Genius is ours for the taking if we know where to look. Just ask three geniuses: Vladimir Nabokov, Immanuel Kant, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While these guys were natural-born geniuses, a capacity for genius is available to everyday people. Nabokov, the novelist, said … [Read more...] about Access the Genius Within
Depth Psychology
How Meditation and Depth Psychology Overlap
I have long been interested in meditation, and I practiced it on and off for many years when I was a young man. Meditation held me together through my neurotic shenanigans, until depth psychology crossed my path and cleaned out the worst of my inner discombobulations. I used to … [Read more...] about How Meditation and Depth Psychology Overlap
Guilt: A Favorite Way to Suffer
Is guilt our favorite way to suffer? I think it is. Shame, fear, and anxiety might be more intense as torments go, but guilt (life’s “fitful fever”—Shakespeare) is the emotional hotspot that flares up most frequently in the backwoods of human nature. And it doesn’t take … [Read more...] about Guilt: A Favorite Way to Suffer
Understanding the Psyche of Boys
Boys are being bad, again. They’re displaying “a stunted masculinity,” says the cover story in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. The article, titled “The Miseducation of the American Boy,” bemoans “the brutal language” of teenagers and young men whose primary values, … [Read more...] about Understanding the Psyche of Boys
The Joy of Militant Ignorance
Human beings are highly resistant to acquiring self-knowledge. Our ego, the turtle shell of our mind, readily embraces willful, even militant, ignorance as self-protection against the humbling reality of how we instigate and then cover-up our participation in self-defeating … [Read more...] about The Joy of Militant Ignorance