The Five Senses
posted by Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. on Mar 11th 2010
"We have eyes, but do we see? We have ears, but, do we listen? Jon Kabbat-Zinn points out that the senses work together to create a wonderful combined sensory experience if, we pay attention. We hear with our eyes and see with our ears. But, do we see, do we hear, do we enjoy the smell of wonderful aromas? " More...

A Practice to Get Clear on Living the Life You Want
posted by Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. on Mar 11th 2010
"There's a great metaphor that comes out the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) community and speaks to a true acceptance on how our difficult emotions can control us. Imagine you were on a bus called "your life." The passengers that get picked up on this bus are all your memories, habitual thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc... When we get on the bus it seems to be a struggle with our difficult emotions as they want to control the direction we're going to go, so they make a big stink and we'll do anything to fix the struggle. So, what happens?" More...

Violent Video Games
posted by Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. on Mar 10th 2010
"We see the advertisements flash across our television screens. They are so realistic that at first the ads appear to be for upcoming movies. Instead, they are violent video games with characters that seem very real. These video games carry tags with them labelling them for "mature audiences only." However, research findings provide small comfort when they are examined. Essentially, the findings are that all audiences are deeply affected by these violent games regardless of age, nationality or geographic location. " More...

Reparative Therapy For Homosexuality: Is It Ethical? Should It Be Provided?
posted by Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. on Mar 9th 2010
"Over the last few days a wife and husband have been leaving comments on an older advice column that Dr. Schwartz responded to some years ago titled, I Think I am Gay and I Need Help to Convert to Heterosexual?. It occurred to me that the whole topic is worthy of an essay in of itself, rather than being limited to a set of footnotes to an older piece. So what I've done is to simply take the husband's comment and reprint it here, followed by my response, followed by some questions I hope that readers will respond to. This is a difficult issue I think, for reasons that I elaborate below - that incompatible worldviews are clashing and there is an unknown but limited amount of common ground to be shared here. But points of contact like this one hold out promise that at least different positions can be accurately understood and therefore not distorted by the other side(s). " More...

Neuroplasticity: The Good, Bad and How it Affects You
posted by Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. on Mar 9th 2010
"I just came from a wonderful conference in UCLA where psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science discussed the nature of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is simply the new-ish finding that our brain continues to grow connections throughout the lifespan. This has been very encouraging and provided people with a lot of hope because of the fact now that we can actually alter our brains for the better. And as with anything that becomes a trend or popular we can sometimes miss the whole picture. So what are we missing?" More...