Last week (or so), I appeared on the Seize the Moment video podcast, thanks to an invitation from Leon Garber (a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Psychotherapist, specializing in existential psychotherapy, who manages a blog exploring death, self-esteem, love, freedom, life-meaning, and mental health/mental illness) and Alen Ulman (who manages Ego Ends Now, a growingContinue reading “The Seize The Moment Podcast On Philosophy And Anxiety”
Tag Archives: mental illness
Philosophical Counseling And ‘Mental Illness’
Are philosophical counselors counselors qualified to ‘treat’ the ‘mentally ill’? The short answer to that is ‘no’ (associated with the query, ‘depends on what you mean by mental illness’.) A slightly more considered answer, which I attempt to provide here, makes note of the particular competences and constraints of the philosophical counselor. First, a noteContinue reading “Philosophical Counseling And ‘Mental Illness’”
Suicide And Our Many Personas
Over a decade ago, a friend of mine killed himself. As we, his many shocked and grieving friends, exchanged notes of commiseration and regret and nostalgic remembrance of a life we had all drawn pleasure from, one refrain made the rounds: “I guess I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.” Indeed.Continue reading “Suicide And Our Many Personas”
Szasz On The Myth Of Mental Illness
This semester, in my Landmarks in Philosophy class, I used Thomas Szasz‘s The Myth of Mental Illness as one of the three texts on the reading list (The other two were Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and William James’ Pragmatism.) Szasz’s argument that mental illness does not exist, that psychiatry is aContinue reading “Szasz On The Myth Of Mental Illness”
Anticipating Another Encounter With Books And Students
This coming fall semester promises to be a cracker: I have the usual heavy teaching load of three classes (including two four-credit classes whose lectures will be one hundred minutes long, thus making for a very exhausting Monday-Wednesday sequence of teaching running from 9:05 AM to 3:30 PM, with an hour break between the secondContinue reading “Anticipating Another Encounter With Books And Students”
The ‘Lone Killer’ And The Mentally Ill World
The invocation of mental illness and lamentations over ‘the state of the American mental health system’ are an inevitable accompaniment to news stories about lone white gunmen who carry out massacres. (c.f. Charleston massacre.) With that in mind, the following wise remarks by Helen De Cruz are worth pondering: People are not just motivated byContinue reading “The ‘Lone Killer’ And The Mentally Ill World”
Samir Chopra 