Dive into the archives.
- Bridging Disciplines
Psychological consultation, despite its qualitative breadth, runs a risk familiar to most organizations— from family units to multinational corporations: the silo. Silos are exactly what their agricultural images suggest: bounded containers within which a particular kind of stuff, product, or service, is kept. When the “stuff” is social science consultation, however, the separation of social [...]
- Millennial Mash-Up and William James
All the honor to you! To you, millennials, beginning or continuing college this year, toiling in late middle school, rebelling in high School under the harsh rod of Algebra 3…… All the Honor to you! I’ve just shown an antique to one of you: a prized, early album of Dave Von Ronk, alluded to on [...]
- Speaking Prose All Along…..
There’s that old story about the fella who discovers that he’s been speaking prose his entire life. That’s what I thought, suddenly, listening to the recently self-employed gentleman, despairing of his recent downsizing. I call him self-employed, though he would not yet admit it: because he’s now on his own. He’s smarting because the conditions [...]
- From Unemployed to Self-Employed
We met in the dog run, Sean and I. Sean had a mastiff—big guy, rolling around with a bloodhound; and my terrier wanted to break up the fight. After vetting one another, sniffing about and introducing ourselves via the names of our dogs, we got to talking about the work we did. Sean is 26 [...]
- Behavioral Finance: Happy Days Are Here Again
Behavioral finance begins with the setting of a question. For the individual investor, the question might be put, “what is going on in the market that is out of synch with fundamentals of reality?” For the market maker, wishing to influence market participants, the same question may be addressed— though acted upon to different ends. [...]
- “The International”: Debriefing the Movies
A movie review: sometimes, the irreality of the movie is enough to provide a moment’s respite from the irrealities of daily life. The International is like that. Its about the unwinding of a super-intelligent plot by fiendish banks to dictate international politics. Ok, that’s banal enough: especially when Goldman Sachs says it’ll repay TARP loans [...]
- Obama’s Outrage and AIG
Outrage? The New York Times tells us that President Obama’s economic team was “on message” delivering the news that $165 million in AIG bonuses to derivatives traders who helped precipitate AIG’s financial hemorrhage, could not legally be blocked. But the public’s response to the news (“the growing outcry”) caused the President to change tactics, with [...]
- Bartleby and the Avoidant Personality
I woke up one morning last week, thinking about Bartleby the Scrivener. It was a few days after my last posting, which had related to Bartleby via two Welsh Academics and one Slavic Lacanian, which is an oblique route to Herman Melville, and Bartelby— who worked, as it happens, in an establishment very close to [...]
- My Single Tip For Success
The great benefit for a self-help essayist in this era of recession is the value of the singular. How many times I have marveled at the multiplicity of tips offered (often in blocks of 7: at the limits of our human capacity for “chunking”, or holding ideas consistently in our heads) for emotional coping and [...]
- “Recession Psychosis”
My psychotherapist colleagues knew it was coming, but Saturday’s Times confirmed it: the severe symptoms of anxiety, despair, and even sucidality they’re calling “recession psychosis”— not a formal DSM diagnosis— but descriptive enough. Studies of unemployment reflect that downsizing is the only traumatizing life event which prevents sufferers from returning to their pre-morbid ‘setpoint” of [...]
