Books I’m reading:

  • “Crazy Like Us” by Ethan Watters

  • “Madness & Civilization” by Michel Foucault

  • “Decolonizing Methodologies” by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

  • “The Heart’s Narrative” by Johnella Bird

  • “Understanding Power The Indispensable Chomsky” by Noam Chomsky

  • “City of Inmates” by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

  • “Assata an Autobiography” by Assata Shakur

Articles I’m reading:

  • “The Movement to Exclude Trans Girls from Sports” by Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, March 27, 2021

  • “Black Trans Women Have Always Been Integral in The Fight For Women’s Rights” by Ashlee Marie Preston, Harper’s Bazaar, March 8, 2021

  • “What on Earth is Amazon Doing?” by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, March 31, 2021

  • “A Tax Code Optimized for White Wealth Leaves Black Americans Behind" by Ben Steverman, Bloomberg Business, March 10, 2021

What I’m thinking about:

The kinds of questions therapists ask. Are they Clients know my affinity for asking questions about context, and the continual work we do to situate problems within power, within constructs, and within systems. This work aims to bring into question the assumed universality of psychological and psychiatric vernaculars, and subsequently expose the means to the end that these norms play in shaping cultural milieus.

If psychology were likened to a language, would it be accurate to posit that all human beings shared in it’s meanings? What and who would we be leaving out? What and who would we be legitimazing and what and who would we be erasing?

What would be the Wouldn’t we have to claim that language is fixed, static and predetermined in order to assume that all humans shared the same meanings for words through time and space? We know, for example, that the meaning for the word “health” has variations throughout cultures, geographic regions, and the stories of the many identities and spaces varies greatly Certainly, we know that this just isn’t true, so how can we continue to equivocate with built-in diagnostic definitions? Who are these definitions serving and who are they casting out, dismissing, dehumanizing, exploiting, doing violence unto?

Psychology is not and has never been apolitical. It is both full of and fueled by hegemonic power. What is the fate of psychotherapy if we continue to make it’s truth claims over the “human condition” explicit? Who are we serving if we continue to use expert knowledge based in degrees that