Feeling, Relating, Existing

On emotion and the human dimension

by Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D.

Ode to a Besserwisser

There are no objective or neutral analysts, no immaculate perceptions (Nietzsche), no God’s-eye views of anyone or anything. Read More

Human Beings Shining

In therapeutic practice, emotional worlds are enabled to shine with a kind of sacredness that calls forth an ethical, respectful, and caring engagement. Read More

Finitude

Owning up to the “good-bye” that is built in to our finite human existing makes possible the saying of an authentic “Hello!” Read More

Trauma, Death, Resurrection: A Russian-American Conversation

If we can help one another bear the darkness rather than evade it, perhaps one day we will be able to see the light — as finite human beings, finitely bonded to one another. Read More

Blues, Trauma, Existential Vulnerability

In the unifying experience of the blues, songwriter, performers, and listeners are joined in a visceral-linguistic conversation in which universally traumatizing aspects of human existence can be communally held and borne. Read More

Deconstructing Psychiatry's Ever-Expanding Bible

The DSM is a pseudo-scientific manual for diagnosing sick Cartesian isolated minds. As such, it completely overlooks the exquisite context sensitivity and radical context dependence of human emotional life and of all forms of emotional disturbance. Read More

What Is Character and How Does It Change?

How might character be understood from a perspective like mine that takes worlds of emotional experiencing as its principal focus? I have long contended that such organizations of emotional experiencing always take form in contexts of human interrelatedness, and it is within such a context that they can change. Read More

Pathologizing Grief

The traumatizing impact of human finiteness, as disclosed in the loss of a loved one, is not an illness from which one can or should recover. Read More

Grief Chronicles

As a countermovement against those in the field of psychiatry who wish to classify grieving that endures beyond a certain length of time as pathological, I offer a selection from my “Grief Chronicles,” a series of poems in which I grieved for my late wife, Dr. Daphne (Dede) Socarides Stolorow, over a ten-year period following her death 21 years ago today at the age of 34. Read More

Review Essay on "The Work of Mourning" by Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida’s "The Work of Mourning" is a haunting book, consisting of a series of 14 texts, each memorializing one of his deceased friends. Interspersed throughout these texts are profound philosophical insights concerning the interrelationships among friendship, fidelity, human finitude, and mourning. Read More

Earthquakes, Trauma, and Existential Anxiety

Angelenos aware of the facts about the San Andreas Fault live in a vague state of anxiety. It is an existential anxiety—about our own existence and the existence of all those whom we love. Such anxiety needs to be brought into dialogue so that it can be shared and held among us. Read More

Losing and Regaining My Sense of Being

When my traumatized states could not find a hospitable relational home or context of human understanding, I became deadened, and my world became dulled. When such a home became once again present, I came alive, and the vividness of my world returned. Read More