#910 Michael Alcee PhD on The Upside of OCD

Michael Alcee, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Tarrytown, NY, and is a Mental Health Educator at the Manhattan School of Music. In his first book,Therapeutic Improvisation: How to Stop Winging It and Own It as a Therapist, Michael demonstrated how all clinicians are artists, reading the changes like well-versed jazz musicians, finding the poetic turns in their client's stories like skilled writers, and reveling in the creative act that emerges in the humanistic encounter of psychotherapy. In his forthcoming book, The Upside of OCD, Michael takes on the field's tilted view of OCD as merely a biological and behavioral condition. Instead, he claims that OCD is a misunderstood existential and empathic sensitivity that has served the life and work of notable OCD sufferers like climate activist Greta Thundberg, author John Green, record producer Jack Antonoff, biologist Charles Darwin, and innovator Nikola Tesla. Carrying on the relational work implied in Freud's case of the Ratman, Michael believes that OCD arises as an intriguing interplay of nature and nurture, one that can only be fully healed through an integrative approach that embraces meaning and feeling in equal measure alongside thoughts and behavior. Michael has been a TEDx speaker and organizer and is a regular contributor at Psychology Today along with contributions to NPR, The Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times, among others. Sign up for 10% off of Shrink Rap Radio CE credits at the Zur Institute