Jeremy Safran, Author at Public Seminar

Feature

Authenticity, American Style

The meaning of authenticity in the era of “reality show” politics

March 23, 2018 • by Jeremy Safran

In her 2012 book The Politics of Authenticity in American Presidential Campaigns, Erica Seifert documents the growing importance over a 25-year period of the voters’ perception of candidates’ authenticity in determining the outcome of presidential elections. In recent years Al Gore, John Kerry and Mitt Romney’s bids for the presidency were all ...

Feature

The Curious Case of the Growing Placebo Effect

Evidence suggests that placebo effects are becoming more powerful

March 19, 2018 • by Jeremy Safran

Over the last several years evidence has been accumulating that placebo effects are becoming more powerful. Clinical trials on a range of medications used for treating both psychological and medical problems, are finding that differences in the magnitude of their impact relative to placebos are decreasing in size. For example, in ...

The Curious Case of the Growing Placebo Effect

Education

The War on Higher Education

Why tax reform is a clear and present danger to universities

November 30, 2017 • by Jeremy Safran

Although the media have provided coverage of this issue, they are understandably more focused on those aspects of the bill that will exacerbate the existing disparity between the wealthiest 1-2 percent of the population and rest of the country, a policy apparently based on “trickle down” economic theory that many ...

Feature

Post-Election Ghosts

November 15, 2016 • by Jeremy Safran

I want to be able to say something about the aftermath of the election, as a psychologist, as a psychoanalyst; as a Canadian expat since 1990, who only decided to become an American citizen after George W. Bush was first elected. But most importantly as a human being. But it’s ...

Education

Replication Problems in Psychology: Crisis, Tempest in a Teapot, or Opportunity?

An assessment of the field

October 30, 2015 • by Jeremy Safran

In late August 2015 an article appeared in the New York Times with a loaded headline: Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says. The article reported on a recent publication in the journal Science, which raised ...

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Uncategorized

On the American Psychological Association and Torture

July 11, 2015 • by Jeremy Safran

This morning’s New York Times summarizes the findings of a recently completed report containing the findings of a seven-month investigation by a team led by David Hoffman, a Chicago lawyer with the firm Sidley Austin, commissioned by the American Psychological Association (APA). This report (commonly referred to as the Hoffman Report) documents ...

Multi Media

A Conversation with Edward Koren

“We deal with it by talking about it”

April 15, 2015 • by Lily Swistel and Jeremy Safran

The Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School recently had the pleasure of having longtime New Yorker cartoonist Edward Koren discuss his craft as part of its Arts in Mind series. The title of the event, “We deal with it by talking about it,” was derived ...

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Clinical Psychology, Psychological Science, and Neo-liberal Times

January 30, 2015 • by Jeremy Safran

Clinical psychology first emerged as a formal subdiscipline within psychology in the aftermath of World War II. During the war, psychologists were initially hired by the military to play a role assessing recruits for psychological stability, combat readiness, and potential for officer training. They were also charged with the task ...

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Psychology and Torture

December 15, 2014 • by Jeremy Safran

The recent release of the long awaited Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s program to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, has been receiving extensive coverage in the media. Among the many troubling details revealed is that the CIA paid two military psychologists $81 million to devise and carry out ...

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The search for authenticity in consumer culture

October 21, 2014 • by Jeremy Safran

Milan Kundera begins his novel Immortality with a description of a gesture made by a woman he is observing at a swimming pool. This woman, who we will come to know as Agnes in the story, smiles and waves at the lifeguard who has just been giving her ...

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McMindfulness

The marketing of well-being

June 13, 2014 • by Jeremy Safran

“McMindfulness.” I came across this term for the first time today. I wish I had coined it. It would be nice to be able to make a claim to originality. But coming across the term is almost good enough. It provides a name for a phenomenon that I didn’t even ...

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Physics Envy

The troubles in psychiatry and psychology

April 28, 2014 • by Jeremy Safran

These are troubling times for the mental health field in the United States. A variety of historical developments have paved the road to the current predicament. Following World War II, the federal government and growing mental health lobby began an unprecedented expansion of mental heath services. This expansion in may ...