A couple of months ago, I gave a presentation the set point theory of chronic illness, it was an attempt to use a new language, the language of cybernetics to shift out of this mind body duality when talking about illness.
The inspiration for this presentation was a paper by. Dr. Tom Pollock and Mike Levin. fter reading the paper and giving the presentation, I decided to reach out to the lead author, uh, Tom Pollock and have a chat. This conversation was the result. He’s a neuropsychiatrist based in the uk. We talk about his experience with a.
Which doctor and how that partly inspired, uh, section in the paper. And more broadly on the role of, of experience and challenges when wading into this field where there’s a clear interface between the mind and the body. I hope you enjoy.
Dr. Thomas Pollak is a neuropsychiatrist based in the UK who works at the interface of immunology and mental health. We talk about his encounter with a Balinese witch doctor, the cybernetics of chronic illness, and why psychiatry needs a more dynamic model of inflammation.
Episode Outline — Dr. Thomas Pollak: Reboots, Resets, and the Immunopsychiatry of Stuck States
00:00:00 Introduction and the Set Point Theory of Chronic Illness
00:01:30 The Witch Doctor Story
00:08:00 Humiliation, Shame, and One-Pointedness as Therapeutic Tools
00:12:00 A Room With a Dead Body
00:15:30 Meditation Practice and the Constructionist Turn in Neuroscience
00:18:30 The Tantric Phase of Science
00:24:00 Reset vs. Learning vs. Unlearning
00:30:00 Safety Behaviors, Canalization, and Narrowing of State Space
00:37:00 Long COVID, Interface Disorders, and the Two-Camps Problem
00:43:00 The Role of Awareness in Healing
00:45:00 What Kind of Awareness Is Therapeutic?
00:49:00 Neurostimulation and Embodied Experience
00:50:00 Autoimmunity and Psychosis: The Main Research Thread
You can find Dr Pollak’s substack here.
