Feeling Our Way

Turn in the direction of the skid.

Michael Karson Ph.D., J.D.

Ironies in Political Correctness

Jews have become white people to the “woke,” while still suffering hate crimes at higher rates than gays, Blacks, and Muslims.

Ariel’s Psychotherapy

A different Prince once said, “Holding someone is truly believing there's joy in repetition."

Lights in the Darkness

As a global pandemic impinges on holiday traditions, we can turn to history for inspiration.

The Internet Can Stunt Our Growth and Undermine Psychotherapy

The Internet allows you to fit in without having to adapt, by finding a social space where you already fit in.

Cinderella’s Psychotherapy

The cure for wretchedness isn’t luxury; it’s ordinary human connection, apart from wealth or poverty.

Martin Buber Does Therapy

In therapy, patients and therapists often confuse indulgence with being treated as a “You” and frustration with being treated as an “It.”

How to Think Systemically About Your Relationship

Take steps to promote the type of marriage you want to be in rather than inadvertently implementing the sort of marriage you don’t want to be in.

Be an activist. Be a comrade. Be an ally. Be a guide. But when you’re doing therapy, be a therapist.

Tartuffe—and social media—judge everything they see, not to help but for profit.

All Cultures Are Cancel Cultures

We are not elevated by canceling the people we are expected to cancel. We are elevated by empathizing with them.

How to Make Your Marriage a Prison

It’s human nature to find someone to blame for life’s disappointments, and your poor spouse is a likely candidate.

Talking in Your Real Voice

The real self is needy, collaborative, and all-too-human.

Unconscious Motivation

We are more likely to manage our motivations successfully if we acknowledge and accept them.

Is the Client’s Racism the Therapist’s Business?

The real self is not racist. Acorns are concerned with becoming oak trees, not with whether white oaks are superior to red oaks.

Psychopathology: Outmoded Intuitive Theories

Psychopathology is like trying to get around in your city using a map that is decades old and drawn by a child.

Psychopathology: Karen Horney’s Humanist View

Psychopathology uses imagination to replace rather than to develop ourselves.

The Medicine Man

When psychologists conceptualize human suffering as angst, despair, and ennui rather than as disease, then our "medicine" is very strong.

Conflict Resolution in Couples: Irrational Goals

Your partner cannot be both a perfect shield against infection and, at the same time, a relaxed roommate. You can’t marry Monica AND Phoebe, or Chandler AND Joey.

Conflict Resolution in Couples: Two Big Ideas

Some partners may not see the advantages of doing what’s best for the system.

Translating In-Person Therapy to Telehealth

Some approaches to therapy move online smoothly, and some don’t.

Stigma During a Pandemic

Once we stigmatize someone, we maintain our sense of our own humanity by demonizing the stigmatized.

A Global Health Crisis and the Storytelling Brain

Don’t be surprised when horror narratives and hero-worship supplant our rational responses to the coronavirus; it’s what we were built to do.

The Quest to Be Oneself

Why people have such a strong desire to be authentic.

Five Ways You Attract Narcissists

It’s hard to tell if your date is a narcissist because everyone is trying to look impressive on a date.

3 Reasons You Don’t Lose Weight

Do you look in the mirror with love or hate?

The Tyranny of Emotion

We need to learn how to manage our emotions, not be tyrannized by them.

How to Treat Your Flaws

All too often, “acceptance” means complacency with ourselves rather than an acknowledgment of our flaws, humility, and a desire to change for the better.

The Punctuation of Oppression

“Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 23:9

Why Science Is Unpopular

Science’s success in insulating us from early death lowers the stakes for sifting bad ideas, allowing us to believe what we like.

Show or Tell: Therapeutic Communication as Theater

Theater and poetry, as opposed to journalism, are the bedrock of therapy.

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