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walkitoutThere are two more episodes coming; I will try to listen, review and link back to this one and forward to that review if I remember. In the meantime . . .
Nocera used to write at NYT; he now writes at Bloomberg. He has been fairly public about developing depression / bipolar disorder as an adult:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-11/let-s-talk-about-kate-spade-anthony-bourdain-me-and-depression
This puts him in a really interesting and if not unique then rare position: he has quite a lot of visibility, he is open about mental health challenges, he has both resisted and pursued treatment AND he does not seem to have a bunch of truly horrifying stories about awful things he did to other people before attaining more stability. Either he really did develop bipolar disorder in mid-life, or whatever was going on earlier was at a low enough level that it did not lead to the kind of Hey Let Us Put That On TMZ type event that discredits people.
I am extremely pleased that he is using this if not unique then rare position to take on a particularly challenging problem: what about when you seek help, and that actually makes it worse?
The podcast is a romp of a story, if at times feeling like a psychological horror story. Nocera is humane enough in his presentation, and he has a gentle and compassionate sense of humor that keeps the focus on, what were people thinking as this process (being taken advantage of by a deeply problematic psychiatrist) ticked along over the course of years, or, in the case of some, decades. For me, “that’s crazy” is not the end of analysis, but rather the beginning. I want to know the mechanics of the crazy, and Nocera really does a dive into this one.
That said, I wish, a little bit, that Nocera had a little bit more perspective on the larger pictures. Obviously, what the therapist did was cartoonishly awful. At a minimum, overcharging for bad advice, with job lots of boundary violations thrown in (at least so far, no obvious sexual misconduct). Nocera spends a lot of time talking with “Judith”, about her issues with an abusive mother (a holocaust survivor) that led her to the psychiatrist, and who says she was strongly encouraged by the psychiatrist to cut ties with her mother, and not to be swayed to visit her as her mother was dying, or to attend her mother’s funeral or to sit shiva.
Abusive family relationships within tight knit communities which take sides when there is a definitive split are really, really awful. Without endorsing the advice given by the psychiatrist, it could be observed that “Judith” got a really great deal here: she got to avoid her mother, go to great parties, feel important and minimize contact with a community that was not working for her. Then, later on, when she wanted back in, she could blame it all on the psychiatrist. I smell splitting. I feel like Nocera should have caught a whiff of it, too, because the main story of the first few episodes reek of splitting.
Anyway. Great story, and if you are ever complaining about therapists who do not tell you anything about their own lives, but just basically encourage you to talk about what you are feeling and experiencing, or who only want to focus on supporting you in making concrete plans to do more of what is working and figuring out ways to incrementally approach the miracle of Being Better, take a step back and go, hey, at least this therapist is not like that therapist. Also, wow, what psychiatrists do has really changed since the 1980s.
ETA: First episode is how Nocera fell into this rabbit hole. Second episode is how the psychiatrist interfered in a sibling relationship. Third episode is how the psychiatrist weaseled his way into President of his client’s company and an employee at that company describing how good the psychiatrist is at lying with no tells at all. Fourth episode is the psychiatrist fostering relationships between patients, and the parties at the house. I started with 4, then listened to 1, 2 and am currently halfway through 3.
Nocera used to write at NYT; he now writes at Bloomberg. He has been fairly public about developing depression / bipolar disorder as an adult:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-11/let-s-talk-about-kate-spade-anthony-bourdain-me-and-depression
This puts him in a really interesting and if not unique then rare position: he has quite a lot of visibility, he is open about mental health challenges, he has both resisted and pursued treatment AND he does not seem to have a bunch of truly horrifying stories about awful things he did to other people before attaining more stability. Either he really did develop bipolar disorder in mid-life, or whatever was going on earlier was at a low enough level that it did not lead to the kind of Hey Let Us Put That On TMZ type event that discredits people.
I am extremely pleased that he is using this if not unique then rare position to take on a particularly challenging problem: what about when you seek help, and that actually makes it worse?
The podcast is a romp of a story, if at times feeling like a psychological horror story. Nocera is humane enough in his presentation, and he has a gentle and compassionate sense of humor that keeps the focus on, what were people thinking as this process (being taken advantage of by a deeply problematic psychiatrist) ticked along over the course of years, or, in the case of some, decades. For me, “that’s crazy” is not the end of analysis, but rather the beginning. I want to know the mechanics of the crazy, and Nocera really does a dive into this one.
That said, I wish, a little bit, that Nocera had a little bit more perspective on the larger pictures. Obviously, what the therapist did was cartoonishly awful. At a minimum, overcharging for bad advice, with job lots of boundary violations thrown in (at least so far, no obvious sexual misconduct). Nocera spends a lot of time talking with “Judith”, about her issues with an abusive mother (a holocaust survivor) that led her to the psychiatrist, and who says she was strongly encouraged by the psychiatrist to cut ties with her mother, and not to be swayed to visit her as her mother was dying, or to attend her mother’s funeral or to sit shiva.
Abusive family relationships within tight knit communities which take sides when there is a definitive split are really, really awful. Without endorsing the advice given by the psychiatrist, it could be observed that “Judith” got a really great deal here: she got to avoid her mother, go to great parties, feel important and minimize contact with a community that was not working for her. Then, later on, when she wanted back in, she could blame it all on the psychiatrist. I smell splitting. I feel like Nocera should have caught a whiff of it, too, because the main story of the first few episodes reek of splitting.
Anyway. Great story, and if you are ever complaining about therapists who do not tell you anything about their own lives, but just basically encourage you to talk about what you are feeling and experiencing, or who only want to focus on supporting you in making concrete plans to do more of what is working and figuring out ways to incrementally approach the miracle of Being Better, take a step back and go, hey, at least this therapist is not like that therapist. Also, wow, what psychiatrists do has really changed since the 1980s.
ETA: First episode is how Nocera fell into this rabbit hole. Second episode is how the psychiatrist interfered in a sibling relationship. Third episode is how the psychiatrist weaseled his way into President of his client’s company and an employee at that company describing how good the psychiatrist is at lying with no tells at all. Fourth episode is the psychiatrist fostering relationships between patients, and the parties at the house. I started with 4, then listened to 1, 2 and am currently halfway through 3.