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 →

Disgust

If you need to be convinced that the feeling of disgust is a peculiarly powerful and primitive emotion, try this experiment. Get a clean glass. Spit in it. Now drink it.

Even if you can drink the spit, you know what I’m talking about. You know there’s nothing wrong with the spit. You swallow your own spit all the time; but, by expelling it from your body, you make it an object of disgust, and disgust is not only powerful and primitive, it’s also unreasonable. Continue reading →

The Gumbo of Grief

Forget the stages, forget the “correct” order. Grief is more like a gumbo than a Powerpoint presentation

These days, no one can shed a tear without someone mentioning the five stages of grief. I’m convinced that when people sit with the bereft, they bring up the stages just so that they can have something to say. Anything is better than the delusional denial, the bitter anger, the useless bargains, the hopeless dejection, and the maudlin acceptance that grievers come up with. Anything is better than the silence of the dead. Continue reading →