Sacred Disorder | Cliff Bostock's blog – 'Finally, I came to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind' (Rimbaud)
It’s not their fault
Ted Haggard and Mark Foley are both back in the news this week, both blaming childhood experiences for their sexual behavior. Foley told the AP that a sexual encounter with a priest at 12 is at the root of his sexual flirtation with Congressional pages: “I loved my early life, and then along comes a […]
Say good-bye to bad memories
Neuroscience is eclipsing psychology. A new study, from the Chinese, reports on experiments that may lead to a “treatment” for traumatic memories — effectively detaching the emotional intensity from the narrative itself, perhaps permanently, through a single treatment. The article, weirdly, does not take up how this might affect the incidence or treatment of post-traumatic […]
Police harassment of gays: blaming the reporter and the victim
Ever since sodomy became legal, the police have had to dream up new harassment charges against gay men who dare to behave sexually outside the home. The New York police have been hard at work seducing gay men in video stores, then offering them money for sex and then, whether they accept the money or […]
Día de los Muertos and the virtue of playing with the dead
Hoy es el Día de los Muertos. Today is the Day of the Dead in Mexico. Yesterday was Halloween in America. For us, encounters with the dead are a scary phenomenon, even if a somewhat compelling one. In Mexico, Day of the Dead is an opportunity to honor and communicate with ancestors. It’s not very […]
Rant: saying bye-bye to ‘Headcase’
The inevitable occurred yesterday. Creative Loafing’s editor, Ken Edelstein, called and let me know the paper was discontinuing “Headcase,” because, he said, “We can’t afford it.” I’ll get the snark out of the way first. The explanation made me laugh. I’ve written “Headcase,” previously called “Paradigms,” for – I don’t even remember. It’s been over […]
The psychology of taste
I posted the following on Creative Loafing’s food blog, Omnivore, today. Since it deals with psychology as well as gastronomy, I’m posting it here too. I’ve been thinking a lot about the psychology of taste in recent weeks. In my other occupation, the psychology one, I conduct workshops related to the imagination and creativity. I’ve […]
More on psychologists and torture
Saturday’s New York Times published a follow-up story on the controversy over psychologists’ participation in “enhanced interrogations,” which I wrote about recently. The American Psychological Association, which is holding its annual conference in Boston this week has been debating whether to designate participation in such interrogations as a violation of its code of ethics. It’s […]
Obecalp, that’s ‘placebo’ spelled backwards
Several studies, including a recent one based on drug companies’ own research, have concluded that antidepressants don’t work any better than placebos in the treatment of mild depression. (They do have measurable effects on cases of severe depression.) The problem of course is how to make use of the placebo effect in real life, since […]
You are about to be voted out of your own life
One of the frequent criticisms of psychology and psychiatry is their penchant for dreaming up new disorders or over-diagnosing existing ones. They are assisted in this by Big Pharma which is always trying to find new uses for existing drugs. Probably the most familiar example of this is the gross over-diagnosing of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity […]