Tweaking on Main, Pioneerworks, March 21, 2024
A new theory about the relationship between the "attention economy" and the adderall crisis.
An intellectual history of the development of the trauma concept by way of a profile of Bessel Van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score.
Mental Health is Political. The New York Times. September, 2022.
On how medicalization frames the current "crisis of mental health" as a biological problem, rather than the biological effect of ongoing political crises.
Intimacy at a Distance: The History of Telepsychiatry. The Nation. June, 2022.
On the history and perils of telepsychiatry as a solution to problems with accessing psychiatric care.
Don't Be So Attached to Attachment Theory. Gawker, January 2022.
On resisting the temptation of pop-psych's easy explanations.
Brain Scans Look Stunning, But What Do They Actually Mean? Psyche (by Aeon Magazine), November 2021.
On how neuroscientists create brain scanning tasks to model "reality," and the limits of those models.
A Virus Without a World. The Nation (print edition), September 2021.
On what's wrong with the contemporary genre of popular science writing that tries to stay "apolitical."
Scientology's Lonely Turf War: How the Left Learned to Love Psychiatry. Pioneer Works, The Broadcast, April 2021.
On the Scientologists' antipsychiatry museum in Los Angeles, and the history of the New Left's movement against psychiatry.
Shit for Brains. The Baffler, September 2020.
On Elon Musk's Neuralink.
The Bad Feature. N+1 (print edition), June 2020.
On plastic surgery and the medicalized optimization of gender in an era of human capital.
Why Doctors Are Fighting Their Professional Organization Over Medicare for All. The Nation, February 2020.
On the push for Medicare for All coming from inside the American Medical Association, and the history of the AMA's fight against single payer.
Medicalizing Society. Jacobin, August 2018.
On the Rockefeller Foundation's role in creating the discipline of psychiatry.