Living in Fantasyland
America gone haywire
Has our country gone mad? Has anyone examined the head of America?
Kurt Anderson has, shortly after the 2016 election; and his conclusion is yes, we have gone mad and it was bound to happen. He wrote the bestselling book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. In it, he presents an alternate history of the country as a kind of case study of America’s madness. Continue reading →
Need a Map for Your Brain?
Not everything about Neuro-Linguistic Programming is phony
If you’re going to learn how to be a psychotherapist, you should study psychology and acquaint yourself with all the theories of human behavior. I believe it also helps to read Russian novels and ponder philosophy. You can do worse than have a solid grounding in statistics and research design if only to wade through the malarkey that tries to pass itself off as science. If you’re going to do your psychotherapy in a large organization, you should be able to practice politics. But if you really care about being a good therapist, you need to study magic. Continue reading →
Will Your Therapist Even Notice If You Drink the Kool Aid?
Mental Health’s blindness to mass delusions
Recently, a group of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in hopes of stopping what they regarded as the stealing of the 2020 election, something they were certain of, despite the lack of evidence. This was just one of many examples of groups of people who have drunk the Kool Aid and come to believe a dangerous and erroneous idea. Therapists like me could have insight into this phenomenon and may be able to help, if only we’d allow ourselves to do so. Continue reading →
Guilt and Shame
Good and bad ways to feel bad
As soon as you see how you are responsible for trouble, you are met by two emotions who offer to be your guide: guilt and shame. Which one should you go with? Is there a difference between the two? Continue reading →
The Face of the Other
Universal survivor’s guilt as a basis for ethics
You’re a survivor. You’re the result of an intense competition between hundreds of sperm seeking to impregnate an egg. You feed yourself off the flesh of others. If you eat meat, hundreds of beings die to give you sustenance; and if you’re a vegan, plants give their lives for you. You insensibly step on ants, slaughter microbes with every breath, and commit genocide on bacteria just to combat an infection. But, it’s not just lower beings you butcher. Many people have died in your place. You could’ve just as easily been where they were or done what they did. Soldiers have fought for your safety. Workers have worked themselves into an early grave. Planes fall from the sky, miss you, and hit someone else. Cars crash a minute after you pass an intersection. Dozens perished to show physicians how to cure diseases that they cure for you. To exist means to survive in place of others. You have survivor’s guilt the moment you’re born. Continue reading →
Responsibility and Blame
What’s the difference?
Not everything is your fault. In fact, most things are not your fault; you had nothing to do with them. You didn’t ask to be born to these people or at this time or this place, at least so far as we know. You didn’t invent the language you speak. You didn’t have a choice about your genetics, nor your early childhood experiences, nor ninety-nine percent of the experiences you have now. You might have chosen the person you married, but you chose him from a very limited field of possibilities. Unless you adopted and are remarkably prescient, you didn’t choose your children. Continue reading →
What Pigeons Can Teach You About Expectations
A lot of psychological studies are just plain silly. Do we really need experimental data to tell us that power corrupts, or that pain and sickness are depressing, or that people like to hear things that confirm their biases? However, there is one bit of experimental psychology that, when I tell people about it, causes their faces to light up. It informs them of something that ought to be obvious, but isn’t. It can explain how you get caught up in the madness of doing what you have always done despite mostly getting the crappy outcome you’ve always got. What is this result of experimental psychology that has so much explanatory power? We call it the intermittent reinforcement schedule. Continue reading →
Disgust Management
I have an idea for a new business opportunity for us shrinks. You know how they have anger management classes that judges, employers, and spouses send people to when they keep losing their cool? The kind like in the movie with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson? Yeah, that. Well, anger’s not the only emotion that needs to go to class. There ought to be disgust management classes, too. Continue reading →
Protected: What Kind of Justice Do You Want?
Can Therapy and Spirituality Co-Exist?
Even though shrinks are quite spiritual, they tend to be skittish about religion.
There are three ways we shrinks handle spirituality. We either A) ignore it and pretend it doesn’t matter, B) help the client work through what they’ve been taught till they arrive at beliefs and practices that work for them, or C) indoctrinate the client in something new. Continue reading →
