Dr Thomas Pollak on Balinese witch doctors and therapeutic resets for chronic illness

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 States00:00:00 Introduction and the Set Point Theory of Chronic Illness00:01:30 The Witch Doctor Story00:08:00 Humiliation, Shame, and One-Pointedness as Therapeutic Tools00:12:00 A Room With a Dead Body00:15:30 Meditation Practice and the Constructionist Turn in Neuroscience00:18:30 The Tantric Phase of Science00:24:00 Reset vs. Learning vs. Unlearning00:30:00 Safety Behaviors, Canalization, and Narrowing of State Space00:37:00 Long COVID, Interface Disorders, and the Two-Camps Problem00:43:00 The Role of Awareness in Healing00:45:00 What Kind of Awareness Is Therapeutic?00:49:00 Neurostimulation and Embodied Experience00:50:00 Autoimmunity and Psychosis: The Main Research ThreadYou can find Dr Pollak’s substack here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit essays.debugyourpain.com