"Freedom From Religion." Boulder, Utah I started critiquing the DSM about sixteen years ...

In The Red Book, CG Jung declared, “the brightness of love seems to come from the fact t ...

I spent the weekend at my alma mater, Pacifica Graduate Institute, attending "The Writer ...

"The health of humankind is not measured just by its coughs and wheezes but by the fever ...

Lately I have been working on a paper about the phenomenology of violence, focusing on t ...

I've started two new blogs, Women. Healing. Violence. and Trauma's Labyrinth, Curated. I w ...

Peekaboo Loop Trail, Bryce Canyon National Park Trickster plays with me. Last week I wr ...

Consider the following classification of animals from an ancient Chinese encyclopedia: ...

View of Golden Gate Bridge from Lands End. Twice weekly, I commute across the Golden Gat ...

“Beware the Ides of March,” says the soothsayer to Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s drama ...

BBC's The Why Factor posted two short podcasts (18 minutes each) on trauma — one on cultur ...

Sonoma County, California. Do you worry about the nuclear waste and bombs squirreled awa ...

Sun setting near Pancake Rocks, New Zealand. "Every day you must arise and say to your h ...

Photo of mural in San Francisco's Mission District. While reading a 2007 press release f ...

And it's all Cupid's fault. Enjoy this darkly charming, short animation film by Cupidon Le ...

Photo of Zeng Fanzhi's "Mask Series No. 9" (1994). The Committee responsible for revisin ...

"The world is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love. ...

Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate love, and love certainly deserves celebration. Excep ...

A long time ago, before the One God replaced the many gods and before Man ruled Nature, ...

This short animated video accompanies the song La Muerte (Death) by the Colombian band Mon ...

There's something untoward about a married woman of my age writing about lust, let alone ...

Photo of Illustration in CG Jung's "The Red Book" Long before their falling-out, Jung wr ...

My husband and I have been together almost 26 years, 21 of them married. We know couples ...

Photo of "Field Guides," By Fred Tomaselli (2003) In Waking Dreams, Mary Watkins wrote t ...

Photo of "Sin with Olives," By Ed Ruscha (1969) The other night, I watched the movie, Ta ...

Chaim Potok wrote: "Life is like the blink of an eye. What is it worth? Nothing. But the ...

In my current research, I am exploring the role of the imaginal (i.e., dreams, fantasies ...

The slated 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM ...

I wish for a world where we understand what it means to be human as a species among othe ...

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination ... ...

"In troubled times youth are doubly threatened since it is through trouble that they fin ...

For several days, I felt a physical uneasiness in response to the Newtown tragedy. From ...

On the eve of World War I, Carl Jung had a vision: "I saw a blood-red glow, like th ...

I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great ...

Do you remember childhood field trips to science museums, gazing into dioramas of our di ...

"I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, i ...

A program called The Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas stud ...

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so you can learn to let g ...

After decades as an American consumer, I have finally developed the acumen necessary for s ...

The "Narrows" in Utah. “We are now in a position to see the wonder and terror of the hum ...

What if there is something fundamental about empathy such that when we cannot act on it, ...

Photo of Illustration in CG Jung's "The Red Book". "We, each and all of us, contain with ...

Free the Mind: Can You Rewire the Brain Just By Taking A Breath? A Danish documentary f ...

Since 1975, natural disasters increased by 430%. Yet percentages mean little to those whos ...

I am writing a book manuscript, Trauma Nation, which looks at how the United States is org ...

"In the past, places changed so slowly that we could return to the scenes of our childho ...

Given the continual stagnation of the US economy, it's not surprising the Gross Domestic ...

I typically ignore national awareness initiatives saddled to particular months. There ar ...

The following Obama campaign ad, written by Adam Mansbach, author of Go the F**k Asleep, a ...

"To go into madness, to start to come out, to leave the web, is to fight to get free, to ...

   "Surrendering to poverty and solitude and finally, in so many cases, to insanity—the k ...

Photo of Illustration in CG Jung's "The Red Book." I've been catching up on 'smaller' wr ...

"Perhaps only through love is it possible to recognize the person of the soul. And this ...

The Indian union of Shiva and Shakti (also known as lingam and yoni), along with the Chi ...

"In the end, that's the gift wounds bring us — a story set to song. If I ignore my morta ...

I am training with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and loving it. Not only have I ...

"Was there an early form of the American Dream? I can't say there was one American Dream ...

I have blogged about the connection between love and psychotherapy, and the topic is up ag ...

"The sun is the father-god from whom all living things draw life; he is the fructifier a ...

The idea of the unconscious -- unintended motivations out of our awareness and control - ...

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich an ...

"Night does not care for the clinical model. For any culture to survive, it needs its ar ...

At the crossroads, No repose. Only birth, Of a memory, A talisman, A tale, A clinging ...

"Joy is a better teacher than pain, always."  —Ginette Paris, Wisdom of the Psyche ...

"Being requires accepting oneself, staying within oneself and not doing to prove oneself ...

Few people pass from birth to death without intimate knowledge of trauma’s capacity to a ...

“Men may now be the possessors of the world’s flimsiest identity structure, the products ...

"A monkey's transformed body weds the human mind. Mind is a monkey — this, the truth pro ...

  "Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and ...

In the West, our introduction to power and dominance comes early. Starting with our first ...

Photo of "Exploded Views," By Jim Campbell (2011). "In the heaven of the great god Indra ...

Before I became a psychotherapist, I often wrote, lectured, and blogged about damaging asp ...

 Alexithymia. Now that's quite the word. Derived from the Ancient Greek, it means "without ...

"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend ...

Photo: "Being Human" Sign at the 2012 Event. I spent Saturday, March 24 at the Being Hum ...

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." —Samuel Becke ...

Just over a decade ago, I spent a summer volunteering in the women’s facility of the San ...

A Mganga (or Traditional Healer) in Tanzania. "Father time is not always a hard parent, ...

In the nineteenth century, psychiatrist Pierre Janet was the first to theorize posttraumat ...

"Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first--the ...

In the mental health system, the biomedical model is the dominant paradigm. It depicts men ...


In her documentary film, ‘Til Death Do Us Part (2008), Vita Lusty brings fresh insight to ...

"With extreme rains, seeds of plants that have been dormant for centuries can sprout. They ...

The Holocaust Memorial at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Every month Somatic Perspe ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed an international version of the Adverse ...

Few of us make it through childhood without getting the wits scared out of us by a night ...

I spent a good part of my youth in San Antonio, Texas, where Bihl Haus Arts exhibits the w ...

The photographer, Grace Brown, also accepts submissions for her website. ...

Last spring I reviewed research conducted by Robert Miller and David Johnson that showed P ...

Ideas about the nature of "healing" are regularly batted around the culture of psychothe ...

Last week I visited SFMOMA, and on display was one of Sam Durant’s works, "History never e ...

From David Whyte's poem, "Sweet Darkness," in House of Belonging, wisdom to remember in ...

The holiday season is a season of longing. Some long for time with loved ones, while other ...

At onearth, David Gessner tells of paddling down the Charles River with environmentalist ...

Click here to read the BBC Report, "America's Child Death Shame" ...

"Humankind has become a very dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be ...

Name calling. Cursing. Yelling when a calmer tone could deliver the same message. Who of u ...

“Every childhood is more or less traumatic, none is without wounding, and the pleasure o ...

Us humans have been destroying environments and eradicating species throughout our history ...

  "The moon and the sun travel night and day. The years trail on without interruption. Wh ...

Photo of Illustration in CG Jung's "The Red Book." "It is no small matter to acknowledge ...

Photo of Illustration in CG Jung's "The Red Book." "He who enters into his own must grop ...

Photo of "Warengestell mit Gehirnen (Display Stand with Brains)," By Katharina Fritsch. ...

Photo of Illustration in CG Jung's "The Red Book." "If you do not know what divine madne ...

Photo of "Warengestell mit Gehirnen (Display Stand with Brains)," By Katharina Fritsch. ...

A 2011 study suggests there may be a connection between creativity and posttraumatic str ...

“Every good quality has its bad side, and nothing that is good can come into the world wit ...

I have rubbed down to nubs thoughts surrounding my current research interest — how Jungian ...

USA Today identified 2010 as “The Year Technology Replaced Talking.” Rather than face-to-f ...

"War," By Henri Rousseau (1894). “What if madness, in at least some of its forms, were t ...

I rushed to put this website together, unsure of direction and focus. In many regards, i ...

"How can we know ourselves by ourselves? We can be known to ourselves through another, b ...

“Our bodies know what is right, if only we listen to them. Beneath the enculturation, ...

In most places, human societies have changed more in the past two hundred years than the ...

The journal Science recently published a study of a molecule, which, if manipulated, could ...

Photo of Illustration from CG Jung's "The Red Book." "If it were permissible to personif ...

I am searching for a new research project. While I still have the same interests (e.g., ...

Photo of "No. 14, 1960," By Mark Rothko. "Psychological art is in creating, transforming ...

Living in Emergency (2010) offers a sobering view of the lives of physicians and surgeon ...

...

I mentioned in my last post that I spent the weekend attending Pema Chödrön's retreat, "Sm ...

I had the pleasure and honor of attending Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön's "Smile at Fear" retr ...

"Ordinary people do evil acts" is the premise of Five Steps to Tyranny, an hour-long docum ...

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), in conjunction with several other org ...

According to author and historian Theodore Roszak, “in another generation, every industr ...

Would you erase devastating memories if given the chance? By blocking a memory-sustainin ...

The National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) website makes it seem the mystery of sc ...

Photo of Illustration from CG Jung's "The Red Book." “Every society has a blind spot, an ...

When health care is inadequate to nonexistent in a country, mental health care is genera ...

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a review (2008) that concluded arti ...

Mental illness has reached epidemic proportions. The National Institute of Mental Health ...

What leads a middle-aged person to contemplate suicide? A failed relationship? Financial ...