This week, I took my orals for advancement to candidacy at Saybrook. It seems like light years from that first residential conference when I met the Saybrook elite and fell in love with the Humanistic-Existential practice of psychology. It was a struggle, but a good struggle. It wasn’t a fair fight. They loaded the bases… Read more »
The world is changing. If you want to survive in the modern world, you have to be leaner, sharper, colder. You have to cut back on love and empathy and focus more on the bottom line. Don’t get me wrong: I love your idealism. I just think you need to be more realistic. Look, so… Read more »
Writing in the Pacific Standard, Jerry Adler suggests that research psychology—like most branches of experimental science right now—is facing a crisis. Poorly proofed journals, unreproducible results, questionable statistical models … It leads him to ask the headlining question: “Can Social Scientists Save Themselves?” Or will reformation need to come from the outside? Ironically the article… Read more »
I am in an abusive relationship. It’s hard to spot. Nobody in my house is hitting anybody or neglecting anyone, or shouting, insulting, degrading. In fact, the abusive relationship does not involve my family at all, except as codependents. What I’m addicted to is money, and my family can’t live with me unless I have… Read more »
I loved Mr. Rogers as a kid—that avuncular, kindly, gently humorous man who could instill in me a desire to learn and become involved in civic endeavors better than any of my childhood teachers could. Now, with Fred Rogers shining in my memory, I work as a professor and a therapist. In the classroom, I… Read more »
It’s quite expensive to be poor in the United States. I was driving along a minor arterial in a poor part of town. I could tell it was poor because it was grimy and the buildings were old and poorly used. People used the sidewalks there, the sort of people who can’t afford different outfits… Read more »
Last year, I was teaching a section of Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy and discussing with my students the topic of mysticism and personal experiences of the “sacred,” which I loosely define as that which is associated with authentic perception of beauty, feelings of awe, and the dawning of wordless profound wisdom that enriches our lives. Trusting that… Read more »
Birdman. Michael Keaton, some other people you might have heard of. The trailers make it look really interesting, the story of a washed-up superhero who was never more than second-rate being dragged out of retirement by popular demand. That could be funny. Only that has nothing whatsoever with the movie. It’s really about a washed-up… Read more »
Last night, I taught my first ever psychology/sociology class to MCAT students. As many of you probably do not know, the MCAT—the Medical College Admissions Test—is adding for 2015 a brand new content section on psychology and sociology in which they expect incoming medical students to have taken at least one semester of introductory psychology… Read more »
Photo by Alfredo Borba. I mean, you aren’t Catholic, so why do you share the little articles about what the Pope says? Benedict seems to have been more conservative. He didn’t do a great deal about systematic abuse in the church, didn’t have anything to say about same-sex romances, had a hard, traditional line on… Read more »
