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Hello, my name is Bob Whitaker, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Kermit Cole. We'll be speaking about a philosophical enterprise that Kermit is now deeply engaged in. That is, broadly speaking, how humor can help in creating a shared experience that is helpful to the healing process. Kermit, in his experiences of being with people in psychotic states, has seen humor as a moment when a connection can be made. In many ways, this project is bringing Kermit back full circle to his work as a film director, early in his professional career.

After dropping out of Oberlin College, he joined a mime troupe that toured the U.S. as well as Italy and Greece, inspired by his interest in humor as well as how connection arises in the spaces between words. One of his first films was a short titled Before Comedy, which is a film performed entirely without words. Another, which he directed in 1994 was titled Living Proof: HIV and the Pursuit of Happiness.

I met Kermit shortly after I published my book Mad in America in 2002. He was working at that time as a Residence Director of what might be called a halfway house in Cambridge called Wellmet. This was for people who had been discharged from or who were avoiding stays in psychiatric hospitals. The house was modeled to a degree after the Soteria Project.

Then in 2012 after I published Anatomy of an Epidemic, Kermit, Louisa Putnam and I transformed my blog site into a web magazine, also called Mad in America. Kermit was the founding editor of the site, and for the first few years, he was something of a one-man band, posting science reviews, blogs and personal stories at a feverish pace. After retiring from that position, he trained in open dialog therapy, and Louisa and Kermit practiced dialogically inspired therapy with clients in New Mexico. Both Louisa and Kermit are Mad in America Board Members.

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A full transcript of this interview can be found here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/05/...

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