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 ›
Mental illness
A Rumor of Empathy in the History of Psychiatry: A Review
Shorter narrates from the point of view of the practicing psychiatrist. The thesis is that psychiatry has struggled to differentiate itself from neurology (and brain science), psychoanalysis (and psychotherapy), finally securing for itself the secure path of a respectable scientific enterprise in the second psychopharmacological revolution, featuring Prozac (floxatine) along with a willingness to make use of some version of “the rapport,” talking with patients as human beings with complex lives and emotions.
From Death in Venice to Empathy in Venice
The city of Venice itself is the most significant symbol in Thomas Mann’s story. Even in 1912, when Death in Venice was published, Venice was sinking into the swamp on which in was built, sinking back into the unexpressed in the sense of… Read More ›
A Rumor of Empathy at Apna Ghar in the Fight Against Gender Violence …. the Movie
This is an on camera interview with Serena Low, Executive Director, Apna Ghar (“Our Home”), captured on December 13, 2012. Apna Ghar (“Our Home”) operates a Hot Line and Shelter for women who are dealing with domestic abuse, intimate partner… Read More ›
Lessons Learned: Intimate Partner Violence Training
This is what I learned in a 40-hour training on how to combat domestic violence (DW) delivered by the community organization Apna Ghar. “Apna Ghar” is Hindu / Urdu meaning “Our Home”. (See http://www.ApnaGhar.org.) I should issue all the necessary… Read More ›
Making Sense out of the Senseless . . . in Newtown
I am sick at heart. Coming at the same time of the Christmas story, events raise the deeply unsettling specter of King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, which sent Mary and Joseph in flight to Egypt. We are all in… Read More ›
The Other Within: the Stigma of Mental Illness Raises the Bar on Empathy
In thinking about the stigma of mental illness I saw in a flash that the stigma is due to discovering the Other within coming at me in the form of another person from without. On a bad day it can… Read More ›
Empathy Lessons 