Reading some of the discussion sparked by Peter Railton’s Dewey Lecture has prompted me to write this post. In the fall of 1996, I began studying for my Ph.D qualifier exams. I had worked full-time at a non-academic job for the previous year, saving up some money so that I could take a month orContinue reading “Of Therapy And Personal And Academic Anxieties”
Tag Archives: psychotherapy
On Not Recommending One’s Choices
Recently, all too often, I catch myself saying something like the following, “I took decision X, and I have my fair share of regrets and self-congratulation about it but I would not recommend X to anyone” or “In all honesty, I couldn’t recommend that you take decision X as I did.” Or something like that:Continue reading “On Not Recommending One’s Choices”
On Not ‘Interfering’ With Others’ Self-Conceptions
Sometimes, when I talk to friends, I hear them say things that to my ears sound like diminishments of themselves: “I don’t have the–intellectual or emotional or moral–quality X” or “I am not as good as Y when it comes to X.” They sound resigned to this self-description, this self-understanding. I think I see thingsContinue reading “On Not ‘Interfering’ With Others’ Self-Conceptions”
April Bernard on Margaret Drabble as Moral Psychologist
In reviewing a selection of Margaret Drabble‘s novels, April Bernard writes: Drabble, as a moralist, seems to believe that it is less important what and why we do what we do, than how we think about it—before, during, after….If the reason that a man always sins is that he is sinful, what matters can onlyContinue reading “April Bernard on Margaret Drabble as Moral Psychologist”
Adam Phillips on Self-Knowledge and the Unconscious
Adam Phillips, psychotherapist and essayist, can be a frustratingly elliptical writer. There are allusions, suggestions, shadings and hints in every passage. (I seem to dimly remember a frustrated reviewer in the New York or London Review of Books complaining about this characteristic slipperiness.) From these though, the diligent reader can often find a perspicuous insight,Continue reading “Adam Phillips on Self-Knowledge and the Unconscious”
Boethius’ Philosophy as Therapist
Here is a common way to think about the psychotherapeutic experience: the therapist helps the patient construct an alternative narrative of his or her life. Why is this therapeutic? The patient has offered the therapist a recounting–via a series of archaeological, genealogical forays into his past–of his life’s events, and describes how these have contributedContinue reading “Boethius’ Philosophy as Therapist”
Freud, Pointing to Poets
Some distinctive features of Sigmund Freud‘s writings are: a clarity of exposition–at least in works intended for more general audiences–which offset the density and novelty of the subject matter; a tendency to philosophize while simultaneously disdaining philosophical speculation; an unswerving overt commitment to science, scientific probity, virtue, and methodology; and lastly, and most entertainingly, a keenContinue reading “Freud, Pointing to Poets”
The Child’s Photographic Record and Personal Narratives
Like any doting first-time parents, my wife and I went a little photography-batty in the hours and days following our daughter’s birth. We had three cameras: two in phones, and one little Panasonic digital unit. We clicked away madly, recording every little change in expression, ever bodily movement that seemed significant. Those three cameras allContinue reading “The Child’s Photographic Record and Personal Narratives”
God as Therapist, Existent or Non-Existent
In ‘When God is your Therapist‘, (New York Times, 13 April 2013) T.M Luhrmann suggests that the evangelical relationship with God often resembles that between client and therapist: I soon came to realize that one of the most important features of these churches is that they offer a powerful way to deal with anxiety andContinue reading “God as Therapist, Existent or Non-Existent”
‘The Master’: Coming Undone And Putting It Back Together
One way to ‘read’ Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master is as an enormously ambitious, technically brilliant cinematic riff on Ron Hubbard and Scientology, on a time fertile for cults and messianic healing: post-WWII America, when broken men–post-traumatic stress disorder is as old as war–drifted back home, and were, just as many other Americans, looking forContinue reading “‘The Master’: Coming Undone And Putting It Back Together”
Samir Chopra 