Dive into the archives.
- On Learning How
A great “Aha!” in the history of psychotherapy came with the recognition (roughly 50 years ago) that the “lifting” or resolution of emotional disturbance did not mean a necessary turn toward emotional well-being. The effect of the original disturbance had blocked learning. If well-being was to be achieved, productive and healthy experiential learning was essential.
Since [...]
- 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 system [...]
- Happy Days R Here Again
Clearly, I was misinformed.
I grew up on stories of the Great Depression: was formed by my parents’ memories of sufferings endured or imagined. My great-grandfather… who’d weathered the Russo-Japanese War and had cannily utilized his war-record after the Kishiniev Pogroms to purchase property formerly proscribed to Jews— just so he could embed his young wife [...]
- Spinning the Wheel Faster
It is official. Deloitte reports that the return on assets at US companies has been in free-fall since 1965. Competition has tightened margins. Both consumers and valued employees have benefited as prices have dropped and salaries have increased. And the counterweight to the bottom line problem (at least at banks) has been increasing leverage.
Leverage of [...]
- 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 Dylan’s [...]
- 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. For [...]
- What’s Really Happening in the Market….
If you’re paying attention to the media commentary, you’re chock full of the knowledge that a) the green shoots of recovery are harbingers of new global hope; b) we are in an extended bear rally; c) the strength of the market is based on our reduced expectations; d) we are approaching another roller-coaster dip, after [...]
- A Conviction in Economic Recovery
The word “conviction” confirms the outcome of a process of proving. After weighing the evidence, sifting through facts, conviction emerges cognitively through what William James called the “slow heave of the will”. Conviction is solid. Conviction is grounded, based on a foundation.
Mania, on the other hand, is an enthusiastic effusion bouncing high in flight from [...]
- Them were Us, Yesterday: Not Coping With Recession’s Realities
Long ago, in another era, I worked as a volunteer following the 9/11 attacks. I began my work serving on a telephone information bank, manned by mental health workers, for the purpose of identifying 9/11 survivors. Working there, I noted an increasing kind of desperation. For example, on that first night (9/12), one of our [...]
- 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 Treasury [...]
