Evil Deeds

Do you believe in fate? Destiny? If fate does exist, how much responsibility must we accept for our lives? Are we responsible for everything that occurs to us--even choosing our own birth, as some suggest--or do we bear little or no responsibility for a cosmically, theologically or genetically preordained destiny? Read More

Let's start with a simple word association experiment: When you think about psychotherapy, what is the first word that comes to mind to describe what therapy is all about? Take a few seconds. Got it? For many of you, my guess is that one, if not the very first, of those words was change. But what if I were to tell you that psychotherapy is really at least as much about acceptance as change? Read More

One of the most common phenomena psychotherapists deal with is a chronic pattern of dysfunctional relationships. The person's partners share consistent similarities, such as physical and/or emotional abuse, unavailability, substance abuse, instability, narcissism, etc. And each relationship eventually ends badly because of these repetitive dynamics. After a while, such destructive patterns--objectively obvious to others--start to become apparent even to the patient. And the therapeutic question becomes: Why would anyone persist in pursuing relationships that are doomed to failure? What's going on here?

The archetypal Jungian notion of the puer aeternus (male) or (female) puella aeterna--the eternal child--provides the basis for what has come in pop psychology and self-help movements (see, for example, the writings of Dr. Eric Berne or John Bradshaw) to be known as the "inner child." What exactly is this so-called inner child? Does it truly exist? And why should we care?