Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death. –R. D. Laing I begin this writing shortly after learning of the unexpected death of John Forbes Nash, Jr. and his wife, Alicia. John Nash was a Nobel… 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 »
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. This week we get to see how psychology is exemplifying the saying: “Everything old is new again.” Psychology and society seem to follow cycles. Thus, we will examine… 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. The American Sniper Chris Kyle murder trial has received a great deal of attention, and the individual at the heart of the controversy, Eddie Ray Routh, is being… Read more »
“Once you have that label it doesn’t stay at the clinic. You carry it with you for a long time.” “We need to encourage people to speak more public [sic] about the topic of mental illness and alternatives to medication and treatment.” “When I finally got labeled ‘depressed,’ I was relieved. It helped me deal… Read more »
What if we’re completely wrong about the reason America suffers from an epidemic of mass shootings? That’s the powerful question recently asked by the psychiatrist Joseph Pierre in Aeon magazine. (W)hat if the reality is that the underlying cause of mass murder lies not in something external to ourselves, but rather something at the root… 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 »
Maurice Merleau-Ponty tells us that we are Beings-in-the-World through our bodies—that it is through our sensations, perceptions, and kinesthetic senses that we can know and relate to our Self and to others. This concept is intrinsic to understanding existential psychotherapy as a mind-body practice and appreciating that relationship has to happen on both levels. It… Read more »
Math is not my subject. In high school, my average in math was lowest, although surprisingly, my highest average was in the sciences. I “got” physics, in spite of the math, because there, the math made sense. In the abstract, it sent my brain reeling. More than once, my mother had to call my math… Read more »
No one who pays attention to the tech industry should be surprised that it has what The Atlantic Monthly recently dubbed “a depression problem.” Why wouldn’t it? It’s a hyper-competitive environment in which people work tremendously long hours, fail often, and judge their self-worth by their earnings and status in an often hierarchical, often conformist,… Read more »
