I have always been interested in language, and how the ability to speak many of them, to think and dream in them, impacts who and how we are. When, and how we learn a second or third or fourth language influences not only how we communicate with others, it also shapes the particular content and […]
I used to think that we needed language in order to experience consciousness. I could even make an intelligent argument for it. The conscious mind, I thought, coded experience with words, which assigned meaning to it. Since thoughts are language based, so consciousness must be. Now that seems all wrong. Simplistic really. I have changed […]
History has always fascinated me. In school, it was one of my favorite subjects because it provided a context for how the world evolved, how it got to be what I know it as. Perhaps my interest in history was one of the things that led me to the study of psychology and later to […]
Memory is one of those concepts that has been studied for centuries and has spawned multiple theories about what it is and how it operates. In psychology we think about memory functionally: in terms of how it operates and what it does. Hence, there are various types of memory whose name describe its function. […]
This might seem a strange question coming from a dweller of NYC, where millions of people are constantly out there – on the street, in the trains, stores, cafes, restaurants. Yet, it is a question that many of my patients ask, in relation to their loneliness. And so, this blog is about the experience of […]
This blog is about Dementors, those magical creatures in the Harry Potter books, that suck all happiness away with a deadly kiss, leaving one empty of life and with nothing to look forward to. A fate, some would say, worse than death. If you are not familiar with the Potter books, no worries, read on, […]
You know that feeling you have when you realize something? You notice it, perceive it, sense it, immediately, you feel it on the inside? You have a hunch, you feel it in your bones, you have an inkling, a sneaking suspicion, a sense, a gut feeling, a presentiment. You just know something without knowing how […]
When it comes to authenticity, be careful what you wish for. I say this, because being authentic is a lot more trouble than not being so. But it is also more rewarding, nurturing, freeing, and full of possibilities for emotional growth. Ultimately, authenticity is the key to life and our experience of it. As of […]
It has occurred to me that all of us speak in many tongues. There is our everyday language, how we speak to others in the course of our day. There is our professional language, for me, the language of psychoanalysis that I share with colleagues and patients. There is the language of emotions, dense with […]
The dictionary defines home as the place where one lives. This definition refers to the concrete place that one lives in, but it applies, just as well, to our internal home, and to the feeling all of us have of being home. I am referring to the experience of home, which can occur when we […]