Psychiatric Discourse, Identity, and the Production of Difference- 1:30-2pm Psychiatric Discourse and the Boundaries of Belonging - Michelle Goodwin
- 2-2:30pm From Grief to Possibility: Thinking Queer Theory with Psychosis - Brett Thatcher
Psychiatric Discourse and the Boundaries of Belonging - Michelle Goodwin
This presentation examines how psychiatric discourse influences belonging by shaping how experiences of distress come to be understood as "mental illness." Psychiatric discourse refers to the language and interpretive frameworks of the biomedical paradigm through which experiences of distress are interpreted and responded to. Rather than assuming psychiatric diagnoses provide the primary explanation for distress, they are situated within the broader social, historical, and political contexts from which they emerged. In doing so, psychiatric discourse locates responsibility within individuals while obscuring the social conditions that shape both distress and its interpretation.
Using qualitative research and Critical Discourse Analysis, psychiatric diagnoses are examined as extending beyond clinical description to influence identity. These diagnoses affect how people are understood and responded to, with consequences for identity and experiences of belonging. Drawing on the work of Patricia Hill Collins, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa, the analysis situates psychiatric discourse within broader systems of power that construct difference and organize social and symbolic boundaries. Within this framework, psychiatric knowledge is understood as emerging through broader systems of power that privilege particular ways of knowing distress while marginalizing others. White supremacy is examined as one of these structuring forces, influencing how distress is interpreted, judged, and responded to, as well as how individuals labeled as mentally ill are understood by others and understand themselves.
Rather than locating distress within the individual, "mental illness" is reframed as emerging within the tensions of the social world, shaped by relations of power, exclusion, and belonging. This perspective opens space for responses grounded in connection, dignity, and collective
From Grief to Possibility: Thinking Queer Theory with Psychosis - Brett Thatcher
Grounded in Saketopoulou’s (2022, 2023) psychoanalytic reconsideration of our relationship to trauma in theory and practice - what she calls a traumatophilic approach, this presentation offers the provocations of Queer Theory to our thinking about psychosis. By allowing habituated notions to be unsettled by attention to the margins and inviting clinicians to “inhabit unease” (Amin 2017), this paper gestures toward a generative disturbance of the norms that discipline mental health. A selection of voices in Queer Theory (Amin, Halberstam, McRuer, Chambers-Letson, and others) will be utilized to draw attention to the frequently oppressive nature of the normativity used to deny social cohesion for those with psychotic experiences. More than just deconstructing the policing of these neoliberal logics, attention will be paid to the possibility of a more livable world, the world as it could be.
