American clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Steven Reisner is a human rights activist; this gives him a very unique perspective on how the mental health profession interacts with culture and society. I start this conversation by asking him whether or not he believes that COVID-19 will constitute a traumatic experience for most of us. Through a social justice lens, he argues that this will depend on our capacity to learn from it and society's ability to mobilize and demand change.
Another topic covered in this episode is loneliness. The pandemic has pushed the theme of loneliness to the forefront, but this trend has been present for a long time in our communities. We also discuss the current tendency of the mental health field to pathologize natural human responses to distress, which can be detrimental to the transformation of not only the individual but society as a whole.
Dr. Reisner ends by talking about his podcast called Madness, where he weaves psychoanalysis concepts with politics, democracy, and the most relevant topics currently being discussed in America and the world.
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