Author Archives
Dedicated and committed that empathy becomes less of a rumor and more of an expanded reality in the community...
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Illness as Metaphor
Catching up on my reading while “sheltering at home” in Chicago, Susan Sontag’s (1933 – 2004) book length essay, “Illness as Metaphor” (1977) is especially timely in view of the psychological dynamics around the Covid-19 pandemic. The message of “Illness… Read More ›
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Alternative facts, dangerous half truths, and complete nonsense
Granted, medical science sometimes mistakes. But medical science still makes many, many fewer mistakes than do politicians appearing on TV and pretending to be doctors, touting unproven anecdotal remedies. Alternative facts, half truths, and dangerous nonsense are readily projected onto… Read More ›
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Empathy in the Age of the Coronavirus
What does empathy in the age of coronavirus look like? Two words to get started: social distancing. Social distancing makes sense and is necessary; but social distancing has a cost and an impact. No hugs allowed. No shaking hands. Bumping… Read More ›
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Online therapy now. Now is the time.
If ever there was a time for online (tele/cyber) talk therapy, this is it. In case you were trekking through Tibet or living in a cave with Buddhist monks, allow me to clarify why. Key term: social distancing. It is… Read More ›
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Review: Psychiatry Under the Influence by Whitaker and Cosgrove – Follow the Money
Book Review: Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove. (2015). Psychiatry Under the Influence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform. New York and the UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 241 pp. [$33.81 – less if digital] This is an important book… Read More ›
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Noted in Passing: George Steiner, author, After Babel, on translation, the Bible story, and empathy
George Steiner passed away in the fullness of time at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of 90. This blog post acknowledges and honors him for his contribution, largely previously unnoted, to the understanding and practice of empathy…. Read More ›
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Empathy, Capitalist Tool
Business leaders lose contact with what clients and consumers are experiencing. Leaders get entangled in solving legal issues, reacting to the competition, or implementing the technologies required to sustain operations, and lose touch with the empathic core of business. Yet empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time for it.
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Elizabeth Wurtzel, author, Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) died at the age of 52 on January 7th in New York City of metastatic breast cancer. Wurtzel became a notorious “bad girl,” with a wicked sense of black humor, sparing few, least of all herself, and… Read More ›
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Review: The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang
Esmé Weijung Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays (Gray Wolf Press, 2019: 210 pp.) are an articulate and clarion cry to bring empathy to an arena in mental health where it has been missing. My take on it? Ms Wang seems… Read More ›
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Top 10 Empathy Trends for 2020
10. Empathy is the new love. You know how in fashion gray is the new black? Same idea. Empathy is the new love. What people really want is to be “gotten” for who they authentically are as a possibility. In… Read More ›
Empathy Lessons 