In Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992, pp. 32-33), Richard Rhodes writes: Somehow I acquired a copy of Dutch physician T. H. van de Velde‘s Ideal Marriage, published in the United States in 1926, the most popular marriage manual in American until The Joy of Sex came along. Ideal MarriageContinue reading “The ‘Ideal Marriage’ And Its Painful Sexual Ignorance”
Category Archives: Psychology
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Mountains Of The Mind
A few years ago, while visiting my brother in India, I browsed through his collection of mountaineering books (some of them purchased by me in the US and sent over to him.) In Robert MacFarlane‘s Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit, I found the following epigraph: O the mind, mind has mountains –Continue reading “Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Mountains Of The Mind”
The Acknowledgments Section As Venue For Disgruntlement
In The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre (University of Chicago Press, 1985) David P. Jordan writes in the ‘Acknowledgments’ section: With the exception of the Humanities Institute of the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose fellowship gave me the leisure to rethink and rewrite, no fund or foundation, agency or institution, whether public or privateContinue reading “The Acknowledgments Section As Venue For Disgruntlement”
Chase Madar On American ‘Anti-Authority Posturing’
In The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story Behind The Wikileaks Whistleblower (Verso Press, New York, 2013) Chase Madar quotes Ray McGovern, ‘a retired CIA analyst’ and admirer of Chelsea Manning, as saying that “he who isn’t angry [in the face of injustice and evil] has an ‘unreasoned patience [and] sows the seed of vice….Bradley ManningContinue reading “Chase Madar On American ‘Anti-Authority Posturing’”
On Avoiding Conversations With Children
Yesterday afternoon, as I rode back from Manhattan to Brooklyn to pick up my daughter from daycare, I noticed three children board the subway car I was seated in. One of them was a friend’s son, all of nine years old; he was accompanied by two younger children. An older woman, clearly their chaperone orContinue reading “On Avoiding Conversations With Children”
Lessons From A Vision Of A Funeral Pyre
My grandfather’s funeral was the first I attended of a significant family member. It was also the first time I witnessed a cremation, that fiery return to the ashes–and possibly eternal cycles of becoming and passing away–which signals the end of a Hindu’s life. As we prepared for it, I was aware, even through theContinue reading “Lessons From A Vision Of A Funeral Pyre”
Epistemology and ‘The Leftovers’
Imagine that an extremely improbable event occurs, one for which there was no warning; your best theories of the world assigned it a near-zero probability (indeed, so low was this probability then calculating it would have been a waste of time). This event is inexplicable–no explanations for it are forthcoming, and it cannot be fittedContinue reading “Epistemology and ‘The Leftovers’”
Angela Davis On Reparation, Reconciliation, And Prison Abolition
In Are Prisons Obsolete? (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2003, pp. 106) Angela Davis writes: It is true that if we focus myopically on the existing system–and perhaps this is the problem that leads to the assumption that imprisonment is the only alternative to death–it is very hard to imagine a structurally similar system capable of handling such a vastContinue reading “Angela Davis On Reparation, Reconciliation, And Prison Abolition”
Kōbō Abe’s ‘Woman in The Dunes’ And The Scientist’s Existentialist Despair
Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes wears and displays its existentialist, absurdist aspirations openly and transparently; this is its terse Wikipedia summation: In 1955, Jumpei Niki, a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led, by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a houseContinue reading “Kōbō Abe’s ‘Woman in The Dunes’ And The Scientist’s Existentialist Despair”
On Self-Censoring Opinions, Verbal Or Written
I would like to consider myself a plain-speaking person, the kind who is always able to ‘speak his mind,’ ‘say what he is thinking,’ ‘tell us what he really thinks,’ and so on. But I’m afraid the evidence suggests that all too frequently, in all too many conversational spaces, I bite my tongue and holdContinue reading “On Self-Censoring Opinions, Verbal Or Written”
Samir Chopra 