George Atwood - Shattered Worlds, the Experience of Personal Annihilation

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

In the episode we discuss:

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

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

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