In this presentation, D. Graham Burnett — one of the leaders in a rising movement focused on ATTENTION ACTIVISM and practices of collective attentional emancipation — will introduce some of the work of those currently advancing this vision, which engages the humanities and the sciences, and reaches toward transformative politics. In an era that has seen new forms of exploitative financialization of our cognitive and sensory capacities (in the form of the so-called “attention economy”), new thinking about the social and existential dimensions of human attention is urgently needed. Teachers and therapists need to be in the vanguard as we confront, together, the dehumanizing dimensions of the business model that underlies so much of what is so promising in the technological transformations of our time.

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Life After Incarceration is a panel discussion highlighting issues related to re-entry for individuals leaving incarceration. Co-sponsored by the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics’ Justice and the Humanities Initiative and the Forum on Racial Justice in America.

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How might the process of creative non-fiction unlock facets of clinical experience that may have initially eluded us? Even as we hone skills of clinical sensitivity over years of practice – be it via forms of ‘even hovering attention’, the comments of supervisors, or forms of countertransference – a professional clinical stance invariably requires that we bracket multiple sources of information and engagement.

This course begins with a piece of clinical non-fiction drawn from the presenter’s time as a trainee in a prison context. In the sessions following, participants will be introduced to a rudimentary series of techniques of creative non-fiction and will then take up a series of writing exercises in which they return to one or more salient clinical experiences.

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When Nature: Molecular Psychiatry published Joanna Moncrieff’s 2022 paper The Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Systematic Umbrella Review of the Evidence, it sparked headlines around the world and became one of the most widely read and debated scientific articles in recent memory. The paper found no convincing evidence for the serotonin imbalance hypothesis of depression, signaling the end of the “chemical imbalance” story that had long shaped how we spoke about mental health, medication, and selfhood, and opening up space for different ways of thinking about the nature of emotional suffering itself.

A Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and co-founder of the Critical Psychiatry Network, Dr. Moncrieff’s philosophical and historical work exposes the social and political assumptions embedded in psychiatric practice. She led UK government-funded research on reducing and discontinuing antipsychotic drug treatment (the RADAR study), and collaborated on research to support antidepressant discontinuation. She is author of numerous papers and her books include A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs Second edition (PCCS Books, 2020), The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), The Myth of the Chemical Cure (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and most recently, Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth (Flint Books, 2025).

Her visit to Boston College invites a dialogue on the opportunities present in developing the psychological humanities as a foundation for clinical education and public discourse on mental and emotional suffering and healing.

Loss can be seen as an aspect of all human experience. Confining our focus to concrete losses limits our understanding of its place in our lives. Loss is everywhere. It is in the moments we first intuit the limits of another's empathy. It is in the recognition of what is unrealistic about our dreams, hopes, ideals, and ambitions. How does grasping loss's ubiquity affect life experience? This course compares psychoanalytic and literary perspectives on bearing loss. A central premise is that cross disciplinary study can enhance our understanding of what the poet, Elizabeth Bishop, has called "the art of losing."Loss can be seen as an aspect of all human experience. Confining our focus to concrete losses limits our understanding of its place in our lives. Loss is everywhere. It is in the moments we first intuit the limits of another's empathy. It is in the recognition of what is unrealistic about our dreams, hopes, ideals, and ambitions. How does grasping loss's ubiquity affect life experience? This course compares psychoanalytic and literary perspectives on bearing loss. A central premise is that cross disciplinary study can enhance our understanding of what the poet, Elizabeth Bishop, has called "the art of losing."

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The discipline of psychology studies the human mind and how psychological, biological, and societal influences contribute to individuals' well-being. Literature is how we make sense of the world and each other. By combining these two fields, we hope to bring about a new analysis of empathy, emotions, and psychological expression. Exploring work from authors such as Flannery O'Connor, George Saunders, Shirley Jackson, Tobias Wolff, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sheila Heti, and Weike Wang, we will employ psychological theories to analyze how writers craft compelling and realistic imitations of emotional expression that challenge our understanding of the world. We will look into research topics like Theory of Mind and the Gossip Theory of Fiction, and how they relate to craft elements such as character, structure, and plot.

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