finebergpsychotherapy

We all have a need for uniqueness contrasted with the need to belong. How we balance the two needs contributes to who we are. (Erle, H., & Gebert, S.  Who am I? Scientific American Mind, 2014, 25(2), 28-33)

Dave Barry: If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”

Yoga changes the brain in areas that promote self-awareness (Scientific American Mind, 2014, 25(2), p. 16).

The brain’s irregular responses to taste may predispose to eating disorders. (Scientific American Mind, 2014, 25(2), p. 10)

Patrick Hardin: As children, we have imaginary friends. We grow up and we replace them with imaginary enemies.

Taffel (2014) spoke of the need for three-dimensional, fully connected, parenting rather than two-dimensional parenting. He saw two-dimensional parenting as resulting from several factors. He described today’s parents as hyper-stimulated and too distracted by technology, especially cell phones, to pay full attention to their children. Helicopter parents are too intrusive to provide the soothing, quiet times and explorations that children need to have on their own. Some parents respond too much by-the-book. They are trying too hard to follow the advice of parenting experts to respond from the heart.

He blames two-dimensional parenting for the decline in self-reported well-being by in-coming college freshman. He recommends three-dimensional parenting, comprised of both firm limit-setting and sensitive attunement, as providing the authentic parenting that encourages the development of secure, firm attachment.

Taffel, R. (2014). The rise of the two-dimensional parent. Psychotherapy Networker, 38(5), 18-25 & 46.

Steve Jobs: Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.

Toni Morrison’s book Home( 2012) is certainly as vivid a rendering of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the Korean war as is available in literature. It is also a story about the home coming of a veteran who had left his hometown with adolescent contempt for its people and culture and returned to recognize their rich possibilities for healing and community. There was also a little man in a zoot suit who magically appeared and disappeared. I don’t know what he symbolized to Ms. Morrison. To me, he was another variation of the fiddler on the roof, an embodiment of the magic and vitality of life in spite of its tragedies