Damon G LaBarbera

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...

 

The short story Cold Little Bird  by Ben Marcus appeared in  the magazine  New Yorker  in 2015. There is nothing supernatural or crimina in the story but it is nonetheless very chilling. The story is of growth from a pre-adolescent into adolescence--the parents experience of losing their son, not through death or his running away, but by his maturation. This may not sound scary but the way the author handles the developmental change and the story surrounding it is profoundly skillful.  This is sort of like the Exorcist without a devil. The change is not wrought from evil but just normal development. Jonah, the boy, is sweeet and bright but suddenly becomes caustic and detached to his parents. He no longer wants to be hugged, he is sharp and decisively cruel with his with retorts.   He scolds his pushes his parents away and blocks any attempt for them to be warm. As the clueless parents attempt to deal with the developmental sequence. Jonah becomes ever...

Baby-faced adolescent Sebastian Barnack is the protagonist of  "Time Must Have a Stop",a novel by Aldous Huxley, written in 1944. Misunderstood and underestimated,  gifted but unrecognized, Sebastian winds his way through complex life events while home in England and in Italy vacationing with his uncle Eustace.   The novel transpires in the 1930s,  against growing Fascism, a menacing backdrop that influences the story Domineered by over-assertive relatives, as well as victimized by his own adolescent drives and machines, he is comic and serious both.  Though intelligent, he thinks like an adolescent, per Huxley's intimate grasp of inner dialogue. Already a talented poet, but not good at “maths”, as the term was used back then, Sebastián's literary gifts contrasts with his youth.  A note on names. The title "Time Must Have a Stop" is drawn from Huxley’s storage of literary associations.  “Time Must Have a Stop” are the impassioned Hotspur’s wo...

Short Story by Aldous Huxley If you like Aldous Huxley's early stories, here is one, so to speak, for the books. Perceptive and prescient of later themes in our culture,  the short story, or more accurately, the novella, "Two or Three Graces”  displays Huxley's brilliant registration of postwar England and its "modern" society.  This novella has something new and something old. The "new" is a plotting style that prefigures his later work. Plots weave in and out of each other, nesting in each other, with a previous theme popping up later in the story.  The polyphonic movement of the plot, with one encounter or relationship intermingling with another, then  diverging then reuniting or,  would be later reified in the title of another book, Point-Counterpoint. Meanwhile, the  "old" aspect of "Two or Three Graces" is that Huxley exercises his wicked talent of parody.  There seems to be no posture exempt from his exorcising literary sabre....

https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4320&context=theses https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4320&context=theses

https://www.si.edu/ https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4320&context=theses

Testing for ADHD is a complicated issue. I probably have done thousands of them over the years. I am less enthusiastic about doing them now. Often these referrals are generated by a physician or other prescriber who needs backup, documentation, or reassurance before prescribing a stimulant. Hence these referrals have a risk management, rather than scientific, qualit--taking on that task is not a particularly  rewarding or good practice. To some extent, that role subordinates psychologists to a rubber stamping function. A quality  report, thought out and nuanced, with personality features, is really not wanted. Many that I read seem to have a perfunctory quality. Also, many clients seem interested in only getting the diagnosis, without interest in the nuances--it is seen as a yes/no evaluation, and testing becomes less the valuable exercise of logically finding the diagnosis, but a form of rubber stamping for a referral source or client that is expecting or hoping for a certain...

 

Dr. Declue made these comments in reference to my comment. Thanks for his eminent attention, as perspicatious as usual and presented below. "Damon wrote, in part, There is no science is the sense that we are dealing with speculation. We can't go back and see what would have happened during the 1918 pandemic if there had been different medicines or different policies. So there is no operational answer and we can't tell the truth about these hypothesis. And yet we have to try to make some sense of the situation and what it holds for the future. That it is not scientific is true. But maybe its better to have some forecast of the future than to be wandering around in the forest. That may be the best that can be done. Meanwhile, try to keep fine tuning the answer in terms of new events, and possible opposing arguments. Damon, if you haven’t yet, I strongly encourage you to read this: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/cidrap-covid19-viewpoint-part1_...

Discussion with peers about narcissism Damon LaBarbera  writes: There is a pop phenomenon on the net—preoccupied with the notion of narcissism. Everybody is a narcissist, just like every dis-likable or acting out male years ago was a sociopath or years before that was a latent homosexual and every troublesome woman a borderline. What hath Christopher Lasch wrought... Clients are coming in with a new vocabulary associated with narcissism. It's a snake oil vocabulary that  tends to mislead  and with the clients I have dealt with, is unhelpful. DL Dr. Auerbach writes: I always have mixed feelings, go figure, about touting my credentials in  the area of  narcissism.  My early publications, albeit now a long time ago, were in this area, however, so I suppose I qualify as an expert.  I  have no idea  whether Meghan Markle even remotely has a narcissistic disturbance, although I wondered this about Stewart Cook, ...