Weekly Checklist 7/11/22
As people have been gaining interest in the way we are introducing to the general public psychological principles that have been the domain of the consulting room or academia, I’ve decided to share with you folks what I am reading and considering. I’ll expand this Check-List as we go, but I wanted to give you a window into some cool developments.
HARD SHIT
While many of us are fretting how we can be living in a government that can rip away the hard-won rights of women seemingly overnight, feminist and people of color psychoanalysts have been working hard to explain this societal aggression to us in psychological terms for years. A Must-Read is Lynne Layton’s Towards a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes (published by Routledge 2020). This book gets into the different theories explaining how and why the mind is “SPLIT” against itself (violence with which hardly anyone but a psychoanalyst has come to terms) and then how the discourses of racism, sexism, and homophobia add to this psychic problem and what we can do about these splits on both the private and collective level. I am sorry this must-read book’s “clinical-sounding” tongue-twisters may feel a tad off-putting. But if you want to ask me any questions about what this amazing volume is saying, I will answer them in a blog summarizing basic points. Meanwhile, this podcast will help:
More Accessible Reading:
"Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust."
-Bell Hooks
I am delighted to learn that Bell Hooks All About Love is WTF Number 3 on The New York Times Best Seller’s List—two decades after it was written. We lost bell, a prolific African American feminist cultural critic, last year. For the last twenty years in my work as a professor and clinician, I have never ceased to admire the way bell’s work ranged from essays to poetry to children’s books, always focusing on the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender in empowering ways. She is one of the FEW culture critics writing on race, gender, and queer life who speaks as a Gay-therapist about child abuse, shame, and self-esteem. To heal as a nation, she says, we must ground ourselves in love’s wisdom: “We yearn to end the lovelessness.” I’d also recommend Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem. Check out this YouTube honoring her life and work:
For Your Overall Health:
Andrew D. Huberman, born in 1975, is a neuroscientist and associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine who has made important contributions to brain development, brain plasticity, and neural regeneration and repair fields. I have become an avid listener of the “Huberman Lab” podcasts on YouTube. Do not be put off by his scientific bona fides. Dr. Huberman comes off as a kind of “bro” chatting you up about the synergy of mind, body, and spirit—a life-changing accessible tone for many of my clients. He talks in exquisite detail about “How and Why to Stretch,” “Therapy Trauma and Growth,” “Tools for Focus and Memory”—to say nothing of, “Dopamine Mindset & Drive” and “Master Your Sleep.” But don’t rush this guy. Keep a notepad open because his pearls of wisdom are that pretty!
For Your Productivity:
“What's obvious to you can be amazing to others.”
- Ali Abdaal
As clients work on and through their traumatic selves and become more “integrated,” they may discover new sources of energy and creativity. But how to best harness newfound feelings of gusto? How to get organized? Where to start? Unless we grew up in affluent families, where the “executive function” was passed down from one country club family to another, we often do not know how to become humanistic “executives” in our own lives. I began watching Creative Entrepreneur Ali Abdaal when he was going through medical school years ago. In his more modest halcyon days, he taught a lot of us how to seriously study by comparing and contrasting note-taking applications. Now he’s become a virtual Guru of virtual productivity. If you can handle his unnervingly positive elan (he’s also kinda cute), he has a lot to offer if you want to get yo life more in order, no cap.
Your Creative Healing and Growth:
Please check out the nectar of the god's music of Barbara Morrison (1949-2022), our “Queen of the Blues.” We lost this Jazz Giant this past March. She builds on Ella, and actually a lot on all the sultry Divas, so go to your favorite streaming channel to catch her Blues for Ella: Live (with the Thilo Berg Big Band) (Mons, 1993 [1995]). My favorite is: Love Is a Four-Letter Word (with the Leslie Drayton Orchestra) (Esoteric/Optimism, 1984), which might be nice to play while reading bell’s book. Morrison’s music takes you back to the Swing Era, albeit with a touch of modernity and a pop of pop. She’ll make you cry and chill at the end of the day. I once played this for a patient who felt he didn’t deserve to be loved: I Wanna Be Loved (featuring Houston Person) (Savant, 2017).