Allen Frances Those of us who said that the Decade of the Brain was too narrowly focused and doomed to fail were sneered at as scientifically unsophisticated psychiatric dinosaurs.

This is a precious history of the rise & fall of theory that #schizophenia can be understood & treated as a simple genetic disease.

Inside story colorfully told by Fuller Torrey- who knew all the players & understands the issues better than anyone else.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

My pick for Saturday's #KentuckyDerby : West Saratoga. Purchased for a mere $11,000 at the very end of the 2022 Keeneland yearling sale by lifelong horseman Harry Veruchi. This is his first big winner. Every horseman's dream.

Very pleased that our paper (with Awais Aftab, Allen Frances, and Konrad Banicki) titled 'Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Clinical Guide to Navigating Diagnostic Pluralism' has been accepted by the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

The beautiful Austen Riggs Center Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1913 by psychiatrist Austen Fox Riggs, it has been a leader in psychodynamic treatment for over a century.

Mark L. Ruffalo Also feeds into the adaptation vs. maladaptive change issue. A disordered personality may be the result of trauma and be protective to a point. Until it becomes its own system and causes more harm than good.

I think this is something like a general law in medicine - a fever is…

I was interviewed on the psychotherapy of schizophrenia for the May issue of The Carlat Psychiatry Psychiatry Report. Subscribe here: thecarlatreport.com

I said this on a recent podcast, but it is worth repeating. Anyone who thinks trauma has been neglected in the psychiatric and psychodynamic understanding of borderline personality disorder knows *nothing at all* about the history of borderline personality disorder.

Mark L. Ruffalo 100% agree. The dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative change is illusory. At a certain point of quantitative excess/deficiency, you see qualitative changes, which can then self-reinforce.

1/ I made a list a while ago, about therapy🚩 that should make you think long & hard about whether you’re seeing right therapist

Starting another, please add

-agrees with nearly everything you say
-diagnoses people in your life
-gives you advice
-mawkish displays of “empathy'

Nathan S. Kline in 1956, writing about the now common practice of ghostwriting: 'It is certainly below professional dignity to have the pharmaceutical house write the article, to which the investigator merely affixes his signature.'

A given analyst’s technique is character rationalized…My view of the divisions between theoretical groups is that they are based primarily on character traits.
- Lee Grossman

For the compulsively caring therapist who desperately holds the dead mother at bay, the patient who does not get better represents the fear of the re emergence of the dead mother and the re- traumatisation of the therapist. The feelings are inherently primitive and visceral.

I recently had a chance to sit down with psychiatrist Alex Curmi of The Thinking Mind Podcast: Psychiatry & Therapy to discuss #borderline personality disorder #BPD , its pathogenesis, interpersonal dynamics, and treatment.
youtu.be/UDGzku4PqNQ?si…

Over the weekend, I had the great opportunity to discuss with co-host Leon's Existential Cafe various topics relating to psychotherapy, psychiatric diagnosis, pluralism and the biopsychosocial model, and more. Take a listen!