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New Existentialists

Distracted Doing

05/13/2013

In my continuing quest to understand work habits and productivity from an existential perspective, an article from The New York Times really caught my eye—it detailed a study on what impact distractions have on our cognitive abilities. First, let me define distraction—21st century life. Phone calls, text messages, email, Twitter, Facebook, doorbells ringing, the call of nature, the sudden need to reorganize your sock drawer while writing your book when your editor is waiting, and countless more that I’m sure others can name. The article explains that—no surprise—...

Posted at 10:00 AM

New Existentialists

The Polarized Mind: Challenging Humanity’s “Great Mistake”

05/10/2013

What is a polarized mind? It is a mind stricken with one absolutist point of view, to the utter exclusion, even demonization, of all others. The polarized mind is, in its way, the great "mistake" of history, and yet we repeatedly fall into its clutches. We see this lapse every day—in the streets, the suites, and the battlefields; in the psychiatric clinics, the factories, and the shrines; and because of our potential for technological destruction today, the polarized mind may be even more dangerous than in our primordial past. The polarized mind can appear as bigotry,...

Posted at 10:00 AM

New Existentialists

The Future of Existential Psychology: Facing Maturity?

05/09/2013

When confronted with the invitation to share some thoughts about the future of existential psychology, the first question that came into mind was whether existential-phenomenological psychology (as I prefer to call it) is in fact constituted and well-established as a science, with an outlined object of study, research methodologies and with clearly delineated objectives. I would dare to say no. Hence, the challenge, internationally speaking, is precisely the need for existential-phenomenological psychology to be able to achieve a desired maturity. In this way, I suggest four areas—to...

Posted at 10:00 AM

New Existentialists

The DSM is dead! Long live the ... wait a minute ...

05/08/2013

For years we in the Existential Psychology Backwater (to use Jason Dias’ phrase) have been shouting at the top of our lungs that the DSM is a fatally flawed approach to mental health. We’ve pointed out that there are no empirical bases for its categories, that its treatment approaches are often arbitrary, and that the entire exercise takes time, energy, and money, away from more useful approaches. It looks like we’ve won that battle. This week the National Institute of Mental Health announced that it will no longer be focusing its grant money on DSM categories....

Posted at 09:45 AM

New Existentialists

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

05/07/2013

Carpe Diem has never been my motto. Trained as a journalist starting in the seventh grade, I somehow got it into my head that what mattered most was the immediate looming deadline. Thus, I became one of those people who worked best under deadline pressure. In college, I wrote 20-page research papers overnight on typewriters (yes, I’m dating myself). Granted, I had already obtained the research materials in advance, but I did not put anything together until those last 12 hours before class. Some people would simply call my style “working best under deadline pressure,” while...

Posted at 10:00 AM

Rethinking Complexity

Givers, Takers and Matchers, and Their Impact in Organizations

05/06/2013

Bill Gates stated at the World Economic Forum in 2008 in Switzerland, “there are two great forces of human nature—self-interest and caring for others.” It is easy to understand the impact of giving and taking at a global scale. Our world leaders show us the results of both. Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King amply demonstrated how giving results in large positive change. In contrast, Hitler, Stalin and Gadhafi embodying the taker mentality caused great strife and destruction. It is a lot harder to understand the impact of giving and taking in the context of our...

Posted at 10:31 AM

New Existentialists

Where Have All The Women Gone?

05/06/2013

Two weeks ago, Jason Collins, a professional basketball player, announced he was gay via an article in Sports Illustrated. As I write this blog entry, Collins announcement is still causing somewhat of a stir among sports media types. Sports media outlets pronounced this a ground breaking moment in major sports history. Collins has been compared to Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play major league baseball. There were polls, opinion pieces, and lots of speculation about what Collins announcement would mean for the future of LGBTQ individuals in sports. At about the same time, another...

Posted at 10:00 AM

New Existentialists

Infinitely Adjustable: Reflections on Technology and What It Means to Be Human

05/03/2013

Among the varied and unending quests to comprehend the meaning of human experience and the nature of being human, broad consensus can be found as to the inevitability of suffering. Where does our suffering come from? Freud (1930) claimed that it came from three principle sources: our (fallible) bodies, the caprice and constraints of the natural world, and our relationships with others (society). He argued that we focus on this last source, as we can do little to alter either antecedent. Being human involves entering into a world distinctly not of our choosing—in Heidegger’s (1962...

Posted at 10:00 AM

Rethinking Complexity

Designing better worlds

05/02/2013

There is a long lineage of systems thinkers, and systems scientists, who have proposed ways to purposefully design the social systems in which we live. Bela H. Banathy, who created the systems program at Saybrook, used an idealized approach to social systems design. John Warfield offered his Interactive Management process. His long-time colleague, Aleco Christakis, expanded that to what is now known as Structured Dialogic Design. Russ Ackoff, like Bela, thought in terms of idealized design, but from a different view and with applications mostly aimed at formal organizations, such as...

Posted at 01:49 PM

New Existentialists

The Future of Existential Psychology: Where Do We Go From Here?

05/02/2013

In reading the many beautiful and profound words that have graced these pages thus far during the last three months in The New Existentialists Future of Existential Psychology series, I have been struck by how many of the writers and practitioners have spoken of various aspects of existential psychology and psychotherapy, but few have looked at how existential and existential-humanistic psychology have been relating to the other schools of psychology found in the mainstream. I’m wondering how many of us perceive of ourselves sometimes in a bit of a bubble. I confess I am often guilty...

Posted at 10:00 AM