB - 25.08.2023
PLAN
I. L’épidemiologie de la santé mentale chez les jeunes
II. Les déterminants sociaux de la santé
III. Soins partagés & Soins collaboratifs
IV. Présentations fréquentes à l’urgence
"Curso de Especilização em Psicoterapia Sistêmico-Integrativa"
NÃO TENHA PRESSA:
SETE LIÇÕES PARA JOVENS TERAPEUTAS
VINCENZO DI NICOLA
UFRGS, Infapa, ABRATEF, AGATEF, Relates, WASP
Sexta-feira 18 de agosto de 2023
Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil
Nesse workshop, vamos expor a situação do terapeuta face à família e a família face ao trauma
Esse workshop apresenta um novo modelo de trauma e de terapia depois de trauma com um novo conceito de mudança em terapia baseado sobre a filosofia do Evento (ou Acontecimento) de Alain Badiou (1994)
Conceitos e estratégias chaves desse modelo incluem: o encontro face a face (Levinas, 1997) e o diálogo relacional (Di Nicola, 2012) para ouvir a estória de trauma (Mollica, 2008)
Isto constrói o terapeuta como testemunha e a terapia como relato de trauma
Só depois que a trauma seja resolvida é que famílias podem mudar através da possibilidade do Evento
A terapia após trauma ajuda famílias para enfrentar o desastre com coragem e preparar-se para a possibilidade do Evento
Esse novo modelo será ilustrado com estórias clinicas de famílias em tratamento após desastres naturais ou humanos
De la crise en psychiatrie et la crise de la reproductibilité en sciences humaines aux Déterminants sociaux de la santé et au contexte socioculturel de toutes nos recherches
Association des Étudiantes et Étudiants en Recherche sur la Santé Mentale (AEERSM)
Centre de Recherche de
l’Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal (IUSMM)
Vendredi le 24 mars 2023
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Why the “social” is essential for an integrative framework of the human sciences
From the crisis in psychiatry and the replication crisis in the human sciences to the Social Determinants of Health and the socio-cultural context of all our research
International Forensic Psychiatry Lecture Series
McMaster University
February 2, 2023
Vincenzo Di Nicola
University of Montreal
Learning Outcomes
After this presentation, participants will be able to:
1. Appreciate how children’s developmental pathways interact with forensic issues in their lives and those of their families and caregivers.
2. Place forensic issues in a family context with a view to multigenerational attachment issues.
3. Employ an understanding of the social determinants of health and mental health (SDH/MH) and the pioneering studies on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in forensic cases.
« Psychiatrie à la croisée des chemins»
Objectives
1. Identifier les bases de la crise en psychiatrie
2. Reconnaître les attitudes des psychiatres contemporains sur la crise en psychiatrie
3. Comprendre les lacunes critiques de la philosophie de la psychiatrie actuelle
4. Discuter trois possibilités pour créer une philosophie de la psychiatrie
Soucieux de l'état de la psychiatrie contemporaine, nous sommes lancés dans un projet pour prendre le pouls de la psychiatrie sous de multiples perspectives – biomédecine, sciences sociales et humaines – dans notre étude Psychiatrie en crise
Réf : Stoyanov & Di Nicola, 2017; Di Nicola & Stoyanov, 2021.
A Re-Appraisal of R.D. Laing, His Relationship to J.-P. Sartre,
and the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, DLFAPA, FCAHS
Psychiatric Fellow, AAPDPP
University of Montreal
American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (AAPDPP)
2022-2023 Virtual Presentation Series
Abstract
Scottish psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Ronald David Laing (1927-1989) is known for his pioneering studies in the tradition of psychodynamic psychiatry (cf. Ellenberger, 1970) of the alien and alienating experiences that are known under the rubric of schizophrenia (cf. Woods, 2011). Along the way, he explored the “divided self” (Laing, 1960) in the “politics of the family” (Laing, 1969) and the sources of “reason and violence” (Laing & Cooper, 1964) in modern society, creating a model of existential psychotherapy (Laing, 1987a) with his social phenomenology (Laing, 1987b).
Schooled in mainstream mid-20th century British psychiatry and then psychoanalysis, reading phenomenological philosophy the whole time, R.D. Laing wrote an undisputed classic, The Divided Self (1960; see Itten & Young, 2012), followed by Self and Others (1961) and others. Before post-modernism and deconstruction, Laing posited the dispersion of self in the bosom of the modern family with its attendant anxieties and insecurities (Laing, 1969; Di Nicola, 2022). Instead of the romantic notion of two becoming one, Laing gives us a vision of the self at odds with and divided against itself, and this opens up vistas for admitting all kinds of psychological and relational experiences on the analytic couch, including psychosis and paranoia. Furthermore, he attempted to normalize such experiences going so far as to argue that they were part of a process of psychic exploration and a shamanic journey rather than pathologizing them. This has even greater resonance today in such contemporary movements as the Hearing Voices Network.
In Laing’s (1987a) model, employing “existential phenomenology in psychotherapy,” even supposedly psychotic and paranoid experiences have meaning if we could only hear them and understand them. Rather than being reductive, it’s hermeneutic, leading existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1964) to write of Laing’s and Cooper’s (1964) efforts create “a truly human psychiatry”:
"I am convinced that your efforts will bring us closer to the day when psychiatry will, at last, become a truly human psychiatry."
Keywords: RD Laing, social phenomenology, Karl Jaspers, J-P Sartre, psychotherapy, schizophrenia, paranoia
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.34543.15524
Theme of course: Since the 19th century, the manifesto has been a vehicle for protest in the form of an announcement – a manifesto – literally, a “showing” from the Italian – implicitly or explicitly of a rupture/hiatus and a call for change. We will explore the manifesto in art (Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto), in politics (Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto vs. Mussolini’s Fascist Manifesto), and in culture (Di Nicola’s Slow Thought Manifesto) and therapy (Di Nicola’s Slow Psychiatry/Therapy) in the spirit of community and conviviality (Illich).
In the workshop component of these explorations, participants will be tasked with writing their own manifesto to be shared by the end of the week.
Keywords: manifesto, protest – rupture/hiatus – change, Event, slowness, art, politics, therapy, conviviality
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12351.59046
The Manifesto in the21st Century - From Art to Politics to Therapy
The Indeterminacy Festival
University of Malta
Concordia University
University of Buffalo
April 25, 2022
11:00 – 2:00 pm EST
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10421.96481
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Vincenzo Di Nicola // “The Manifesto in the 21st Century: From Art to Politics to Therapy”
Since the 19th century, the manifesto has been a vehicle for protest in the form of an announcement – a manifesto – literally, a “showing” from the Italian – implicitly or explicitly of a rupture/hiatus and a call for change. We will explore the manifesto in art (Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto), in politics (Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto vs. Mussolini’s Fascist Manifesto), and in culture (Di Nicola’s Slow Thought Manifesto) and therapy (Di Nicola’s Slow Psychiatry/Therapy) in the spirit of community and conviviality (Illich). In tandem with these explorations, participants will be tasked with writing their own manifesto to be shared by the end of the week.
Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal and The George Washington University, and is on the Global Mental Health teaching faculty of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA, FCPA, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, relational therapist, and philosopher of psychiatry in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, author of: "A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families and Therapy" (New York & London: W.W. Norton) and "Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming Community" (New York & Dresden: Atropos Press) awarded the Prix Camille-Laurin of the Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec/Camille Laurin Prize of the Quebec Psychiatric Association.
Saturday, April 2, 2022
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35540.27523
« Un manifeste pour la psychiatrie sociale du XXIe siècle »
Résumé :
Une question cruciale pour notre domaine est de savoir comment définir la psychiatrie sociale contemporaine. Dans cette présentation, j’aborde cette tâche en la décomposant en trois questions majeures pour la psychiatrie sociale et je conclus par un appel à l’action, un manifeste pour la psychiatrie sociale du XXIe siècle :
(1) Qu’y a-t-il de social dans la psychiatrie ?
J’aborde les problèmes de définition qui se posent, tels que la pensée binaire et le besoin d’un langage commun.
(2) Quelles sont la théorie et la pratique de la psychiatrie sociale ?
Les questions comprennent les principes fondamentaux, les valeurs et les critères opérationnels de la psychiatrie sociale ; les déterminants sociaux de la santé et le mouvement mondial pour la santé mentale ; et le besoin de recherche translationnelle. Cette partie établit les critères minimaux d’une théorie cohérente de la psychiatrie sociale et la vision da la personne qui émerge d’une telle théorie, le « soi social ».
(3) Pourquoi le temps est-il venu d’un manifeste pour la psychiatrie sociale ?
J’esquisse les paramètres d’une théorie de la psychiatrie sociale, basée à la fois sur le soi social et les déterminants sociaux de la santé, pour offrir une définition sociale inclusive de la santé, en concluant par un appel à l’action, un manifeste pour la psychiatrie sociale du XXIe siècle.
3 objectifs de la présentation :
1. Comment définir la psychiatrie sociale contemporaine.
2. Élaborer ce qui est social en psychiatrie.
3. Décrire les implications pratiques de la psychiatrie sociale.
For this reason, this crisis has been renamed a syndemic, encompassing two different categories of disease—an infectious disease (SARS-CoV-2) and an array of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Together, these conditions cluster within specific populations following deeply-embedded patterns of inequality and vulnerability (Horton, 2020). These pre-existing fault lines of inequity, poverty, mental illness, racism, ableism, ageism create stigma and discrimination and amplify the impacts of this syndemic. And children are the most vulnerable population around the world. The impact on children is part of a cascade of consequences affecting societies at large, smaller communities, and the multigenerational family, all of which impinge on children and youth as the lowest common denominator (Di Nicola & Daly, 2020).
This exceptional set of circumstances—in response not only to the biomedical and populational health aspects but also in constructing policies for entire societies—is creating an “experimental childhood” for billions of children and youth around the world. With its commitment to the social determinants of health and mental health, notably in light of the monumental Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) studies (Felitti & Anda, 2010), social psychiatry and global mental health in partner with child and family psychiatry and allied professions must now consider their roles for the future of these “experimental children” around the world. The parameters for observing the conditions of this coronavirus-induced syndemic in the family and in society, along with recommendations for social psychiatric interventions, and prospective paediatric, psychological, and social studies will be outlined.
Keywords: Children & families, COVID-19, syndemic, ACE Study, confinement, social isolation
For this reason, this crisis has been renamed a syndemic, encompassing two different categories of disease—an infectious disease (SARS-CoV-2) and an array of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Together, these conditions cluster within specific populations following deeply-embedded patterns of inequality and vulnerability (Horton, 2020). These pre-existing fault lines of inequity, poverty, mental illness, racism, ableism, ageism create stigma and discrimination and amplify the impacts of this syndemic. And children are the most vulnerable population around the world. The impact on children is part of a cascade of consequences affecting societies at large, smaller communities, and the multigenerational family, all of which impinge on children and youth as the lowest common denominator (Di Nicola & Daly, 2020).
This exceptional set of circumstances—in response not only to the biomedical and populational health aspects but also in constructing policies for entire societies—is creating an “experimental childhood” for billions of children and youth around the world. With its commitment to the social determinants of health and mental health, notably in light of the monumental Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) studies (Felitti & Anda, 2010), social psychiatry and global mental health in partner with child and family psychiatry and allied professions must now consider their roles for the future of these “experimental children” around the world. The parameters for observing the conditions of this coronavirus-induced syndemic in the family and in society, along with recommendations for social psychiatric interventions, and prospective paediatric, psychological, and social studies will be outlined.
Keywords: Children & families, COVID-19, syndemic, ACE Study, confinement, social isolation
Mental Health, Well Being, and Social Psychiatry:
Challenges Imposed by the Covid-19 Pandemic
Friday, 18 September 2020
Contribution by Vincenzo Di Nicola, WASP President-Elect:
"Mental Health and Well Being in the Covid-19 Era"
Objectives:
1. To offer an overview of the mental health consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on vulnerable populations
2. To highlight factors that foster well being in individuals, families, and communities
10.13140/RG.2.2.32649.47209
Présentation au cours PST - 6511
Faculté de médecine, Université de Montréal
10 septembre 2020
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33065.01125
Also on: Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Politics, Dialogues on Theory on twitter: https://twitter.com/torsion_groups/status/1476176670889582593,
and Youtube: youtu.be/5n4VSdM4QYw
We are joined by Dr. Vincenzo Di Nicola to discuss modern psychiatry and his work on trauma, family therapy and the philosophical underpinnings of psychiatry. We discuss the prevalence of trauma discourse, the philosophy of Alain Badiou, why social dynamics are often ignored by modern psychiatry and psychology, and we examine the history of the "anti-psychiatry movement" with special focus on R.D. Laing, Jacques Lacan and Frantz Fanon.
Vincenzo Di Nicola is an Italian-Canadian psychologist, psychiatrist and family therapist, and philosopher of mind. Di Nicola is a tenured Full Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry & Addiction Medicine at the University of Montreal, where he founded and directs the postgraduate course on Psychiatry and the Humanities, and Clinical Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The George Washington University, where he gave The 4th Annual Stokes Endowment Lecture in 2013.
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D Tutt (Interviewer), V Di Nicola, “Psychiatry Today: An Interview with Vincenzo Di Nicola,” Jouissance Vampires Podcast, December 29, 2021. Also on: Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Politics, Dialogues on Theory –
on twitter: https://twitter.com/torsion_groups/status/1476176670889582593,
and Youtube: youtu.be/5n4VSdM4QYw.
Available online in print and audio: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/12/crisis-psychiatry-way-back-interview-vincenzo-di-nicola/
Nicola é italiano de nascimento, mora e trabalha no Canadá e, filho de pai ítalo-brasileiro, diz-se brasileiro de coração. Sua formação extensa teve início na adolescência, com o curso de Filosofia. Depois formou-se em Psicologia, Medicina Pediátrica e Psiquiatria Geral, Transcultural e Infantil, com vários cursos de pós-graduação.
Na visita a Florianópolis, vai falar sobre os diversos ramos de terapias que são oferecidos, hoje em dia e, principalmente, sobre as relações entre pais e filhos na atualidade. O encontro começa, em ambos os dias, às 8h30min, prosseguindo até as 17h, no Hotel Mercure, em Florianópolis.
Nesta entrevista, Nicola fala um pouco de seu trabalho como psiquiatra, psicólogo e terapeuta no Canadá e das semelhanças que ele vê entre canadenses e brasileiros.
Nesta visita ao Brasil, Vincenzo Di Nicola pôde encontrar o público brasileiro em duas diferentes palestras, uma para discutir a relação pais e filhos e outra em que o foco foi o relacionamento entre casais. Entre um evento e outro, ele recebeu a revista Viver Psicologia para a entrevista a seguir."
1. O perdão pode transformar as pessoas?
2. O que fazer para superar sentimentos de ódio e vingança?
3. De que maneira perdão ajuda psicologicamente quem perdoa?
4. Perdoar a ofensa recebida é sinal de covardia ou é o contrário?
5. Como fazer para pagar o mal com o bem e não ser daqueles que dizem: “não levo desafora para casa”?
6. A falta de perdão pode gerar doenças?
7. De que maneira o perdão me liberta e liberta o outro?
8. Como a psicologia explica a atitude de Jesus que ao morrer perdoa seus algozes dizendo: “Pai, perdoa-lhes porque não sabem o que fazem.”
9. Como acreditar que perdoando a gente está se beneficiando?
5.0 out of 5 stars "The Unsecured Present" Focuses on Writing Style, Ideology and Psychological Depth January 14, 2013
By D. G. Farnsworth
Format: Paperback
"After Fernando," the opening novella of "The Unsecured Present," resonates with the provoking bipolarity of memory - that memory is a betrayal: When you try to remember, you have to betray either the person you were or the person you've become. Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (living in fear of insanity) grasps for other ways of seeing - unable to trust his own memory and most fundamental cognitions. And although both novellas and the poetry in the book stand on their own, one may read the literary fiction and poetry (sandwiched between novellas) as a singular unique effort. Pessoa remains a familiar manifestation in the author's work. The parochial connections that incorporate progression and perspective align the composition in a collective manner; so the comprehensive influence is much larger than that of the individual pieces.
"After Fernando" recognizes universality in the conflicts of the iconic outsider. The life of Ophélia Queiroz (former lover of Pessoa) unfolds in an imaginary dream "where she has constructed her perfect day by winnowing out the chaff of her life's memories ..." The novella progresses in a talkative manner as the author vividly illuminates and reveals characters' conflicted souls through those that surround them. The fragmented polyglot poet, who didn't appear to touch the floor when he walked, incessantly suffered for his ability to see himself from the outside. He reveals that "countless lives inhabit us" - lives that often carry a greater sense of drama and action than our own lives seem to have. Obviously, Vincenzo Di Nicola remains cognizant that "the world is not yet done with Fernando."
Commensurate with Fernando, the author weaves literary fiction and poetry together much "like a secret orchestra that must work together in harmony to create a symphony." He alerts reader sensibilities and expands the limits of imagination. Poems (or "conversations") exploit a language passion with meticulous detail, illustrating a collective richness throughout - whether playful, anguishing or dissonant. The Collective as the last stage towards supreme consciousness presents an enlightening, different view of a richer, fuller life in the novella "Crowd Theory." Is the individual dead? As bees hive, sheep herd, geese gaggle and fish swarm, people crowd to form The Collective.
A recurring theme reflects seeing ourselves as others sees us on our way to evolutionary unity, which promotes that there is no existence without co-existence. "We see ourselves in others, you express someone else's opinions, your partner acts out a neighbour's desire. We live each others' lives." Again, these ideas vex the audience's thoughts and beliefs - often with the result of altering or changing a reader's perspective on life. The questions plaguing the central characters here reveal truths that offer the reader a deeper life understanding. The book examines the human condition, stimulating the audience towards some type of change, while the unsecured present flutters and remains in an irresolute or uncertain state of what could have been and what may yet be.
"The Unsecured Present" doesn't actually fall in a commercial category where the plot often occurs above the surface. Instead, plots take place beneath the surface and in the minds, desires and hearts of the characters. Social expectations and cultural issues influencing character actions furnish another stratum. Most imperative are predilections, ideas and character motivations - along with underlying cultural and social threads that act upon them. What occurs in the world is not as noteworthy as what's going on within the characters' minds. Hence, the novellas' climaxes may merely mirror something as simple as a new conviction or decision.
Vincenzo Di Nicola's decision to focus more on writing style and ideology with more psychological depth which appeals to a more intellectually-minded audience reigns paramount. His talented writing technique stitches together "from all the fragments, the absences, the disavowals, the gaps, the erasures and the corrections--just one connected, complete and very personal, perfect day" with the poet called Fernando.
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Unsecured-Present-Vincenzo-Di-Nicola/dp/0985304278/ref=la_B004NILQFS_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1367963979&sr=1-3
5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing book! February 21, 2011
By Armando Favazza
Format: Paperback
As a very critical Professor of Psychiatry I am amazed by this thoughtful and beautifully written book. Di Nicola has managed to bring together relevant information from culture and science in a masterful synthesis of what all therapists, not only young ones, should know. I have highlighted material on just about every page so I can return to reread it. I have published many articles and books, and I consider myself to be well informed about therapy, but this book introduced me to new information and many marvelous anecdotes, stories, and quotes. There are not many books that I would consider to be "wise," but this is one of them. I recommend it highly.
Armando Favazza, MD
Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry
University of Missouri-Columbia
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Therapist-Relational-Practices/dp/0983173451/ref=la_B004NILQFS_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367963979&sr=1-1
I recommend "A Stranger in the Family" to all clinicians ... this scholarly and clinically sound book represents another step in the treatment of multicultural families.
--Lillian Comas-Díaz, Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 187(7):453-454, July 1999
In sum, the richness of experience that the author of "A Stranger in the Family" delivers should spark and nourish reflections as much for seasoned practitioners as for professionals beginning to work with patients and their families coming from other cultures.
--Rhona Bezonsky-Jacobs, PRISME, No. 30: 156-158, 1999
DiNicola makes culture a central focus and emphasises cross cultural encounters ... [T]he book stands as an important contribution to the development of a cross culturally valid, and therefore truly theoretically sound, clinical practice.
--Inga-Britt Krause, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 44(4): 312, 1998.
DiNicola artfully uses a combination of theory, research and autobiographical material and illustrates his therapeutic style through well chosen, relevant case studies and session transcripts. This is a very useful text for those who work with migrants or refugees.
--Leo Sexton, Aust & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 20(3): 174, 1999.
DiNicola [is] a master of narrative and the use of metaphor ... I found myself thoroughly fascinated by the skilful way DiNicola weaves his own story in his succession of narratives.
--Annie Lau, MD, Consultant Child Psychiatrist and Family Therapist, London, England, advance review for W.W. Norton & Co.
Amazon.com review:
5.0 out of 5 stars Bold, original, and incisive. January 30, 1997
By A Customer
Format: Hardcover
Bold, original, and incisive, "A Stranger in the Family" pushes the boundaries of cultural perspectives for family work in postmodern times. Intellectually, DiNicola offers useful, fresh concepts and creative tools to descipher the complex relationship of culture and families. But he also reaches deeper and further, capturing the reader's emotions and imagination about the rich, creative encounters that are possible between therapists and clients of diverse cultures.
--Celia Jaes Falicov, Ph.D.,
Editor, "Cultural Perspectives in Family Therapy"
5.0 out of 5 stars A new landmark in family therapy February 6, 1997
By A Customer
Format: Hardcover
DiNicola's "A Stranger in the Family" is a rare combination of science and enchantment, of hard research and compelling narrative, of clinical acumen and cultural insights. This new landmark in the field of family therapy is a true magnum opus.
--Armando R. Favazza, M.D., M.P.H.
Author, "Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry"
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Family-Culture-Families-Professional/dp/0393702286/ref=la_B004NILQFS_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367963979&sr=1-2
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma
Global Mental Health Course
Educational Objectives
The presentation will sensitize participants to appreciate basic questions about working with traumatized children and their families across culture to create trauma-informed care:
Why development matters – and how it changes the clinical presentation of trauma at different ages
Why family matters – and how it creates models for the experience of trauma that attenuate or amplify both developmental neurobiology and sociocultural influences
Why culture matters – and how it offers or limits the range of socially privileged perceptions and culturally sanctioned solutions
Outline
Children, Culture and Trauma: Three lenses
Children & Culture: “Looking Across at Growing Up”
Children & Trauma: “Changelings”
“The Nightmare of Childhood”
“The Longest Shadow”
“The Experimental Child”
Culture & Trauma: “Two trauma communities”
Clinical and cultural trauma studies
Healing
Rebrith
Aporias/Puzzles
How does bringing childhood, culture, and trauma together affect our understanding of each?
What does an archaeology of trauma reveal?
(R Mollica: What is the nature of trauma?)
What can be done?
Rashōmon : Un cadavre, deux témoins, trois comptes, quatre versions …
Radicaux, rebelles, réformateurs et révolutionnaires
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Résumé
Ce séminaire inverse la logique de l’antipsychiatrie et décrit les différents mouvements critiques de la profession : la psychiatrie contre elle-même. Pareil au contraste des philosophes avec les antiphilosophes d’Alain Badiou, les antipsychiatres poussent la tradition établie de la psychiatrie à confronter les difficultés qui apparaissent avec de nouvelles perspectives pour relancer la pensée psychiatrique. Le double thème qui émerge de cette étude : tradition contre innovation et négation contre affirmation.
Cette thèse est composée de trois parties : (1) L’enjeu intriguant des psychiatres associés au mouvement antipsychiatrique est la négation qui les unit. Dans chaque cas, leur travail procède par une négation clé critique, au point que la caractéristique déterminante des psychiatres en antipsychiatrie devient la négation elle-même. (2) Chaque négation transforme chaque antipsychiatre à un rebelle, un radical, un réformateur ou un antipsychiatre révolutionnaire. (3) Chaque antipsychiatre a brandi un instrument, que j’ai nommé la faucille de Badiou, pour provoquer un changement. En se basant sur une négation clé critique, chaque antipsychiatre a résisté à la suture représentée par la psychiatrie d’une sous-discipline donnée, d’une pratique régionale, ou d’une idéologie dominante en la divisant doucement ou brutalement avec le scalpel, les ciseaux, les cisailles, la faux ou la faucille de Badiou pour libérer la psychiatrie en termes de théorie et de pratique générale, et la retourner à sa mission originaire.
Quatre psychiatres réputés occidentaux du XXe siècle, qui avaient critiqué leur domaine, sont étudiés à travers leurs attitudes fondamentales et leurs contributions à la redéfinition de la psychiatrie. L’Écossais Ronald David Laing (1927-1989) était un psychiatre-psychanalyste radical qui a retourné la psychiatrie à ses racines cliniques en faisant appel à la phénoménologie sociale et en niant la mystification de la maladie mentale en plaçant la souffrance de soi dans son contexte social, familial et politique. Le Français Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) était à la fois un psychanalyste subversif et un rebelle de la psychiatrie qui a confirmé la centralité de Freud dans sa construction de la psychanalyse tout en se rebellant contre l’établissement de la psychanalyse et celui de la psychiatrie, en niant l’institutionnalisation de la pratique psychanalytique. Le psychiatre Italien Franco Basaglia (1924-1980), réformateur, il a été l’instigateur de la désinstitutionnalisation psychiatrique à travers le monde avec son texte clé, L’Istituzione negata, « L’institution en négation » (1968) et en se joignant à la Partie Radicale du Parlement italien qui a réformé la législation de la santé mentale en Italie. À titre de psychiatre, philosophe et révolutionnaire, le Martiniquais Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) a contesté, rien de moins que la réclamation de la psychiatrie européenne à l’universalisme dans ses critiques radicales de la psychologie de la colonisation et la formation d’identité, en offrant une psychologie plus humaine sur laquelle on bâtirait la psychiatrie dans un programme révolutionnaire pour une nouvelle société.
Deux autres penseurs d’esprit critique sont examinés. Il s’agit du Hongrois-Américain Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) que je définis comme un psychiatre réactionnaire sous la forme d’un progressiste qui a dénoncé la réalité des troubles psychiatriques. Contrairement aux autres antipsychiatres, la négation de Szasz a été destructive, en donnant lieu à une plus grande stigmatisation de la maladie mentale et en diminuant les ressources et les services. Finalement, le travail du psychologue et philosophe Français Michel Foucault (1926-1984) qui éclipse le discours au complet de l’antipsychiatrie, quand il nous informe et incite à remettre de l’ordre dans les perceptions médicales et la pensée psychiatrique, en bouleversant « l’ordre des choses », au sens strict du terme. La négation de Foucault était la plus perturbante à la pensée psychiatrique car il mettait en cause la base même d’avoir imaginé la folie et la raison/déraison.
Faculté de médecine Université de Montréal - automne 2018
Co-directeurs : Vincenzo Di Nicola et Alexis Thibault
Description
La complexité de la médecine contemporaine sera illustrée principalement par les problèmes biomédicaux en psychiatrie contextualisés par les sciences humaines
Valeurs privilégiées
1. Interdisciplinarité – collaborations et synthèses entre médecine et sciences humaines, disciplines mutuellement enrichissantes, ce qui permet d’aborder la complexité
2. Dignité – chaque contribution au cours représente l’ensemble et doit refléter la dignité de l’être humain
3. “Beneficence” – un concept clé da la bioéthique indiqué en français par plusieurs termes, soit bénéficience comme traduction directe, soit bienveillance qui souligne la disposition affective d'une volonté qui vise le bien et le bonheur de chacun, et enfin bienfaisance qu’on peut définir comme la bienveillance en action
Objectives spécifiques du cours
1. Identifier des thèmes, problématiques et ressources au carrefour d’intérêts entre la médecine et les sciences humaines.
2. Offrir une exposition aux perspectives de la médecine et des sciences humaines, leurs définitions et leurs approches aux problèmes biomédicaux mis en contexte par les sciences humaines.
3. Conscientiser les étudiants aux valeurs nécessaires pour le traitement des thèmes complexes: interdisciplinarité, dignité, bienveillance.
The poem makes an ironic reference to a Sufi mosque as a tavern, inspired by a comment by my teacher Sheik Farhat of the Sufi Mosque on Fairmont Street in Montreal's Mile End.
In: Jan Jorgensen, Ed. (2019). My Island, My City. Montreal, QC: d'Iberville Press/sitting duck press, p. 17.
On February 13, 2015, it was one of 11 novels longlisted out of 217 completed entries.
The novel is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche where Professor Moriarty ("the Napoleon of crime") and Holmes ("the Napoleon of crime fighters") encounter Professor Cesare Lombroso ("the Napoleon of criminology") and a bloody mystery in Turin, Italy.
http://www.amazon.com/Bombastic-Gadflies-DG-Farnsworth/dp/1460918711/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367709806&sr=8-1&keywords=bombastic+gadflies
The menu needed altered severely. Not fit to consume or eat: that's how folks viewed the politics served to them in Kentucky. Candidates didn't level with the people. Dishing out negative advertising throughout the campaign sickened voters. Forking over the most massive helpings of money—the key ingredient—enabled a Carey Lucas and Hayward Thomas primary victory. A diet of deceit and greed--consumed by the congressman and his daughter, Myra (the apple does not fall far from the tree). The congressman's daughter and best friend, Royce VanArsdale, lead exciting, rich, tumultuous lives in the Bluegrass' thoroughbred racing world. Royce VanArsdale and Leila Nichols share a rich lifelong history of eccentric, family secrets among the Bluegrass elite. Their friendship tears apart as the congressman's daughter weaves a web of deceit and lies. US Congressman Carey Lucas pockets the largest pool of money of any departing member of Congress--$700-thousand--free to take his campaign chest by not running for office. Corruption of the Highest Order. Congressman Carey Lucas' actions reflect one of the reasons why the public holds Congress in such low esteem. It validates their concern that there are a lot of people who get into politics to benefit themselves financially. The money was not supposed to be a special interest pension fund, but was contributed to the Lucas election campaign. By running for governor against the millionaire horse breeder, Congressman Lucas could pocket that money (by not seeking another congressional term). The US representative broke that promise he made while running for governor—to “not keep any of that money.” He put into his pocket what remained in his congressional campaign fund...bad politics, bad taste, and bad for the Republican party. The congressman misleads the public with press releases--including remarks about the Persian Gulf War (used to benefit his campaign). Protagonist Royce VanArsdale, along with others, fight anorexic behavior--struggling to tame their fight for perfection, demanded by extremely wealthy and successful families who often expect too much. The politics, itself—along with substance--is purely anorectic….
About the Author:
Freelance journalist/writer/researcher. Past front-stretch/back-stretch camera-man for a live horse-racing production at the Red Mile--Lexington's standardbred track (Charlson Broadcast Technologies): simulcast to racetracks nationwide. Grew-up working around Keeneland Racetrack's barns hotwalking exercised thoroughbreds. TV producer (and Captioned News Coordinator) at Kentucky Educational Television for seven years. Left KET for San Jose California on a plight for a graduate school career. Thirteen years of college: B.A. in Journalism from University of Kentucky (enrolled Post Bac/two graduate programs: 30 graduate hours); Masters of Management from the University of Phoenix; enrolled in Master of Arts in Teaching/Teacher Certification program at University of the Cumberlands (33 graduate hours). In the mid-1990's tutored dozens of athletes (a half-dozen sports) at the University of Kentucky Athletics Association--including seven members of two NCAA basketball championship teams. Listed: 26th Ed. Marquis Who's Who In The South and Southwest as athletics educator. TribeHollywood member. Published in most read magazine/paper in The Hamptons--"Dan's Papers." Photographer/videographer/editor. Classically trained pianist. Music at the heart of the soul. Companion of second Toy Fox Terrier, Gemsy. Enamored with Karen Carpenter.
* Relational theory addresses the lack of consensus in psychology and psychiatry by focusing on relational dialogue, self, and psychology.
* Relational psychology emphasizes the self-in-relation, socialization, and social skills, positioning it as a social science.
* Relational therapy values authenticity, conviviality, and dignity, aiming to contextualize suffering through relational dialogue and empathy.
* The theory critiques existing methodologies and proposes relational therapy as a bridge between individual and social dimensions.
Key Takeaways: * Relational dialogue is central to social psychiatry, linking relational therapies with foundational social principles. * Therapists may have technocratic or phenomenological temperaments, focusing on techniques or meaning. * Relational dialogue emphasizes active listening, mutual respect, and hierarchy flattening, fostering intimacy through self-disclosure. * It is crucial for expressing and witnessing suffering, promoting change, and enhancing the therapeutic alliance.
* Eliot Sorel, MD, was a pioneering leader in psychiatry, advocating for global mental health and social justice.
* He was instrumental in integrating primary care with psychiatry, co-founding the APA Caucus on Global Mental Health.
* Sorel's mentorship and leadership left a lasting impact, inspiring colleagues worldwide to pursue social psychiatry.
* His passing was met with widespread condolences, highlighting his unique contributions and irreplaceable qualities.
For my 25th column in Psychiatric Times, I want to take stock of the underlying themes and lookforward to the future. To do this, John Farnsworth, PhD, who has already contributed to this column1and is a close reader of my work, conducted an interview with me in a Q&A format.John Farnsworth, MA Hons, PhD, NZAPACP, AANZPA, CSIM: You have laid out an extensive palate ofthinking about psychiatry so far in your 24 columns to date in Psychiatric Times. These columns arethemselves informed by an expansive tapestry of writing over some 40 years. What themes standout at present as you look back?Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FCAHS, DLFAPA, DFCPA: With my inaugural column, “SocialPsychiatry Comes of Age,” I chose the theme of “Second Thoughts... About Psychiatry, Psychology,and Psychotherapy,” to express reflections about my profession in a warm and constructive way. Thisarose from my reflections after 40 years in the psy disciplines – 50 years if I date it from myundergraduate training in psychology. Both psychology and psychiatry have changed a lot since then.The dominant model of Anglo-American academic psychology 50 years ago was behaviorism andbehavior therapy. Now, it’s cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. The “brains andgenes” approach that medical researcher Raymond Tallis, MD criticizes in his work .2 In psychiatry, theconsensus in most academic departments in North America 40 years ago was what I call the“standard model” with three components: DSM, BPS, and psychodynamic psychiatry. Today, we don’thave any consensus about the current state of psychiatry. The new mantra is evidence-basedmedicine (EBM), which was coined in my medical alma mater, McMaster University. And brains andgenes might represent one avenue for the future of psychiatry, but there is no consensus about it,creating a crisis in psychiatry.3,4,5.What gave me the courage to call it a crisis was that at the height of my career as a tenured fullprofessor of psychiatry, I spent four years doing a doctorate in philosophy. What I learned fromleaders in continental philosophy such as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek is thatpsychiatric theory is quite weak and we haven’t mounted very convincing answers to our critics. Mymentor Alain Badiou, who is noted for his theory of the event, challenged me “either to declare the
(PDF) "How To Connect Things": A Relational Dialogue about Social Psychiatry. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384808978_How_To_Connect_Things_A_Relational_Dialogue_about_Social_Psychiatry [accessed Oct 10 2024].
Our interview was conducted in Portuguese on August 16, 2024 at the 15th Congress of the Brazilian Association of Family Therapy (ABRATEF in the Portuguese acronym) in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the inland state of Minas Gerais after his workshop. Dr. Barreto’s workshop entitled, “Trabalhando as Ressonâncias na Relação Terapêutica” (“Working with Resonances in the Therapeutic Relationship” in English), was a lively and engaging encounter with him and his way of working with communities.
We have had an enriching exchange about art, life, and psychotherapy for several years. Dennis was our invited guest for the inaugural meeting of APA Caucus on Medical Humanities in Psychiatry in New Orleans, LA in 2022. Dennis’ uniquely diverse and specialized skill sets allow me to explore the question of the relationship between the psy disciplines and detective fiction, More generally, I wanted to explore the roots of creativity and empathy in creative writing and clinical work and connect it to therapy.
It is a pleasure to introduce Dennis Palumbo, MA, MFT to the readers of Psychiatric Times. Dennis is a licensed psychotherapist in Los Angeles, CA where he specializes in treating people in the creative arts community of Hollywood. He is uniquely well-suited for this specialized work given his double, even triple skill sets as a former Hollywood scriptwriter and current detective fiction novelist,1 teacher of creative writing,2 and his work with Robert Stolorow, MD, incorporating intersubjectivity theory in his psychotherapeutic work. Dennis will soon be addressing readers of Psychiatric Times in a monthly column of his own, “Creative Minds: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights.” His latest essay is about role as Consulting Producer on the recent Hulu TV series, “The Patient.”3
We have had an enriching exchange about art, life, and psychotherapy for several years. Dennis was our invited guest for the inaugural meeting of APA Caucus on Medical Humanities in Psychiatry in New Orleans, LA in 2022. Dennis’ uniquely diverse and specialized skill sets allow me to explore the question of the relationship between the psy disciplines and detective fiction, More generally, I wanted to explore the roots of creativity and empathy in creative writing and clinical work and connect it to therapy.
Besides international literary fiction and poetry, detective novels and murder mysteries have been my great avocational passion, something that Dennis and I share with such serious thinkers as Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and British social psychiatrist Sir Michael Shepherd, MD who wrote an insightful little book about Sherlock Holmes and Freud. And literary greats from Jorge Luis Borges to TS Eliot chimed in on what makes great detective fiction, not to mention pliers of the trade, especially British detective fiction writer PD James.4
Summer 1974. Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital (HPH). During the summer break of my studies in psychology at McGill University in Montreal, I was conducting a survey to catalogue the health and social services in Hamilton, Ontario, my hometown. We were looking at the annual report of the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital (HPH) and the numbers did not seem to make sense. My supervisor called it “the revolving door” – patients in, patients out, with no drop in numbers over time. What were the benefits? What were the costs?
Response to Vincenzo Di Nicola’s “Terms of the Social II: The Sociology of Knowledge” by John Farnsworth
Introduction by Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD
Dr. John Farnsworth trained in sociology and is now a senior psychotherapist in New Zealand. We share mutual interests at the intersection of sociology, psychotherapy, and philosophy. Together, we are exploring French philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of the event as a contemporary science of being to create a new foundation for the “psy disciplines.” With his sociological background, Dr. Farnsworth is my key sounding board for this series on “Terms of the Social.” In this essay, he extends our understanding of the social, notably the Sociology of Knowledge, to encompass the digital world and – invoking Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquid modernity” – the fluid social.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/extending-the-terms-of-the-social-digital-worlds-and-the-fluid-social
The focus of this column is on Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge with a digression into Bernstein’s sociolinguistics. The two words we should retain from these reflections for an eventual, comprehensive theory of the social are: class and context.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-experimental-child-children-and-the-covid-19-syndemic
Expanding the medical model to embrace the humanities.
Link: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/-psychiatry-and-the-humanities-an-innovative-course-at-the-university-of-montreal
POLARIZAÇÃO: SINTOMA DE UMA DOENÇA SOCIAL
Foreword for
POLARIZATION: SYMPTOM OF A SOCIAL MALADY
Por/By Marcos de Noronha
(Florianópolis: Editora Letras Contemporâneas, in press)
NO LIMIAR ENTRE IDEOLOGIA POLÍTICA E REALIDADE SOCIAL
ON THE THRESHOLD BETWEEN POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL REALITY
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Professor titular de psiquiatria, Universidade de Montreal
Presidente, Associação Mundial de Psiquiatria Social
Full Professor of Psychiatry, University of Montreal
President, World Association of Social Psychiatry
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35640.93448
Special issue on “Moral, Social, and Economic Determinants of Mental Health”
Editor: Prof. Dr. Fernando Lolas Stepke
Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Studies in Bioethics Universidad de Chile
Vice-President, World Federation for Mental Health
Santiago, Chile
Paper proposal:
Title:
Trauma, psychopathy and moral development: Unpacking the meaning of the social determinants of health for children and youth
Author: Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FCAHS
University of Montreal
Abstract:
Idealist German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1964/1797), widely considered the pre-eminent philosopher of the European Enlightenment, suggested that the lack of “moral feeling” in what we would today call psychopathy resulted in “moral death” (to invoke the title of a celebrated paper by Murphy, 1972). Although many classical thinkers addressed how we imagine morality, only in the 20th century do we see developmental models of thinking and feeling, notably by Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1932) whose thought was later elaborated by American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1984). This paper situates this problem at the crossroads of trauma, psychopathy and moral development, in which each of these key terms is questioned in turn.
The sorts of questions that arise in this intersection of interests include:
• Do the vicissitudes of life affect the sense of right and wrong in children?
• Can empathy, morality and psychopathy be understood developmentally?
• What do we mean by children’s development, anyway?
Philosophers who study how children reason and their capacity to pose philosophical questions conclude that either philosophy is not a mature activity or our theories of development are wrong. As a child psychiatrist with a social and cultural orientation (Di Nicola, 1995) and now as a philosopher (Di Nicola, 2012b, 2018), I conclude that children do have the capacity to pose philosophical questions and that capacity is predicated on both moral feeling and fellow feeling which can be subsumed under the term empathy. The so-called developmental question which Piaget posed as an epistemological question or how we acquire knowledge would be: does empathy evolve over time – “develop" in the jargon of social science – or is it innate? (See the debate between Kohlberg and American feminist critic Caroline Gilligan, noted for her study, In A Different Voice, 1977). If empathy and morality develop over time, do vicissitudes affect them? This may be addressed by studying the social determinants of health and the Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) Study (cf. Di Nicola, 2012a) and their relevance to understanding trauma (Di Nicola, 2012b, 2018).
What are the stakes? On one hand, without Kant’s (1964) “moral feeling” and its allied “fellow feeling,” we are condemned to an essentialist and reductionist view of these constructs under the rubric of an innate moral capacity or its lack in psychopathy as “moral death.” In this case, we could not argue for any grounding of morality and ethical practice (Di Nicola, 1988) in a presupposed human nature. On the other hand, if we adopt a developmental approach, we confront the limits of such thinking as condescending and judgmental, since children and other groups that do not share Enlightenment values are demonstrably able to philosophize.
Key words: Moral development, children and youth, trauma, social determinants of health, philosophy
A Re-Appraisal of R.D. Laing, His Relationship to J.-P. Sartre,
and the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, DLFAPA, FCAHS
University of Montreal
Psychiatric Fellow, AAPDPP
American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (AAPDPP)
2022-2023 Virtual Presentation Series
Brief Abstract
Scottish psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Ronald David Laing (1927-1989) is known for his pioneering studies in the tradition of psychodynamic psychiatry (cf. Ellenberger, 1970) of the alien and alienating experiences that are known under the rubric of schizophrenia (cf. Woods, 2011). Along the way, he explored the "divided self" (Laing, 1960) in the "politics of the family" (Laing, 1969) and the sources of "reason and violence" (Laing & Cooper, 1964) in modern society, creating a model of existential psychotherapy (Laing, 1987a) with his social phenomenology (Laing, 1987b).
The Origins of Biopolitics and the Coronavirus Syndemic
An essay-review of Roberto Esposito’s trilogy "Bios – Communitas – Immunitas"
Abstract
This essay-review by a physician-philosopher addresses the origins of the debate over immunity in the coronavirus crisis by examining the terms immunity and community in law and politics through the innovative trilogy of philosopher Roberto Esposito, how they are used in medicine today, and how they can be deployed to construct an affirmative biopolitics, avoiding a narrow medical scientism on one hand and authoritarian political power on the other. With its origin in the obligations of office and the gratitude of the gift, we must preserve the protection of immunity against the predations of impunity.
Key words: Immunity, community, syndemics, affirmative biopolitics, Roberto Esposito
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14649.29281
Follow-up and reply to commentaries on "A social psychiatry manifesto for the 21st century" by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Abstract
The author follows-up and replies to the three invited commentaries on his Social psychiatry manifesto published in the first issue of World Social Psychiatry, emphasizing points of agreement with three practical examples of how research, practice and policy-making can benefit from Social psychiatry – or falter without implementing its powerful and relevant insights.
Keywords: Social psychiatry, social mind, social therapy, social determinants of health
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22752.00008
License CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Psychoanalysis at the Intersection of Disciplines
1ère colloque inaugural de la MADP
1st Inaugural Conference of the Moroccan Association of Dynamic Psychiatry (MADP)
Centre « ERHSO » Oujda, Maroc
Sous la patronage de son excellence M. le Wali d'Oujda - Angad
Le samedi 02 octobre 2021
Table ronde : La psychanalyse à la croisée des chemins
Round Table: Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads
Modérateurs : Pr. Nadia Kadiri, Pr. Bouchra Oneib
« On vit déjà dans l’avenir de l’illusion de Freud :
La foi au risque de la psychanalyse ou la psychanalyse au risque de la foi? »
“We Are Already Living in the Future of Freud’s Illusion:
Faith Confronted by Psychoanalysis or Psychoanalysis Confronted by Faith?”
Pr. Vincenzo Di Nicola
Université de Montréal
The author, an Italian-Canadian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and philosopher, argues that we are already living in the future of the illusion of faith and religion envisioned by Sigmund Freud (1932/1927), a European Jew who identified with medical science and modernity. This intervention proposes an update of the rationalist and positivist proposition on religion by the founder of psychoanalysis with new readings and critiques. Among others, the question of “murderous identities” and extremism by the Lebanese journalist Amin Malaouf (1998) and the harsh criticism of the British biologist and neo-atheist Richard Dawkins (2008) find counterpoints in more positive readings of faith and religion in essays by French psychoanalysts Françoise Dolto and Gérard Sévérin (1983) about the confrontation between faith and psychoanalysis and by Syrian poet Adonis on Sufism and surrealism (2016/1995). The debate is contextualized by the author’s framing of contemporary psychiatry in crisis at the crossroads of social sciences, the humanities, and neuroscience (Di Nicola & Stoyanov, 2021).
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26579.30248
The speech will address three themes:
(1) the place of the person in social psychiatry linking Prof. Di Nicola’s call for a 21st century social psychiatry manifesto (Di Nicola, 2019) with the new person-centred paradigm for medicine, health, and social care at the Scuola Medica di Milano;
(2) the struggle for a person-centred vision of health and social care in a time that Neil Postman (1993) characterized as technopoly, defined as “the surrender of culture to technology,” with examples from psychiatry (Di Nicola & Stoyanov, 2021), child development (Di Nicola & Daly, 2020), and family therapy (Di Nicola, 2011); and
(3) the challenges of the new coronavirus pandemic, better understood as a syndemic or combination of biological and social epidemics (Horton, 2020), for both medicine and society, addressing its impacts on children and families (Di Nicola & Daly, 2020), on society (Barreto, et al., 2020; Chadda, et al., 2020), and on biopolitics (Agamben, 2020; Di Nicola, 2021). Prof. Di Nicola’s speech will conclude with a call for a synthesis of social psychiatry with person-centred medicine, balancing evidence-based medicine with values-based practice, by embracing the emerging epistemology of the Global South (Di Nicola, 2020) and an eco-social perspective.
Principal references:
Agamben G. A Che Punto Siamo? L’epidemia Como Politica. Quodlibet, 2020.
Barreto AP, Filha MO, Silva MZ, Di Nicola V. Integrative Community Therapy in the time of the new Coronavirus pandemic in Brazil and Latin America. World Soc Psychiatry. 2020;2 (2):103-5. Available from: https://www.worldsocpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2020/2/2/103/292135
Chadda RK, Bennegadi R, Di Nicola V, Molodynski A, Basu D, Kallivayalil RA, Moussaoui D. World Association of Social Psychiatry position statement on the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. World Soc Psychiatry. 2020;2(2):57. Available from: https://www.worldsocpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2020/2/2/57/292111
Di Nicola V. Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming Community. Atropos Press, 2011.
Di Nicola V. “A person is a person through other persons”: A social psychiatry manifesto for the 21st century. World Soc Psychiatry. 2019;1(1):8-21.
Available from: https://www.worldsocpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2019/1/1/8/267958
Di Nicola V. The Global South: An emergent epistemology for social psychiatry. World Soc Psychiatry. 2020;2(1):20-6.
Available from: https://www.worldsocpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2020/2/1/20/281130
Di Nicola V. From Plato’s cave to the Covid-19 pandemic: Confinement, social distancing, and biopolitics. Global Mental Health & Psychiatry Review. 2021;2(2):8-9.
Di Nicola V, Daly N. Growing up in a pandemic: Biomedical and psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on children and families. World Soc Psychiatry. 2020;2(2):148-51. Available from: https://www.worldsocpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2020/2/2/148/292140
Di Nicola V, Stoyanov D. Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Sciences, the Humanities, and Neuroscience. Springer; 2021.
Available from: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-55140-7
Horton R. Offline: COVID-19 is not a pandemic. Lancet. 2020;396:874.
Postman N. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage, 1993.
Book Review Section
Psiquiatría en la medicina [Psychiatry in Medicine]
Edited by Bernardo Ng, Enrique Chavez-Léon, and Martha Ontiveros Uribe
Ciudad de México: APM Ediciones y Convenciones em Psiquiatría
2016, pp. 695
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Article in the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP) Newsletter December 2020
Special Issue on the COVID-19 Pandemic
Growing Up in a Pandemic:
Biomedical and Psychosocial Impacts
of the COVID-19 Crisis on Children and Families
Vincenzo Di Nicola,
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Montreal
&
Nadia Daly,
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow, Harvard Medical School
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic creates a cascade of social and mental health consequences
for children, adolescents and their families. After reviewing the known pediatric and epidemiological data on children, we discuss key features of children’s mental health in response to this crisis, their specific needs, and the impacts of social distancing, confinement, and adverse childhood events. While acknowledging potential long-term consequences in this psychosocially vulnerable population, we also caution health and social care workers against pathologizing normal reactions to an abnormal global crisis.
Keywords: COVID-19, children, families, adverse childhood events, narrative resources, psychosocial support, pandemic, child and adolescent psychiatry, mental health
Special issue on the COVID-19 pandemic
"A Canadian Perspective on the Biomedical and Psychosocial Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families"
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA
Abstract
An overview of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, with an emphasis of its impact on children and families.
The article examines the impacts of three public health practices:
- Social distancing
- Confinement
- Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) - "The longest shadow"
Case Studies and Commentaries, D.S. Stoyanov, C.W. Van Staden, G. Stanghellini, M. Wong, K.W.M. Fulford, Editors. Springer International (forthcoming)
Chapter 7 Abstract
The story of Antonella illustrates the way in which cultural and other values impact on the presentation and treatment of eating disorders. Displaced from her European home culture to live in Canada, Antonella presents with an eating disorder and a fluctuating tableau of anxiety and mood symptoms linked to her lack of a sense of identity. These arose against a background of her adoption as a foundling child in Italy and her attachment problems with her adoptive family generating chronically unfixed and unstable identities, resulting in her cross-cultural marriage as both flight and refuge followed by intense conflicts. Her predicament is resolved only when after an extended period in cultural family therapy she establishes a deep cross-species identification by becoming a breeder of husky dogs. The wider implications of Antonella's story for understanding the relationship between cultural values and mental health are briefly considered.
Key words
Eating disorders, anorexia multiforme, cultural values, uniqueness of the individual, role of animals, cross-species identification, cultural family therapy
The question I am asking is: does social and transcultural psychiatry (and psychiatry generally) have a political agenda today? Should it? Why and why not are explored by looking at Giorgio Agamben's investigation of the separation since Aristotle between private (home) and public life, the biological and the political, with disastrous consequences. Foucault first introduced the notion of biopolitics which Agamben has elaborated in a his chef d'ouevre, Homo Sacer.
I examine the implications of this for an engagement of psychiatry with politics, calling along with Agamben and others for a new politics of "potenza" (potentiality) and a new psychiatry of potenza.
This is the opening of a new line of inquiry I have started in my seminar on psychiatry and the humanities at the University of Montreal, at McGill's Culture, Brain and Mind program, and with the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture where we will have a debate on this topic in April 2019.
An Emergent Epistemology
Summary
In this essay, I discuss the sociopolitical notion of the Global South as a bridge between globalization and the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement. A brief history of the Global South reveals that it is wider and deeper than economic and geopolitical notions such as the Third World, the developing world and the Non-Aligned Movement, across a broad swathe of history and culture. I then turn to globalization and its critics, examining critiques of economics, human rights, and problems associated with humanitarian services. A feature of GMH, “the health gap” is contrasted with “the epistemic gap,” a divide between the epistemologies of the North and emergent Southern epistemologies. Three key features of the Global South – conviviality, porosity and syncretism – are discussed with examples from my practice of cultural consultations in child psychiatry and family therapy in Haiti and Brazil.
Keywords: Globalization, the Global South, Global Mental Health (GMH), Southern epistemologies, syncretism, conviviality, porosity
http://blog.apaonline.org
Associate Editor: Nathan Eckstrand, PhD
"Badiou, the Event, and Psychiatry"
by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Part I: Trauma and Event
Part II: Psychiatry of the Event
http://blog.apaonline.org
Associate Editor: Nathan Eckstrand, PhD
"Badiou, the Event, and Psychiatry"
by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Part I: Trauma and Event
Part II: Psychiatry of the Event
http://blog.apaonline.org
Associate Editor: Nathan Eckstrand, PhD
"Badiou, the Event, and Psychiatry"
by Vincenzo Di Nicola
Part I: Trauma and Event
Part II: Psychiatry of the Event
"WASP Position Statement on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic"
WASP Executive Committee
15 April 2020
WASP Website:
https://waspsocialpsychiatry.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/WASP-Position-Statement-COVID-19.pdf
By Vincenzo Di Nicola
"A Collection of Poems that Refutes the Binary in Favor of Imaginative Plurality"
Reviewed by Dennis Palumbo, M.A., MFT*
Capital Psychiatry, Fall 2023, 4(4): 44-45.
Accompanied by a poem from this collection, "The Sufi Tavern."
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28435.04640