My thoughts on anything related to psychology.
What Jung does when he compares primitive man with civilized man, is he gives a historical perspective of the situation of all of mankind in the current moment. This is opposed to taking a snapshot in time and comparing different groups of people together, such as different races or sexes. Jung describes to us a … Read more
Debates can be illuminating, or they can be a waste of time. When is a debate illuminating? When there is a mutual attempt to explore the truth. The form that professional debates take, whether presidential or academic, are rarely an exploration of the truth. And the form that casual debates take, like the one your … Read more
Alfred Adler was an Austrian psychologist, famous for discovering the “inferiority/superiority complex” and the effect of birth order on personality. But most importantly, Adler differed from his contemporaries, Freud, and Jung, by focusing on the present rather than on the past. Adler’s idea was that the past did not determine an individual’s destiny, there was … Read more
The Paradox of Work Work is the source of anxiety, pain, exhaustion, and stress – yet without work, we would lose our sanity and ability to sustain ourselves. One imagines that the avoidance of work is how you manage stress, but it is the avoidance of work that cultivates stress. It is only when you … Read more
Stay Foolish If you have ever read anything about Steve Jobs, you must have heard his famous line, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” The psychologist Carl Jung emphasized that the fool was the precursor to wisdom. This idea has been articulated in the Bible and other ancient texts. In mythological stories, this is called the call … Read more
Don’t Tell People What To Do (or What Not To Do) The human mind is innately rebellious. Often, it is said that children are rebellious, but that is not true, everyone is rebellious, and it has everything to do with control. The loss of control physiologically causes us great stress. In fact, completely different areas … Read more
There are many things that are fun to do. But if you keep doing what’s fun for long enough, you’ll get depressed. Why? Because you substituted short-term gratification for long term happiness. That is the story we are often told, but there has always been a missing piece in this story, and I believe one … Read more
The Call to Adventure In mythological stories, there is the call to adventure. And in Biblical stories, the call to adventure happens to people who are in late age, and are imperfect, and have taken too long to leave their homes. The motif of these myths is always the same. It is better to go … Read more
A Dialogue Unless you are terribly honest with yourself, you will not question the real reasons why you are avoiding something. But assuming you are someone who is honest, and there is something that you want to do, for example, starting a business or ending a relationship or making a lifestyle change but don’t, then … Read more
To know that there is a clear difference between intelligence and wisdom, one must simply ask themselves if one can exist without the other. Can you be intelligent without being wise? Can you be wise without being intelligent? The answer to both these questions is yes. Intelligence without wisdom is less clear to see. But … Read more