Can Covid-19 Begin to Heal Our Disconnected and Unjust Society? | Dr. Fay Bound Alberti

How might sweeping shifts in both religion and medicine in the nineteenth-century impact a wide array of things we face today like loneliness and racism? When the mind began ruling over the body we saw society shift and loneliness, racism, and mental illness rise. 

Dr. Fay Bound Alberti is a cultural historian, writer, and UKRI future leader’s fellow who studies the history of medicine and the human body. Her books include Matters of the Heart, The History of Medicine and Emotion, This Mortal Coil, the Human Body in History and Culture, A Biography of Loneliness The History of an Emotion.

Listen in as Dr. Bound Alberti finds a glimmer of hope in what feel like hopeless times.  She pinpoints the exact moments in which we started to separate body, mind, and spirit and how it ushered in the world that we now have.  She plants seeds of possibility that Covid-19 just might reconnect our bodies, minds, and spirits in a way that could usher in the social transformation that could end discrimination and loneliness and improve our health.  The key, she says, is the body.

Episode Timeline:

• [00:09] Intro
• [01:21] Meet Dr. Fay Bound Alberti
• [03:16] -Emotions and relationships
• [04:32] History of Separating The Mind And The Body
• [07:14] The need for structural change and social change
• [13:45] Covid-19 Destigmatizing Loneliness
• [17:05] Shared meaning as a barrier against loneliness
• [22:20] Psychotherapy Being Limited By Insurers
• [23:16] -The body as the solution
• [23:52] Medicalized approaches to loneliness
• [30:35] Loneliness and prejudice
• [35:58] Dr. Fay Bound Alberti’s Wish To Listeners
• [37:43] - Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Matters of The Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotion
• Book: This Mortal Coil: The Human Body In History and Culture
• Book: A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion
• UKRI Future Leaders 

Standout Quotes:

• Loneliness is being created and induced by our sensory experiences. [24:46] - Dr. Fay Bound-Alberti
• “Where people feel connected to others, either spiritually or even in a secular sense through environmentalism or movements or networks that make people feel imaginatively connected to some world outside of their own. I think that's that provides a barrier against loneliness.” [16:51] - Dr. Fay Bound-Alberti
• “One of the most important things for me about studying the history of medicine in the history of emotion is the ways in which some of the things that are entrenched in our society around racism, around sexism, around gender difference, they're rooted in what we think about the body, what we think about identity, what a person is capable of. And a lot of those ideas that were developed in the 19th century have not been sufficiently challenged.” [32:41] - Dr. Fay Bound-Alberti