This Is America

The case for progress

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D.

The Power of Premonitions

If premonitions are impossible, why do many of us have them?

Is Psychiatry Facing an Existential Crisis?

Psychiatrists, a new book maintains, cannot establish chains of causation for mental disorders.

A Review of "Paradise Falls": Lessons From Love Canal

How corporate elites and politicians have evaded their responsibility to address environmental catastrophes.

The United States of Surveillance

The new age of electronic surveillance features NSA data-mining and an economy that depends on the monetization of private information.

How Reliable Are Articles in Peer-Review Medical Journals?

Why the U.S. spends more money on health care than other affluent countries.

Is Grief Healthy or Pathological?

How grief can help us re-examine our “practical identities.”

Americans’ Do-It-Yourself Death-Care Rituals

New death rituals are more improvised, individualized, and reflect a green burial ethos.

Is Aggression Imprinted In Human Nature?

Are people programmed to make love, war, both, or neither?

How People Can Be Rational and Irrational

An analysis of mistaken beliefs, fallacious reasoning, and the tools of rationality.

The Post-Pandemic Future of America’s Cities

How can cities improve underperforming public health systems, policing and schools?

How Has Government in the U.S. Become “The Problem"?

Explaining the stalemate on environmental regulations and the administrative state during the last 40 years.

The Complex Beauty of Memories

Involuntarily aroused, feelings are interpreted as emotions by the unique filter of memory.

Old and New Scripts for Difficult Conversations

Powerful narratives illuminate how we should talk, to whom, and when to get greater clarity and compassion in our relationships.

Why We Are Living Longer

Government oversight and regulation played a pivotal role in increasing life expectancy.

It’s Time for a Declaration of Interdependence

What a new social contract related to childhood, education, work, healthcare, and aging should look like.

Does It Have To Be Us Against Them?

Can Americans adopt a new way to address conflict that is more satisfying than fighting, running away or staying silent?

The Psychological Forces That Hinder Us From Seeing Reality

We need to decide how we can fight self-deception and when (and how much) we should embrace it.

Why You Should Never Stop Looking Inside Your Memory Closet

Rooting around in memory closets, real and metaphorical, can provide an outsider’s perspective and enable us to hear our own voices in different ways.

What We Know About the Origins and Meaning of Dreams

When we dream, our brain entertains possibilities we might reject in the light of day.

Adoption in the Baby Scoop Era

What has—and hasn’t—changed in adoption policies that have left so many feeling lost and unloved.

Demystifying and De-Stigmatizing Mental Illness

Mental illness diagnoses should supplement neurology with social, cultural, and environmental factors.

Nurturing Hyper-Systematizers, Including Autistic People

Instead of a binary of “normal” and “abnormal” children, the concept of neurodiversity helps ensure a fit of individuals (including autistic people) with their environments.

When America Found—and Lost—Its Virtue

What the founding fathers learned from classical Greece and Rome about politics, the public good, and self-interest — and how those lessons apply now.

Reassessing the Scientific Method

How and why scientists confine themselves to empirical facts and ignore aesthetic, religious, psychological, and philosophical arguments.

How Young Americans Become White Supremacists

The many and varied ways in which far-right ideologies have entered the mainstream of American culture.

Can Children Become Change Agents?

Affirming the rights of children and enhancing the role to improve their communities is vitally important—but the challenges are daunting.

How Youth Mentoring Programs Can Become More Effective

Traditional youth mentoring programs yield meager results. But mentoring programs that take into account risk factors, set goals, and assign homework can have a substantial impact.

How to Make, and Maintain, Close Friendships

How to forge friendships that provide a secure base, a safe harbor, adapt to changing circumstances, avoid racism’s trapdoor, and address conflicts that arise in all relationships.

Life Lessons From the Poker Table

How poker teaches us about first impressions, the internal locus of control, hot hands, bad beats, skill, and luck.

Should Therapists Specialize in Digital Anxiety?

How a culture of feeling that everything can—and must—be sorted, accounted for, validated, and gratified rubs off on us psychically and often lets us down.

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