Problematic Person Quotes

No killing,” Jordan said. “We’re trying to make you feel peaceful, so you don’t go up in flames. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things. Isn’t there anything else you like? Rainforests? Chirping birds?” “Weapons,” said Jace. “I like weapons.” “I’m starting to think we have a problematic issue of personal philosophy here.” Jace leaned forward, his palms flat on the ground. “I’m a warrior,” he said. “I was brought up as a warrior. I didn’t have toys, I had weapons. I slept with a wooden sword until I was five. My first books were medieval demonologies with illuminated pages. The first songs I learned were chants to banish demons. I know what brings me peace, and it isn’t sandy beaches or chirping birds in rainforests. I want a weapon in my hand and a strategy to win.” Jordan looked at him levelly. “So you’re saying that what brings you peace … is war.” “Now you get it.

I'm glad to have known you, oh Queen of Flowers. You are a prickly and problematic person, but life is more interesting with you around.

The mythological Narcissus rejected the advances of the nymph Echo and was punished by the goddess Nemesis. He was consigned to pine away as he fell in love with his own reflection - exactly as Echo had pined away for him. How apt. Narcissists are punished by echoes and reflections of their problematic personalities up to this very day. Narcissists are said to be in love with themselves. But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with his reflection. There is a major difference between one's True Self and reflected-self.

Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change...A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing.

If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth. One of the greatest social fears for a white person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially problematic. Yet when someone lets us know that we have just done such a thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief (after all, now that we are informed, we won’t do it again), we often respond with anger and denial.

The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into submission. A more subtle version of this claim argues that their strength allows men to monopolize tasks that demand hard manual labor, such as plowing and harvesting. This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates into political clout. There are two problems with this emphasis on muscle power. First, the statement that men are stronger is true only on average and only with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease, and fatigue than men. There are also many women who can run faster and lift heavier weights than many men. Furthermore, and most problematically for this theory, women have, throughout history, mainly been excluded from jobs that required little physical effort, such as the priesthood, law, and politics, while engaging in hard manual labor in the fields....and in the household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strength or stamina, women should have got far more of it. Even more importantly, there simply is no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. People in their sixties usually exercise power over people in their twenties, even though twenty-somethings are much stronger than their elders. ...Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do the manual labor. Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but from aggression. Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed, and abuse are concern, but when push comes to shove…men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. This is why, throughout history, warfare has been a masculine prerogative. In times of war, men’s control of the armed forces has made them the masters of civilian society too. They then use their control of civilian society to fight more and more wars. …Recent studies of the hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen the assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent tendencies and are…on average, better suited to serve as common soldiers. Yet, granted that the common soldiers are all men, does it follow that the ones managing the war and enjoying its fruits must also be men? That makes no sense. It’s like assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton fields are all Black, plantation owners will be Black as well. Just as an all-Black workforce might be controlled by an all-White management, why couldn’t an all-male soldiery be controlled by an all-female government?

The most important part of becoming better people, I’ll say yet again, is that we care about whether what we do is good or bad, and therefore try to do the right thing. If we love a problematic person or thing too much to part with it altogether, I think that means we have to keep two ideas in our head at the same time: I love this thing. The person who made it is troubling.

Imagine the case of someone supervising an exceptional team of workers, all of them striving towards a collectively held goal; imagine them hardworking, brilliant, creative and unified. But the person supervising is also responsible for someone troubled, who is performing poorly, elsewhere. In a fit of inspiration, the well-meaning manager moves that problematic person into the midst of his stellar team, hoping to improve him by example. What happens?—and the psychological literature is clear on this point.64 Does the errant interloper immediately straighten up and fly right? No. Instead, the entire team degenerates. The newcomer remains cynical, arrogant and neurotic. He complains. He shirks. He misses important meetings. His low-quality work causes delays, and must be redone by others. He still gets paid, however, just like his teammates. The hard workers who surround him start to feel betrayed. “Why am I breaking myself into pieces striving to finish this project,” each thinks, “when my new team member never breaks a sweat?” The same thing happens when well-meaning counsellors place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability.65 Down is a lot easier than up.

Plasticity and entanglement imply that every single brain must be unique, for the simple fact that every person’s life experience is different. It is this, argues Daphna Joel at Tel Aviv University, that makes looking for differences between groups so fraught with error. Evidence of sex difference in the brain is statistically problematic because each brain varies from the next.

You can start training yourself in this Stoic practice of objective representation right now by writing down a description of an upsetting or problematic event in plain language. Phrase things as accurately as possible and view them from a more philosophical perspective, with studied indifference. Once you’ve mastered this art, take it a step further by following the example of Paconius Agrippinus and look for positive opportunities. Write how you could exercise strength of character and cope wisely with the situation. Ask yourself how someone you admire might cope with the same situation or what that person might advise you to do. Treat the event like a sparring partner in the gym, giving you an opportunity to strengthen your emotional resilience and coping skills. You might want to read your script aloud and review it several times or compose several versions until you’re satisfied it’s helped you change how you feel about events.

The effect of emotional venting is to sustain an unsatisfactory status quo. Most people think the opposite, that complaining is part of an effort to change an unsatisfying situation. Nope. Complaining lets off pressure so that we neither explode with frustration nor feel compelled to take the often risky steps of openly opposing a difficult person or situation. Keeping emotional pressure tolerably low doesn't change problematic circumstances but rather perpetuates them.

Julian felt about Courtenay’s looks the way radicals thought about money: that it was deeply unfair and problematic for one person to possess such a disproportionate share.

You are prickly and problematic person, but life is more interesting with you around.

It's work to be the only person of color in an organization, bearing the weight of all your white co-workers questions about Blackness. It's work to always be hypervisible because of your skim - easily identified as being present or absent - but for your needs to be completely invisible to those around you. It's work to do the emotional labor or pointing out problematic racist thinking, policies, actions, and statements while desperately trying to avoid bitterness and cynicism.

It isn’t so much life’s problems that challenge us but the emotional turbulence stirred up while trying to deal with them. People possessing the gift of emotional detachment are lucky in that their personal problems seem far less problematic.

Man is a world-forming being, a being that actively constitutes his own world, but when everything is always already fully coded, the active constituting of the world is made superfluous, and we lose friction in relation to the world.We Romantics need a meaning that we ourselves realize – and the person who is preoccupied with self-realization inevitably has a meaning problem. This is no one collective meaning in life any more, a meaning that it is up to the individual to participate in. Nor is it that easy to find an own meaning in life, either. The meaning that most people embrace is self-realization as such, but it is not obvious what type of self is to be realized, nor what should possibly result from it. The person who is certain as regards himself will not ask the question as to who he is. Only a problematic self feels the need for realization.

Most often, a problem is pointing your attention to an experience you need to have. So instead of looking for a strategy or action that will change the problematic situation, try relaxing into the situation to see what your soul wants you to notice

When clients relinquish symptoms, succeed in achieving a personal goal, or make healthier choices for themselves, subsequently many will feel anxious, guilty, or depressed. That is, when clients make progress in treatment and get better, new therapists understandably are excited. But sometimes they will also be dismayed as they watch the client sabotage her success by gaining back unwanted weight or missing the next session after an important breakthrough and deep sharing with the therapist. Thus, loyalty and allegiance to symptoms—maladaptive behaviors originally developed to manage the “bad” or painfully frustrating aspects of parents—are not maladaptive to insecurely attached children. Such loyalty preserves “object ties,” or the connection to the “good” or loving aspects of the parent. Attachment fears of being left alone, helpless, or unwanted can be activated if clients disengage from the symptoms that represent these internalized “bad” objects (for example, if the client resolves an eating disorder or terminates a problematic relationship with a controlling/jealous partner). The goal of the interpersonal process approach is to help clients modify these early maladaptive schemas or internal working models by providing them with experiential or in vivo re-learning (that is, a “corrective emotional experience”). Through this real-life experience with the therapist, clients learn that, at least sometimes, some relationships can be different and do not have to follow the same familiar but problematic lines they have come to expect.

It is in this line of thinking that Dr. King’s “poverty of the spirit” really hits home. That a person can have a billion dollars in the bank and walk around as though that excess is OK in the midst of the vast suffering around him is an exceptional state of ethical and empathic impoverishment. But instead of looking at billionaires as a manifestation of both our problematic social system and disturbed human psychology, the public is lured into cultural violence, idolizing billionaires as heroes and beacons of success.

BPD sufferers experience emotions far more intensely than the rest of the population.  In many senses, this is no bad thing but the lack of control of these emotions is where BPD patients risk self-harm, destructive behaviors and problematic relationship issues with others.

First, you begin to find out how selfish this wonderful person is. Second, you discover that the wonderful person has been going through a similar experience and he or she begins to tell you how selfish you are. And third, though you acknowledge it in part, you conclude that your spouse’s selfishness is more problematic than your own. This is especially true if you feel that you’ve had a hard life and have experienced a lot of hurt.

From earliest days I wanted to be someone else. The injunction nosce te ipsum had an ashen taste on my tongue from the first time a teacher enjoined me to repeat it after him. I knew myself, all too well, and did not like what I knew. Again, I must qualify. It was not what I was that I disliked, I mean the singular, essential me—although I grant that even the notion of an essential, singular self is problematic—but the congeries of affects, inclinations, received ideas, class tics, that my birth and upbringing had bestowed on me in place of a personality. In place of, yes. I never had a personality, not in the way that others have, or think they have. I was always a distinct no-one, whose fiercest wish was to be an indistinct someone, I know what I mean.

This is morally problematic when personal decision is confused with personal opinion.

Stay far away from problematic people. In life...when a person is drowing they will try and pull the person closest to them down with them to save themselves.

One last characteristic of the memoir that is important to recognize is one which also applies to essays, and which Georg Lukacs described as "the process of judging." This may seem problematic to some, since...we connect it with 'judgmental,' often used nowadays as a derogatory word. But the kind of judgment necessary to the good personal essay, or to the memoir, is not that nasty tendency to oversimplify and dismiss other people out of hand but rather the willingness to form and express complex opinions, both positive and negative. If the charm of memoir is that we, the readers, see the author struggling to understand her past, then we must also see the author trying out opinions she may later shoot down, only to try out others as she takes a position about the meaning of her story. The memoirist need not necessarily know what she thinks about her subject but she must be trying to find out; she may never arrive at a definitive verdict, but she must be willing to share her intellectual and emotional quest for answers. Without this attempt to make a judgment, the voice lacks interest, the stories, becalmed in the doldrums of neutrality, become neither fiction nor memoir, and the reader loses respect for the writer who claims the privilege of being the hero in her own story without meeting her responsibility to pursue meaning. Self revelation without analysis or understanding becomes merely an embarrassment to both reader and writer.

It also creates a problematic reflection: If a villain is the person who knows the most and cares the least, then a hero is the person who cares too much without knowing anything. It makes every hero seem like Forrest Gump. But it’s not the intelligence that people dislike; it’s the dispassionate application of that intelligence. It’s the calculation. It’s someone who views life as a game where the rules are poorly written and designed for abuse.

One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern would go something like this: • The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon—I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. • The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or female, they will not be as strict with their children as their parents were with them. • The next generation (Sophia and Lulu’s) is the one I spend nights lying awake worrying about. Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. Even as children they will own many hardcover books (an almost criminal luxury from the point of view of immigrant parents). They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses.They may or may not attend private schools, but in either case they will expect expensive, brand-name clothes. Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation

An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty maneuvers, and ugly aspirations, and often can build up your defenses. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy. The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely erratic and irrational not only makes defense problematic but it also makes any counterattack extremely difficult—like trying to shoot at an object that is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements.

The whole notion of “Be true to yourself” is similarly problematic. Society pounds this idea into us in the unrelenting echo chamber of television, movies, and social media. And it is one of the underlying themes of most movies, even children’s movies. Again, “yourself” in this scenario is corrupted by sin, so why be true to that? The whole idea of this is bound to the exaltation of self. It carries the implication of making yourself your own god. Putting yourself and your desires on a pedestal and worshiping them. Being true to yourself is nothing short of idolatry. Oh, and isn’t a child molester just being true to himself? A rapist? A thief? A greedy person? And on it goes. So no thank you. I don’t want to be true to myself. I want to be true to God and his Word.

More problematic was Stanley’s persistent interest in other women, which he saw no reason to hide. Dowson’s poem about a man who confesses infidelity even as he pines for his lost love—“I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion!”—became their personal shorthand. (“My fashion has been acting up again,” Stanley would sometimes say, addressing Shirley as “Cynara,” after he had been out with another woman.)

The price of a successful relationship is devotion. Devotion is, essentially, commitment to something we value. What are we devoted to? Surely not what another person wants. I think most people would agree that being devoted to that would be problematic even with the best of people. So, what exactly are we devoted to? We are devoted to the well-being of another person. And we are devoted to the well-being of the relationship. We honour the other person’s value and the relationship’s worth.


Freedom to Suspend Contact Ideally, you’d probably like to have the freedom to be yourself yet protect yourself while continuing to relate to your parent. Still, you might find it necessary at times to protect your emotional health by suspending contact for a while. Although this can stir up tremendous guilt and self-doubt, consider the possibility that you may have good reasons for keeping your distance. For example, your parent may be emotionally hurtful or disrespect your boundaries—an intrusive way of relating that impinges upon your right to your own identity. You may want to take a break from dealing with a parent who behaves in this way. Some parents are so unreflective that, despite repeated explanations, they simply don’t accept that their behavior is problematic. In addition, some sadistic parents truly are malevolent toward their children, and enjoy the pain and frustration they cause. Children of these sorts of parents may decide that suspending contact is the best solution. Just because a person is your biological parent doesn’t mean you have to keep an emotional or social tie to that person. Fortunately, you don’t need to have an active relationship with your parents to free yourself from their influence. If this weren’t so, people wouldn’t be able to emotionally separate from parents who live far away or have died. True freedom from unhealthy roles and relationships starts within each of us, not in our interactions and confrontations with others. Aisha’s

I figured scraps were better than nothing at all. I failed to realize that the same thing that distinguishes addiction from passionate interest also divides unhealthy love from that which is the highest experience of humanity. That is, love is real when it expands and enhances your life—and troubling and problematic when it contracts or impairs it. Whether you love a person, a drug, or an intellectual interest, if it is spurring creativity, connection, and kindness, it’s not an addiction—but if it’s making you isolated, dull, and mean,

when we are left alone, with no demands on attention, the basic disorder of the mind reveals itself. With nothing to do, it begins to follow random patterns, usually stopping to consider something painful or disturbing. Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness—a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

A person's attachment status is a fundamental determinant of their relationships, and this is reflected in the way they feel about themselves and others. Neurotic patterns can be seen as originating here because, where core attachments are problematic, they will have a powerful influence on the way someone sees the world and their behaviour. Where there is a secure core state, a person feels good about themselves and their capacity to be effective and pursue their projects. Where the core state is insecure, defensive strategies come into play.

model’s blind spots reflect the judgments and priorities of its creators. While the choices in Google Maps and avionics software appear cut and dried, others are far more problematic. The value-added model in Washington, D.C., schools, to return to that example, evaluates teachers largely on the basis of students’ test scores, while ignoring how much the teachers engage the students, work on specific skills, deal with classroom management, or help students with personal and family problems. It’s overly simple, sacrificing accuracy and insight for efficiency.

I’ve always felt personally and emotionally closer to the searchers, rather than to the finders…to those who don’t get answers, as opposed to those who do. For me, the experience of epiclitus is closely related to the experience of the uncanny, but also to the experience of complex and problematic emotions, like yearning, and awe, and psychic unease, which are of particular interest to me. That precipice of endless uncertainty, of the impenetrable—those are the moments that I’ve always loved in literature, as well as the moments that have haunted me in life.

Empathy is difficult for the AVP. They do care about others and can be very aware of emotional content. AVPs are capable of expressing empathetic thought, though it is usually short lived. Their thoughts are often racing and difficult to find. They vacillate between what is fair or not. You might see an AVP give more empathy to a distant relative at an event than the significant other. They do care, but the feeling of that care response can be problematic. They are still hiding, balancing, and are fearful of rejection. Interactions rarely are confronted or dealt with.

Analysis of your social network and its members can also be highly revealing of your life, politics, and even sexual orientation, as demonstrated in a study carried out at MIT. In an analysis known as Gaydar, researchers studied the Facebook profiles of fifteen hundred students at the university, including those whose profile sexual orientation was either blank or listed as heterosexual. Based on prior research that showed gay men have more friends who are also gay (not surprising), the MIT investigators had a valuable data point to review the friend associations of their fifteen hundred students. As a result, researchers were able to predict with 78 percent accuracy whether or not a student was gay. At least ten individuals who had not previously identified as gay were flagged by the researchers’ algorithm and confirmed via in-person interviews with the students. While these findings might not be troubling in liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, they could prove problematic in the seventy-six countries where homosexuality remains illegal, such as Sudan, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, where such an “offense” is punished by death.

This was the most disorienting and upsetting idea that emerged from my reading: the idea that C-PTSD was baked into my personality, that I didn’t know where my PTSD stopped and I began. If C-PTSD was a series of personality traits, then was everything about my personality toxic? Was everything about my history toxic? And would I have to throw it all away? My diagnosis called into question everything I loved—from ginseng abalone soup to talking a whole lot at parties to doodling during meetings. I couldn’t tell which parts were pathologically problematic and which were fine as they were.

Discoveries of such secrets typically bring on tumultuous crises. Ironically, however...it is often the person who lied or cheated who has the easier time. People who transgressed might feel self-loathing, regret or shame. But they have the possibility of change going forward, and their sense of their own narrative, problematic though it may be, is intact. They knew all along what they were doing and made their own decisions. They may have made bad choices, but at least those were their own and under their control. Now they can make new, better choices. And to an astonishing extent, the social blowback for such miscreants is often transient and relatively minor...Our culture, in fact, wholeheartedly supports such “new beginnings” — even celebrates them.

The concept of “brain plasticity” refers to the ongoing capacity of the brain and the nervous system to change itself. Everything that we do, think, feel, and experience changes our brain. A stroke or a traumatic brain injury can affect brain plasticity, and plasticity may also be associated with such developmental disorders as autism. Increased brain plasticity may also potentially endow a person with unanticipated new abilities, as John appears to have experienced in this book. TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation, the intervention that John undergoes, provides a unique opportunity for us to learn about the mechanisms of plasticity, and to identify alterations in the brain’s networks that may be responsible for a patient’s problematic symptoms, and also for recovery.

Normal people find it difficult to grasp the reality that predators really do think differently. We tend to want to evaluate them from the point of view of our own experience and life values, and then try to figure out what it is that “went wrong.” In other words, what is the aberrant piece that once identified and “fixed” will make them think “normally” again? Well, in many cases there is an aberrant piece that either determines or influences behavior. But by the time some individual acts on his predatory urges, it is usually so completely assimilated into his entire personality that you can’t simply take it out and replace it as you can a defective mechanical part. That is why the concept of rehabilitation is so problematic for violent offenders. Once the damage is done, it is often all but impossible to repair it.

In 2011, actor Johnny Depp told the November issue of Vanity Fair that he felt participating in a photoshoot was akin to rape. "Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped . . . It feels like a kind of weird - just weird, man. But whenever you have a photo shoot or something like that, it's like - you just feel dumb. It's just so stupid," he said. Likening instances of being flustered or uneasy to the often life-shattering experience of rape has become a far too common comparison in modern lexicon. The phrase "Facebook rape" is perhaps the most widely used, which implies one person has posted on another person's Facebook account - usually something intended to embarrass the person. But the casual, flippant use of the term "rape" in instances that do not involve sexual violence is highly problematic in that it trivialises one of the most despicable invasions of a human being. Desensitising the masses to the term "rape" is just another way the conversation surrounding sexual assault is derailed or diluted in society. Rape is, and should be considered universally, as a serious societal sickness that occurs within the "toxic silence" that surrounds sexual assault as Tara Moss put so elegantly in her recent Q&A appearance. Further to that, the use of the term can be a trigger for rape survivors in that it may jolt terrifying memories of their own experience. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, up to 57 per cent of rape survivors suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in their lifetime, with "triggers" including inflammatory words like rape causing deeply traumatic recollections. Beware desensitising the term "rape", Newcastle Herald, June 6, 2014

And I *know* I wrote in the above that I hate biographies and reviews that focus on the psychological, surface detail, especially when they pertain to women writers, because I think it’s really about the cult of the personality, which is essentially problematic, and I think simplistically psychologizing which biographies are so wont to do is really problematic, and dangerous, especially when dealing with complicated women who just by being writers at a certain time and age were labelled as nonconformist, or worse, hysterical or ill or crazy, and I think branding these women as femme fatales is all so often done. And I know in a way I’m contributing to this by posting their bad-ass photos, except hopefully I am humanizing them and thinking of them as complicated selves and intellects AND CELEBRATING THEM AS WRITERS as opposed to straight-up objectifying. One particular review long ago in Poetry that really got my goat was when Brian Phillips used Gertrude Stein’s line about Djuna Barnes having nice ankles as an opener in a review of her poetry, and to my mind it was meant to be entirely dismissive, as of course, Stein was being as well. Stein was many important revolutionary things to literature, but a champion of her fellow women writers she was not. They published my letter, but then let the guy write a reply and scurry to the library and actually read Nightwood, one of my all-time, all-times, and Francis Bacon’s too, there’s another anecdote. And it’s burned in my brain his response, which was as dismissive and bourgeois as the review. I don’t remember the exact wordage, but he concluded by summing up that Djuna Barnes was a minor writer. Well, fuck a duck, as Henry Miller would say. And that is how the canon gets made.

The standard narrative of sexual desire is that it just appears-you're sitting at lunch or walking down the street, maybe you see a sexy person or think a sexy thought, and pow! you're saying to yourself, "I would like some sex!" This is how it works for maybe 75 percent of men and 15 percent of women...That's "spontaneous" desire. But some people find that they begin to want sex only after sexy things are happening. And that's normal. They don't have "low" desire, they don't suffer from any ailment, and they don't long to initiate but feel like they're not allowed to. Their bodies just need some more compelling reason than, "That's an attractive person right there," to want sex. They are sexually satisfied and in healthy relationships, which means that lack of spontaneous desire for sex is not, in itself, dysfunctional or problematic! Let me repeat: Responsive desire is normal and healthy.

Biopsychosocial discourse often portrays these patients as possessing unhealthy personality traits, such as ‘maladaptive perfectionism’ [67,68]; yet such assertions are not well supported, many studies find no significant differences between ME/CFS patients and the general population with regard to distinctive personality profiles [69–72]. A Swedish study of physicians’ attitudes to CFS found that physicians often downgrade the seriousness of this illness to ‘non-disease’ status and view patients as being ‘illness focused’, ‘demanding’, and ‘medicalising’ [73]. Given community-based doctors have limited knowledge of ME/CFS [74] and doctors display high levels of skepticism in this illness domain [75], it is unsurprising that many patients with ME/CFS report problematic clinical interactions [29–31,76]. Patient surveys conducted by patient organizations confirm high levels of patient dissatisfaction in the medical encounter.

Now everyone knows that to try to say something in the mainstream Western media that is critical of U.S. policy or Israel is extremely difficult; conversely, to say things that are hostile to the Arabs as a people and culture, or Islam as a religion, is laughably easy. For in effect there is a cultural war between spokespersons for the West and those of the Muslim and Arab world. In so inflamed a situation, the hardest thing to do as an intellectual is to be critical, to refuse to adopt a rhetorical style that is the verbal equivalent of carpet-bombing, and to focus instead on those issues like U.S. support for unpopular client re­gimes, which for a person writing in the U.S. are somewhat more likely to be affected by critical discussion. Of course, on the other hand, there is a virtual cer­tainty of getting an audience if as an Arab intellectual you passionately, even slavishly support U.S. policy, you attack its critics, and if they happen to be Arabs, you invent evi­dence to show their villainy; if they are American you confect stories and situations that prove their duplicity; you spin out stories concerning Arabs and Muslims that have the effect of defaming their tradition, defacing their history, accentuating their weaknesses, of which of course there are plenty. Above all, you attack the officially ap­ proved enemies-Saddam Hussein, Baathism, Arab na­tionalism, the Palestinian movement, Arab views of Israel. And of course this earns you the expected accolades: you are characterized as courageous, you are outspoken and passionate, and on and on. The new god of course is the West. Arabs, you say, should try to be more like the West, should regard the West as a source and a reference point. · Gone is the history of what the West actually did. Gone are the Gulf War's destructive results. We Arabs and Mus­lims are the sick ones, our problems are our own, totally self-inflicted. A number of things stand out about these kinds of performance. In the first place, there is no universalism here at all. Because you serve a god uncritically, all the devils are always on the other side: this was as true when you were a Trotskyist as it i's now when you are a recanting former Trotskyist. You do not think of politics in terms of interrelationships or of common histories such as, for instance, the long and complicated dynamic that has bound the Arabs and Muslims to the West and vice versa. Real intellectual analysis forbids calling one side innocent, the other evil. Indeed the notion of a side is, where cultures are at issue, highly problematic, since most cultures aren't watertight little packages, all homogenous, and all either good or evil. But if your eye is on your patron, you cannot think as an intellectual, but only as a disciple or acolyte. In the back of your mind there is the thought that you must please and not displease.

[I]f we objected to any blanket statements that would portray Black people in a certain way, or statements that insinuate that any Muslim is potentially violent or a terrorist, or that queer people are pedophiles, why aren’t we using the same basic critical tool to reject the assumption that being white necessarily makes one privileged or racist? Why are we not using another basic critical tool by asking yet another important question: what percentage of white people is extremely wealthy and privileged, and how/why it is problematic to put all whites in one basket as it would be if we do to any other group of people? Anyone who has traveled through the poor parts of white America, places like West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and many others that I have personally visited and observed, will know that there is a big percentage of white people who are, in some cases, as poor as newly arrived undocumented immigrants. [From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]

Over the years there have been times when I’ve been mesmerized by a figure in my imagination that I mistook for someone real. A crush that could have crushed my partner’s feelings. At such a moment, while you may not be in control of who or what is beguiling or besotting you, you are in control of what you do about those feelings. The choices you make. Romantic love can enlarge a person or shrink them. Sometimes the most convincing act of love is to just let someone be who they are. Without you. As a songwriter I am attracted to any territory or subject that’s just out-of-bounds, a someone or something new who might take my imagination by surprise. As a man too. This can be problematic. I can have a crush on a person who doesn’t exist. Ali finds other obstacles in the way of her love. Were there days when both of us might resent the obligations our marriage makes of each other? Sure, but neither of us would want to live outside each other’s love as expressed through this old-fashioned but still functional construct called marriage.

Go on like this and you’ll never get used to yourself or anything else,’ his mother had warned him more than once. ‘You’ll always be reinventing the wheel.’ Then, as if aside to a third party: ‘And my God, won’t that be as tiring for you as it is for everyone who has to deal with you.’ In revenge for assessments of this kind, Shaw had quickly learned to skip-read his own experience, maintaining through adolescence only the most lateral relationship with its problems. A short attention span had helped: if for a month or two he liked motorcycles, by Christmas it was horses. He didn’t meet girls. He didn’t make friends. With university behind him, he’d found himself able to skirt most events and encounters, problematic or not, by cataloguing them under ‘sketchy and uninterpretable’ even as they occurred. When he actually took in the things that happened to him, the work was done somewhere else, somewhere deep, if he had anywhere like that: his surface focus – indeed his entire personality – always seemed to be taken up somewhere else.

It's work to be the only person of color in an organization, bearing the weight of all your white co-workers' questions about Blackness. It's work to always be hyper visible because your skin - easily identified as being present or absent - but for your needs to be completely invisible to those around you. It's work to do the emotional labor of pointing out problematic racist thinking, policies, actions, and statements while desperately trying to avoid bitterness and cynicism. It's work to stay open to an organization to learn new skills without drinking in the cultural expectations of body size, personality, interests, and talents most valued according to whiteness. Quite frankly, the work isn't just tedious. It can be dangerous for Black women to attempt to carve out space for themselves - their perspective, their gifts, their skills, their education, their experiences - in places that haven't examined the prevailing assumption of white culture. The danger of letting whiteness walk off with our joy, our peace, our sense of dignity and self-love, is ever present.

I discovered that the predominant effects produced by the drugs discussed in this book are positive. It didn’t matter whether the drug in question was cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin. Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic, empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil. They also experienced enhanced social interactions, a greater sense of purpose and meaning, and increased sexual intimacy and performance. This constellation of findings challenged my original beliefs about drugs and their effects. I had been indoctrinated to be biased toward the negative effects of drug use. But over the past two-plus decades, I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding. Sure, negative effects were also possible outcomes. But they represented a minority of effects; they were predictable and readily mitigated. For example, the type of drug use described in this book should be limited to healthy, responsible adults. These individuals fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, parents, partners, and professionals. They eat healthy, exercise regularly, and get sufficient amounts of sleep. They take steps to alleviate chronic excessive stress levels. These practices ensure physical fitness and considerably reduce the likelihood of experiencing adverse effects. Equally important, I learned that people undergoing acute crises and those afflicted with psychiatric illnesses should probably avoid drug use because they may be at greater risk of experiencing unwanted effects. The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use to take advantage of the wide array of beneficial outcomes specific drugs can offer. To put this in personal terms, my position as department chairman (from 2016 to 2019) was far more detrimental to my health than my drug use ever was. Frequently, the demands of the job led to irregular exercise and poor eating and sleeping habits, which contributed to pathological stress levels. This wasn’t good for my mental or physical health. My drug use, however, has never been as disruptive or as problematic. It has, in fact, been largely protective against the negative health consequences of negotiating pathology-producing environments.

Because another thing we look away from, in the killing of animals, is just how much they are like us. One of the things the internet has done is circulate, on a vast scale, short films of animals being cute. A lot of the time this means: being like us. I watched, once, some YouTube footage of a pig who had been raised by a specific human and allowed to grow old. In the clip the pig sees this human again after several years of separation and rushes over to the edge of the pigsty, braying and trying to leap the fence with what seemed to my eyes like joy: like the joy of recognition – indeed, of love. If you post links to such films approvingly, cynics – men (always men) born with the knowledge that they know best – will tell you, with lordly condescension, that you are anthropomorphising. By which they mean projecting human emotions and responses onto animals. When they say this, they tend not “to consider the possibility that if this were not anthropomorphism – if the pig just, as the film clearly suggests, had empathy and memory and other-directedness, if it was really overjoyed to see the person who reared it again years later, if it was capable of love – if the pig were showing the big emotions which we humans think make us special, then complacently slaughtering and eating pigs might become a bit problematic.

But as people become anxious to be accepted by the group, their personal values and behaviors are exchanged for more negative ones. We can too easily become more intense, abusive, fundamentalist, fanatical—behaviors strange to our former selves, born out of our intense need to belong. This may be one explanation for why the Internet, which gave us the possibility of self-organizing, is devolving into a medium of hate and persecution, where trolls6 claiming a certain identity go to great efforts to harass, threaten, and destroy those different from themselves. The Internet, as a fundamental means for self-organizing, can’t help but breed this type of negative, separatist behavior. Tweets and texts spawn instant reactions; back and forth exchanges of only a few words quickly degenerate into comments that push us apart. Listening, reflecting, exchanging ideas with respect—gone. But this is far less problematic than the way the Internet has intensified the language of threat and hate. People no longer hide behind anonymity as they spew hatred, abominations, and lurid death threats at people they don’t even know and those that they do. Trolls, who use social media to issue obscene threats and also organize others to deluge a person with hateful tweets and emails, are so great a problem for people who come into public view that some go off Twitter, change their physical appearance, or move in order to protect their children.7 Reporters admit that they refuse to publish about certain issues because they fear the blowback from trolls.

If someone publishes an essay, or tells a joke, or performs a play that forwards a problematic idea the U.S. government generally wouldn't try to stop that person from doing so. Even if they could. If the expression doesn't involve national security the government generally doesn't give a shit. But, if enough vocal consumers are personally offended, they can silence that artist just as effectively. They can petition advertisers and marginalize the artist's reception and economically remove that individual from whatever platform he or she happens to utilize simply because there are no expression based platforms that don't have an economic underpinning. It's one of those situations where the practical manifestation is the opposite of the technical intention. As Americans we tend to look down on European countries that impose legal limitations on speech. Yet as long as speakers in those countries stay within the specified boundaries discourse is allowed relatively unfettered, even when it's unpopular. In the U.S., there are absolutely no speech boundaries imposed by the government. So the citizenry creates its own limitations based on the arbitrary values of whichever activist group is most successful at inflicting its worldview upon an economically fragile public sphere. As a consequence, the United States is a safe space for those who want to criticize the government, but a dangerous place for those who want to advance unpopular thoughts about any other subject that could be deemed insulting or discomforting. Some would argue that this trade off is worth it. Time may prove otherwise.

There are two parts to growing as a person—well, no, there aren’t, there’s more, but you can simplify it down—the first is pinpointing problematic areas, the toxic parts, as you said, and cutting them out. You are immensely good at this,” he said, and it sounded a quite genuine compliment, “but it is only one half of the equation. The other part, once you have hollowed out all the offensive parts, is to replace them with healthy, constructive parts. New behaviours; new patterns of thought. Something to nurture those empty spaces back to whole. Because otherwise those holes stay open, and they beg to be filled, and they will collapse on themselves and cause even bigger problems than the things that once lived inside of them. And you, Ronoah? You are singularly lacking in imagination in this respect. You take half the bricks out of a veritable castle of behavioural instinct and you expect it to hold—you never put new ones back in. And I shall tell you why. “There is a difference between action and character. One you change on purpose, but the other, it changes clandestine, without your noticing, until one day you have to run to catch up with where it’s got to. There is a difference between making a mistake, and being a mistake,” he said, tapping Ronoah’s shoulder with one, and then two fingers. “Your problem, Ronoah, quite possibly one of the only problems I can offer that you have not already thought of, is that you are constantly conflating the two. To the everyday eye, character is immovable, immutable—how do you solve a problem when the problem is you? You cannot improve a broken system when the only tool you have with which to do the fixing-up is the system itself. You need new parts, better data—and it just so happens you are discarding a rather sizeable portion of the available data on yourself while you’re at it, which makes your calculations even more erroneous. Because, and get ready for this, it might come as a bit of a shock—because you are not actually broken.

Catch Either/Or Thinking Anxious perfectionists will typically think “I need to perform flawlessly at all times,” with their underlying assumption being “or else it will result in disaster.” This is a common type of thinking trap termed either/or thinking. In this case, the either/or is this: Either there is flawless performance or complete and utter failure, and nothing in between. Not only can this style of thinking make you feel crushed when you don’t meet your own ideal standards, but it also often leads to perfectionism paralysis. Take, for example, an artist who sees his future career prospects as becoming either the next Picasso or a penniless flop; this person doesn’t see other possible outcomes in between. You can see how this would give the artist a creative block. For other folks, their hidden assumption may be slightly different: “Either I need to perform flawlessly at all times, or other people will reject me.” When I look back at my clinical psychology training, I realize I had this belief at that time. At a semiconscious level, I thought that the only way to prevent getting booted out of the program was to score at the top of the class for every test or assignment. Ultra-high standards often arise because a person is trying to hide imagined catastrophic flaws. In this scenario, people often think that if their flaws get revealed they’ll be shunned, and so the only way to conceal their defects is by always excelling. When people who have this belief do excel, their brain jumps to the conclusion that excelling was the only reason they managed to avoid catastrophe. This then perpetuates their belief that excelling is necessary for preventing future disasters. Researchers have used the term clinical perfectionism to describe the most problematic kind of perfectionism. When clinical perfectionists manage to meet their ultra-high standards, they often conclude that those standards must not have been high enough and revise them upward, meaning they can never feel any sense of peace. All this being said, I’m not suggesting you shoot for “acceptable” performance standards if you’re capable of excellence. Most of the anxious perfectionists I’ve worked with would hate that. It’s not in their nature to feel comfortable with mediocre performance.

One government policy that libertarians accept is provisions of national defense, since no private solution is likely to prove satisfactory. A private group that attempted to field an army and defend the country would find it difficult to exclude any individual person from the benefits of its protection, since any activities that deterred potential attacks or warded off actual attacks would defend everyone within the country. Thus, most people would not voluntarily pay for national defense provided by a private group, so it is hard for such an activity to be profitable enough to induce adequate private provision. That is, national defenses is what economists refer to as public good. The conclusion that government should provide some national defense applies to narrow self-defense activities, such as fielding an army that deters enemy attacks and responds to attacks that do occur. In practice, however, nations perform many inappropriate actions under the mantle self-defense, most of them harmful. On action that goes beyond strict self-defense is preemptive attacks on other countries, as in the invasion of Iraq. In rare instances preemptive strikes might be legitimate self-defense, and by moving first and preventing extended conflict, a government might save lives and property both at home and in the threatening country...In most instances of preemptive attack, however, the threat is not obvious, undeniable, or imminent. The justification for military action is therefor readily misused whenever leaders have other agendas but wish to hide behind the guise of self defense. Thus, preemptive national defense deserves extreme suspicion, and most such actions are not wise uses of government resources. Another problematic use of a country's self defense capabilities is humanitarian or national-building efforts that purport to help other countries. One objection to such actions might be that the helping country pays the costs while foreigners receive the benefits, but this is not the right criticism. The compassion argument for redistributing income holds that government should be willing to impose costs on society generally to raise the welfare of the least fortunate members. It is hard to see how logic would apply only to people who already residents of a given country.

My bedroom is separated from the main body of my house so that I have to go outside and cross some pseudo-Japanese stepping stones in order to go to sleep at night. Often I get rained on a little bit on my way to bed. It’s a benediction. A good night kiss. Romantic? Absolutely. And nothing to be ashamed of. If reality is a matter of perspective, then the romantic view of the world is as valid as any other - and a great deal more rewarding. It makes of life and unpredictable adventure rather that a problematic equation. Rain is the natural element for romanticism. A dripping fir is a hundred times more sexy than a sunburnt palm tree, and more primal and contemplative, too. A steady, wind-driven rain composed music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of things. Obviously, then, the Pacific Northwest's customary climate is perfect for a writer. It's cozy and intimate. Reducing temptation (how can you possibly play on the beach or work in the yard?), it turns a person inward, connecting them with what Jung called "the bottom below the bottom," those areas of the deep unconscious into which every serious writer must spelunk. Directly above my writing desk there is a skylight. This is the window, rain-drummed and bough-brushed, through which my Muse arrives, bringing with her the rhythms and cadences of cloud and water, not to mention the latest catalog from Victoria's Secret and the twenty-three auxiliary verbs. Oddly enough, not every local author shares my proclivity for precipitation. Unaware of the poetry they're missing, many malign the mist as malevolently as they non-literary heliotropes do. They wring their damp mitts and fret about rot, cursing the prolonged spillage, claiming they're too dejected to write, that their feet itch (athlete's foot), the roof leaks, they can't stop coughing, and they feel as if they're slowly being digested by an oyster. Yet the next sunny day, though it may be weeks away, will trot out such a mountainous array of pagodas, vanilla sundaes, hero chins and god fingers; such a sunset palette of Jell-O, carrot oil, Vegas strip, and Kool-Aid; such a sea-vista display of broad waters, firred islands, whale spouts, and boat sails thicker than triangles in a geometry book, that any and all memories of dankness will fizz and implode in a blaze of bedazzled amnesia. "Paradise!" you'll hear them proclaim as they call United Van Lines to cancel their move to Arizona.

In Western culture today, you decide to get married because you feel an attraction to the other person. You think he or she is wonderful. But a year or two later—or, just as often, a month or two—three things usually happen. First, you begin to find out how selfish this wonderful person is. Second, you discover that the wonderful person has been going through a similar experience and he or she begins to tell you how selfish you are. And third, though you acknowledge it in part, you conclude that your spouse’s selfishness is more problematic than your own. This is especially true if you feel that you’ve had a hard life and have experienced a lot of hurt. You say silently, “OK, I shouldn’t do that—but you don’t understand me.” The woundedness makes us minimize our own selfishness. And that’s the point at which many married couples arrive after a relatively brief period of time. So what do you do then? There are at least two paths to take. First, you could decide that your woundedness is more fundamental than your self-centeredness and determine that unless your spouse sees the problems you have and takes care of you, it’s not going to work out. Of course, your spouse will probably not do this—especially if he or she is thinking almost the exact same thing about you! And so what follows is the development of emotional distance and, perhaps, a slowly negotiated kind of détente or ceasefire. There is an unspoken agreement not to talk about some things. There are some things your spouse does that you hate, but you stop talking about them as long as he or she stops bothering you about certain other things. No one changes for the other; there is only tit-for-tat bargaining. Couples who settle for this kind of relationship may look happily married after forty years, but when it’s time for the anniversary photo op, the kiss will be forced. The alternative to this truce-marriage is to determine to see your own selfishness as a fundamental problem and to treat it more seriously than you do your spouse’s. Why? Only you have complete access to your own selfishness, and only you have complete responsibility for it. So each spouse should take the Bible seriously, should make a commitment to “give yourself up.” You should stop making excuses for selfishness, you should begin to root it out as it’s revealed to you, and you should do so regardless of what your spouse is doing. If two spouses each say, “I’m going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage,” you have the prospect of a truly great marriage. It Only Takes One to Begin

The Extraordinary Persons Project In fact, Ekman had been so moved personally—and intrigued scientifically—by his experiments with Öser that he announced at the meeting he was planning on pursuing a systematic program of research studies with others as unusual as Öser. The single criterion for selecting apt subjects was that they be “extraordinary.” This announcement was, for modern psychology, an extraordinary moment in itself. Psychology has almost entirely dwelt on the problematic, the abnormal, and the ordinary in its focus. Very rarely have psychologists—particularly ones as eminent as Paul Ekman—shifted their scientific lens to focus on people who were in some sense (other than intellectually) far above normal. And yet Ekman now was proposing to study people who excel in a range of admirable human qualities. His announcement makes one wonder why psychology hasn't done this before. In fact, only in very recent years has psychology explicitly begun a program to study the positive in human nature. Sparked by Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania long famous for his research on optimism, a budding movement has finally begun in what is being called “positive psychology”—the scientific study of well-being and positive human qualities. But even within positive psychology, Ekman's proposed research would stretch science's vision of human goodness by assaying the limits of human positivity Ever the scientist, Ekman became quite specific about what was meant by “extraordinary.” For one, he expects that such people exist in every culture and religious tradition, perhaps most often as contemplatives. But no matter what religion they practice, they share four qualities. The first is that they emanate a sense of goodness, a palpable quality of being that others notice and agree on. This goodness goes beyond some fuzzy, warm aura and reflects with integrity the true person. On this count Ekman proposed a test to weed out charlatans: In extraordinary people “there is a transparency between their personal and public life, unlike many charismatics, who have wonderful public lives and rather deplorable personal ones.” A second quality: selflessness. Such extraordinary people are inspiring in their lack of concern about status, fame, or ego. They are totally unconcerned with whether their position or importance is recognized. Such a lack of egoism, Ekman added, “from the psychological viewpoint, is remarkable.” Third is a compelling personal presence that others find nourishing. “People want to be around them because it feels good—though they can't explain why,” said Ekman. Indeed, the Dalai Lama himself offers an obvious example (though Ekman did not say so to him); the standard Tibetan title is not “Dalai Lama” but rather “Kundun,” which in Tibetan means “presence.” Finally, such extraordinary individuals have “amazing powers of attentiveness and concentration.

ago? No. Setting aside a host of policy problems, even the phrase “compassionate conservatism” is problematic. It validates those who falsely claim that conservatives are uncompassionate in the first place. It grafts “compassion” onto conservatism like an unnatural appendage. This is a major error. Notwithstanding our communication failures, a creed that flows from the optimistic belief that every person is valuable and capable of earned success is inherently compassionate to the core.

A second line of criticism of Kant comes from the results of the categorical imperative. According to Kant, when properly applied, the categorical imperative gives one absolute moral rules, which is the goal. That is, it produces an exceptionless moral system—there are never any exceptions to Kantian formulated moral rules. Kant himself suggests that even when confronted with the need to lie in order to protect an innocent person who is about to be killed, one still has an unqualified duty to tell the truth. Yet this seems very problematic and illustrates one of the tensions of absolutist deontological moral systems in general—they cannot deal with scenarios when principles conflict.

And while of course everyone, even the most wrecked and destitute among us, has a unique personal history, the problematic nature of trying to gather information about people who’ve severed too many basic ties is this—that in a sense we truly have history only insofar as it’s shared, and too much uniqueness really leads away from individuality to anonymity, the great sea of the forgotten.

No, life was an insoluble conundrum; and all that a sensible man could do was to try and get through it with as little unplesantness to himself and everyone else, as possible; in private to be considerate and detached, in public to do what little he could to guide the world down its uncharted course with the minimum of friction. This generally involved doing very little. It certainly meant refusing to risk an immediate disturbance for the sake of a problematical future good. As for ultimate truth, the nearest an honest man could hope to get to that, was to be vigilantly faithful to the conclusions of his own reason and experience; not to let his candid impressions be distorted by convention or cowardice or the deceptions of his own vanity. Probably, these personal conclusions were as far from the truth as everything else. But they were the only things of which he had first-hand evidence. Anyway only good could come of speaking one's mind, even if it did shock people. "It is a good thing to surprise:, he once said. By shaking others out of the complacency one might make them realize how ill-founded human convictions are.

When people possess information they deem too problematic to disclose, they will deceive. Contrastively, in situations where little personal, relational, or professional costs

Withdrawal occurs once a person stops eating any addictive food. Though abstaining from foods is a contentious subject in the scientific literature, there is no question that it will cause a level of discomfort that often drives addicts back to eating... Feelings of deprivation, obsessions about food, and anxiety arising from unresolved trauma that was being 'medicated' by the addictive foods may appear like spectres that linger, worsening before they get better... It may seem that life without one's comfort foods is simply not worth living. Even problematic eating is seen as better than feeling bereft to the point of suicidal thoughts. But others might find the symptoms so common they are not even recognizable as withdrawal... The good news is that detoxification is not a long process; it only lasts for a relatively short period - between one week and four weeks... Cheating by having a bite here or a spoonful there is also an excellent way to suffer withdrawal in perpetuity. Withdrawal will not end if the substance is constantly being reintroduced back into the brain reward pathway.

Why are They Converting to Islam? - Op-Eds - Arutz Sheva One of the things that worries the West is the fact that hundreds and maybe even thousands of young Europeans are converting to Islam, and some of them are joining terror groups and ISIS and returning to promote Jihad against the society in which they were born, raised and educated. The security problem posed by these young people is a serious one, because if they hide their cultural identity, it is extremely difficult for Western security forces to identify them and their evil intentions. This article will attempt to clarify the reasons that impel these young people to convert to Islam and join terrorist organizations. The sources for this article are recordings made by the converts themselves, and the words they used, written here, are for the most part unedited direct quotations. Muslim migration to Europe, America and Australia gain added significance in that young people born in these countries are exposed to Islam as an alternative to the culture in which they were raised. Many of the converts are convinced that Islam is a religion of peace, love, affection and friendship, based on the generous hospitality and warm welcome they receive from the Moslem friends in their new social milieu. In many instances, a young person born into an individualistic, cold and alienating society finds that Muslim society provides  – at college, university or  community center – a warm embrace, a good word, encouragement and help, things that are lacking in the society from which he stems. The phenomenon is most striking in the case of those who grew up in dysfunctional families or divorced homes, whose parents are alcoholics, drug addicts, violent and abusive, or parents who take advantage of their offspring and did not give their children a suitable emotional framework and model for building a normative, productive life. The convert sees his step as a mature one based on the right of an individual to determine his own religious and cultural identity, even if the family and society he is abandoning disagree. Sometimes converting to Islam is a form of parental rebellion. Often, the convert is spurned by his family and surrounding society for his decision, but the hostility felt towards Islam by his former environment actually results in his having more confidence in the need for his conversion. Anything said against conversion to Islam is interpreted as unjustified racism and baseless Islamophobia. The Islamic convert is told by Muslims that Islam respects the prophets of its mother religions, Judaism and Christianity, is in favor of faith in He Who dwells on High, believes in the Day of Judgment, in reward and punishment, good deeds and avoiding evil. He is convinced that Islam is a legitimate religion as valid as Judaism and Christianity, so if his parents are Jewish or Christian, why can't he become Muslim? He sees a good many positive and productive Muslims who benefit their society and its economy, who have integrated into the environment in which he was raised, so why not emulate them? Most Muslims are not terrorists, so neither he nor anyone should find his joining them in the least problematic. Converts to Islam report that reading the Koran and uttering the prayers add a spiritual meaning to their lives after years of intellectual stagnation, spiritual vacuum and sinking into a materialistic and hedonistic lifestyle. They describe the switch to Islam in terms of waking up from a bad dream, as if it is a rite of passage from their inane teenage years. Their feeling is that the Islamic religion has put order into their lives, granted them a measuring stick to assess themselves and their behavior, and defined which actions are allowed and which are forbidden, as opposed to their "former" society, which couldn't or wouldn't lay down rules. They are willing to accept the limitations Islamic law places on Muslims, thereby "putting order into their lives" after "a life of in

The girls were riveted by Georgia’s lecture on the importance of sports bras and the dangers of the uni-boob, double busting, slippage, unsightly bulges, and my personal favorite, head lighting. I thought she made valid points and I would never have guessed that bouncing boobs were so problematic.

Patients with symptom neuroses feel on the side of the therapist in opposing a problematic part of the self. They rarely require a long period to develop a shared perspective. In contrast, those whose problems are complexly interwoven with their personality may easily feel alone and under attack.

solidarity is the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic.

WHITE SOLIDARITY White solidarity is the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic. Educational researcher Christine Sleeter describes this solidarity as white “racial bonding.” She observes that when whites interact, they affirm “a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating particular interpretations of groups of color, and drawing conspiratorial we-they boundaries.”10 White solidarity requires both silence about anything that exposes the advantages of the white position and tacit agreement to remain racially united in the protection of white supremacy. To break white solidarity is to break rank. We see white solidarity at the dinner table, at parties, and in work settings. Many of us can relate to the big family dinner at which Uncle Bob says something racially offensive. Everyone cringes but no one challenges him because nobody wants to ruin the dinner. Or the party where someone tells a racist joke but we keep silent because we don’t want to be accused of being too politically correct and be told to lighten up. In the workplace, we avoid naming racism for the same reasons, in addition to wanting to be seen as a team player and to avoid anything that may jeopardize our career advancement. All these familiar scenarios are examples of white solidarity. (Why speaking up about racism would ruin the ambiance or threaten our career advancement is something we might want to talk about.) The very real consequences of breaking white solidarity play a fundamental role in maintaining white supremacy. We do indeed risk censure and other penalties from our fellow whites. We might be accused of being politically correct or might be perceived as angry, humorless, combative, and not suited to go far in an organization. In my own life, these penalties have worked as a form of social coercion. Seeking to avoid conflict and wanting to be liked, I have chosen silence all too often. Conversely, when I kept quiet about racism, I was rewarded with social capital such as being seen as fun, cooperative, and a team player. Notice that within a white supremacist society, I am rewarded for not interrupting racism and punished in a range of ways—big and small—when I do. I can justify my silence by telling myself that at least I am not the one who made the joke and that therefore I am not at fault. But my silence is not benign because it protects and maintains the racial hierarchy and my place within it. Each uninterrupted joke furthers the circulation of racism through the culture, and the ability for the joke to circulate depends on my complicity. People of color certainly experience white solidarity as a form of racism, wherein we fail to hold each other accountable, to challenge racism when we see it, or to support people of color in the struggle for racial justice.

You will probably respond with white fragility. But unfortunately, white fragility can only protect the problematic behavior you feel so defensive about; it does not demonstrate that you are an open person who has no problematic racial behavior.

[T]he word 'tolerance', which is commonly used as a positive word when it comes to 'tolerating' difference, is extremely problematic if we think about it. If you simply Google the linguistic meaning of the word, the first definition you will get is (tolerance: noun): 'to allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference.' In this sense, using this word is disturbing because it suggests two things: first, the person who is doing the tolerating has the upper hand in everything, and therefore, they are kind enough to 'tolerate' others. Second, it gives those doing to 'tolerating' the right to change their mind and stop 'tolerating' others any time they please, which could perhaps lead them to commit violence against the 'intolerable'. I never understand how any native English speaker could thoughtlessly use 'tolerate' as a positive word in such situations. How could they use the same word to tell us that they 'tolerate a medication' and they 'tolerate an immigrant or another religion.' We need a culture that teaches us to appreciate, to love, and to affirm others not to 'tolerate' them.

Part of what makes cultural appropriation so problematic is that it ignores the need for understanding the actual history and people who own the culture. People can learn and appreciate, but unless they are from that group, they can never fully understand.

Saying a person is “half-Brazilian and half-Japanese” or is a “quarter Black” is commonly heard. However, this can be viewed as cutting a child into parts, or identifying one’s affinity to a racial heritage by the racial percentage or blood quantum count. Given the punctuated historical context we live in, this can be problematic. Instead, a way to invite a child to honor all aspects of their racial heritage equally would be to say that they are “Native American and Lebanese.

A lack of emotional boundaries can be equally problematic. If you don’t like the way someone treats you, yet you don’t stand up for yourself, you give that person power over your life.

Each person pulled onto the slave ship embodied a social history: one or more distinctive places that were called ‘home’ and an indelible web of relationships comprising ties with immediate family and the extended network of kin. A collective of people suddenly torn from participation in these and other domains of social life, the slave cargo was, necessarily, a novel and problematic social configuration. Atlantic commodification meant not only exclusion from that which was recognizable as community, but also immersion in a collective whose most distinguishing feature was its unnatural constitution: it brought strangers together in anomalous intimacy. A product of violence, the slave cargo constituted the antithesis of community.

We realize that we inherit great personal suffering as a result of this weakened condition and from our inadequate but incessant attempts to regain the lost parts of Self. It is from our problematic and often futile attempts to regain Selfhood that life takes on its odd and distasteful complexion. It is the reason we become sadistic and/or masochistic. It is why we become troubled, morose, withdrawn, envious, compulsive, defensive, aggressive, insensitive, obsessive, suspicious, paranoid, acquisitive, competitive, delinquent, criminal, violent, warlike, brutal and tyrannous. Any external event that threatens or compromises the authority of our fragile and impaired Self is a source of fright and conflict. Our penchant for pleasure and terror of discomfort, challenge and pain stem from this dynamic. This is the reason soldiers cry out for their mothers at the moment of death in the trenches and on the battlefield. It is why the image of the female is so captivating, and why violence toward women is prevalent in history. It accounts for the over-sexualization of media and culture, for perversity, fetishism and fascination for womb symbols. It is the reason for child abuse, and explains our heinous desecration of nature and abominable treatment of animals. It explains the manufacture of supernatural gods and apollonian refuges where the cares of mortality cease. It accounts for our penchant for antihuman technology and our desire to build a sterile, post-psychological, post-philosophical dystopia in which we will not be troubled by emotions of any kind.

Not all resurrections of Kundalini exhibit events that can be considered divine experience. In addition, certain unfinished risings can be quite complicated because the actions of Kundalini Shakti to enhance her standing may influence subtle processes of the body, creating a variety of experiences, including subtle physical activity that may be painful and emotional. Blocked risings or risings through cul-de-sac routes can give rise to some distressing and unusual symptoms, and thwart further spiritual development until the block or misdirection is corrected. The strain on the subtle body can ultra-sensitive and urgent distress the experiencer, especially if they don't know how to properly support their rising. Individuals may also use or misuse any special abilities that their risings provide for their own worldly purposes, and this may eventuate in some uncomfortable side effects. If the gifts offered by an arisen Kundalini Shakti are harnessed for non-spiritual purposes, the resulting dissipation or misdirection of vital energy and likely ego inflation may postpone further spiritual progress until the diffusion is contained and the inauspicious focus is corrected. Other factors that complicate an upturn are sometimes present. An uncomfortable upsurge can result when Kundalini Shakti emerges spontaneously through non-spiritual catalysts (such as life shock or incorrect intervention) in an unprepared person whose subtle body is weak, toxic, or unbalanced and who may not have a frame of reference for interpreting and responding to the experience as potentially spiritual. The emotional reaction to the rising itself can disrupt the delicate body even further. Kundalini Shakti will work to resolve limitations in the system of the individual, and the experiences produced by her effort may be felt as uncomfortable, and thus the experiencer considers them problematic. Even a "spiritual disaster" or "kundalini syndrome" may be branded. It may be mistakenly pathologized by others who do not recognize spiritual experiences because the phenomenon must satisfy appropriate requirements to be considered a diagnosable disorder or disease. However, the Kundalini process is not a pathology, and it is considered a blessing that spiritual aspirants should seek for. A blocked rising may result in distressing discomforts, and some discomfort may also be associated with the purification and restoration, which follows an improvement in a rising. Yet essentially, these challenges can be changed. A healthy, balanced lifestyle promotes a successful cycle of Kundalini. With the seeker's spiritual understanding and committed right commitment to co-operate with the intent of Kundalini Shakti, grace is conferred by the divine right to promote the spiritual development of the soul. Practicing appropriate spiritual methods allows Kundalini Shakti to fix (divert, unblock, elevate) a stuck rising so that rising problems can be improved over time. Unimpeded risings can eventually impart a gentle process, culminating in full spiritual attainment through a direct route.

White solidarity is the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic. Educational researcher Christine Sleeter describes this solidarity as white “racial bonding.” She observes that when whites interact, they affirm “a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating particular interpretations of groups of color, and drawing conspiratorial we-they boundaries.”10 White solidarity requires both silence about anything that exposes the advantages of the white position and tacit agreement to remain racially united in the protection of white supremacy. To break white solidarity is to break rank.

The price of a successful relationship is devotion. Devotion is, essentially, commitment to something we value. What are we devoted to? Surely not what another person wants. I think most people would agree that being devoted to that would be problematic even with the best of people. So, what exactly are we devoted to? We are devoted to the well-being of another person. And we are devoted to the wellbeing of the relationship. We honour the value of the other person and we honour the worth of the relationship.

Whether Homer was a feminist, a male chauvinist or a woman himself (herself?), he (she?) has all the qualities found in recent male poets, who are notoriously antigovernment, antiwar, antiauthority and fond of women, children, nature and sexuality. Obviously, he was in Freudian terms an oral personality. In any case, his values (and those of later poets like Euripides, Sophocles, the anonymous authors of the Greek Anthology, etc.) were always compatible with sexual love, however much the relationship between men and women had been rendered problematical by the patriarchal system, which had reduced women to second-class citizens.

The First Trans Poem Every two years a trans person who came out two years ago declares herself an old school transsexual. Every trans elder is like so old now, in their thirties or even late twenties. Every rich trans person who just came out is a new hope for trans people, the one to really get this right. Every trans person who got a media job invented gender fluidity a year ago. Every trans person who tracked tenure before transing out is the leading intellectual. Every trans person speaks for every trans person, which is to say there is only one trans person. Every decade is a new trans moment, the first trans literature, the first talk show interview, the first trans billionaire, the first transsexual polemic, the first arrival of trans arrival. Every older transsexual is problematic. Every trans discourse is the new discourse. Every trans joke is the new joke, told over and over.

WHEN the way things are seems to offer no possibility; when you are angry and blocked, and, for all your efforts, others refuse to move or cooperate, to compromise, or even to be halfway decent; when even enrollment does not work and you are at your wit’s end—you can take out this next practice: our graduate course in possibility. In this one, you rename yourself as the board on which the whole game is being played. You move the problematic aspect of any circumstance from the outside world inside the boundaries of yourself. With this act you can transform the world.

County, two-county (meso-regional), and broader regional elites and identities: …the greater gentry were in a better position to form an identity that was regional in nature than the lesser gentry because of the broader nature of their landed, marital, and personal interests; in addition, they were also the individuals who would be recruited by magnates for the influence that they could wield over their clients. It appears possible to speak of ‘county elites’: the shires seem to have been the primary foci for identification … The ‘regional elite’–comprising those involved in all counties–was small in number, being composed mostly of peers and greater gentry. While there was a significant supra-shire dimension to elites’ landholding, office-holding, and marriages, this seems to have been focused on meso-scale regions–the coupled-county units of Somerset/Dorset, and Devon/Cornwall. (p. 147) …With the principal foci appearing to be at shire and meso-regional levels, the concept of a broader south-west regional identity seems somewhat problematic. However, that said, the trans-county and trans-regional nature of the Hungerford affinity–with many of the same clients utilised in transactions concerning different shires–shows how a magnate and his circle could provide a focus for patronage that was extra-county, perhaps even regional, in scope (p.148). The principal themes of this study have been the interplay of the contemporaneous politics of the south-western elites, and long-term shire and regional identities (p. 347). …The ‘regional elite’, as seen, appears to have consisted mostly of only a small number of peers and the greatest gentry who cannot be regarded as a purely ‘regional’ elite because of their possession of wide-ranging estates on a trans-regional or national scale. The surveys of landowning and office-holding showed that, amongst the political elites, there tended to be some emphasis on the county unit; yet, while there were distinct shire elites, there were also extra-county elements to their identities. A significant emphasis seems to have been on the meso-regional communities of Somerset/Dorset and Devon/Cornwall, corroborating the earlier exploration of the region’s broader geography, economy, and culture (pp. 347–8) ... Both sets of political elites seem to have become more entwined over the period, and there was a growing region-wide dimension… (p. 348).

Our task as readers in the modern age is to pan through these older texts, sifting through the rubbish of problematic personal and cultural biases and ideologies of their time period and find the golden nuggets within them and what applies to us now.

the two-track for nuggets of musical ideas – the core of ‘Cluster One’ and ‘Marooned’ emerged and lingered through to the final album. But the truly significant thing was that each improvisation represented a kick-start to the creative process. That was – as we had always found – our most problematic hurdle. And by allowing ourselves to play whatever came into our heads, with no taboo or no-go areas, I had the impression that we were expanding a field of vision that had become increasingly narrow over the past two decades.

Worshiping with flowers is in fact problematical for Jains because of the violence inflicted on the flowers and the plants from which they were picked. This leads Muktiprabhvijay to some fairly desperate casuistry (ibid.: 55-57). He says that the flowers in question are picked by the Mali (gardener) for his livelihood, and therefore when a layman pays a price for the flowers there can be no question of sin (pap) or fault (dos). He adds that when the layman purchases such flowers he should think that, if he does not buy them, they will go to some wrong believer (mithyatvi) who will burn them in a (Hindu-style) sacrifice. It could also be that these flowers might go to some debauched person who will make them into a necklace or bouquet to give to his mistress or concubine. The flowers might then become a bed to be wallowed upon in lust; or they might end up on some woman's neck, and in this way cause someone to become infatuated and thus pushed in the direction of sin.

To become a complainer can also mean becoming the object of other people’s complaints.7 Members of her department submitted an informal complaint to Human Resources identifying her as a bully. It should not surprise us that a “pushy minority” can morph into a bully. Bullying often works to create a narrative about a person as behind whatever is deemed problematic. She was a new head of department; she was trying to make changes to the culture of that department.

White solidarity is the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic.

Co-dependent individuals often deny their own healthy needs, and attempt to save or rescue the “problematic” person in the family system (e.g., the alcoholic) whether by denial of the problem or by repeatedly rescuing them with caregiving or money and other resources.

The definition of art is problematic, but, simplistically, it is the application of skills to the creation of aesthetic values. Science can be defined as the methodical pursuit of knowledge about the phenomena of the physical world on the basis of unbiased observation and systematic experimentation. Roughly speaking, the objects of art and science are beauty and truth, respectively. Yoga is an art because it evidently does not have the mathematical exactitude of the natural sciences. The British-American mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once remarked: “Art flourishes when there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment; but when caution comes in you get repetition, and repetition is the death of art.”2 These comments apply to Yoga quite well. It is an incredible adventure of the spirit, which seeks to create an altogether new destiny. Each time the practitioner applies the wisdom of Yoga to life’s many situations, he or she must engage the process as if it were the first time. Thus Yoga is continuous self-application but not merely repetition. The Sanskrit term abhyāsa, which literally means “repetition,” has the primary meaning of “practice” in the context of Yoga, and practice calls for what the Zen masters call “beginner’s mind.” Any efforts to squeeze Yoga into the much-celebrated scientific method is doomed to failure, which is not to say that Yoga cannot or should not be studied rigorously from a scientific perspective. In fact, since the 1920s various research organizations and individual researchers have conducted such research, especially medical investigations, with varying degrees of success, and their findings have definitely been helpful in appraising Yoga’s effectiveness.3 Yet, Yoga is not completely subjective and inexact either. It proceeds according to careful rules established over a long period of (repeatable) personal experimentation.

Incessantly ‘brooding over his problematic character’, [Carl] Schmitt labels himself as ‘Proletarian’ and even intends to write a character study of the type with opportunism as the essential trait. ‘The Proletarian, or, the Plebeian’, he notes, ‘[h]is instinct: to creep or to strut, as the situation demands. He is ad alterum’, i.e. he adapts to every other person he encounters. As one of the editors of Schmitt’s diaries remarks: ‘I know of no contemporary of Schmitt—nor of anyone today—whose written records reveal the psychological state of their author so unsparingly as these diaries.’ The area of Schmitt’s private life most unsparingly disclosed is his sexual obsessions, the tribulations of a man ‘driven by erotomania’. ‘Often bursting with sexual craving’ (27 February 1923; 164), he guiltily notes his ‘ejaculations’. ‘I sneak from a conference so horny I have to bite my fingers’, he records in November 1912.

It became clear that if I believed that only bad people who intended to hurt others because of race could ever do so, I would respond with outrage to any suggestion that I was involved in racism. Of course that belief would make me feel falsely accused of something terrible, and of course I would want to defend my character (and I had certainly had many of my own moments of responding in just those ways to reflect on). I came to see that the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually impossible for white people to understand it. Given our racial insulation, coupled with misinformation, any suggestion that we are complicit in racism is a kind of unwelcome and insulting shock to the system. If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth. One of the greatest social fears for a white person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially problematic. Yet when someone lets us know that we have just done such a thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief (after all, now that we are informed, we won’t do it again), we often respond with anger and denial. Such moments can be experienced as something valuable, even if temporarily painful, only after we accept that racism is unavoidable and that it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic racial assumptions and behaviors.

Stochastic and Reactive Effects Replication may be difficult to achieve if the phenomenon under study is inherently stochastic, that is, if it changes with time. Moreover, the phenomenon may react to the experimental situation, altering its characteristics because of the experiment. These are particularly sticky problems in the behavioral and social sciences, for it is virtually impossible to guarantee that an individual tested once will be exactly the same when tested later. In fact, when dealing with living organisms, we cannot realistically expect strict stability of behavior over time. Researchers have developed various experimental designs that attempt to counteract this problem of large fluctuations in behavior. Replication is equally problematic in medical research, for the effects of a drug as well as the symptoms of a disease change with time, confounding the observed course of the illness. Was the cure accelerated or held back by the introduction of the test drug? Often the answer can only be inferred based on what happens on average to a group of test patients compared to a group of control patients. Even attempts to keep experimenters and test participants completely blind to the experimental manipulations do not always address the stochastic and reactive elements of the phenomena under study. Besides the possibility that an effect may change over time, some phenomena may be inherently statistical; that is, they may exist only as probabilities or tendencies to occur. Experimenter Effects In a classic book entitled Pitfalls in Human Research, psychologist Theodore X. Barber discusses ten ways in which behavioral research can go wrong.11 These include such things as the “investigator paradigm effect,” in which the investigator’s conceptual framework biases the way an experiment is conducted and interpreted, and the “experimenter personal attributes effect,” where variables such as age, sex, and friendliness interact with the test participants’ responses. A third pitfall is the “experimenter unintentional expectancy effect”; that is, the experimenter’s prior expectations can influence the outcome of an experiment. Researchers’ expectations and prior beliefs affect how their experiments are conducted, how the data are interpreted, and how other investigators’ research is judged. This topic, discussed in chapter 14, is relevant to understanding the criticisms of psi experiments and how the evidence for psi phenomena has often been misinterpreted.

Addictive Personalities. When a person is struggling with addiction, they will frequently lie, deny, exploit, manipulate, threaten, and do everything in their power to make sure their addiction gets fed. It can be difficult to tell if their problematic behavior is a result of their addiction or if it's their true personality. In order to be able for you or a mental health clinician to be able to determine this, the person with the addiction would need to be sober for at least eighteen months. However, a person can have both a personality disorder and a substance use disorder. It's also possible for a person to become emotionally stunted at whatever age they first began abusing a substance.

Although one might think that psychology would be the one field where unconscious biases might be acknowledged and considered, it rarely is. Inferential errors are common among clinicians, who tend to attribute client change for the better to intervention effectiveness (illusory causation; Lilienfeld et al., 2014) while change for the worse is attributed to client factors (attributional bias; Batson & Marz, 1979). Diagnoses are conceptual heuristics prone to the same errors inherent in all stereotypes,3 and their use is directly associated with prejudice and fear (Read, Haslam, Sayce, & Davies, 2006). Increased genetic determinism and “blaming the genes” can be considered as evidence of the ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979), wherein behaviors perceived as problematic by a person from a stereotyped group are considered to be genetically based; at the same time, any positive behaviors are suggested to be exceptions to the rule or due to situational context (i.e., “treatment”). Confirmation biases appear to be rampant, in that researchers and clinicians, unless actively seeking alternative explanations, are likely to observe and take note of behaviors and explanations that fit their preconceived ideas and beliefs (Croskerry, 2002; Garb, 1997; Nickerson, 1998). Another common bias that may arise is an overpathologizing bias that describes the tendency for women and minorities to be perceived as requiring more intense and intrusive interventions (Lopez, 2006; Ussher, 2010

We don't usually notice how little control we have over the mind, because habits channel psychic energy so well that thoughts seem to follow each other by themselves without a hitch. After sleeping we regain consciousness in the morning when the alarm rings, and then walk to the bathroom and brush our teeth. The social roles culture prescribes then take care of shaping our minds for us, and we generally place ourselves on automatic pilot till the end of the day, when it is time again to lose consciousness in sleep. But when we are left alone, with no demands on attention, the basic disorder of the mind reveals itself. With nothing to do, it begins to follow random patterns, usually stopping to consider something painful or disturbing. Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness-a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.