The Verbal Metrics Department filled a single corridor of Building M, a squat Bauhaus knockoff with one glass face that presided over the northwest corner of 275 acres of former farmland that everyone at the Scholastic Achievement Service referred to as a “campus.” 

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the British psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips delivered a talk at the Brooklyn Academy of Music titled “Acting Madness.” The event was being held in conjunction with BAM’s spring season, which features three…