Return of the Repressed: Is a Mysterious Outbreak of Mass Hysteria Proving...
In a tiny, unknown New York town, something remarkable is happening. It could turn out to be a crucial wake up call to contemporary psychology and psychiatry not to forget or stray too far from its...
View ArticleDSM-5 Hysteria: When Normal Mourning Becomes Neurotic Bereavement
DSM-IV-TR clearly draws a distinction between "normal" and pathological bereavement. As it should. When does a "normal grief reaction" become a debilitating, prolonged and potentially life-threatening...
View ArticleStress, Psychosis, and the Creator of "Kony 2012"
Severe stress sometimes precipitates psychosis. When a citizen's behavior becomes so bizarre, threatening, self-destructive or violent that it demands the attention of the police, that individual may...
View ArticleEssential Secrets of Psychotherapy: What is the "Shadow"?
The shadow is the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality—dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and...
View ArticleRefreshment From Freud's Faucet
Sigmund Freud's "psychoanalysis" is the seminal fount (or faucet) from which all forms of contemporary psychotherapy more or less flow. Sunday, May 6, is his birthday. read more
View ArticleAncient Aliens, the Collective Unconscious, and the Quest for Meaning
So-called "ancient alien" theorists fervently believe that past extraterrestrial visitations directly influenced and guided human history over the millennia. What is the underlying psychology of such...
View ArticleEssential Secrets of Psychotherapy: Jung's Typology, Eudaemonology, and the...
Are you an introvert or extravert? Here is a quick, easy and, in my experience, fairly accurate way to determine your own typology and start living a healthier, happier, more meaningful life.read more
View ArticleThe Meaning of Mentors: Memories of Rollo May
Soon there will be a much-deserved and long-awaited biography of Rollo May published by Oxford University Press, painstakingly researched over the past two decades by historian and scholar Robert...
View ArticleSex, Celibacy and Spirituality: Why the Dalai Lama Doesn't Date
CNN's Piers Morgan recently interviewed His Holiness the Dalai Lama, at one point asking him candidly about sex. Does the celibate14th Dalai Lama really think sex is "dirty"?read more
View ArticleNightmare in Aurora: Batman, the Joker and James Holmes
In The Dark Knight (2008), the Batman movie preceding the newly released The Dark Knight Rises, the late Heath Ledger memorably plays the Joker: the ultimate psychopathic, antisocial, nihilistic,...
View ArticleMaking Sense of the Batman Massacre: Is Suspect's Behavior Motivated by...
Malingering is an ever-present possibility in the practice of forensic psychology and psychiatry. No mental health professional is beyond being fooled by a skilled, clever and manipulative defendant....
View ArticleEssential Secrets of Psychotherapy: Why Extraverts Hate Meditation and...
Generally speaking, introverted types are more receptive to meditation than extraverted types, who tend to avoid it like the plague. So chances are, if you are attracted to meditation, and find it...
View ArticleThe Breivik Verdict: Forensic Commentary
On Friday, August 24, 2012, a Norwegian court found militant mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik sane, guilty, and sentenced him to up to twenty-one years in prison. The center of controversy during...
View ArticleDevils, Demons and Dybbuks: Possession, Exorcism and Psychotherapy
"The Possession" tells the terrifying tale of a mysterious wooden box containing an ancient Hebrew evil spirit, the Dybbuk. In medieval Jewish folklore, the Dybbuk was a transmigrating demon or...
View ArticleBeauty, God, Death: What is Real Psychotherapy?
In honor of National Psychotherapy Day, I will be posting a series of my previously published pieces on the practice of psychotherapy. A different posting each day this week, Monday through Friday. In...
View ArticleThe Death and Rebirth of Psychotherapy
Today is National Psychotherapy Day. How can we restore psychotherapy's soul?read more
View ArticleWhat's Love Got to Do With It?: How Therapy Helps
What if finding love has at least as much to do with becoming the right person as meeting him or her?read more
View ArticleEssential Secrets of Psychotherapy
What really happens in psychotherapy? The answer to that question is complex. And depends in part on the type of psychotherapy one seeks. And who provides it. But one thing psychotherapy can convey to...
View ArticlePsychotherapists as Wounded Healers
How much of Marsha Linehan's success in working with severely disturbed and suicidal patients—and that of other psychotherapists—stems from having faced down and overcome or, at least learning to live...
View ArticleEnd of Men: The "Feminization" of Psychotherapy
A New York Times article by Benedict Carey (May 21, 2011) titled "Need Therapy? A Good Man Is Hard to Find," highlights the fact that men have been abandoning the psychotherapy field in droves for...
View ArticleWhy We Love Music—and Freud Despised It
Fascinatingly, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general, disliked music with a passion. He had practically no appreciation of music as an art form. Indeed, he avoided...
View ArticleBipolar Disorder Debate: Myths of Mental Illness
Bipolar Disorder is, like most mental disorders, a pathological process occurring over time. In the case of so-called childhood bipolar disorder, depression reaches a tipping point, turning into...
View ArticleDiagnosing Scrooge Syndrome: The Dangers of Embitterment
Though Ebenezer Scrooge's chronic embitterment and narcissism fortunately never resulted in his becoming a mass murderer, it conceivably could have. And, in extreme real life cases, clearly does. What...
View ArticleBirthday Tribute to Psychology Today Blogs!
January 31st marks a half-decade of Psychology Today Blogs' online presence! read more
View ArticleRace, Rage & Revenge: Forensic Commentary on the Dorner Case
Can racial discrimination create mass murderers?read more
View ArticleDangerous Genius: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
Tonight Al Pacino plays Phil Spector in a made-for-television drama about his creative life and 2009 conviction for the tragic killing of Lana Clarkson. read more
View ArticleRefreshment from Freud's Faucet: A Birthday Salute to Siggie
On May 6, 2013, we mark Sigmund Freud's 157th birthday. Though much maligned today, for the most part unfairly so, Freud is the indisputable father of modern psychotherapy. And much of what he had to...
View ArticleJodi, Joran and Casey: On the Psychology of Evil
Jodi Arias has been convicted of brutally murdering, with premeditation, her boyfriend Travis Alexander. Today the jury was declared deadlocked regarding whether to sentence her to death or life...
View ArticleAmerican Racism and the Acquittal of George Zimmerman
Yesterday, in a Florida courtroom, a jury of six women found George Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder or any other crime in the shooting and killing of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin....
View ArticleBeauty, Evil and Death in Venice: A Midsummer's Meditation
Last Saturday evening, as the brilliant Southern California sun descended slowly into the Pacific Ocean, with throngs of vacationing tourists and lively locals out enjoying the natural beauty and...
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