PhilosophyPodcasts.Org

By: August Baker
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  • Summary

  • Interviewing leading philosophers about their recent work
    2022
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Art Literary History & Criticism Philosophy Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • madness

    madness
    Jan 11 2025


    Wouter Kusters

    A Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking

    MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044288/a-philosophy-of-madness/
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    44 mins
  • pork

    pork
    Dec 14 2024
    The IPU at Corrigan Mental Health Center. This is a psychiatric IPU in Fall River, MA. It's a DMH facility. Best parts: 1) there are some excellent staff members (excellent both for patients and for co-workers), (e.g., OT Kyle, providers Max and Allison, nurses Christian and Jill, tech Sean, Social Worker Nicole). 2) As a public-sector, unionized shop, the staff can be their authentic selves. For those who don't like their jobs, they can express that openly. They are not pressured to dissimulate. 3) for patients, if you are looking for a place to stay a while, (i.e., if you are okay with being detained longer than the usual 72 hours), and if you are young and hence able to access the outdoors space, it may be a good place. If you are a patient of one of the Corrigan doctors (like Mayer, then an advantage of having Mayer as a doctor is that he is able to use this unit as an IPU for his regular outpatient clients. He can keep them there in an emergency and thus provide a respite for the patient and their family, a chance to return to stabilization) Worst parts: (a) Approximately half of the patients do not have actual access to the outside. The staff will tell you they provide four outdoor opportunities per day. But for practical purposes, many of the patients cannot--orwould not be reasonably expected to--access the outdoors as provided by Corrigan. (To go outside requires negotiating a steep set of stairs [it can be possible to take elevators but the elevators are difficult to operate, the techs don't make them readily available, and even when the techs are asked to take someone down in the elevator, they may choose not to. ). In addition, accessing the outside can only be done in a large group. Many of the patients are anxious in groups and would love to access the outside if they were able to do so individually, but prefer not to go down in the crowded group, long-stair, way with chains and locks, and authentically depressed staff). (b) Taxpayers lose big time. This is an extremely cost inefficient IPU. It is staffed 24/7/365, (including always an on-call provider apparently), and the staffing levels are such that, during the day shift alone, there are more staff than patients!!! At one time, Corrigan IPU had 40 patients. The folklore is that a patient there hung themself and, as a result, the beds were dropped all the way to 16. But there are more than 16 staff working the day shift alone (not even counting the evening shift or nighttime shift). During the daytime, there are 5 nurses (a charge nurse, another unit nurse, a med nurse, and two nurses in an administrative role (not on unit). 2 occupational therapists 2 providers 4 techs and 3 social workers That is for 16 beds, and often a bed or two is empty, so let's say 15 patients on average. In addition, there are other staff who are not full time (or who work full time, but divide their time across the IPU and other operations): a pharmacist, a nutritionist (she may be full time), a peer advocate, a human rights officer, and more layers of admin. In addition, Corrigan tends to keep people longer than other inpatient units--- much longer (e.g., instead of 72 hours, one stays for months or even, for two patients, 2 years and counting). Because of this, there are more court proceedings compared to units which churn more on a 72 hour cycle. Few if any patients bring their own counsel. So whenever there is a hearing, the taxpayers are paying for the DMH attorney, the Corrigan Staff, the patient's attorney, and the judge or magistrate. (c) social work. Let's not ask "who did what wrong" or "who is at fault?" Let's instead ask "What happened?" DMH emphasizes a patient centered approach. But the incentives facing SW Danielle Keogh, in combination with her training and experience, have resulted in a flouting of patient-centeredness, supposedly because it doesn't apply to these patients. Her focus, instead, is on auditing: that is, on auditing from DMH ultimately but also preparatory audits from Corrigan MHC itself. In addition, despite the extreme inefficiency of the unit, she tells staff to fudge records. For example, not all patients are supposed to go to groups, but, even if the patient is catatonic and has not been attending groups and is angry when asked to go to a group, SW Keogh insists on the SW so harrassing the client, and then putting that down in the MIS (perhaps so that this can be "billed"?) Her training, incentive structure and work load have, further resulted in her rational choice being to renege on responsibilities such as those of being an internship supervisor. (She is supposed to meet for 1 hour weekly with an intern, but does not, and yet directs the employee to record 1 hour supervision each week). Based on training and education, burnout, work load etc., she has a very narrow view of what social work is. Professionalism in SW is about doing mundane busy work ...
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    45 mins
  • Alenka Zupančič. Disavowal

    Alenka Zupančič. Disavowal
    Dec 11 2024

    Alenka Zupančič

    Disavowal

    This book argues that the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal best renders the structure underlying our contemporary social response to traumatic and disturbing events, from climate change to unsettling tectonic shifts in our social tissue. Unlike denialism and negation, disavowal functions by fully acknowledging what we disavow. Zupancic contends that disavowal, which sustains some belief by means of ardently proclaiming the knowledge of the opposite, is becoming a predominant feature of our social and political life. She also shows how the libidinal economy of disavowal is a key element of capitalist economy.

    The concept of fetishistic disavowal already exposes the objectified side of the mechanism of the disavowal, which follows the general formula: I know well, but all the same, the object-fetish allows me to disregard this knowledge. Zupancic adds another twist by showing how, in the prevailing structure of disavowal today, the mere act of declaring that we know becomes itself an object-fetish by which we intercept the reality of that very knowledge. This perverse deployment of knowledge deprives it of any reality.

    This structure of disavowal can be found not only in the more extreme and dramatic cases of conspiracy theories and re-emerging magical thinking, but even more so in the supposedly sober continuation of business as usual, combined with the call to adapt to the new reality. To disrupt this social embedding of disavowal, it is not enough to change the way we think: things need to change, and hence the way they think for us
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    51 mins

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