Author Archives

Dedicated and committed that empathy becomes less of a rumor and more of an expanded reality in the community...

• Freud’s innovations in his essay “Infantile Sexuality”

  By Lou Agosta on April 9, 2016

  

  Freud’s innovations in his essay “Infantile Sexuality” (1905) transformed our understanding of human development. They changed our way of thinking about and engaging with human relations so that we can never go back. In particular, Erik Erikson (1950/1963) and Anna… Read More ›

• So Ancient, It is Modern: Freud’s Approach to Sexuality

  By Lou Agosta on March 27, 2016

  

  The key point on which Freud’s argument turns and which is responsible for the surprising results that shocked Freud’s contemporaries is the distinction between the aim, the sexual drive (or instinct (“Trieb”)) and the sexual object. We shall have to work with this; but basically the drive or instinct aims at satisfaction. The sexual object is highly variable and different objects are relatively readily substitutable for one another.

• Resistance to Empathy in the Organization

  By Lou Agosta on March 19, 2016

  

  Ours is the age of compliance. There are so many “shoulds” – so many rules – that doing one’s job is a challenge. Resistance to empathy is subtle, and it deploys institutional mechanisms, usually unwittingly, to disrupt empathy. The psychosocial dimension complicates resistance to empathy on the part of “behavioral health” professionals.

• Wittgenstein, Schreber, the Schizophrenic Mind, and the Paradoxes of Delusion, reviewed

  By Lou Agosta on February 28, 2016

  

  Sass provides a compelling account of how philosophical solipsism, idealism, and phenomenalism (not phenomenology!) gives us access to the experiences of schizophrenic individuals and provide the disorder with its characteristic aspects.

• Empathy: A Model Interdisciplinary Curriculum

  By Lou Agosta on February 28, 2016

  

  Empathy is oxygen for the soul – for teachers and students, here is a model curriculum for empathy studies in diverse contexts.

• The Last Psychoanalyst: Review of Arnold Goldberg’s The Brain, the Mind, and the Self: A Psychoanalytic Roadmap

  By Lou Agosta on February 14, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  It is not the purpose of this engaging and thought provoking book to get the reader to feel comfortable; it is the purpose of this book to get the reader to think – about psychoanalysis.

• Empathy Triple Play: 3 books on empathy: hear about the book that got me thrown out of the local institute for psychoanalysis

  By Lou Agosta on February 6, 2016

  

  Empathy is oxygen for the soul. Short of breath? Maybe one needs expanded empathy. Get some – along with a light snack – at this event.

• Soul Machine: John Locke, Inventor of CBT [Cognitive Behavioral Therapy]?

  By Lou Agosta on January 31, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  By the end of George Makari’s engaging – indeed monumental – Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind (W.W. Norton 2016: 652 pp.) one comes to understand that the modern mind is more ancient than most people believe and the… Read More ›

• 3 Empathy Books: Meet the Author Book Signing: Short of breath? Empathy is oxygen for the soul! Get expanded empathy.

  By Lou Agosta on January 16, 2016

  

  Empathy is oxygen for the soul. Short of breath? Maybe one needs expanded empathy!

• Trends and Predictions in Empathy for 2016

  By Lou Agosta on December 27, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  The idea is to pause for a moment and consider the relationship of empathy trends and predictions. I include empathy as an enabler or something enabled in diverse forms of relatedness. Now admittedly, so many of my predictions for last… Read More ›