Inhabiting Unease: Brett’s Contribution to the Psychosis Care & Connection Retreat

When Gould Farm welcomed clinicians, scholars, and families this past June for the second annual Psychosis Care & Connection Retreat, the air was once again filled with the unique blend of rigor, tenderness, and hope that has come to define these gatherings. Across three days, participants explored humanistic approaches to psychosis, building insight and connection. Among the several voices, one stood out as both challenging and compassionate—our own Brett Thatcher, LICSW, MTS, who shared his paper, A Generative Unease: Thinking Psychosis with Queer Theories.

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Brett’s presentation invited participants to pause and consider what happens when we resist the impulse to smooth over the discomfort that often accompanies encounters with psychosis. Instead of rushing toward solutions or standard definitions of recovery, he asked: what if we treated the strangeness and unease of psychosis not as something to be erased, but as something potentially generative—for the person experiencing it, and for the clinician walking alongside them?

Drawing from queer theory and contemporary psychoanalytic thought, Brett challenged listeners to see beyond cultural norms that quietly shape expectations of “successful” treatment. He suggested that rather than asking people to conform to predetermined markers of wellness—such as productivity, compliance, or symptom reduction—we might make space for the creative self-fashioning that often emerges from unusual experiences.

“What clients do with their symptoms,” Brett emphasized, “can be as vital to their identity and world-making as anything we might call recovery.”

Brett’s work reminds us that psychosis is not only a challenge to be managed but can also be, in his words, a “generative heuristic”—a way of living into new meanings, new selves, and even new worlds. His paper wove together philosophy, literature, and lived experience, yet it was grounded in the kind of compassion that makes theory feel alive and human. 

As Gould Farm looks ahead to hosting the third Psychosis Care & Connection Retreat in 2026, Brett’s contribution reminds us of what makes these kinds of gatherings vital. It is not simply a conference, but a place where the boundaries between professional and personal, clinical and human, soften. A space where ideas take root in relationship, unease becomes fertile ground for empathy, and hope is not imposed but emerges in community.

In Brett’s words, borrowed from his paper, we are called to “inhabit unease” and discover in it not despair, but a generative openness—a reminder that healing is not always about returning to what was, but about daring to imagine what might yet be.