Category: Neuroscience

ON MINDFULNESS – and minding your p’s and q’s.

Mindfulness is a term that gets used a lot these days, despite the fact that it has been around for centuries. Eastern thought, primarily Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, and meditative disciplines have always had the concept of mindfulness at their core. The idea of mindfulness has entered western ideas through the world of spirituality and […]

ON LAUGHTER : And the power of humor.

A good belly laugh can change the mood, tone and connection to an other in an instant. Teasing or joking with someone can invite them into a space to play with something in a different way. I have noticed that in my clinical practice, the ability to tease or joke with my patients about a […]

BEING VIRTUAL: Social Media and the Relational Self.

Is our culture of texting, tweeting, friending, Facebooking, Instagramming, Linked-iness and LOL speak threatening interpersonal connection and communication? You know, the old fashioned kind? Is our techno-connectivity eroding interactive experiences involving face to face contact and conversations, and changing the quality of our relationships with others? Is social media creating a new kind of intimacy? […]

GENERATION GAP: Ageism or Darwinian Adaptation?

Recently, in the ongoing supervision group that I have belonged to for almost 20 years, there ensued a discussion about working with younger patients, and whether we were speaking a different language. My colleagues and I all felt a generational gap, and wondered together whether we had finally taken up the language that our parents […]

ON SEISMIC ACTIVITY – And the Disruption of the Self.

In my work as a psychoanalyst I spend much of my time in areas of experience that tend to be de-stabilizing to our sense of personal integrity and unity. I am speaking here of those times when emotion overwhelms us, disrupting our sense of being oneself and ushering in feeling states that cause a disturbance […]

ON CHANGE: And What It Takes To Make It Happen.

It is the end of another year, and the beginning of a new one. After the holidays and celebrations, this is a time when many consider what the past has been about and the possibilities that the future might hold. It is a time when people make resolutions to do something or change something in […]

ARE WE THERE YET? The time it takes to change.

Why does psychotherapy take time? Why is it difficult to predetermine how long a treatment will last? Are we there yet? My patients want to know. How long till we get there? How long do I have to come to therapy for? Good questions. It reminds me of the questions we used to ask as […]

ON WORK AND LOVE – and finding a balance.

In considering what makes life distinctly human and meaningful, Freud famously wrote: “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” And indeed they are. They are the very foundation on which we build a meaningful life. Think about it, our lives revolve, hour after hour on our relationships with others, and they are organized […]

PLAY IT AGAIN SAM: On the compulsion to repeat.

There is a Buddhist belief that people come into our life so that we may learn something and/or work through something that we need to resolve before we can move on.  Thus everyone in our lives is a potential teacher, involving us in a relationship with the very thing that we have to work out. […]

CAN I GET A WITNESS? Relationality and consciousness.

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 […]