Adam DeVille
@adamdeville.bsky.social
Professor of psychology and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Canadian citizen abroad.
It's nearly August, so of course like all academics I'm suddenly possessed of the manic urge to write, which urge was nowhere in evidence for the first 2.5 months of the summer recess.
Mentalization therapy has a strong empirical foundation for effectiveness in working with personality disorders, including in group therapy, but what about individual therapy? Two recent books are, at long last, helpful in this regard. booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2026/07/ment...
Mentalization and its Discontents
I have been reading works on mentalization (some of them discussed here ) for at least five years now, not long after I discovered how much ...
booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com
If gender isn’t sandwiches explain how you turn a croque monsieur into a madam just by giving her a cute hat
Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 2w agoi'm doing anti-harassment training videos for work and when this one part talked about gender being a spectrum they showed b-roll of different types of packaged sandwiches at a grocery store
Perhaps it's my peculiar or unduly dark reading of Freud, but I have long assumed from him that--to put it crudely in contemporary terms--the unconscious is not your friend: it is, rather, the repository of all of our darkest & most destructive drives & self-sabotaging impulses.
With the usual horrible timing I end up making raspberry jams (red and black) on the most disgustingly hot and humid night of the month. But at least I'll have a jar to take in the morning to my piano teacher to distract him from how little I practiced this week!
#booksky: Any Eric Hobsbawm fans on here? I've wanted to read him for ages so I sat down this week with four of his books and am enjoying them immensely.
Any Eric Hobsbawm fans on here? I've wanted to read him for ages so I sat down this week with four of his books and am enjoying them immensely.
Am I a snob? incorrigible old-timer? for refusing your very attractive new subscriber price for the sole reason that I want a print copy to read at breakfast each morning? I hate digital subscriptions (except, sometimes, for academic journals) so even if it's free I'm not likely to read it.
“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity. “You are not numbers or case files. “You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV
High on my list of things to ban when I become Emperor of All I Survey will be the SUV and pickup truck (except, perhaps, on farms). These drivers are also the worst tail-gaters around.
Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app · last mo.This is an incredible piece of reporting, worth clicking through even if you’re aware of the problem of vehicular growth
I just learned that the Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles has died. I've recommended his books on the spiritual and moral life of children to students and patients for years, and have often returned to his charming (if incomplete) biography of Anna Freud. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/u...
Robert Coles, Pulitzer-Winning Child Psychiatrist, Is Dead at 97
nytimes.com
Karen Maroda is in the top 3 clinicians from whom I've learned the most. This updated 2nd ed. is even more fantastic than the 1st.
My Canadian high-school did this in the 80s for us starting in gr.10. I can't believe how often those insights are used regularly and how often my American students got nothing even close.
Why do some patients not get better in psychotherapy? Irwin Hirsch reminds us of the dangers of "coasting in the countertransference." It is a simple, useful, and powerful book about a problem that prevents patients from improving. booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2026/05/on-t...
On Therapeutic Drift or: Coasting in the Counter-Transference
There are certain books which may meander for several hundred pages, but have a single, simple thesis easily summed up in a paragraph or les...
booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com
"Each of these labels can capture something useful and inform treatment options, but none of them do justice to the dimensional and dynamic nature of mental illness."
Awais Aftab@awaisaftab.bsky.social · 3mo agoWhen patients ask, “What disorder do I really ‘have’?” the honest answer is usually more interesting and messier than a single diagnostic label. I wrote for the @nytimes.com on what I wish people understood about diagnoses and the nature of mental health problems. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o...
Hey psychologists, when you're explaining some psychological phenomenon that's perfectly well captured in psychological terms, maybe you don't need to refer to some shitty neuroimaging study with ten people to make it seem more "sciencey"...
Me when therapists start on about mindfulness: Get that commodified capitalist woo-woo shit out of here. Me when my piano teacher says "I want you to be mindful that your fingers are not hammers, but they are extensions of your wrist and arm. Be mindful of the weight and movement of your arm as you
Twilight of the Psychopharmacologists A Review of “Psychopharmacology Reconsidered” and the collapse of diagnosis-centered psychopharmacology www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/twilight-o...
Twilight of the Psychopharmacologists
The collapse of diagnosis-centered psychopharmacology
psychiatrymargins.com
I gotta stop spending money at this amazing new Indian place that opened a short walk from my place. I also love cooking. So hit me up with your top 3 Indian cookbooks and/or recipe websites.
I don't see this said enough: the widespread use of generative AI is not only making our jobs as educators harder logistically, but also emotionally. It is genuinely sad to be suspicious of students when you have spent so much time building a pedagogy based on trust and not being a cop. It sucks.
I don't know how people read books without making extensive marginalia. theamericanscholar.org/thinking-in-...
Thinking in the Margins - The American Scholar
What Oliver Sacks jotted down in the books he read
theamericanscholar.org
Freud, Standard Edition (eds. Strachey et al.), 24 vols. D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality. Nina Coltart, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue; Dependent Rational Animals. Leston Havens, Making Contact. Adam Phillips, The Cure for Psychoanalysis; Missing Out.
Elliot@1t2ls.bsky.social · 5mo agoA passive-aggressive number of books that shaped me: The Republic, Plato How to Read a Book, Adler Being and Time, Heidegger The Magic Mountain, Mann Sword of Honor, Waugh Summa Theologiae, Aquinas Either/Or, Kierkegaard History of Sexuality, Foucault Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism, Rorty
In the March cover story for Psychiatric Times, I provide an overview of the proposed changes to the future DSM, accompanied by some personal commentary and suggestions of my own. www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-fut...
The Future DSM: Bold Redesign, Lingering Blind Spots | Psychiatric Times
The future DSM revamp is coming, weaving social context, biomarkers, functioning and symptom dimensions into faster, evidence-based diagnosis.
psychiatrictimes.com
