David Ferraro is a psychoanalyst in Melbourne. He is a current member and former president of the Lacan Circle of Australia, and gives a seminar on the politics of mental health at the University of Melbourne.
Arguments from experience The ideas of psychoanalysis and its founder, Sigmund Freud, have long been assimilated into both popular culture and academic discourse. This assimilation has been so comprehensive that in the Anglophone world—though not necessarily elsewhere—these ideas have been relegated to the status of historical relics, discredited museum pieces that have been replaced by […]
...denial of care to a particular group of patients is not the application of some apolitical, medical procedure. It is thoroughly reactionary, and continues the worst traditions of psychiatric care, updated for the neoliberal age.
Mindfulness and positive psychology as ideology. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative: 'try not to think'. It would be tempting, perhaps, to describe 'positive psychology' as the latest fad in a discipline not short of buzzwords and passing fashions. Tempting, but not true, since this particular trend has thoroughly infiltrated almost every form of psychotherapeutic mental-health treatment, and many other areas besides, and is implemented in the corporate world, the public sector and educational settings.…
