Tag: Academia


Learning to live with ambiguity

Blurry_Prison_0

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 »

The paradox of servant leadership in the classroom and therapy office

Fred_Rogers2C_late_1960s

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 »

Opening to Heartfulness: Gratitude and the Sacred

Merci_d27Exister

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 »

Dear Hollywoodãor How To Pick A University

Actor_Sander_Jan_Klerk_Hollywood_Hills

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 »

Doctoring Lessons

Brockhaus_and_Efron_Jewish_Encyclopedia_e6_535-3

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 »

Why Do You Care What The Pope Thinks?

pope

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 »