
Society starts with two—one is a fiction.
Dr Di Nicola is a child psychiatrist, family psychotherapist, and philosopher in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he is professor of psychiatry & addictology at the University of Montreal. He is also clinical professor of psychiatry & behavioral health at The George Washington University and president of the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP). Dr Di Nicola has received numerous national and international awards, honorary professorships, and fellowships. Of note, Dr Di Nicola was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (FCAHS), given the Distinguished Service Award of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists (FACPsych) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC). His work straddles psychiatry and psychotherapy on one side and philosophy and poetry on the other. Dr Di Nicola’s publications include: A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families and Therapy (WW Norton, 1997), Letters to a Young Therapist (Atropos Press, 2011), and Psychiatry in Crisis: At the Crossroads of Social Sciences, the Humanities, and Neuroscience (with D. Stoyanov; Springer Nature, 2021).

Society starts with two—one is a fiction.


Embracing movement as theory.

Experience is an end in itself, not measured in time or goals.

Challenging what is normal and the value of order.

From the Global North to the Global South.

Trauma is the distance between the reach and the grasp for our chosen image.

Poetry for peace in a time of war.

An analysis of polarization: “To be aware of the abyss of polarization is already to be forewarned and forearmed.”

What are the links between social psychiatry and the family therapy movement?

Some of the most divisive notions in the Western world and the Global North: individualism and independence. Are they a myth?

Welcome to the new column, “Second Thoughts… About Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy.”

A poetic conversation among a Palestinian Israeli psychologist, an Italian Canadian psychiatrist, and a Canadian United Church Pastor in a time of war.