Damon G LaBarbera

  "Devils of Loudon" by Aldous Huxley is a complicated book, and written on a fairly high plateu of erudition. It probably has to be read several times to understand. Some notion and appreciation of Aldous Huxley's view on spirituality and religion also enrich the reading experience. Not a book for everyone,  some readers complain that there are too many digressions from the riveting plot into Huxley's pet philosophical interests.  If one is willing to put in the time and effort this is truly a "great book."  The prose style is insidious and elegant. Reading DOL from beginning to end is the equivalent , in terms of processed knowledge, of earning an MA in French 17th-century history.  This is not just a book about a demonic possession, it is also a statement of philosophy, politics, propaganda, psychological theory, and a critique of the habit of religious persecution into varied non-secular domains.. The plot involves the life and death of Father Urbain Gra...

A lesser-known or lesser-discussed diagnosis is Aggressive-Sadistic Personality Disorder. This diagnosis helps conceptualize certain personalities with distinct features that don't fit neatly into other descriptions. Often, these individuals are mistaken for having narcissistic or antisocial personalities. Theodore Millon's conceptualization of Aggressive-Sadistic Personality is rooted in older ideas of sadism and masochism. Once explained, the features of this personality are easily recognized, especially by those who have lived with such individuals, as they are toxic both in the short term and particularly over time. The diagnosis of Aggressive-Sadistic Personality is not currently included in the DSM psychiatric nomenclature. It was included at one time but later removed, much to the dismay of prominent psychologists. One reason for its removal was to prevent it from being used to justify bad behavior. While it falls under the broad category of personality disorders, it rem...

I would have thought that Philip Roth would have won a Nobel Prize. I am surprised he never did, though he was always mentioned as a potential recipient.  Nefarious powers that be must have kept him from winning the award--that or, perhaps he was not the all-powerful writer that I think he was, and my own lack of breadth in other writers is behind my indignation. I think not, though, I think he was a very good, or great writer, certainly one of the best post-war writers that genre I am most familiar with. And also depressing is the idea that if Roth, who was light years ahead of anything I might aspire to in terms of human insight would not have won such a prize, what level of inconsequence does that leave my own, indeed that of most of my friends, level of abilities. Roth had a grasp of dialogue, especially that of hard-boiled individuals. He did not quite, like Saul Bellow, create his own universes, but what I have read, probably about a third of his corpus, always struck me as b...

 Graduate School Diary Second Year jottings on what daily life was like for a grad student in 1981 On Friday I went to the veritable Varsity Inn, the coffee place for this grande University. It is not only the coffee place, but the only place for a grad student without a car who does not want to walk a half mile to a supermarket. I saw Ann sitting there at a table alone. Anne is a graduate student in another apartment, a little older than me, maybe about 23. I can't say I really enjoy Anne's company very much, not because of anything she has necessarily done, but because my perception is she dislikes me.  Anyway, when I first met her--there was a cold attitude. She lived down the hallway in the graduate dorm, a desolate place for those without better choices, and seemed, literally, to lift her nose in the air when she encountered me. Most of the folks are quite nice on the hallway. Nowadays, when I see her, she gives me a cold look that is quickly averted, or not acknowledging...

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...

Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are two writers who people continue to read, many decades after their deaths.  Both wrote books about the future and both are considered men of letters, par excellence. Sometimes people wonder who was the correctest of the two dystopian writers. Who was a better forecaster of the future? Both wrote about a society morally ruined. And both were products of the excessive English literacy at the beginning of the last century, and, finally, both have firm and enthusiastic adherents.  And this probably is true as well--they have managed to survive cancellation in our woke culture, just because they were so contrarian themselves in their own day.Who was the smartest? I think it is a contest of champions--a Joe Louis versus Sugar Ray Leonard comparison.  They did differ in background. Huxley had the more priveleged upbringing. He was from the intellectual British aristocracy, while Orwell had humble beginnings. Most interestingly, Huxley taught Or...

From the brilliant John Auerbach, PhD  I

In this recorded lecture Alan Watts describes the accomplishment of Aldous Huxley iin the book  "Island". Huxley had been a social critic his entire life and it was a hard task reversing himself, and becoming a critic. Given that utopias were out of style, he allowed himself to be a sitting duck, by writing this utopia. The regnent idea was that the world was getting worse, so this utopian novel was out of step with literary fashion. Since Huxley was a novelist, he chose to put his ideas into novel form;. Possibly it would have worked better as an essay. But that was his identity--as a novelist, and that is the category people put him into. So rather than writing essays, which would have conveyed the same content, he had the ideas come out of characters mouths. Also, Watts describes how Huxley changed in the nineteen thirties, under the influence of Gerald Heard, developing a Maniachin view of the world. The physical world was a degradation from the spiritual state. That idea...

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...

 Russian Authors The Russian invasion of Ukraine has drawn censure and ire around the glob. An anti-Russo tone runs through recent stories of all types. So, the same Russia that has produced, like any other, both good and bad, and produced the likes of Tolstory and Dostoevsky, is now, understandably enough, being judged by its worst, most recent moment.  An enemy today can be a friend tomorrow. Countries fall into and out of alliances.  The crazed murderous fanaticism with which the world characterized Imperial Japan, say, is quite out of place with what we now see of that country--a staunch ally and cool producer of anime and boy bands. Similarly, we would not want to judge the US civilization based on one episode in History. One is tempted to recite Vietnam as the obvious example, except that in retrospect, Vietnam seems less the disaster it was portrayed. It did give us the concept of PTSD, and also weakened the Soviet Union and other communist countries to the point t...

 The stock market has risen over the last month in what appears to be a "bear rally". Most market indicators suggest further downside. A recent article by Hulbert in WSJ, an analyst who uses a wide range of data, suggests further downside and that stocks are still overvalued. High equity allocations for many investors, one of the more robust indicators of overvaluation, are at a decade level high.  I look for patterns. Despite some intraday volatility, it seems that a regular pattern of developing the open is operative. If the market opens high, it continues to edge higher. If it opens lower, it continues to drop during the day. I assume this is a bear market pattern of lower lows. The pattern since January continues downward. Moves upward can be exciting, and veterans of 2009 trading will recall the supposed bear rally that rose and rose, befuddling many technical analysts. When the market rises, it does so quickly. Meanwhile, though, most are predicting continued downside. ...

There is a genre of video on Youtube called the "reaction video". One variant is a "first look," where the youthful participants watch some relic of old culture and give commentary, or more likely, show various facial and gestural actions to show their usually positive registration of the retro music or film clip. So we see two twentysomethings watching Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock or a Talking Heads video. Invariably the reviews seem laudatory--they love this or that song. When the viewers sometimes are younger--maybe a pair of teen brothers or high school friends--the reactions remain laudatory, despite an underlying, agonizingly stifled, sense of ridicule or derision.   The videos are nice affirmation for the oldster--yes the stuff we loved back in the day really was good. Who knows what the reviewers actually think, though.   But they offer an easy watching experience plus the chance to rehear some old favorites.. The reaction viewers are, generally, a congenial an...

Thought for today  To the mystic St Theresa is attributed the wise saying that "answered prayers cause more grief than unanswered prayers. Truman Capote named a book of his short stories with the same aphorism, with St. Theresa's quote as its frontispiece.  We are own worst enemies and don't know what is best for us.  The idea is akin to that of unintended consequences--our efforts in one direction often create a contrary result, full of mishap, grief, and if one is of a humorous temperament, ironic self-defeat. We long for what is, if not what is the worst for us, what is irrelevant, toxic, stressful, or illusory, and finally just represent an unproductive expenditure of calories that could be better used.  This is an internalized version of the saying that "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Along similar lines is the notion that overly planned and ideologically based efforts in a particular direction often create mayhem. The most active, well-mea...

Behavioral Economics  Stock Market Psychology The name most associated with behavioral economics is Daniel Kahneman--the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and (nearly) public intellectual because his work is so familiar and he has published well-received books. Adam Tversky was his collaborator--a movie was made about the two. Unfortunately, Tversky died before the aware of the prize So, in trading stocks, we tend to have a fear of losing money. Loss aversion theory, the centerpiece of the theory, is that losses hurt more than gains feel good. So we sell our winners and hold onto our losers. We don't want to concretize a loss. If. a stock goes down, a trader is more likely to hold on hoping it regresses to the mean Worse, there is a tendency to buy more, or double down, once the stock has fallen. In effect, when we lost, we tend to become even more risky. Meanwhile, we grab that little win--feeling great about the appreciated stock. But those little wins are not sufficient to counte...

 My perceptions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are not likely to be any better informed than the next person who, like myself, has no specific knowledge of the country, history, or diplomacy other than what I read about in popular periodicals. Given that everybody is feasting on the same information, divergent opinion is unlikely. There are, however, a few aspects of the current crisis that seem worthy of commenting here.  What is different about this conflict is how, in the internet age, we are so quickly updated, and so immediately involved in the actual events. So much news is registered that it can be an unpleasant form of virtual too much reality.   I don't recall ever feeling so close any conflict.  And we can check in, whenever we please, to new instances of scarred landscapes, blown-up hospitals, killer drones in action, and burning tanks. While we can read of the Crimean War or Boer War, the day-to-day immersion into the Russian invasion is new....

Crome Yellow  was Aldous Huxley's first novel.  When published in 1921, it was regarded as a a smart, and "modern" book.  Huxley was funny, a satirist, and an iconoclast. Along with his youthful essays of earlier years, Crome Yellow established Aldous Huxley as "modern"n, a purveyor of new ideas, and a dynamiter of Victorian morals.  What strikes me about the book, one hundred years after it was written, was its humor and even basic good nature--how infrequently good humor and hilarity are put to such good use--so few satirists are kindhearted. The protagonist is Denis Stone, a young man who is a Huxley self-portrait, one of many of these self-portraits that developed over time in many of his books. The other characters in Crome Yellow were based on urbane personalities of the day, England postwar. The physical setting is a country home, the residence of  Lady Ottoline Morrel, a culturati of the time who gathered around her a smart set.  The book...

Below, in blue, is a link to an article by the biographer and writer James Atlas. I discovered one of his works, now a favorite of mine, when I was about 20. In particular, Atlas wrote, among his other books, the authoritative biography of Delmore Schwart entitled  Delmore Schwartz, Life of An American Poet. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/delmore-schwartz-and-the-biographers-obsession But who was Delmore Schwartz? Not many people will recognize his name. For a while, there was much attention paid to the late poet, particularlyl after Saul Bellow fictionalized Schwartz in his book, which preceded Bellow's Nobel Prize, Humboldt's Gift . Delmore Schwartz peaked very early, had fame, and then dissolved into mental illness.  The link is to an article by Atlas recollection of writing the biography. Appearing in 2017 in New Yorker, Atlas recounts how he came to write the biography of Delmore Schwartz.  Great writing on a great writer, as engaging as the subj...

Miscellaneous notes, Damon LaBarbera, PhD Licensed Psychologist: Rex :

Eyeless in Gaza Damon LaBarbera Eyeless in Gaza  was written by Aldous Huxley in 1936 and describes, in achronological order, the lives of several characters over decades,   Eyeless in Gaza  is not one of Huxley's best-known books, but it is one of his finest, surpassing in-depth and literary innovation, so some opine, and I am inclined to agree, his more famous books, including  Brave New World .  Brave . Eyeless in Gaza   is a finer novel, and has that  particular style of which Huxley is so adept, allowing us to enter the inner monologue, acutely and sometimes humorously depicted, of his protagonists (assuming a book can have more than one protagonist).   The mood of this book differs from Huxley's earlier oeuvre, the latter being "smart" and "modern ."Huxley wrote  Eyeless in Gaza  at a time in his life when less interested in being iconoclastic and concerned with humanistic themes. The book is of a period that also precede...