What does it actually take to heal, not just manage symptoms or get through the week, but to grow? Dr. Irene Hurford, MD, is a psychiatrist who works from a non-biological frame. She sees the person and their development first, and the diagnosis and prescription pad second. In this conversation we get into what robust psychological treatment can look like, including with people experiencing psychosis, a population often written off as reachable only through medication. Irene talks about medication as a supplement rather than a cure: sometimes helpful, sometimes necessary, but rarely the whole story. We also explore what developmental pain feels like from the inside: the disorientation, the grief, the sense that something is breaking when something may actually be forming. Irene makes the case that this process isn’t reserved for the severely ill. It’s a human one, and most of us are somewhere in it. Both of us being proud patients in analytic treatment. Heal on my dudes!