Psychology Archives - Public Seminar

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

The renewed threat of nuclear war—and the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety

October 25, 2022 • by James Carroll and Robert Jay Lifton

Nuclear complacency is multifaceted. A certain amount of nuclear fear is appropriate to our situation. When we give in to what you’re calling nuclear complacency, it’s because we have insufficient fear of what is actually dangerous....

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

Announcements

Decolonizing Psychology: Applications in Research & Clinical Practice

A three-session online conference presented by the department of psychology at The New School for Social Research

October 23, 2020 • by Andre Broussard

Mainstream psychology continues to privilege and promote the interests of the majority, in particular those in Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries. The call for a decolonial turn in psychology has gathered momentum over recent years, along with greater reflection on how the field reproduces and reinforces systems ...

Decolonizing Psychology: Applications in Research & Clinical Practice

Politics

The Man Who Predicted Twitter Mobs

Gustave Le Bon and the mind of the crowd

July 10, 2020 • by Mitchell Abidor

In May, the New York Times published an opinion piece I wrote on the position taken by Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin magazine on the presidential election. Both DSA and the magazine had expressed opposition to support for Joseph Biden, and the editor of Jacobin announced his intention to ...

Fashion

Psychology and Fashion

July 9, 2020 • by Carolyn Mair

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior. It is applicable, and valuable, in every context in which people are involved. Psychologists are analysts, trained to synthesize information and conduct analyses to provide deeper understanding of behavior in order to be able to predict it—and where desirable, to change it for ...

Psyche

#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 1

Reflections and Conversations Across the Gender Divide

February 10, 2020 • by Andrea Singer

It was two years ago that actor Alyssa Milano, in response to the sexual abuse allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein, brought activist Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement into the social media mainstream. And it was one year ago that Christine Blasey Ford, in the midst of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Justice hearing, ...

#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 1

Psyche

Trauma and Race

A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity

January 16, 2020 • by Sheldon George

On November 23, 2012, a seventeen-year-old African American boy named Jordan Davis was shot and killed at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. During a verbal exchange with Davis over loud music being played by Davis and three friends, the shooter, a forty-seven-year-old white male named Michael Dunn, pulled out ...

Psyche

The Reign of One’s Own Desire

An interview with Sheldon George on his book Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity

January 15, 2020 • by Sheldon George and Daniel Gaztambide

Daniel Gaztambide (DG): Would you mind unpacking some of the Lacanian concepts you draw on to understand racism and Black identity, such as jouissance and object a, for a general audience? Sheldon George (SG): Jouissance is often translated from the French as pleasure or enjoyment, but it is most properly an excessive pleasure, a destructive ...

Psyche

Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues for Healing and Liberation

Chairwork y La Raza

January 9, 2020 • by Amanda Garcia Torres

It was 2013 and I was at my first Chairwork training with my future mentor and colleague Dr. Scott Kellogg, one of the psychologists leading the current renaissance of Chairwork psychotherapy. This experience expanded and changed my beliefs about the possibilities of psychotherapy. In many ways, it has also changed ...

Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues for Healing and Liberation

New York City

Even as Youth Suicides Rise, New York State Cuts Funds For Kids’ Mental Health

December 23, 2019 • by Abigail Kramer

When he’s well, Hauptman says, Cody’s a sweet 12-year-old. He likes to take care of rescue animals, and he fantasizes about winning the lottery and opening a center for young children with mental health problems. But when he’s sick, he suffers from episodes of psychosis, which often turn violent. His ...

Even as Youth Suicides Rise, New York State Cuts Funds For Kids’ Mental Health

Uncategorized

Reclaiming Victimology

Why there are no victims – only survivors

December 3, 2019 • by Alyson Cole

It’s not the poor, marginalized, or dispossessed, but those who occupy positions of privilege and power who seem most eager to assume the victim mantle today, those Lawrence Glickman classifies as “elites.” On the one hand, this is not new: American history is littered with examples of dominant groups deploying iconic imagery ...

Feature

Socialist Humanism

Integrating Psychology into a New Progressive Politics

September 26, 2019 • by Mick Cooper

The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics is, perhaps, one of the most inspiring and forward-thinking texts to come out of UK progressive politics for several years. Edited by a Green MP (Caroline Lucas), a Labour MP (Lisa Nandy), and a Liberal Democrat candidate (Chris Bowers), the book lays out a ...