Dear Young Person: Alcohol, drugs and sexuality can enhance and create life. They work. They can alter your moods, change your perceptions and disinhibit you. It’s fun to be able to behave differently. Blotting out discomfort relieves anxiety. Going wild can release tension. Alcohol, drugs and sexuality have always been part of the human experience. […]
Thinking Through Diversity
I have been very involved in thinking about how the ideas of diversity help us build our shared society. I recently published this piece on CNN.com trying to pull together a way of conceptualizing how in our diversity we are together.
Affluenza doesn’t excuse wrongdoing
from “The Guardian” Ethan Couch’s lawyer defended him by stating that he was not responsible for driving drunk and killing four people because he had “affluenza”.The legal argument dazzles. Psychological research doesn’t support it.
Numbers Don’t Tell The Whole Story
Does being self-reliant mean a person can’t also have needs? Is the success of the wealthy also built upon the working and middle classes? Are those stricken by poverty affected by the more resourced classes? Some thoughts about this at the InAmerica blog at CNN.com.
Why Therapy?
People who consult with me rarely ask this question directly, but it often lingers in the background. The assumed but often unstated answer emphasizes how talking to a trained clinician will help diminish problems like depression/anxiety/obsessions. That answer, however, rarely satisfies. What people really want to know is “Why do I NEED therapy? The best […]
Identity and Environments
When I spent time with my grandmother in McAdoo, PA, I found myself speaking with that inflected “yous” that meant “you.” As a student at Wesleyan University I was very open and even funny. I spent some time in the Philippines as a child, and still retain some native culture style naturalness. At home, I […]
Social class in white America
A post on class in white America from InAmerica/CNN.com and a creative response to Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State Of White America 1960-2010
New Post on CNN about Identity
I’ve been doing some thinking about identity. Please see this post, “Don’t forget where you came from” and Learning from baba’s list featured on CNN’s great new In America blog: “You define America. What defines you?”