The Ethics of Diagnosis and Alternatives to It—An Invitation for Inquiry This week the American Psychological Association holds its annual convention in Denver. I had been planning to attend and present as part of a symposium, “The Future of Diagnosis: Ethics, Social Justice, and Alternative Paradigms.” The topic I planned to...
With the damp dog Curled On my lap My laptop glows An open window on the world A world I'd like to ignore For now. Because now is quiet and still Now is like a tree Singing to itself In the storm. Dan Friedman July 29, 2016 ...
I’m at the beginning of writing a chapter for a book a colleague of mine is putting together. As often happens with me early in the writing process, I’ve been surfing around my library of books and PDFs stored on my computer, doing some Amazon and Google Scholar searches to...
Performing the World (PTW) is a cross-disciplinary gathering of practitioners and scholars from every continent. Participants include performers and performance scholars, psychologists and social workers, physicians and nurses, educators and youth workers, community organizers and activists, and all others for whom performance, play and the creative/expressive arts offer a new...
I recently completed a draft paper summarizing and discussing the survey results for a special issue of a journal dedicated to the growing movement to develop alternatives to the current diagnostic system in psychiatry and clinical psychology. In my latest blog post appearing on Mad in America, I give a...
Check out a guest column by my friend and colleague Peter Smagorinsky at my Psychology Today blog, A Conceptual Revolution....
“If you construct a classroom in which children must keep their seats, you are assuring that there will be a hyperactivity syndrome.” Jerome Bruner 1916-2016 [caption id="attachment_3083" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Jerome Bruner & Gita Vygodskaya at East Side Institute Reception in her Honor[/caption]...
“Disorder” is an inappropriate term to attach as a fundamental part of the name of a neurological condition. Whether it’s order or disorder is a matter of how it works in relation to other people and settings. Unless this basic idea becomes better understood, too many people will go...
Here's a sneak peek at the next chapter of The Overweight Brain. I'm giving it the working title — "The Cult(ure) of Science" Chapter 7. The Cult(ure) of Science My beef with science isn't that it’s a scam. Sciences like chemistry, anatomy, biology and physics—unlike psychology—don’t purposely distort what they’re studying to make it...
David Harper of the University of East London calls for moving beyond individual therapy. Read his essay in The Psychologist (British Psychological Society). "Psychologists could start by going out more to where people conduct their everyday lives (e.g. where they live, study or work). We could encourage more ‘bottom-up’ rather than...