Once upon a time, a long time ago, Nancy and I were on vacation in Exmoor, outside of Devon. We were following the road wherever it led, and found ourselves on a winding one lane road, tall grass towering over the car. We spotted a white building glistening in the late morning sun, high up […]
Forty-three years before Freud arrived on the scene with the Interpretation of Dreams, Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. He taught us all we need to know about character formation, the effects of trauma, and the healing process of mourning. This most illuminating story prefigures the Psychotherapy of Character and is an exemplar of […]
As an experiment, my son and I asked the following question on Facebook ”Looking for the sad song you love to listen to when you’re down. Open to any and all genres. ” We received 71 responses in 24 hours. Each person sent their go-to music, or even long playlists. All were very enthusiastic about this […]
We talk often about the role of genetics in shaping our character. Because as always, what it is to be human involves both nature and nurture. I have already addressed the nurture part in “Psychotherapy Is ‘The’ Biological Treatment.” Here is the nature part: the role that genetic temperament plays as to how specific […]
Stranger Than Fiction The documentary Three Identical Strangers by filmmaker Tim Wardle takes us (spoiler alert!) from fun and frothy to a surprising left turn about the evils of human experimentation. The film raises moral questions that lead us, unsuspectingly, to a very dark place. When Bobby Shafran went off to college at age 19, he was […]
I was driving in Cambridge in a blinding snow storm on Thanksgiving Day, 1970. When I braked to slow down, my car didn’t stop, it just kept on skidding. I slowly continued on. When I approached the stop light at Memorial Hall, I braked far in advance of the light and skidded twenty feet until […]
“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.” Willa Cather I can’t call him Tony because I have never met him. He is Anthony to me. I only know him from his show, ‘Parts Unknown’. I never read Kitchen Confidential, which is now […]
“It was gloomy and cloudy. The forest was filled with darkness. A grotesque ogre was chasing me through a primordial forest. I was running down a dirt path surrounded by gnarled trees and overhanging vines. The misshapen giant took one step to my three. Fortunately, I was faster and more cunning. It was […]
I saw your documentary ‘Jane’ last night. You don’t need me to tell you it was perfecto. She was clearly destined to fulfill her passion. I am impressed that you stayed away from pandering which would have been very easy to do. You showed the fullness of her character and struggles, consistent with ‘Montage of […]
I was thinking about the torture parents, David and Louise Turpin and their thirteen children, and Larry Nassar, the pedophile doctor who preyed on hundreds of innocent girls. As a psychiatrist I have heard many horrific stories of child abuse from my patients, each one worse than the last. When I think I have reached […]