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The Narrative Fallacy describes our tendency to find meaning, connections, and causal relationships where they do not necessarily exist. In this episode, Dr. O'Leary had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky.

He recently published a paper called “Narrative fallacy and other limitations of psychodynamic case formulation.” Dr. Tolchenski did not invent the idea of the Narrative Fallacy, but he is working to apply this idea to his own clinical practice. We could all benefit from recognizing the ways that Narrative Fallacy plays out in our lives. The great thing about these ideas is that they are so generalizable. The Narrative fallacy is not limited to medicine or science, but can be applied, for example in how we explain to ourselves why our neighbor seems to hate us.

Tolchinsky, A. (2023). Narrative fallacy and other limitations of psychodynamic case formulation. Practice Innovations.

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/znxs5

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References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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Dr. O'Leary discusses a variety of concerns that all clinicians should have in mind when using psychometrics. In the end, he hopes you come away with some level of agreement with the statement: “Our primary concern should not be with the quantity of data, but with the quality of the data.” Statistics are conceptual machines that will produce results no matter what you feed them. These results can be truly helpful and informative. But statistics are also poop in poop out machines, and adding more malarky does not magically convert the results into something other than BS.

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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In this episode, Dr. O'Leary discusses a word that he has struggled to understand since medical school. The word is aphasia. The root “phasia” comes from the Greek phanai which means “to speak.” When aphasia is used medically, it refers to an inability to speak, although not always. More generally it is often used to mean a failure to understand or produce language, but it gets complicated. Dr. O'Leary reviews the brain regions responsible for various kinds of aphasia and how to identity them.

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.