Dad, I would like to say a few words on this occasion of your 90th birthday. Tolstoy begins his great novel Anna Karenina with this famous opening line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” A couple of sentences you could spend a lifetime pondering without quite figuring… Read more »
Welcome to the Existential Roundup, where we bring you links to some articles currently trending that may be of interest to those in the existential-humanistic psychology community. Care for aging baby boomers is the subject of this week’s Existential Roundup. We begin with a news story that caught my eye and made me scratch my… Read more »
I haven’t seen the doctor. Snowpocalypso 2015 was suggesting a non-driving weekend, and they’d only want me to take a narcotic painkiller. I’m not so keen on the idea. The last time they suggested it, I was agreeable. But the pills did little for the first pain I was feeling, and also inspired a second—a… Read more »
Today’s The New York Times bore out some sad news, at least to me. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, announced he has terminal liver cancer (Sacks, 2015). In his announcement, he followed the lead of his favorite philosopher, David Hume, in the… Read more »
Developmental psychology, primarily the history of child psychology and education, broadened to include theories of the stages of life and the lifespan, acknowledges a linear concept of growth, omitting a nonlinear axis representing self-actualization, which can occur at any stage in one’s development. Self-actualization is a life-long process marked by existential insights in moment to… Read more »
I could introduce this book by telling you it was written by a dear friend, I know some of the individuals interviewed, and I wrote the Forward—but I’d rather tell you it is inspiring reading for anyone who is interested in aging, creativity, and self-expression. A central theme of Judith Zausner’s career has been creativity…. Read more »
Photo by Elizabeth Thomsen. Browsing social media yet again when I should have been working, I came upon a story that broke my heart. The headline, written by a Fox News affiliate in Denver was, of course, designed to tear at the soul: “Woman, 29, chooses to die two days after husband’s birthday.” However, this… Read more »
Illustration by Genia Brodsky and Noam Sobel. Welcome to the Existential Roundup, where we bring you links to some articles currently trending that may be of interest to those in the existential-humanistic psychology community. If you have been paying attention to the smaller details of health news—the non-Ebola-related news—you might have come across this most… Read more »
I’ll be 41 here in a minute, and around these times we mark out as indications of aging, I like to spend a few minutes reflecting. What does it all mean? This year, I’ve decided to think about the upsides of aging. Sure, there are downsides, but we can’t have everything. The occasional focus on… Read more »
Barbara Shaiman. Photo by John P. Creveling. As we grow older and have less time left, there may be a tendency to ask, “What impact have I had?” “What have I contributed to others and future generations?” “What is my legacy?” Most theorists agree that adult development is ongoing. As we age, a major task… Read more »
