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Adam DeVille

@adamdeville.bsky.social
578 followers 312 following 1.1K posts

Professor of psychology and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Canadian citizen abroad.

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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
"Freud tells us...that our operating systems are defined by ambivalence, that we cannot eliminate contradiction but can fashion it into something livable, that we are creative and defensive creatures whose evasions are themselves imaginative acts." hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-f...
hedgehogreview.com
Freud in the Age of Therapy-Speak
Casual self-diagnosis flourishes as a consequence of our current obsession with therapeutic infotainment.
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Curtis @soccurt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Extremely long shot post, but do any scholars know if there were programs run in Indigenous communities that IQ tested kids to select kids to transfer to schools not in Indigenous communities? (Will appreciate a repost if you don't know an answer to this.)
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
@pdubco.bsky.social
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
OC Transpo bus, Ottawa, September 1996.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
A lovely reflection on what goes into, and goes on in, one's consulting room as a psychotherapist. I admit I've spent huge amounts of time over the years fussing about mine--where the couch should go, how many lamps, where to put the plants, whether to have a bookcase so I can appear smart, etc.
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Annette Yoshiko Reed @annetteyreed.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
August as an academic
Tabbycat in tie say he hopes he doesn’t have a lot of meetings… while in the background is a lots of meetings factory
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
@gaybitterskeets.bsky.social
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Immigration is, indeed, good.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
It's nearly August, so of course like all academics I'm suddenly possessed of the manic urge to write, which urge was nowhere in evidence for the first 2.5 months of the summer recess.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Mentalization therapy has a strong empirical foundation for effectiveness in working with personality disorders, including in group therapy, but what about individual therapy? Two recent books are, at long last, helpful in this regard. booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2026/07/ment...
booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com
Mentalization and its Discontents
I have been reading works on mentalization (some of them discussed here ) for at least five years now, not long after I discovered how much ...
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Niko Stratis @nikostratis.com · 21/07/2026
If gender isn’t sandwiches explain how you turn a croque monsieur into a madam just by giving her a cute hat
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Perhaps it's my peculiar or unduly dark reading of Freud, but I have long assumed from him that--to put it crudely in contemporary terms--the unconscious is not your friend: it is, rather, the repository of all of our darkest & most destructive drives & self-sabotaging impulses.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
With the usual horrible timing I end up making raspberry jams (red and black) on the most disgustingly hot and humid night of the month. But at least I'll have a jar to take in the morning to my piano teacher to distract him from how little I practiced this week!
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
#booksky: Any Eric Hobsbawm fans on here? I've wanted to read him for ages so I sat down this week with four of his books and am enjoying them immensely.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Any Eric Hobsbawm fans on here? I've wanted to read him for ages so I sat down this week with four of his books and am enjoying them immensely.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Dr Aftab again raising crucial questions in psychiatric nosology.
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
chrisdillow.substack.com/p/the-35-str...
chrisdillow.substack.com
The 35% strategy
It is both electorally expedient and morally correct to ignore large chunks of public opinion.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Am I a snob? incorrigible old-timer? for refusing your very attractive new subscriber price for the sole reason that I want a print copy to read at breakfast each morning? I hate digital subscriptions (except, sometimes, for academic journals) so even if it's free I'm not likely to read it.
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Christopher Hale @christopherjhale.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity. “You are not numbers or case files. “You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
High on my list of things to ban when I become Emperor of All I Survey will be the SUV and pickup truck (except, perhaps, on farms). These drivers are also the worst tail-gaters around.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I just learned that the Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles has died. I've recommended his books on the spiritual and moral life of children to students and patients for years, and have often returned to his charming (if incomplete) biography of Anna Freud. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/u...
nytimes.com
Robert Coles, Pulitzer-Winning Child Psychiatrist, Is Dead at 97
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Karen Maroda is in the top 3 clinicians from whom I've learned the most. This updated 2nd ed. is even more fantastic than the 1st.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
My Canadian high-school did this in the 80s for us starting in gr.10. I can't believe how often those insights are used regularly and how often my American students got nothing even close.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Why do some patients not get better in psychotherapy? Irwin Hirsch reminds us of the dangers of "coasting in the countertransference." It is a simple, useful, and powerful book about a problem that prevents patients from improving. booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2026/05/on-t...
booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com
On Therapeutic Drift or: Coasting in the Counter-Transference
There are certain books which may meander for several hundred pages, but have a single, simple thesis easily summed up in a paragraph or les...
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Tiziana Metitieri @timetit.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
"Each of these labels can capture something useful and inform treatment options, but none of them do justice to the dimensional and dynamic nature of mental illness."
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Hey psychologists, when you're explaining some psychological phenomenon that's perfectly well captured in psychological terms, maybe you don't need to refer to some shitty neuroimaging study with ten people to make it seem more "sciencey"...
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Me when therapists start on about mindfulness: Get that commodified capitalist woo-woo shit out of here. Me when my piano teacher says "I want you to be mindful that your fingers are not hammers, but they are extensions of your wrist and arm. Be mindful of the weight and movement of your arm as you
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Awais Aftab @awaisaftab.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Twilight of the Psychopharmacologists A Review of “Psychopharmacology Reconsidered” and the collapse of diagnosis-centered psychopharmacology www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/twilight-o...
psychiatrymargins.com
Twilight of the Psychopharmacologists
The collapse of diagnosis-centered psychopharmacology
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Ye Olde Fish & Chip Shoppe.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
I gotta stop spending money at this amazing new Indian place that opened a short walk from my place. I also love cooking. So hit me up with your top 3 Indian cookbooks and/or recipe websites.
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Mikki Brock @mikkibrock.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
I don't see this said enough: the widespread use of generative AI is not only making our jobs as educators harder logistically, but also emotionally. It is genuinely sad to be suspicious of students when you have spent so much time building a pedagogy based on trust and not being a cop. It sucks.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
I don't know how people read books without making extensive marginalia. theamericanscholar.org/thinking-in-...
theamericanscholar.org
Thinking in the Margins - The American Scholar
What Oliver Sacks jotted down in the books he read
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Freud, Standard Edition (eds. Strachey et al.), 24 vols. D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality. Nina Coltart, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue; Dependent Rational Animals. Leston Havens, Making Contact. Adam Phillips, The Cure for Psychoanalysis; Missing Out.
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Awais Aftab @awaisaftab.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
In the March cover story for Psychiatric Times, I provide an overview of the proposed changes to the future DSM, accompanied by some personal commentary and suggestions of my own. www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-fut...
psychiatrictimes.com
The Future DSM: Bold Redesign, Lingering Blind Spots | Psychiatric Times
The future DSM revamp is coming, weaving social context, biomarkers, functioning and symptom dimensions into faster, evidence-based diagnosis.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
@1t2ls.bsky.social
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
@1t2ls.bsky.social : reference to Rorty here in this interview with Adam Phillips, the most interesting psychoanalyst writing in English today. www.culturedmag.com/article/2026...
culturedmag.com
Psychoanalysts Jamieson Webster and Adam Phillips on How to Get the Life You Want
The psychoanalysts reflect on reclaiming curiosity, humility, and pleasure in the end times, as Phillips heads into retirement.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
In addition to being the author of *The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days*, a moving and fascinating book, Mark Edmundson is one of the great defenders of an education in the humanities, as he is in this essay where he argues that "Solitude is an elemental necessity of
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
I have deeply loved and been greatly enriched by all his books, not least because of his clear refusal to play the part of 'guru.' www.interviewmagazine.com/literature/a...
interviewmagazine.com
Adam Phillips Is No One’s Guru
The London-based shrink is the quiet confessor to the city's artists and writers, and a cultural figure in his own right. For our March issue, he made time to talk with his friend, the writer Hermione...
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Sofia Jeppsson @jeppsson.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
I wrote a long blog post called Psychotherapy, neuroscience and honesty. jeppssonphilosopherauthor.blogspot.com/2026/02/psyc... It's about therapists who feel like they have to prop up any psych talk with SOME neuroscience theory or other. #philsky #psysky
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
For those who treat psychotic patients or have interest in such conditions, I have long found Christopher Bollas' books some of the most deeply moving and helpful. He'll be presenting in early February at this event that looks most interesting. trtogether.com/events/chris...
trtogether.com
Christopher Bollas: A live unscripted lecture on working with Psychosis
Christopher Bollas’ work has been profoundly influential in contemporary psychoanalytic thought, shaping how clinicians understand the unconscious, the mind, and the work of psychoanalysis. He...
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
My youngest daughter, almost 15, manifestly earned a place in the will by sketching me this portrait of him "under whom we conduct our different lives" (in the words of Auden's panygeric) for Christmas.
Sigmund Freud in pencil.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
@1t2ls.bsky.social: thought of you today in a bookstore in Charleston WV with multiple large poetry sections.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
AI avant la lettre.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
On the second day of Christmas we have some more Winnicott as a treat:
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
A lovely story.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Bliss it is to have one's building on campus entirely empty, permitting silence to read and stare out the window. This new book on Bion is very good.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
God love Montréal winters!
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
On a cold morning run past my favorite library tree and lo! what do I spy but some Handel whom I love. So I'll noodle away at this on the piano and be ready for my global debut c. 2097.
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BiteSize Therapy @bitesizetherapy.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
As this article wonderfully illustrates, the spurning of psychoanalytic thought has led to serious deficiencies in training programs.
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Adam DeVille @adamdeville.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
“Therapeutic interaction is an inherently sloppy process....Rather than seeing this sloppiness as problematic, we see it as critical to the generation of new possibilities for psychotherapeutic change….Sloppiness is potentially creative.” (Boston Change Process Study Group 2010)
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