Happiness

Several weeks ago my mother, in her eighth or ninth year of Alzheimer’s Disease, and 63rd year of marriage, began wielding knives and trying to stab people, verbally threatening to kill my father, throwing dangerous glass objects and screaming bloody murder at her own image in the mirror—“I DON’T WANT YOU HERE, GET OUT!!!” My brother and I finally intervened and had her temporarily hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, hoping we could buy more time for her at home through stabilizing her on the right meds, and getting Dad more help. Read More

"Commercialism is a vacuum," my mother warned me. "It will suck you in."

I was seven or eight years old and my mother was running a bath for me. I imagined being sucked down the drain into a wet underworld of nefarious Disney characters. Read More

The crux of the new film "Precious" has a basis in research psychology. Read More

As we approach the Thanksgiving season, a time when families are called upon to embody a Norman Rockwell sense of togetherness and gratitude, some may feel pressured to become a family they’re not. Read More

Most marriages end in a whimper, not a bang. The final rupture is not caused by too much anger or abuse or infidelity. Rather, most marriages die a slow, agonizing death from too little compassion. Read More

I know an advertising agency owner who never fully takes a vacation.  He takes his family to fairly exotic locations, but never so alien that they are outside the reach of modern communication.  In other words, he is never further than a cell phone call or email away.  He checks in with the office several times a day – much to the chagrin of his family who want him to be fully engaged in the holiday at hand.  So, he ends up sneaking off under the guise... Read More

Loss makes room in us. We lose a lover or mate and discover in ourselves a storehouse of independence. We no longer have a certain friend in our life but we form an alliance with someone we might otherwise never have known. We lose a parent only to find, paradoxically, a renewed sense of their influence and tenderness in our lives.

What can you do to what is gone-- except to let it go? Perhaps the only thing is to remember that if life is about loss, it is also about discovery.

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Happiness energizes, motivates, and keeps us healthy. But there are other positive emotions, with distinct positive effects, that frequently go below the radar of psychological research... Read More

In her September 19th column, "Blue Is the New Black," Washington Post columnist Maureen Dowd related the fact that, according to the General Social Survey, which tracks the general mood of Americans, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier while men are becoming cheerier. Read More