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Members of my profession are sometimes casually referred to as shrinks. While it seems this term was originally used to refer to psychiatrists, its application is more broadly applied these days. I’ve had clients refer to me as their shrink. So I’ve been thinking about “shrink.” It seems the first use of the term as […]

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.” — George Santayana The above is perhaps one of the most famous quotations known today. It is it strikes me keenly psychological. The philosopher George Santayana was a contemporary of Freud’s (I don’t know if they knew one another or their work). He was […]

It seems to me that ambiguity has a bad rap in our society. We generally don’t like what is ambiguous. We strive for clarity and focus, for being determined and resolute (somewhere in some classroom those attributes must have been set as standards). An employee, a politician, can be subject to criticism for a lack […]

It seems that in the last couple of weeks I must have heard at least half a dozen times someone remark about how fast the year is going by. It’s nearly October. Years move fast. Months move fast. Days move even faster. In fact it can seem as if all of modern life moves at […]

Much of psychotherapy is about identifying the key patterns that have developed in one’s past and changing those that no longer benefit the person. I often refer to these patterns as “templates.” Templates form through repeated experiences, and they then create a way of acting and of thinking about oneself and about others that may […]

Over the past several weeks, I have been posting blogs on the subject of addictions and the treatment of addictions. I have now assembled those various postings into an article which I’ve included in the Library portion of my web site. I hope that people will find this article of interest; that it will give […]

An important dimension in the process of working with addictions is how the client and I examine other ways of healthier coping. I often say to clients that everyone deserves a break, some respite from what is difficult in life. We often talk about some of these more positive respites (developing hobbies, doing meaningful volunteer […]

From my clinical experience, I have often seen that these behaviors have persisted for a very long time in a person’s life. It is not surprising to see that during the person’s childhood (perhaps beginning in adolescence) there was some use of some substance as a means of coping. In these circumstances, it is important […]

When working with addictions, it is vitally important to understand the role that predictability, and the desire for predictability, has in a person’s life. The repetition of these behaviors creates habit; and with any habit, a person comes to know just what he is going to experience. If it is the habit of drinking to […]

Psychotherapy is about discovery. At the heart of the work that the client and I do is the quest for discovery. It might be to discover just what is causing distress and suffering in the person’s life. In this regard, our quest is multi-leveled. There is of course the immediate level: a loss that the […]