Nelson Mandela’s greatness was most visible in his power to overthrow—through his courage, compassion, and peaceful manner—the brutality and murderous ways of the Apartheid regime. He was an ordinary man, he said, as he counseled us to find our own greatness. How do we acquire … [Read more...] about Curbing Our Appetite for Brutality
The Futility of Compulsive Approval-Seeking
Using brain imaging, researchers have discovered that pleasure is activated in the brain when people get positive feedback concerning their reputation or character. These researchers do not appear to understand that such pleasure is not necessarily genuine or healthy. A … [Read more...] about The Futility of Compulsive Approval-Seeking
How Worriers Unconsciously Chose to Suffer
These days people are snapping a lot of selfies, those close-up self-portraits taken with a cell-phone camera. Could this activity foretell a coming trend in which more of us turn inward to take close-ups of our psychological self? When we penetrate our psyche, new intelligence … [Read more...] about How Worriers Unconsciously Chose to Suffer
Get to Know Your Psychological Defenses
We’re often the dupes of our defenses which render us blind to our emotional life and mislead us about the sources of our suffering. For starters, we don’t see that common varieties of suffering are both symptoms of mysterious dynamics unfolding in our psyche as well as defenses … [Read more...] about Get to Know Your Psychological Defenses
The Love Song of the Self
The character Prufrock in T.S. Eliot’s ironically titled great poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” personifies the painful plight of people who are unable to connect with their authentic self. Contemplating “a hundred indecisions,” Prufrock saw the moment of his … [Read more...] about The Love Song of the Self