Inside Out – Exploring the Life of the Mind
Using psychoanalysis to explore current events, trends, and human behavior.
This column originally appeared in the Orange County Register.
While conversing with a colleague recently, discussing the progress and vagaries of her doctoral dissertation and the general trends of the day, I began to think about the financial triage that has come to redefine daily life for so many people impacted negatively by the dismal economic environment in which we all find ourselves bobbing like corks. Essentially, almost everyone. Continue reading “What’s it really worth, anyway…?”
This column originally appeared in the Orange County Register.
Much has been written lately about impulsive behavior, particularly excessive spending or shopping, as its problematic consequences have become increasingly obvious as our economy continues to implode. Continue reading “I Just Can’t Live Without It”
This column originally appeared in the Orange County Register
A screenwriter friend gave me an article discussing the salutary aspects of sadness and the ways in which our contemporary culture tends to quickly erase it or prematurely foreclose upon its gritty psychological usefulness in a quest for perennial cheery happiness. As if happiness were a concrete object one could hold instead of a transitory state of being, one of many, that links specific inner notations of experience with external ones. Continue reading “Sadness and Mourning”