Genius and Madness

A recent post on "real" psychology--as opposed to all the fake or unreal psychology out there--got me thinking. The day we all decide on what real psychology is, is the day psychology dies. Real psychology equals dead-ended, myopic, oversimplification--of subject matter and of methodology. Real psychology is a means-centered approach. That is to say: only psychologists making use of prescribed, narrowly-defined "scientistic" methods are allowed into the fold. All others are touchy-feely, hopelessly subjective trespassers. Such a stance is 1) naïve, 2) unhistorical, and 3) regressive. Read More

Just finished a class called Freud and Jung. Learned a lot, not so much about theory, which is already firmly cemented in my head, but the personal factors at work in the relationship. On that subject: WOW. So much going on. From the very beginning--the first meeting and fevered discussion for something like 13 hours straight--a sense of high promise combined with undeniable doom. Read More

I'm teaching a class on Psychobiography now, my area of specialization. This time around we're studying the lives of John Lennon, Elvis, and Kurt Cobain, and like psychobiographers do, trying to superimpose the life and personality on the art to see how the subjective origins of the art can be illuminated. Quite a lot always comes up, but one theme that interpenetrates when it comes to Lennon, Elvis, and Cobain concerns the psychological consequences of fame itself. Read More

You know the (by now) ancient rite. It's embarrassingly formulaic, and like all such formulas, pathological in its compulsiveness and utter lack of imagination. Some major or even minor celebrity/notable says or does something he or she "shouldn't" have. Read More