Panel Discussion: "What Can Psychotherapists Learn From the Social Sciences?" Chair: Césare Alfonso Panelists: Vincenzo Di Nicola Arvind Rajagopalan Renato Antunes dos Santos International Federation for Psychotherapy 23rd World Congress of Psychotherapy Casablanca, Morocco 10 February 2023 Points covered: My first contribution was my model of Cultural Family Therapy (CFT) A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, & Therapy (1997) Next, I articulated overarching principles of the psychotherapies Letters to a Young Therapist (2011) Now, we are re-visioning psychotherapy through philosophy Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event

1. Panel Discussion
What Can Psychotherapists Learn
From the Social Sciences?
Professor Vincenzo Di Nicola
International Federation for Psychotherapy
23rd World Congress of Psychotherapy
Casablanca, Morocco
10 February 2023

2. Professor Vincenzo Di Nicola
MPhil, MD, DipPsych, FRCPC, PhD, FCAHS, DLFAPA, DFCPA
Professeur titulaire, Université de Montréal
President, World Association of Social Psychiatry
Email: vincenzodinicola@gmail.com

3. 1997 2011 2021

4. Culture & Family Therapy (CFT)
My first contribution was my model of Cultural Family Therapy (CFT)
A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, & Therapy (1997)
• Medical anthropology – Ellen Corin, Margaret Locke (McGill), Arthur
Kleinman, Byron Good, Mary Jo Delvecchio Good (Harvard)
• Cultural anthropology (USA) – Clifford Geertz, Gregory Bateson
• Social anthropology (UK) – Mary Douglas, Victor Turner

5. Culture & Family Therapy (CFT)
A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, & Therapy (1997)
• Key clinical tool: Working with liminal people & liminal experiences
• Social anthropology of Victor Turner
• CFT is threshold therapy for threshold people

6. A Practical Synthesis
Next, I articulated overarching principles of the psychotherapies
Letters to a Young Therapist (2011)
• Philosophy – Giorgio Agamben (Italy)
• Critical pedagogy – Ivan Illich (Austria), Neil Postman (USA)
• Ethics – Emmanuel Levinas (France)
• Sociology – Christopher Lasch, Robert Putnam (USA)

7. A Practical Synthesis
Letters to a Young Therapist (2011)
• Critical concepts: Ambiguity, complexity, uncertainty
• “Technopoly is at war with subjectivity” – Neil Postman
• We don’t know when therapy starts or when it ends
• Why people go into therapy and why we offer to do it

8. Evental Therapy
Now, we are re-visioning psychotherapy through philosophy
• Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event
Slow Thought: A Manifesto (2019) – critique of speed and “development”
Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Sciences, the Humanities,
and Neuroscience (with D Stoyanov, 2021) – lack of a grounding theory
Changing the Subject: The Event in Psychology, Psychiatry, and
Psychotherapy (with John Farnsworth, in preparation)

9. Evental Therapy
Changing the Subject: The Event in Psychology, Psychiatry, and
Psychotherapy (with John Farnsworth, in preparation)
• Foundation: Philosophy of the Event (Badiou)
• An Event changes a world, marking life before and after
• Conditions for the Event: it is experienced, it is named, and in
being faithful to the Event, you become a new person

10. References
• Di Nicola, V. A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families and Therapy. New York &
London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.
• Di Nicola, V. Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming
Community. New York & Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011.
• Di Nicola, V. Take your time: Seven pillars of a slow thought manifesto. Aeon
(online magazine). February 27, 2018. https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-
the-seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto
• Di Nicola, V, Stoyanov, D. Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Science,
The Humanities, and Neuroscience. Foreword by KWM Fulford, MD, Afterword by
A Frances, MD. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2021.