The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, defines our connectedness to self, to other, to the earth, as interbeing. Interbeing does not dismiss the I or the self but does reframe it in such a way that we see how connected we are to everyone and everything. Recently, a client reflected on his life and world events and how the two intersect. He pondered what…
“… Morning has broken like the first morning, Black bird has spoken like the first bird. … Praise with elation, praise every morning, God’s re-creation of the new day. …” Although this old hymn’s lyrics (by Eleanor Farjeon) may print the word recreation without the hyphen, I placed it here to emphasize not only how the word is pronounced in the song but also how…
In my early years as a psychologist and family therapist, I had the good fortune to meet and learn from many pioneers of family therapy. Perhaps the grandfather of family therapy, Murray Bowen, and his theories captivated me the most. He did not just consider the individual, couple, or family in the session; he was interested in the inter-generational patterns in the family tree. He…
Bet you thought it was a far-fetched fairy tale of little consequence. Just as Rorshachs have meaning beyond being "just" inkblots, so too can fairy tales have a deeper psychological significance. I remember Rumpelstiltskin, or at least I recall the epiphany I had about him when I heard James Hillman, a great Jungian psychologist, reframe the story. Quick refresher: Rumpelstiltskin is the tiny guy who…
Sometimes common sense is quite inaccurate and sometimes it’s spot on. What I enjoy about rigorous research is that while it can sometimes support common sense perceptions, it often does not. For eons, remember the common sense view was that sunrises and sunsets proved that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around it. When this “obvious” notion was displaced…
Summertime is coming, and the livin’ is easy—or not. But let’s just consider the word “time” for a moment. Many of us seem to languish under time constraints: not enough time for one thing or another; not wanting to “take time” or “waste time.” Writer Marney K. Makridakis decided she would “create” time since she found herself unable to “manage” or “save” it. In her…
Recently I attended a county mental health advisory board meeting. I did not like what I heard: that there is a rising population of the homeless hidden among the affluent. A school administrator reported on how he encounters children every day in his suburban school district who are in need of food and shelter. When we hear the word “homeless,” we, unfortunately, need to expand…
Wondering what topic I might choose to write about this week, I perused several books on my shelf. I could have chosen one of the easier reads, but, no, I elected to choose the most complex of the lot. “The Archeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions,” by Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven, is a page turner—all 500 of them—that looks at mammalian neuroscientific…
Have you ever wanted to cry and couldn’t? Or didn’t know what “to do” when a loved one bursts into tears? Why do we cry anyway? Jay Efran and Mitchell Greene, both with doctorate degrees, have some answers. They note that tears are a manifestation of an individual’s physiological system shifting rapidly from sympathetic to parasympathetic activity. That is, the person swiftly goes “from a…