Cultivating Change

There’s a lot you can do to change another person, up to a point

If you hang around a therapist’s office long enough, or around anyone who’s seen a therapist, they’re going to tell you that you can’t change another person; you can only change yourself.

Basically, it’s true; but, like many adages, there’s more to it than that. There’s a lot you can do to change a person. If there wasn’t, there would be no therapists. But, once you reach a certain point, there’s nothing more you can do, and the other person must take over.

Cultivating change is a lot like cultivating a garden. Continue reading →

Intolerant of the Intolerant and Outraged by the Outrageous

Sooner or later, if you declare yourself as a supporter of liberal democracy, you’ll run into a thorny problem. Do you show tolerance for the intolerant? Can you permit the free speech of those who will destroy free speech? Should you give publicity to those who threaten a free press? Can you get disgusted with disgust or outraged by outrageous behavior?Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →