Reality Play

Where psychoanalysis meets art
by Bruce Poulsen, Ph.D.

The Boston Tragedy: One Simple Suggestion for Our Kids

Repeated exposure to upsetting and increasingly vivid images in the news is clearly not helpful to children. In the face of so much that can be difficult to control, turning off the television is something any of us can do. Read More

In Praise of Frustration

Much has been said about how we praise children when they succeed. Recent research supports the view that praising a child's inherent qualities, rather than effort, may ultimately backfire. What about when children fail? Children may also need more experience with failure and greater fluency for talking about frustration. Read More

Are We About to Map the Entire Human Brain?

The Obama administration is about to announce a 10-year scientific project to map the human brain. The proposal, which may be announced as early as March, will include efforts to map the functions and activities of the billions of neurons in the human brain, much like the Human Genome Project. Read More

On the End of History Illusion

When we recall the past, we can easily see how much we've changed. When we look into the future, however, we imagine that we’ll be no different from who we are today. We tend to predict that our values, interests, and preferences will be the same. We are quite convinced that we’ll be the same tomorrow, the next day, and 10 years from now. Read More

The Bright Side of Uncertainty

What would it mean to be capable of bearing uncertainty, doubt, and mystery–without what Keats called our “irritable reaching after fact and reason?” Are there unseen pleasures with being bewildered? Read More

The Future of Nostalgia

What has been the appeal of Apple's nostalgic design references and why are such images appealing to us in the first place? Does psychology offer ways of accounting for the allure of nostalgia in our technology? Read More

The Pleasures of Being in Disguise

Apart from its cultural history, there is something compelling about our ritual of costuming. Our amusement in disguising ourselves from other people may be an echo of how we masquerade our own wishes and desires from ourselves. Read More

Revisiting the Myth of Mental Illness: Some Thoughts on Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz died this past week at the age of 92. His numerous writings have provided the philosophical basis for the antipsychiatry and patient advocate movements that began in the 1960s and have flourished ever since. What are the side effects of the medical model? Is Szasz too radical for a modern, neuroscience-based psychiatry? Read More

The Transitional Space of John Cage

The avant garde composer would have turned 100 this week and celebrations are being held throughout the world. What can we learn about creativity from John Cage? What, if anything, can psychoanalysis add to understanding his artistry? Read More

In Defense of Blushing

So what exactly is this most peculiar and most human of all expressions? What do we communicate when we blush? Is there an upside to blushing? Finally, what, if anything, do we learn about ourselves by understanding the phenomenon of blushing? Read More

Curiosity, Here and Abroad

While we are bound to learn from Curiosity, it can be revealing to reflect on what we find alluring about space missions in general and our excitement about this one in particular. Surely, there is not only a psychology of space exploration but also a psychology of space fascination. Read More

Being Amused by Apophenia

You experience the following on a Monday: The alarm clock does not wake you up and you are now late for work. The cat has peed on the couch. The coffeemaker is making strange noises and doesn't seem to be working. The kids are fighting with each other. It's raining. And on top of everything else, the car won't start. What do you conclude? Read More

The Grace of Accuracy

Just weeks before his death in 1977, the poet Robert Lowell published Day by Day, a collection of poems that marked a significant shift toward a minimalist and confessional style—a style Lowell would be remembered for. His newer streamlined verses were a contrast to the rhythmic, longer sonnets published previously. Read More

Home and its Illusions

In the second poem of the Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot writes that “Home is where one starts from.” Our earliest psychological memories—indeed our earliest formulations about who we are and how the world works—hinge on a sense of home. We arrive as infants with a nervous system that senses our place in the world and forms judgments about its safety. Read More

Empathy and its Discontents

When Apple announced an upgrade to its mobile operating system, we also learned about some improvements to Siri, the iPhone's personal assistant. Siri had been one of the most anticipated new features on the latest iPhone and has mostly succeeded in gimmickry, if not wizardry. Read More

Bruce Poulsen, Ph.D.

Bruce Poulsen, Ph.D., teaches at both the University of Utah School of Medicine and Department of Educational Psychology.

more...

Subscribe to Reality Play

About Reality Play

My blog includes explorations of literature, current events, technology, and popular culture—viewed through the lens of psychology and psychoanalysis.

Current Issue

Confessions of a Sociopath

She's successful and charming as well as ruthless and calculating.