Preparing a Eulogy
It may be the most meaningful writing you ever do--preparing your remarks when you stand up before friends and family to honor someone you loved. Describing anyone....and what that person meant to...
View ArticlePsychology and Philosophy: Irreconcilable Differences?
To look at the difference in approach that psychology and philosophy bring to the table, it might be useful to look at their perspectives on the same problem. Happily, there is a problem that has...
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The Downside of Genius
Genius has a personality and many of us may find at least one aspect of it surprising. My new book, Genius Unmasked, reveals one particularly startling aspect of genius: Geniuses were so bent on...
View ArticleDoctors Should Help Patients Weigh Tradeoffs
One theme of my book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, is that the third-party payment system has caused major harm by distorting the price system and thereby undercutting our ability to...
View ArticleWhy Women Fear Envy and Why We Don't Need To
One day many years ago a client who I will call Virginia* accused me of hurting her feelings by calling her competitive. This was ironic, since Virginia had spent long hours in therapy discussing her...
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They Called it the Murder Swamp
In 1921, a woman was nearly beheaded in her own home, which was close to railroad tracks that ran through western Pennsylvania. In July 1923, the decomposed body of a six-year-old girl turned up. That...
View ArticleIs Adultery Always Bad?
The term “adultery” (sexual intercourse between a married person and anyone other than his or her lawful spouse) is considered pejorative because virtually all religions condemn it. In some cultures it...
View ArticleNEBA Brainwave Test for ADHD: Should I Do It?
"Tested?"From time to time I will hear that an individual "is being tested for ADHD" as though there were some objective diagnostic tool which allows certain identification of the underlying condition,...
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Marriage Arguments: Can All Conflicts Be Resolved?
Marriage arguments can be upsetting. Most therapists agree that fixing marriage problems requires that couples learn to resolve their differences collaboratively, without criticism, anger or fighting....
View ArticleFinding the Right Balance--An OCD Problem
It is possible to have too much of a good thing—particularly food and drink?Individuals who suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) tend to see things in black or white. There is the proper way...
View ArticleLarger than Life
There’s a crude memorial twelve thousand feet up in the Andes Mountains. Rocks, scraps of airplane fuselage, luggage, and other rift-raft piled together topped with an improvised iron cross. The cross...
View ArticleWhat's organ donation got to do with Macy's?
I was recently honored to be an invited keynote speaker at Donate Life America's annual national conference. As a researcher, who cares a lot about spreading the word, I do a considerable amount of...
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Here are the Secrets to the Fountain of (Internal) Youth
Lauren Kessler's goal was simple: To reverse her biological age from the inside out.In essence, to be the canary in the coal mine for all of the rest of us midlife moms who wonder about all the old and...
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Posthumous Fatherhood
Of all the various modern ways of making babies via assisted reproductive technology, one of the weirdest and most ethically challenging is the practice of inseminating a woman with sperm taken from a...
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"I Do Not Like Being A Mother"
This is what my client Didi told me yesterday. After she said, “I do not like being a mother,” she said, “I never did and I feel really guilty. When my son was a year-old someone said, ‘how do you like...
View ArticleStrange Stories People Have Told Me
I remember, when I was a kid, listening to a radio program in which a man who had started a movement to dress up farm animals was being interviewed. The position he took was that cows standing around...
View ArticleAre You Tired of Being Single?
Are you tired of being single?But more than weary are you wary of getting into another lousy (or worse) relationship especially when you barely got out of the last one with your sanity in tact?If it’s...
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Why Psychoanalysis Isn't Going to The Dogs
By Gurmeet S. Kanwal, M.D.What is uniquely human? What separates us from all other animals? It may seem obvious to some, but philosophers and scientists have had many different answers to this question...
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As We Define Our Needs, Doors Open
I’ve come to the conclusion that my basic needs fall into three general categories. I’m not talking about food, shelter, water, safety, but more what I need to do my best with the tools I have...
View ArticleAn Area of Vast Dark Ignorance
With the impact of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male still very much felt five years after its appearance, Alfred Kinsey’s second volume in his planned series of books about sex in America was...
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