Resolutions
“I would prefer not to.”
High Sensitivity
I recently came across Dr. Elaine Aron’s work on high sensitivity. Aron posits high sensitivity as a trait exhibited across a variety of species that favors awareness and evaluation over unreflective action. While some animals, hoping to catch a tasty snack, may immediately dart after something new in their environment, others may stay back and …
Religious Trauma or Philosophical Crisis?
[Note: I am a philosopher, not a mental health professional. These are my personal opinions, and should not be regarded as professional advice regarding the diagnosis or treatment of mental illness. If you have concerns about your mental health, you should seek the counsel of a licensed mental health professional.] America has witnessed a mass …
Cults and Attachment
Victims of cults are often portrayed as credulous, submissive, and prone to delusion. To an extent that is true, but this stereotype ignores the fact that these vices are the result, not the cause, of involvement in a cult. Cults hijack people’s rational and volitional capacities through a deceptive process of recruitment and indoctrination that …
Archetypal Astrology
In his book Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New Worldview, Richard Tarnas presents a sustained case for the contemporary applicability of the ancient art of astrology. The first hundred pages or so are devoted to an exposition and critique of the modern mechanistic world picture and the adumbration of what Tarnas believes to be …
Consolation
Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy has been neglected by most Anglo-American philosophy departments. It is not unusual for students to come away from their undergraduate degree in philosophy with the basics of Russell, Quine, Kripke, and whatever else is marketed to be fashionable at the moment, but little to no exposure to the classical texts …
The Collective Unconscious
The distinction between the conscious and the unconscious has become a cultural commonplace. We recognize when our co-workers, friends, and family act unconsciously, repeatedly manifesting meaningful patterns of action they claim to be purely accidental. Wider society also capitalizes on the unconscious by designing its propaganda (marketing) to appeal to our deep longings that rarely …
The Hermeneutics of Healing
Note: I’m a philosopher, not a mental health professional. These reflections are my personal opinions and none of them should be construed as professional advice regarding the diagnosis or treatment of mental illness. Problems for Therapy as it is Traditionally Construed Despite branding efforts to the contrary, psychotherapy remains a human endeavor (and more an …
Dehumanizing Therapy
I have been reading several books on the practice of psychotherapy this week, and have been struck by how the changes in that field parallel those in the university. In both, there is a good deal of cheerleading about increasing ‘diversity’ and access by the ‘marginalized’ which masks the ever greater encroachment of external corporate …
Humanistic Psychotherapy
“Higher Virtue isn’t virtuous/ thus it possesses virtue/ Lower Virtue isn’t without virtue/ thus it possesses no virtue/ Higher Virtue involves no effort or the thought of effort/ Higher Kindness involves effort/ but not the thought of effort/ Higher Justice involves effort/ and the thought of effort/ Higher Ritual involves effort/ and should it meet …