Boris Cyrulnik articulates that human evolution takes place only in crises. "When the epidemic is over, we will see that we will have dusted off old values that will help us to develop a new way of living together. There will be profound changes, this is the rule." …
Category: Psychology
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn. –David Whyte “One wonders only when he is alone, and seeks the truth, ” said Einstein. The great thinker Goethe said that creative inspiration comes only when he is alone. Winnicott, one of my favorite psychologists, defines “the capacity to stay on his own” as a crucial indicator of child development. H.D. Thoreau, the notable American philosopher and nature lover proclaimed that he made his spiritual discoveries during his walks in nature. He wrote in Walden that being on his own in nature provided him …
Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us and take with us when we depart. Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), in her pioneering work with patients nearing the end of their lives in palliative care, interviewed them on their feelings about life and death, and how they measure the life they lived. The results of her work proclaim that the patients unanimously express their emotional state as “yearning for love,” a shield needed against the fear of death, and the measure of the degree of inner peace and contentment they savor at the end of their life …
“When we are about to choose a partner, or get married to a certain partner –that’s the kind of decision that we cannot make based on a cold cognitive calculus” says Richard Davidson, the seminal neuroscientist known for his research on what determines our emotional styles. In the interview with Krista Tippet, he adds “we consult our emotions for making that decision, and if our emotions were disrupted, it will really impair our capacity to make those kinds of decisions.” In the assessment of the functioning of the emotional brain, he identifies six innate capacities which constitute our emotional …
Siri Hustvedt, the prizewinning writer and scholar, describes the meaning of life in her vigor for work, the joy she finds in the creative impulse and the urgency to write driven by it. She recounts her life being a woman writer in men’s world, married to the well-known writer Paul Auster and describes her remedies to overcome the challenges of the “writing self”. Her deep knowledge of psychoanalysis, art and neuroscience is woven in her stories where the human condition is playing up real and tangible. She insightfully draws answers to the question “what are we ?” Here …
In the dance, one finds the cinema, the comic strips, the Olympic hundred meters and swimming, and what’s more: poetry, love and tenderness, said Maurice Bejart, the exceptional choreographer, opera director and dancer. Long before neuroscience confirmed that our brains are wired to move along with music, dancing was there. Babies, children, and adults, all instinctively move to the rhythm of the music. Based on recent cognitive research, it seems like human beings are universally synchronized with the chords of music. Moreover, the rhythmic movement lifts our mood, regulates the mental and emotional fluctuations, and we become happier. Such …
Psychoanalytic therapy aims to explore the hidden emotions, repressed childhood memories, fantasies and thoughts affecting present behavior and relations of the client. The ultimate gain is a sound sense of self, contentment at a higher state of consciousness and self-mastery. The history of the psychoanalytical practice is not only long but it has been evolving ever since S. Freud’s work in psychoanalysis from 1915s up to present. Moving from the divan (couch) to psychoanalytic therapy wherein the client is relocated to the armchair facing the therapist and further on to the developmental approach founded by S. Freud’s daughter Anna …
The practice of psychology had started with two traditional schools: psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology from which further derivatives and styles of therapies would be formulated in tandem with advanced research in cognitive science and developmental psychology. Freud’s pioneering work with psychoanalysis at the turn of the 20th century and the Jungian approach to the unconscious, both prepared the field for psychological practices, primarily paving the way for psychoanalytical therapy in the 1930s. The next major school – Cognitive Behavioral psychology was founded in the late sixties by the developmentalists Bruner and Neisser. Here is a simplified outline …
“Murmuring, noisy, intuitive, singing, liberating, the conversation made with oneself is the characteristic of all human beings” states psychologist and anthropologist Victor Rosenthal, in his recent book Somebody is Talking. From an early age on, one speaks to himself without any external trigger, relentlessly accommodates and comforts himself … in the form of talking aloud either through objects or directly with oneself… It allows us to reflect, to come back to our self while distinguishing us from our environment, and helps us to develop our sense of discernment for the good and the bad. This kind of inner dialogue …
The impact of our perceptual patterns on the way we navigate the “self” has always been a cornerstone in understanding human behavior. Long before neuroscience started thought experiments on the nature reality, W. James put forward “our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to perceive” and that, in effect, shapes the world around us. C. Jung, firmly believing “unconscious is our great guide”, he proclaimed that the information stored in the unconscious plays up in decoding the world, and the manifestation of the self out there. It happens in daily life that we know …
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