Dear Friends,

I am pleased to introduce this remarkable interview of Edward Podvoll, MD, by Studs Terkel, recorded on September 13, 1990, in Chicago. The first Windhorse Community in Boulder came late in this cultural revolution of alternative care, having thrived from 1981 to 1987.  At the time of this interview, there was no active Windhorse community, and the alternative care movement seemed to be passing into history.  Yet, at the same time, the influence of mindfulness-awareness meditation on psychology and psychotherapy was just gaining momentum.  Windhorse, inspired by Naropa University, had been at the forefront of what has become known as the “mindfulness revolution.”  With mindfulness practice, therapists further deepen the skills of “being with” and learn more about true compassion.  We call this discipline “contemplative psychotherapy.”  In this interview you may hear a certain urgency in Dr. Podvoll’s voice, which he felt about spreading the message of the truth of recovery from psychosis and the means to do so.  He and we, his students, could not let this tradition of alternative care die out, and so Windhorse has survived.  As Dr. Podvoll states in Recovering Sanity (p.4), “There is a wisdom within the history of caring for insane people that is not well known.  Motivation toward an alternative, more natural, and homelike treatment is a long and venerable tradition within psychiatry itself.  It is a tradition that has always taken many risks in the pursuit of alternative treatments for mental illness.”

I hope you enjoy this interview,

Jeffrey Fortuna.