Twenty-five years ago, in the foreword to my book To Wrestle With Demons, I wrote, “We are more alike than different in our needs and fear and much more alone than we need to be.” Back then, I was a newly-minted psychiatrist. But I had enough early experience and enough raw sense about people to […]
The human brain has unique emotional power I call Magnetic Empathy. Magnetic Empathy is the force that drives a man to rush onto thin ice to save his stranded, frightened dog. He can feel the dog’s fear. It’s why even reading about the man’s bravery and visualizing him taking his first steps onto the ice, […]
When you try to outdistance your past, instead of turning to look at it and understand it, you will find that it can do damage to your future and that of your children, and perhaps their children as well. The very pain you deny can become your destiny—and theirs. That’s why it is your moral […]
The “third ear” is something counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists spend their careers refining, but others can benefit from developing, as well. It’s the concept, first introduced by the psychoanalyst Theodor Reik, that human beings can train themselves to listen not just to words that are being spoken by others, but to the deeper meaning behind […]
I have often thought that the world would be a kinder place if all of us were able to keep one fact at the front of our minds: We are all temporary beings on this planet. We all face the pain of impermanence—saying goodbye to our youth, to friends and family members who grow old, […]