Psychology Tomorrow Blog

  • Rev. Sheri Heller, LCSW - Therapeutic Theater: The Phoenix Project The essential work and the driving spiritual force behind The Phoenix Project is the play, Let The Phoenix Rise! Therapeutic Theater by The Phoenix Project NYC Let The Phoenix Rise! is based on the true stories of four teenage girls and their triumph over adversity. As they struggle to make sense of the challenging circumstances they were born ...
  • Martha Crawford, LCSW - Keeping Secrets: What’s A Psychotherapist to Blog? “Kalli was the secret-keeper of Maldinga. Every day the people of Maldinga straggled through the woods to the clearing where Kalli’s cottage stood. They came one by one, never in two or threes. And one by one, they told Kalli their secrets.“ (Kate Coombs: The Secret Keeper) Almost two years ago, when I began to talk ...
  • Anne Sabo, PhD - Porn Incorporated: The Lust Industry Revealed Deep Inside - A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars: “Without any mental deliberation, picture the average female porn star. Just let her spring into your mind’s eye looking however she looks. Can you see her?” A blonde with big boobs? “That’s what everyone says. And in fact, it’s wrong.” For the first time, a massive data set of ...
  • Velleda C. Ceccoli PhD - Generation Gap: Ageism or Darwinian Adaptation? Recently, in the ongoing supervision group that I have belonged to for almost 20 years, there ensued a discussion about working with younger patients, and whether we were speaking a different language. My colleagues and I all felt a generational gap, and wondered together whether we had finally taken up the language that our parents ...
  • Darian Leader - The Bipolar Explosion: Psychiatry Is At Last Asking The Right Questions “Historians of psychiatry have all made the same observation: it was precisely when patents ran out on the big-selling tricyclic antidepressants in the mid-90s that bipolar suddenly became the recipient of Big Pharma marketing budgets. Websites helped people to diagnose themselves; articles and supplements appeared all referring to bipolar as if it were a fact; and nearly ...
  • Alyssa Siegel, MS, LPC - Punk Parenting or “Alternafolks” I’m not sure that I would say that I fall into the category of punk, though those who don’t know what true punk is might see me as so. I have tattoos. I have my nose pierced. I have had close to every hair color known to hair color at some point in my life. ...
  • Stanley Siegel, LCSW - Coming Out against “Conversion Therapy” “Richard Socarides is an openly gay attorney, writer and commentator who served as President Clinton’s senior adviser on gay rights. He also happens to be the son of Charles Socarides, one of the controversial founders of so-called gay conversion therapy… Dr. Charles Socarides thought being gay was a curable mental illness. Sadly, having a gay son ...
  • The White Cube Diaries - The Uncanny: Where Psychology Meets Art “Dreams and Dramas” by Ofri Cnaani “The idea of the uncanny was first identified by Ernst Jentsch in his 1906 essay, On the Psychology of the Uncanny, where he defines the uncanny as being a product of ‘intellectual uncertainty.’ In 1919 Freud published The Uncanny, in which he elaborates on the uncanny through aesthetic investigations…. Freud outlines circumstances ...
  • Jennifer Bullock, LPC - “The Other” Psychotherapy: Social Therapy for a Social Species When I mention to colleagues that I am a group therapist, many will respond with pleasant, though puzzled curiosity. This reaction is not surprising, given that we are taught that group therapy typically functions as an adjunct practice, used to enhance or support the “core” individual and/or couple’s therapy. Group therapy is often viewed and ...
  • Karl Nicholason - Throwback: Illustrations in Psych Textbooks from the Late 60’s and Early 70’s Can you guess which psychological theorem each drawing depicts? The above drawing accompanied the textbook’s section on homosexuality. Other interpretations are equally valid of course. Fig 5.8: “One important aim of existential psychotherapy is to help the person assume responsibility for his own actions, because only through accepting responsibility can the client create meaning in his own life. Different existential ...
  • Stanley Siegel, LCSW - Curing Pornophobia: How Watching Pornography Can Change Your Life The great majority of us watch pornography. Nearly 87 percent of men and 76 percent of women reportedly visit adult entertainment sites. In fact, pornography drives the economy of the Internet and our appetite for it has led to Internet innovation. That sex sells is hardly a startling discovery. But what attracts us to pornography, and ...
  • Mariana Caplan, PhD - Yoga and Psyche: The Marriage of Ancient Wisdom and Depth Psychology   “There are papers and books written on the benefits of physical yoga for health, happiness, and psychological issues such as anxiety and depression, but few have published on how these two great and popular traditions — one from the East and the other from the West — can inform and compliment each other, and even ...
  • Alyssa K. Siegel, MS, LPC - Family. And Dying. And Family Dying. At this moment, I am sitting on a black pleather chair at LAX waiting for my flight home on Southwest. My mother is next to me, though it is my father’s mother we are returning from visiting. My mother’s relationship with her ex-mother in law, though tense at times (starting with my grandmother’s horror at ...
  • Dr. Justin J. Lehmiller - Same-Sex Marriage is Good for Gay and Lesbian Health Two recent studies have documented some positive health changes among sexual minorities… Same-sex marriage has been good overall for the health of persons who have taken advantage of it. However, there remains an important health disparity between persons involved in same- and other-sex marriages, and it appears that this disparity is even larger among women. Although ...
  • Stanley Siegel, LCSW - The Soul of Therapy: Our Problems Are Our Solutions As I continue to teach and lecture among my colleagues around the world, I have become increasingly aware that most psychotherapists train and practice within a paradigm that sees patients’ problems as rooted in pathology. These therapists wait and watch for a symptom to see how it might fit into a a category of identified disorders. That neatly solves ...
  • Bill Hayward - Bent: Conformity and Self Expression (video) “Bent is a video exploration where the fashion world collides with aerial modern dance. Grounded Aerial Dance Theater collaborated with Bill Hayward to create a piece about conformity and personal expression. This piece was inspired by the music video industry and the potential use of aerial work in that particular filming genre.” bent by bill ...
  • Miguel Ángel Huerta Floriano - The Cinema as Therapy: Psychoanalysis in the Work of Woody Allen “In general, Allen’s films have an existentialist tinge that emerges through a manipulation of the deepest of human preoccupations as the subjects of humour. The meaning of life, the lack of consistency in moral and/or theological referents, the unforeseen nature and intervention of chance - sometimes randomness - in interpersonal relationships are just some of the ...
  • Velleda C. Ceccoli, PhD - The Making of Identity: On Fingerprints, Bruises and Scars In my work as a psychoanalyst, I often think that none of us can avoid the fingerprints of our early history, the particulars of who our parent(s) and/or caretakers were and how their distinct elements shaped us, the specific interactions that molded our relational self. We cannot avoid it, nor would we want to. Our ...