We talk to Andrew Kay about the political and cultural aspects of psychiatric disorders — looking specifically at how OCD has gone mainstream because of the kind of society in which we live.

We start by talking about Andrew’s great Harper’s essay in which he chronicles his own struggles with OCD and recounts his participation in an OCD convention in San Francisco — where participants paid good money to, among other things, cure their OCD by hugging a homeless man and dumpster driving. And then we go into all sorts of related things: Puritanism and the religious quality of living with OCD, the effect of suburbs and the internet and social alienation on mental health, the totalitarian nature of modern American psychology (if you’re not happy with the way things are, you must be crazy and need be pumped full of pills) and how this compares with the Soviet practice of institutionalizing dissidents in psych wards, the role the Pentagon played in shaping our concept of the mind, my own self-diagnosis of ADHD and pill regimen…

Take a listen. And read more stuff by Andrew Kay.

—Yasha

PS: I wrote about how social media has made as all OCD a few weeks before we talked to Andrew.

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