I recently listened to a podcast of Dr. Louis Cozolino, a neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, discussing what he would teach if he were training psychotherapists. The first year would be phenomenology: the power of Carl Rogers’ perspective to train how to develop an alliance through reflective listening while keeping countertransference out
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A Puff of Absurdity: Yalom’s Gift
I recently binge-watched all of Group, a show inspired by a novel by Irvin Yalom, The Schopenhauer Cure. So I revisited Yalom’s non-fiction to see how closely the series aligns to his actual practices. The Gift of Therapy is a fascinating read from 2017 in which Yalom dives openly into his
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Covid Defences Matching Game
Match statements from friends, family, colleagues, bosses, and/or random strangers with “opinions,” to defence mechanism! Dr. Mike Hoerger, a clinical health psychologist in the US, noted several psychological defence mechanisms being used to downplay the risk of Covid. This is his entire thread, well worth saving here for future reference.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The One with the Apocalypse
I recently watched a few things, back to back, to distract me from the news. One was openly apocalyptical, as so much is these days. Is it a trend, or is the output the same, but I just never gravitated to it so much?? I’ve also noticed a rise in
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Frankl’s Logotherapy
The second half of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning was added in 1962 to provide greater detail of Logotherapy, in which patients must hear difficult things in contrast to psychoanalysts provoking telling difficult things (see the first part here). It’s less introspective and more focused on our place in the world: “Logotherapy defocuses all
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Frankl’s Phases of Life in the Camps
My lovely friend and former colleague recently passed away unexpectedly. The kindest people go far too soon. We also went to teacher’s college together over 30 years ago, and his quips and just the calm and jovial way about him helped make the ridiculous assignments there far more tolerable. Sitting next to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Where is My Mind? On Freud and Neuropsychology
Freud got some things right, and this isn’t a post to slam him. But he understood the whole concept of the unconscious mind upside-down. It’s a lot like Aristotle’s science, with the cause and effect going in the wrong direction. It’s still pretty impressive how far they got as they
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The John Snow Project on Spooky Masks
The John Snow Project has the singular goal of cleaning the air in public buildings the way its namesake demonstrated the link between cholera and contaminated drinking water, and eventually was able to convince the government to clean water for public consumption. Cholera was one of the deadliest diseases in
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Or maybe we’d recognize Nietzsche’s last man as ourselves: “Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth! .
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Hari’s Lost Connections
“There’s violence to knowing the world isn’t what you thought. . . . Sometimes the world doesn’t make a lot of sense, but how we get through it is, we stick together, okay?” – Gloria Burgle, Fargo I watched Joe Rogan’s interview with (interrogation of) Johann Hari about his new
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Freud and Einstein’s Correspondence
Lately many people are talking of the rise and fall of Freud’s psychotherapy and his philosophies. Some write him off completely because many of his psychoanalytical claims have been discounted through a more rigorous scientific method than Freud employed, but it’s not good philosophy to discount an entire person for
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness
Some Russell quotations have been floating around lately, so I read The Conquest of Happiness, first published in 1930, and, boy, did I need this right now! The main ideas and some bits I liked are below by chapter. The book is really just a mix of Stoicism and Epicureanism,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gender Pronouns and Peterson’s Case
This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I’m not sure I’m quite firm on anything yet, but I’ve been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I’ll try to narrow down what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gender Pronouns and Peterson’s Case
This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I’m not sure I’m quite firm on anything yet, but I’ve been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I’ll try to narrow down what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Swiss Army Man
I first saw this at the theatre and, despite the fact that it starts with a whole lot of farting in a wide variety of tones and tempos, the ending had me in tears. I highly recommend it. The surface story is about Hank, trapped on a deserted island –
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Swiss Army Man
I first saw this at the theatre and, despite the fact that it starts with a whole lot of farting in a wide variety of tones and tempos, the ending had me in tears. I highly recommend it. The surface story is about Hank, trapped on a deserted island –
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Century of the Self – A Brief History of Psychoanalysis and Corporate Control
I just watched this four-hour doc on propaganda and social change and how we’re swimming in Freudian concepts like it or not. It’s older (2002), but it’s compelling viewing useful to weed out the ideas of Freud from those of his followers. My notes&nb…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Century of the Self – A Brief History of Psychoanalysis and Corporate Control
I just watched this four-hour doc on propaganda and social change and how we’re swimming in Freudian concepts like it or not. It’s older (2002), but it’s compelling viewing useful to weed out the ideas of Freud from those of his followers. My notes&nb…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Has the Green Revolution Actually Arrived?
There’s an article floating around sub-titled “The Year Humans Got Serious about Saving Themselves from Themselves” by Jonathan Chait. It starts with a litany of climate change-driven bad news with the conclusion that, “The drama has taken on an air of inevitability, of a tragedy at the outset of its
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Ethos – a 2011 Documentary
“Our ethos is all that we currently hold to be true. It is what we act upon. It governs our manners, our business and our politics.” – Howard Zinn Directed by Pete McGrain, and hosted by Woody Harrelson, this 68 minute film explores how we got here and what to
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