writing portfolio
Reading Time: 8 minutes Many people think that going to a therapist is like taking your car in to a mechanic: you pull up in the garage, pop the hood (your head), the mechanic-therapist looks around for a bit and finds the broken part, then you both sit around chatting for 6-12 weeks until the new part arrives. Then …
Reading Time: 3 minutes A recent study conducted by Martina Luchetti at Florida State University suggests that in response to the social distancing measures of the Covid-19 situation, people are feeling more socially connected and supported than expected. The study had a total of 1,500 people who participated from beginning to end, and consisted of three surveys filled out …
Reading Time: 12 minutes So, it’s the bottom of the 9th, 2 outs, 3 and 2, bases loaded. It’s The Jays are down 12-9, and it’s their last game of the regular season, and their last hope of making the playoffs. Rodriguez is up. He steps into the box, digs in his feet, spits, adjusts his helmet, waggles his …
Reading Time: 11 minutes Indoor rock climbing is a lot of fun. It’s challenging and demanding in all of the best ways. It takes strength and coordination and endurance. It demands mental clarity and concentration. You get to feel strong (sometimes), and weak (most of the time), and if you stick with it you get to see yourself getting …
Reading Time: 7 minutes Existentialism has a reputation for being a bit of a downer. It seems a gloomy and depressing philosophy, obsessed with meaninglessness, isolation, and death. Its stark view of life and its fixation on suffering and dread may make excellent fodder for the melodramatic fantasies of romantic teenagers, but to the adult whose life is already …
Reading Time: 11 minutes In progressive, liberal, Western societies, the concept of adulthood has become rather nebulous. The trend of increasing acceptance of individual difference has made many of adulthood’s traditional ideas more difficult to interpret. Unlike traditional societies, for example, Western European and North American traditions in the main no longer practice any rites or rituals which formally …
Reading Time: 6 minutes The selfobject is perhaps the most important concept in Self-psychology. A selfobject is not an object in the normal, physical sense, rather it is a person in our lives we relate to, like a parent or a friend, and whose interactions with us have an effect on how we feel about ourselves. The selfobject is …
Reading Time: 5 minutes According to Self-Psychology, the Self is made up of three self-structures: the nuclear structure, the compensatory structure, and the defensive structure. The different layers of self-structure vary in flexibility and in the roles they play in determining who we are and how we behave. These structures can be visualized as the layers of an apple, …
Reading Time: 6 minutes Carl Oberst and Marie Carmichael were having an affair. They thought nobody knew, and the feeling of having an illicit secret made their meetings even more exciting as they slid and slithered over each other in the back of a car in a secluded corner of the baseball diamond parking lot. They also sometimes fucked …
Reading Time: 10 minutes 1_ He could remember the news report from the day before. The anchor man looking deeply, earnestly, gravely, into the camera. Saffron yellow dots on his cornflower-blue neck-tie. It really brought out his eyes, that tie. “Experts recommend,” he said, “that everyone make their way to an underground shelter.” As if they hadn’t stopped building …