What makes us most distinctively human, our reason or our emotions? How do we know when relationships with others are authentic, and when they’re just a matter of utility? Does civilization corrupt or improve us? Is honesty all it’s cracked up to be, or is lying a social inevitability? Which is more important to our happiness, love or work?
Wes Alwan is joined by Dr. Glenn Mobray of the New Center of Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles to discuss this classic 1946 psychoanalytic text. This is a preview of a 63-minute discussion. You can listen to the whole thing by becoming a PEL Citizen or $5 Patreon supporter. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to learn how. Klein worked with small children and hypothesized Continue Reading …
(sub)Text #6: Melanie Klein’s “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms” (Citizens Only)
Wes Alwan is joined by Dr. Glenn Mobray of the New Center of Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles to discuss this classic 1946 psychoanalytic text. Klein worked with small children and hypothesized that the Oedipal complex happens not at 3–5 years as Freud thought but much earlier, and this innovation also made it possible for psychoanalysis to treat psychotics, and not merely Continue Reading …
The Duh of Charlie Sheen: getting high off your high horse
Enjoying Charlie Sheen's meltdown? Winning! Engaging in guilty ruminations about how wrong it is to be enjoying Charlie Sheen's meltdown? Duh - Losing! The New York Times has a useful rundown of such ruminations, beginning with Craig Ferguson's giving a speech about how he's going to refuse to talk about Charlie Sheen because doing so reminds him of the 18th-century Continue Reading …
Thinking Hot Thoughts: “The Secret” as Manic Defense
In its current issue The New Yorker profiles Rhonda Byrne, the author of the Oprah Winfrey-endorsed "The Secret," the book that "urges readers to rid themselves of illness through 'harmonious thoughts,' to attract love by loving themselves, and to express gratitude for what they want before they get it." There is a "law of attraction, which decrees that thoughts have physical Continue Reading …