A Swim in Denial

What we can't think about and how it shapes us.

by Kirby Farrell, Ph.D.

You Deserve a Rap(e) Today:

Terrorism and rampage killing participate in the hidden logic of advertising, politics, preaching, and more. Read More

Fascination with the Boston Marathon terrorism is an emergency response to threat that looks different if you step back from the screaming sirens onscreen and in your gut. Here's a look at some of the basic issues buried in the overwhelming moment. Read More

Shopping to Survive

Shopping is choreographed to be reassuring. You can forget that sales rituals are civilizing predatory motives. The customer is always right, except when it's an offer you can't refuse. Many transactions disguise a threat that coerces you to accept unreasonable terms. Read More

School for Scandal

Bike racers, two-timing generals, bankers, and the offshore rich cheat. Why not a poor Atlanta school district? In American culture school testing isn't just a database, it's a contest, with all sorts of implications for the reluctant contestants. There must be a better way. Read More

Exploding the Money Bin

The problem isn't simply making ends meet, or just the unfairness warping American life. Big money and the levers that control things are located in the unaccountable beyond. To take charge of your life, you need a new style of thinking. Read More

Competition, Paranoia, and Cannibalism

Competition has some drawbacks, including murder. You can take the cannibal out of the village, but you can't take the village out of the cannibal. Read More

Beastly "Beauty"

Fantasies of life at the top can be bad for your health. And your village. How did we ever get so mean? A close look at the propaganda of innocence and aspiration. Read More

Downton Abbey for Sale

At a time of torturous confusion in American & British culture, "Downton Abbey" is soothing syrup. Read More

Terrorism in the Checkout Lane

The gun debate is really about passive aggression. It's a gun barrel pointed in your face with a smile. Read More

Guns, Boobs, and Facebook Fantasy

In the stormy wake of the slaughter of school children and the conflict over guns, two internet crazes yelp for attention. Let's go ashore for a closer look. Read More

Vitamin Death

Guns are weapons and tools. But to understand the current debate about guns, we need to keep in mind that they also function as snake oil for self-esteem. Read More

Shooting into the Dark

Rampage violence is often an emergency effort to save the self and the world from psychic death. Denial keeps us from recognizing how familiar and dangerous its deep dynamics can be. Read More

Thinking in Scale

We have difficulty thinking about things larger and smaller than we're used to, especially when conflict and denial further fuzz the picture. Here's another look at "Beating up Baby." Read More

Beating Up Baby

One out of every four American kids lives in a family that had trouble finding the money to feed them last year. The psychology of wealth is working against those kids. Why aren't we nurturing them? Read More

Sacrifice and Survival at the Top

When survival anxiety's in the air, passive aggression can make the workplace sound like a church service. Pass the offering plate. Read More

Waiter, There's a Demon In My Soup!

A new poll says more than half of Americans believe demonic possession is possible. Demons are ancient tools for managing troubling motives. What does it mean that those tools are at work today as people cope with an overwhelming world? Read More

Strong Medicine

We worship strength, even when it's irrelevant or enslaves us. Look at all the ways it seduces us. Read More

Military Suicides in the Fog of Denial

Military suicides are individual yet also signs of disturbing conflicts in corporate-military culture and the US in an era of vertigo. Yet the behavior is shrouded in denial that serves neither the living nor the dead. Read More

It's the Cruelty, Stupid

How we mask our motives and keep other people invisible to serve the creaturely motives of flight and fight. Read More

The Uses of Religious Outrage

Religious violence raises crucial questions about how we use the convictions that shape us. Read More

The New Rampage Mentality

It's a seductive idea: if you could only let go of all your inhibitions, you could tap uncanny powers. Uh-oh. Read More

Your iPhone, Creaturely Motives, and Prosthetic Identity

Technology can make us feel superhuman, but the experience is grounded in creaturely motives and prosthetic identity. It's how we're built. Read More

Killing Right

Vengeance makes you feel superhumanly right and safe from death. Uh-oh. Read More

Love, Death,and Denial in the Voting Booth

What doesn't get into elections makes them maddening Read More

Batman in Diapers

Criminal behavior at the top in US culture has many Americans silently agreeing with protesters who take to the streets. Why don't these "sheeple," as they get tagged, openly support the reformers? A strong answer begins with the psychological and biological theory of neoteny. Read More