This past January, I participated in a webinar hosted by the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture – with the wonderful Lauren Utter, PsyD, a Harvard-affiliated clinical psychologist who does work in early psychosis, whom I’d met when she was a Post Doc at Yale; and Dr. Francis Lu, a psychiatrist and Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at UC-Davis. The webinar addressed self-coping and help-seeking pathways for psychosis. My portion was entitled Learning Our Voices’ True Names, inspired by Zen Master, spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, Please Call Me By My True Names, which captures poignantly and evocatively the beauty, pain, and terror of the human condition—of living and being in the world. Each of us embodies, to some degree, each of the life forms he describes. Each of us has within us that which is innocent, true, and beautiful. And each of us has within us that which can render us the hapless victim, or the predator, or, if we are unlucky, and not careful, the arms merchant, and the sea pirate.

The webinar can be viewed by following this link: zoom_0.mp4 – Google Drive . My portion goes from 23.19 – 51.26 minutes.