Psychiatric Times Home page teaser: Experience is an end in itself, not measured in time or goals. Column: "Second Thoughts ... About Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy" Link: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/slow-thought-in-a-fast-city Slow Thought in a Fast City May 15, 2024 Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FCAHS, DLFAPA, DFCPA

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Psychiatric Times
Home page teaser: Experience is an end in itself, not measured in time or goals.
Column: Second Thoughts
Link: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/slow-thought-in-a-fast-city
Slow Thought in a Fast City
May 15, 2024
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, FCAHS, DLFAPA, DFCPA
We are in New York City, navigating between my participation at the Annual Meeting of the
American Psychiatric Association (APA) here and my Brazilian wife and young daughter’s first
visit to the city. Both the meeting and the city are in a perpetual, inexhaustible hubbub, an
infusion of espresso on an IV drip.
My nervous system feeds on a large metropolis like New York City (population: 8.3 million),
having lived in London, England (Greater London: 8.9 million) for my postgraduate work in
psychology almost 50 years ago and visiting my family in São Paulo, Brazil (12.4 million; Greater
São Paulo: 22 million) for the last 30 years. Montreal, Canada’s second largest city where we
live, is practically a town in comparison (1.8 million).
Frank Sinatra’s voice singing the “Theme from New York, New York”1
is in my mind everywhere
we go. I love the energy, the openness and the plurality and of this “city that never sleeps.” And
yet.

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As in Montreal where I live, I see a lot of people walking around NYC plugged in to their
headphones or walking down the street looking at their smartphone screens, barely avoiding
running into people or cars. In a week in the city, I saw precisely one person on the subway
reading a book. She was standing and had it down to an art – with a bookmark clipped on the
page, feet planted widely apart, and leaning back on a divider to stabilize herself against the
starts and stops of the train. There were fewer bookstores than I remember just a few years
ago. Two of my favorites – Rizzoli and The Strand – are still there but there are no bookstores
anywhere in sight in Times Square or on Broadway.
Where are the spaces for reflection in this city? Central Park surely, where we spent the first
afternoon on a leisurely stroll. In his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Italian semiotician
Umberto Eco2
has a chapter called, “Lingering in the Woods” where he describes the pleasures
of a slow, digressive text and Central Park is like that. You don’t go there with a purpose – the
experience is an end in itself, not measured in time or goals. New York’s museums are another
place for reflection – my return visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), a ritual for an
unrepentant modernist like me, is like going home. Henri Matisse’s large canvas, “Dance,” with
its exuberant nudes dancing in a circle against a flat background of primary colors, never fails to
lift my spirits and invite me to sit and watch them. And Giorgio de Chirico’s mostly unpeopled
cityscapes are a striking contrast to this densely populated city. The ironies abound.
Until recently, I would have added Washington Square encircled by those redoubtable bastions
of liberal thought, New York University and The New School, where I have former professors
and friends. It was calm and peaceful during a sunny afternoon, but the shadow of illiberal anti-
Israel and anti-Semitic protests cast a pall on our visit. I wanted to visit the bookstore at The
New School where Simon Critchley, one of my mentors in philosophy teaches, but a Pro-
Palestinian protest with signs like “Shame On You Shalala” (a reference to The New School’s
President, Donna Shalala, a highly respected academic and former politician in the Carter and
Clinton administrations) kept me away.

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Instead, we went into a Greenwich Village gallery to see Bob Dylan’s paintings, “The Beaten
Path,” not far from folk clubs like The Bitter End where he got his start. After becoming a
master of the American songbook (see his The Philosophy of Modern Song),3
Dylan is now
painting the American landscape. A former New Yorker, Dylan’s paintings reflect both its
density and its intensity, fused with a capacity to observe it seriously, soberly, slowly. There is
nothing rushed about these canvases which stretch from drab run-down cafés and old signs
into riots of colors where lurid neon lights bleed into magenta and indigo skies. Like de
Chirico’s, Dylan’s cityscapes are populated with the artifacts of our culture but not its people.
Paradoxically, New York is the perfect place to repeat my pitch for slow thought. And to
practice it.
My call for Slow Thought4
is part of the global Slow Movement instigated by Italian journalist
Carlo Petrini5
with his protest against the opening of an American fast food franchise near
Rome’s famous Spanish Steps in 1986. Against fast food, Petrini called for Slow Food which
morphed into the worldwide Cittàslow or Slow Cities movement, based in Orvieto, Umbria. The
Slow Movement has now reached into every aspect of contemporary life, from Slow Medicine
to my own Slow Thought.4, 6
Slow Thought versus Developmentalism
As I wrote in my column on the Global South, [hyperlink here to April 26th
column:
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/from-quebecs-two-solitudes-to-the-global-south]
Slow Thought has a critical relationship to globalization and critiques of development.7 Both the
metaphor and the reality of development, from its application to stages of life (child
development) to economics, have adverse effects.
“Developmentalism” is always in a rush, represented in our work in child psychiatry and
developmental psychology by the notion of stages and the Western urge to accelerate them.8

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When Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget was asked if it was possible to accelerate a child’s
cognitive development, he paused and said, “Ah yes, the American question.” American scholar
of comparative mythology and religion, Joseph Campbell told the story of presenting Dante’s
Convivio in Eugene, Oregon, with its four stages of life – youth, maturity, wisdom, and old age.
A woman in the audience rose to counter that, “In America today, Mr. Campbell, we go directly
from youth to wisdom.” “That’s really wonderful,” Campbell replied. “All you’ve missed is life.”
What is the Opposite of Slow?
It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-
alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they
makeno mistakes,and they produce only dead things.Thealive-alive are constantly in error,
in search, in torment.
—Yevgeny Zamyatin9
When it comes to thought, the opposite of slow is not speed but mindlessness. Zombies are
mindless. What Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin called the “dead-alive.” In a future column, I
will offer my take on the “two kinds of people” of today’s popular culture – vampires and
zombies. For now, I will focus on zombies. Recall the people speeding along the streets of New
York or Montreal – plugged in, earphones on, talking to the air, eyes glued to their smartphone
screens, oblivious to their social surroundings. Stoked on industrial doses of caffeine at places
that rhyme with “Barstruck” everywhere or “Jim Norton’s” in Canada.
Count me among Zamyatin’s “alive-alive,” constantly searching, often in error, tormented by
what I see. Skeptical of received wisdom, scarcely arriving at certainties. Not for nothing do I
call this column, “Second Thoughts.” And yet, zombies walk among us, busy by their actions,
dead in their thoughts. Being busy is a fence against reflective thought. If you stop, you may
have to actually think about what you are doing. As the ad says, “Just do it.” And my Slow
Thought rejoinder is: Don’t just do something, stand there! Or sit there. Even better – think.

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In an upside-down update on Timothy Leary’s counter-culture mantra from the 1960s, “Tune in,
turn on, drop out,” the world is telling you: Turn on (your smartphone), tune out (the social
world), and join the crowd (where you can easily lose yourself).
Change versus Traumatic Repetition
Change. But start slowly, because direction is more important than speed.
– Paulo Coelho
There is a popular anecdote about the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania. A man who survived
that flood (that had some 2200 victims) spent the rest of his life telling stories about the “Great
Flood of 1889,” tirelessly recounting each detail he recalled. When he dies and arrives at the
Pearly Gates, St. Peter announces that everyone who gets to Heaven has to give an inaugural
lecture, advising him, “You have all eternity, take your time.” And the man replied quickly, “I
know what I want to talk about.” “Yes,” says St. Peter wearily, “but remember that Noah will be
in your audience.”
This old anecdote is very instructive for our times. The man who survived the Johnstown flood
experienced traumatic repetition. Through constant retelling, he re-experienced his trauma in a
futile effort to master it (the devastating flood he survived). But he never does even when faced
with a much larger perspective on his trauma (Noah’s Biblical flood). Change is unlikely when
someone is stuck in an endless loop of traumatic repetition. Today’s “busy-ness” is like that;
you have to interrupt the loop to stop and think for change to happen.
In The Art of Stillness, British essayist Pico Iyer10
offers an antidote to this endless movement
and mindless repetition:

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In an age of speed … nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of
distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of
constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
“Walking the Talk”
Do I practice what I preach? One of my friends in Montreal told me when my Slow Thought
Manifesto4
was published that it was ironic coming from someone he sees as a rather quick
person. Maybe that’s the point – “Physician heal thyself”! In any case, Slow Thought does not
mean being dull-witted. Above all, it is a call for calm deliberation before action. I call it,
“Walking the talk.” Have your say and the practice follows.
And what about the other part of my visit to New York City – the Annual Conference of the APA
(well documented in several posts in Psychiatric Times)? Let me share a secret with you: I was
very busy slowing down! I participated in the APA Assembly for three days, where our
committee gave out Assembly Awards, leisurely; I attended several receptions at the APA and
the Indo-American Psychiatric Association (IAPA) with my wife and daughter where we danced;
and I attended the annual meeting of a caucus I co-founded and chaired on Global Mental
Health & Psychiatry.
The luncheon meeting of the American Association of Social Psychiatry (AASP) was sandwiched
between two award presentations for the AASP Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award which
went to my friend and fellow Psychiatric Times columnist, H. Steven Moffic, MD, and the
George Tarjan Award which went to another dear friend, Dr. Rama Rao Gogineni. We
schmoozed, we joked, we dined, we danced and we drank – and I helped to bring two new
national associations for social psychiatry in Mexico and West Africa into the World Association
of Social Psychiatry (WASP) fold. And I didn’t attend a single scientific session (but please do not
tell the Program Committee). Too busy having fun and slowing down in the world’s fastest city!

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Like the man who survived the Johnstown flood, we should think carefully before choosing
what we are going to say and do. As Bob Dylan sang, “I’ll know my song well before I start
singin’” …
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
– Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (1963)11
That’s why Slow Thought means calm deliberation before action.
Thoughts for the Seventh Day
Let me leave you with a few suggestive – and hopefully instructive – bon mots for calm
reflection. I call them thoughts for the seventh day. If you are not religious, you can call them
thoughts for a rainy day. The first three are from New Yorkers …
Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
– Songwriter Paul Simon, “59th
Street Bridge Song”12
As a general rule, do not take in any more information after seven or eight o’clock at
night.
– Educator and cultural critic Neil Postman13
Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a
mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may
have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni.

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Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person
next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on
your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.
– Celebrity chef and travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain14
And finally, Leo Szilard was a Hungarian Jewish physicist on the Manhattan Project who later
rued his contribution to the making of the first atomic bomb. Szilard’s “Ten Commandments”15
are all about rhythm and timing with a gentle non-determinism, bowing to the “connections of
things” and the “laws of conduct of men.” I will close with my favorite of his commandments:
Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so
that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.
Resources
• The Slow City Movement, based in Orvieto, Italy:
https://www.cittaslow.org/
• Vincenzo Di Nicola, Take your time: Seven pillars of a slow thought manifesto. Aeon
Magazine. February 27, 2018. Accessed May 11, 2024.
https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-the-seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto
Dr Di Nicola is a child psychiatrist, family psychotherapist, and philosopher in Montreal, Quebec,
Canada, where he is professor of psychiatry & addiction medicine at the University of Montreal
and President of the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP). He has been recognized
with numerous national and international awards, honorary professorships, and fellowships,
and was recently elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and given the
Distinguished Service Award of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr Di Nicola’s work
straddles psychiatry and psychotherapy on one side and philosophy and poetry on the other. Dr

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Di Nicola’s writing includes: A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families and Therapy (WW
Norton, 1997), Letters to a Young Therapist (Atropos Press, 2011, winner of a prize from the
Quebec Psychiatric Association), and Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Sciences,
the Humanities, and Neuroscience (with D. Stoyanov; Springer Nature, 2021); and, in the arts,
his “Slow Thought Manifesto” (Aeon Magazine, 2018) and Two Kinds of People: Poems from
Mile End (Delere Press, 2023, nominated for The Pushcart Prize).
Acknowledgement
I would like to dedicate this column to Brooklyn author Paul Auster who passed away on April
30, 2024. His New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room)16
reads at once like
three detective novels, an alternate history, and a skeleton key to the “City of Glass” which may
or may not be New York.
References
1. Theme from New York, New York. Wikipedia. Accessed May 11, 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_from_New_York,_New_York
2. Eco U. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Harvard University Press; 1994.
3. Dylan B. The Philosophy of Modern Song. Simon & Schuster; 2022.
4. Di Nicola V. Take your time: Seven pillars of a slow thought manifesto. Aeon. February 27,
2018. Accessed May 11, 2024. https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-the-seven-pillars-of-
a-slow-thought-manifesto
5. Petrini C. Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair. Rizzoli
Publications; 2013.

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6. Honoré C. In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. HarperSanFrancisco; 2004.
7. Kothari A, Salleh A, Escobar A, Demaria F, Acosta A, eds. Pluriverse: A Post-Development
Dictionary. Tulika Books/Columbia University Press; 2019.
8. Di Nicola V. Development and its vicissitudes – a review of Pluriverse: A Post-Development
Dictionary, ed. by A Kothari, A Salleh, A Escobar, F Demaria, and A Acosta. Tulika
Books/Columbia University Press, 2019. Global Mental Health & Psychiatry Review. 2023;
3(1): 17-19.
9. Zamyatin Y. OnLiterature, Revolution, Entropy,and Other Matters (1923),ed.& trans. Ginsburg
M. In: A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The University of Chicago Press; 1970.
10. Iyer P. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. TED Books/Simon & Schuster;
2014.
11. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Wikipedia. Accessed May 11, 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hard_Rain%27s_a-Gonna_Fall
12. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy). Wikipedia. Accessed May 11, 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_59th_Street_Bridge_Song_(Feelin%27_Gro
ovy)&oldid=1219112954
13. Sternberg J. Neil Postman’s advice on how to live the rest of your life. ETC: A Review of
General Semantics. 2006;63(2):152-160.
https://www.academia.edu/1984314/Neil_Postmans_Advice_on_How_to_Live_the_Rest_o
f_Your_Life
14. This quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain is possibly apocryphal but it is too good not to
be true. So, to honor that wonderful free spirit and guide to the good, slow life, let us
pretend they really are his words.

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15. Szilard L. The Ten Commandments of Leo Szilard. In: The Voice of the Dolphins & Other
Stories. Stanford University Press; 1992.
16. Auster P. The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room. Penguin; 2006.