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A Psychologist's Thoughts on Clinical Practice, Behavior, and Life

Stage Fright

It has long been stated that the greatest fear is of public speaking: having to appear before an audience and "deliver." I can still remember my terror when speaking before a high school school class and likely most have shared this experience.

In later years, when public speaking became important in my career, I learned  Read More 
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Confused Child/Disabled Adult

ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and AD/HD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) have been widely used terms to diagnose children's problematic behavior for the past fifty years though the particular symptoms that they comprise have been noted for two hundred years ("mental restlessness").

Fifty years ago the symptoms were believed to reflect MBD (Minimal Brain Dysfunction). Yet rather  Read More 
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After a Relationship Ends

People instinctively know, despite how they might then feel, that their life is not over when a relationship ends: that the abused wife can move on, and the battered teenager can find a better home.

Or two sisters may relate pathologically, being hatefully tied to each other with their love being overlain by envy or  Read More 
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Deception and Self-Deception in War and Life

During World War I, the British General Sir Douglas Haig presided over the greatest slaughter of that country's armed forces in history. Virtually every family had a member who was killed or wounded and the grief nearly led to revolution. There were over a million dead, a half-million missing, and two million wounded. This  Read More 
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Why A Financial Journalist Should Resist Giving Parenting Advice

Several years ago The Wall Street Journal published an article by a financial columnist on how to discipline children, using his experience with his teenage son as an example.

Basically, his advice was to take away something which the child likes but not something which would impact their future ( Read More 
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The Illogic of Diagnosing Youth with Bipolar Disorder

It is both clinically and logically incorrect to diagnose a child or teenager as suffering from Bipolar Disorder since this diagnosis is classified as a personality disorder and requires an adult mental structure which youth, by definition, do not possess.
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The Fallacy of the "Healthy Troubled" Adolescent

Parents and others often consider adolescence to normally be a period of strife. They believe that all teenagers have personal difficulties and will behave in odd, inexplicable ways but this is false.

The normal teenager has no greater difficulty coping with the tasks of adolescence than they did with the demands of earlier developmental periods. Then it  Read More 
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Teachers' Responsibility For Students' Academic Success

The problem with holding ‪teachers‬ largely responsible for their ‪student‬s' learning is that many learning difficulties derive from emotional and family issues that are uncontrolled by the teacher. Teachers teach--with greater or lesser knowledge and creativity--and can be a catalyst for a child's learning but they do not control most elements of a  Read More 
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The Cheapest, Most Effective Pre-School Education

While no one can dispute the value of most education, the cheapest and most effective early intervention “program” would be for parents to read to their children from 2 years of age onward, and to speak with rather than to them (as by explaining why something should be done rather than merely saying, “do it  Read More 
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Psychotherapy and Artistic Creativity

While psychotherapy remains the best hope for those who experienced emotionally destructive childhoods it is not the only avenue toward health. Artists often use their creative ability to express their conflicts and relieve their feelings. The writer's block, of which so many writers complain, can indicate the presence of a creative blockage caused by  Read More 
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