Ten ideas helpful to know if you want to be a therapist, understand human nature, or have an incisive ability to effect matters

1) Easterbrook hypothesis, essential for understanding ADHD, procrastination, work productivity. This was the basis of my dissertation way back in 1987, and remains a central explanatory concept for me.

2) Yerkes Dodson Law, the relationship between arousal and task efficiency

3)  The structure of intelligence as formulated by the Wechsler scales

4)  The active/passive dichotomy of Theodore Millon

5)   Shadow pathologies

6)  Diagnostic fashions

7) The unreliability of clinical versus actuarial diagnosis

8)  Cultural and legal context of disorders

9)  Rules of active listening

10)  B versus D cognition by Abraham Maslow

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luis N Zumarraga

  10-08-2023 Keeping up with Panama City events, as I do while living elsewhere, I learned that a retired psychiatrist in Panama City, Florida, recently died, and I was sorry to hear it. I was an intimate part of the mental health community in Panama City from the mid-eighties to 2020. Dr. Zumarraga was kindly, competent, well organized, and sturdy in disposition and personality, and a stalwart in that community. He helped me along with my career and referred hundreds of clients for therapy or psychological testing over the years. He seemed to take a personal interest as well and truly had the Rogerian quality of genuineness. He looked a bit like the actor Desi Arnaz. He raised a happy and successful brood of children, had a loving and pretty wife, had a very well-run and ethical practice, knew his medications very well, had a great understanding of general medicine, and attained wealth, with a home with a great lush garden he manicured himself. What else could you ask for in a l...
Read more
John Lennon stands as an almost archetypal figure for those who came of age in the United States during the 1960s. For those residing in New York, there was the additional mesmerization of his, and his three bandmates, arriving in Kennnedy airport for their initial visit on Ed Sullivan. They were popular in a way that it has hard for another generation to fathom. Maybe those who grew up in the nineteen twenties had the same feeling for Lindbergh, or those in the nineteen forties had the same feeling for Roosevelt. I am not sure who holds the current chair. The unparalleled popularity of the Beatles ensured that they remained a constant presence in our day to day existence. Beatle cards, Beatle memorabilia, each new album garnered the attention of the young baby boomers. Their exceptional talent, deemed a once-in-a-generation or even once-in-a-century phenomenon by music critics, elevated them beyond temporary celebrity status. Even today, half a century later, John Lennon is remember...
Read more
I am fascinated by how explanatory scholastic, philosophical, or political systems--ways of understanding the world--can be so different in content yet so consistent in form.  This is particularly a source of ironic pleasure when looking at two vociferous adversaries arguing about what are apparently different worldviews, yet formulating and attacking the same way.  There seem to be structural similarities even in very different thought systems.  Also,  I am also fascinated that people do not recognize how their arguments often are really not that different from each other's.  While the opinions of a conservative or liberal may seem vastly different, while the strictures of a Mormon versus a Zarathustran may seem vastly uncomparable, and while the thought patterns of a romantic versus absurdist writer may seem vastly incongruent,  the fact remains that organized thinking tend to have commonalities.  There are rules, certain rubrics, and a definite loss...
Read more