Wednesday, June 16, 2021 Glendale, California Sifting Through Lies Reviewing events of the past few days, I am reminded of the near impossibility of finding the TRUTH about any particular topic. Here are three examples from this week alone: I watched the documentary, Cowspiracy, a film on Netflix co-directed by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn. It reveals a number of disturbing truths about the global animal agriculture business. A few choice facts: Raising cattle is responsible for 51 percent of global warming. To create one pound of hamburger meat requires 1200 gallons of water. And, 90 perc ..read more

Friday, May 21, 2021 Eugene, Oregon Why Read Saul Bellow? Before recommending immersion into Mr. Bellow’s brilliant fictional worlds, I wish to apologize for disappearing the last few months. I plan on keeping this blog going—probably weekly—as I have for several years now. It offers me a vehicle, perhaps more accurately a ventilation pipe, for sharing edgy psychoanalytic, literary, and philosophical reflections not consonant with the usual academic writing. BTW, and herein lies the distraction, I started a subscription newsletter earlier this year called: Journeys to the Unconscious Mind It ..read more

Saturday, March 27, 2021 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Must You Feel Empty and Lonely? Usually inspired by J. Krishnamurti’s words, these excerpts from his teachings left me troubled: People running away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, are not different from what they seek to avoid; they are it. You cannot run away from yourself; all you can do is seek understanding. You are loneliness, emptiness, and as long as you regard the feelings as something separate from yourself, you live in illusion and endless conflict. Only when directly experiencing your own loneliness can there be freedo ..read more

Sunday, March 21, 2021 Glendale, California Atlanta Shooting: The Rush to Oversimplify My Dearest Readers, [Before delving into a possibly life-endangering topic, I want to shamelessly self-promote a newsletter. It costs all of $70 per year, but you will get 50 issues/year. The newsletter is intended for depth psychotherapists, their patients, and anyone interested in the psychoanalytic field. To find it, cut and paste this url into your search engine: www.unconsciousjourneys.com. Thanks so much! Alan] Hate crimes are awful. More often than not, they are clearly delineated. Here are a few rece ..read more

Sunday, February 7, 2021 Glendale, CA On Being a Zen Retriever Have you ever noticed, as I do, how much of the day you spend, well, taking things out and putting them away? When I write, usually in my small backyard, I retrieve a laptop, notebook, a few pens, and some files. When I wake up, I retrieve coffee grounds, heat up water, grab the french press, and put a few pieces of bread in the toaster. When I garden, I retrieve gloves, a spade, left-over bags of soil, and whatever new plant I’ve bought, or whatever old one I’m moving. When I head to my office, I retrieve my appointment book, mobi ..read more

Joshua Tree National Park, California Friday, January 8, 2021 Defecation, Fornication, and Dissociation A most troubling triad, I know, but here’s the point: Every single day, unless you’re eating extremely poorly, you poop at some point. It’s a good thing, ridding the of body waste products. Feces is often the subject of jokes among second graders; apparently, it becomes a more frequent topic of conversation among the elderly. But, the theme today concerns what people don’t talk about, what they compartmentalize. Defecation is certainly one of them. It’s an extremely personal matter. The expe ..read more

Joshua Tree National Park, California Tuesday, January 5, 2021 Meditating One-Year In: Five Reflections Without conscious plan or intent, I began meditating, on a daily basis, one year ago. I’d learned the classic Zen method of sitting meditation, Zazen, in the 1980s. On occasion, I’d practice it. In 2019, I practiced more regularly, but still not daily. Beginning January 2020, I got in the habit of starting my day with a half-hour of Zazen. Meditation became part of my daily routine, squeezed in between breakfast and working out. Then, perhaps facilitated by the pandemic, I added a second ..read more

Friday, November 27, 2020 Arbor Heights, Seattle, Washington Achieving the fearful state of “caught up” on the Blackest of Black Fridays, mid-Covid, after illegally traveling by airplane, overeating, over-drinking and, worst of all, over-thinking, I stumbled upon these startling words on p. 203 of Saul Bellow’s book, Humboldt’s Gift: This combination of power and boredom has never been properly examined. Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror ..read more

Arbor Heights, Seattle, Washington Wednesday, November 25, 2020 An Ode to Dr. Larry Brooks Fractal geometry, way beyond my comprehension, refers to how a part of an object mirrors its larger version. In essence, then, a leaf predicts the form of a tree. A rock predicts the shape of a mountain. I offer one story, one fractal, as a symbol of the life of Larry Brooks, PhD. A friend, and a fellow psychologist, Larry lost his life in a tragic if absurd manner earlier this year. I offer an angle, perspective, viewpoint—a fractal—representative of Larry’s character. Friends and family will gather in ..read more

Saturday, October 24, 2020 Glendale, California “The Whole World Is Watching” Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators chanted this phrase, as relevant now as in 1968, while being beaten and arrested by police outside the Chicago Democratic National Convention. It works well as a rallying cry for our upcoming election. Set aside the endemic corruption part of any governmental system. Set aside the frighteningly powerful influence of corporate lobbyists. What’s left? Even with these and other many flaws, the US remains the world’s best experiment in democracy existing today. Our democracy proved that ..read more