My Mother Never Liked Me
Dear Dr. Alasko: Since I was a little girl my mother has never been very loving. She was too involved in her own career and, I suspect, alcoholic. Even today she finds ways to ignore me or criticize...
View ArticleMy Wife Acts Like a Teenager
Dear Dr. G.,I know that your column is about problems with teenagers but I have a problem with my wife who is trying to act like a teenager. I met my wife 18 years ago and married her because she was...
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Da Vinci, Copernicus and The Astronomical Procrastination of Science
From the beginning, science and procrastination have been intertwined. Consider Leonardo Da Vinci. Five hundred years ago, he designed or sketched the submarine, the helicopter, and the armored tank as...
View ArticleTen Ways to Wow Your Audience
Do you hate public speaking? Are you afraid that no one will pay attention? Are you nervous about getting up and talking in front of strangers, or even family? Social phobia, also called social anxiety...
View ArticlePossible worlds in dreams
I recently received this email from a reader:"Dear Professor McNamara,I read with great interest your article "Counterfactual Thought in Dreams" during a research on counterfactual thinking, and a...
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Immunity Mirrors the Diametric Mind
It's probably a symptom of our innate tendency to hyper-mentalize that we think of our brains as our principal organ of adaptation to our environment and prime means of survival. But a moment's...
View ArticleTo Procrastinate or Not: Do You Have A Choice?
My only resolution this year was to get all of my client's invoices and insurance forms to them on time. I started off well. On January 1 I did all of the billing for December, printed out all of the...
View ArticleRegister Now for National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week will take place from February 26 through March 3 this year, and Eating Disorders News won't miss the opportunity to raise awareness about this insidious...
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Kids Making Too Much Noise?
Read this story to your children if their voices sometimes sound too loud. The story was written by a boy whose grandma kept asking him to quiet down. The Missing Voice Once upon a time there was a...
View ArticleThe Two Faces of Facebook
The "Friend" and the Big BrotherWho doesn't know that Facebook is about to go public, with a projected market capitalization of one hundred billion dollars? That's the new face of Facebook, an economic...
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Nika and Her Animal Friends: A Most Inspirational Rescue
In response to my recent essay on Chancer, a golden retriever who takes care of a youngster named Lyal, I had some very interesting emails but a note from a friend stuck out as one of the most...
View ArticleClassroom Sexual Predators: A Perfect Storm of Trust and Betrayal
The arrest of Los Angeles elementary school teacher Mark Berndt in late January on charges that he allegedly bound and photographed some of his students and had them drink his semen from spoons, seems...
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Superbowl XLVI Ads: A Biopsy of the American Mind
Each year, companies spend a fortune to buy advertising time during the Superbowl game. They aim to make the biggest impact of the year and to cement powerful connections and images that will lead to...
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Are Seniors Enjoying Sex More Than the Rest of Us?
"No presents, just negligees made of French silk," read the invitation to Great-Grandma's 90th birthday celebration during her trip to America. As she opened gifts she fingered the fabric and smiled,...
View ArticleReview Essay on The Work of Mourning by Jacques Derrida
True to its title, Jacques Derrida’s The Work of Mourning (2001) is a haunting book, consisting in a series of 14 texts, each memorializing one of his deceased friends. Interspersed throughout these...
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Noise, Noise, Noise!
How to turn down the volume in an increasingly loud world—and why you should.
View ArticleParental Put Downs, Power Tests, and Power Struggles with Adolescents
All parents fall from grace.The child looks up to parents and their wonderful powers and idealizes who they are. The adolescent looks down on parents and their unfair authority and criticizes who they...
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What Kind of Ancestral Leader Are You Most Like?
What kind of ancestral leader are you most like? Are you most similar to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Sir Winston Churchill and Diego Maradona, Hillary Clinton and Pele, Angela Merkel and Howard Schulz,...
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Hot Tips for Relationship Success, Part 2
Seymour Boorstein, M.D. was my main mentor during my psychiatry residency. Every Tuesday for two years, I left the skyscrapers and academic institutions of San Francisco, traversed the Golden Gate...
View ArticleIs the Male Sex Drive the Cause of Wars?
Why are conflicts between different human tribes so prevalent and why is violent intergroup conflict almost exclusively the domain of men....both as perpetrators and victims?The latest tragedy in Egypt...
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