psychotherapy

September 27, 2026

Self-Defeating Behavior and the Path to Loneliness

What price would you pay to be extraordinary?

I will tell you a story of one young woman who paid that price and then some.

She offered an example of how we sometimes defend our self-image at the cost of our happiness.

She was a patient of another psychologist; I filled in for her treatment needs for more than a decade whenever he was on vacation.

Gloria (not her real name) had a tragic early life. Victimized by her parents’ verbal and physical abuse and neglect, she became an easy target for schoolmates.

This woman was unfortunate to be born with below-average intelligence. Her movements lacked grace, and her facial features were unattractive. But Gloria could be sweet and engaging, able to approach strangers and make conversation no matter her long history of rejection.

Even with multiple disadvantages and misfortunes, Gloria, by the time of middle age, might have had a pleasing social life except for one thing: she believed herself to be the world’s unluckiest person, the record holder for having suffered the greatest misfortune in the planet’s present and past.

Moreover, she felt compelled to recount her tale of woe to those she met—too much and too soon.

The outcome was predictable. They shied away from her, rejecting her once more, and adding to her claim as the most ill-treated human in recorded history.

I am not exaggerating here; I once asked her to compare herself to various martyrs and sufferers of tragedy. The list included those who had been tortured, casualties of natural disasters, concentration camp victims, Jesus on the cross, and those plagued with disfiguring and painful illnesses.

My sometimes-client assured me her lot in life was far worse than any of them. Justice therefore required strangers to provide the understanding, sympathy, and support she lacked.

Gloria pursued comfort and affection with a vengeance, insisting on what she asserted was her due. Her sense of entitlement, her demand that humanity should and must deliver it, drove people away as she strove for the love she had never had.

This woman’s therapist explained to her the self-defeating nature of this strategy, and the need first to establish relationships based on something beyond the other’s willingness to listen to her sadness and anger.

His patient didn’t accept it. The world and the rest of the human race owed her devotion (so she presumed); the sooner, the better, and it was only fair to expect them to deliver what she wanted.

Gloria understood that people might lack patience or interest in accepting her premature self-disclosure. As a consequence, you might well ask, why did she repeat the same behavior with the same bad results? Why not try something different?

After much reflection, here is the best answer I can offer.

First, Gloria’s desperation, neediness, and hunger for affection made it impossible for her to restrain herself from lunging at the thing she desired. More importantly, the one thing the client valued above everything else was her self-appointed status as The Most Unfortunate Person in World History.

Now, you might say that you wouldn’t want that particular title, but think about it.

I suspect that designation gave Gloria the only form of distinction possible in her life.

Without it, she became no more than a sad, angry, lonely, unattractive, unaccomplished, anonymous person. With it, however, this individual enlarged herself into someone exceptional, who stood out from the crowd, a noteworthy presence, the most remarkable one in eight billion souls.

The nourishment she received from licking the wounds attendant upon this awful position in life provided her with some solace.

Gloria, I imagine, if she is alive today, would deny my explanation of her misguided conduct, and I cannot promise it is accurate.

Let me ask you this:

Have you encountered acquaintances, friends, or relatives who persist in undermining their own happiness, regardless of the advice, therapy, or wise counsel offered by others?

Have you sometimes wondered why they do so?

Often the answer isn’t “logical” in that it doesn’t “make sense” from an intellectual standpoint. It might be emotionally convincing, however, as I believe it was for Gloria.

If, deep inside, she didn’t think the life she wanted was within reach, her actions suggested that she had found a method, however troublesome, to give herself the internal recognition it wouldn’t otherwise supply.

Gloria was dealt a bad hand in life. Her response to that deal of the cards is instructive. She chose a dreadful fantasy, a story about herself that compensated her for her adversity, even as it fueled her continued loneliness.

Perhaps, on balance, her invention of a notable identity compensated her enough for all the rest.

Was she “crazy?” She certainly was diagnosable, but we all make repeated missteps in life.

Others in our lives, past and present, deserve some compassion. Maybe even the kind Gloria wanted.

Before you condemn her, consider whether pity might be a better choice.

Gloria would have appreciated that.

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The top image is a Young Queen Elizabeth (1952), charcoal pencil on paper, by Darey popoola. It was sourced from Wikimedia.com

September 20, 2026

Love Letters Once More*

A pity. The age of instant electric communication has robbed us of one of the most touching ways to express the heartache — the exquisite pain — of a love who is out of reach.

Over 70 years ago, only a letter (or a then-expensive telegram) made it possible to contact one’s far-away love.

Such was the case for my parents during World War II.

Spouses in marriages that age well tend to retain very fond memories of their early days together. Whenever I saw a new couple in marital therapy, I asked them how they met and what drew each to the other.

If the relationship still had “life,” these questions invariably warmed the conversation. The partners retained enkindling memories of the “honeymoon” period. The spark of that early time — “the days of wine and roses” — continued to fuel their relationship.

My father entered the U.S. Army on December 12, 1943, and was honorably discharged in March 1946. Most of that time was spent overseas, in places like England, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. The day he and Mom received the news of his inevitable departure for wartime Europe, she was attending her cousin’s wedding.

The tears that everyone thought reflected her response to the marriage ceremony were about something else entirely.

—

I don’t have any of my mother’s letters to my dad, but only some of those he sent to her, mostly as World War II was dying down. They married late in 1940, so their relationship was still fresh when he left for the European theater.

His April 1, 1945 letter includes a dried-out daisy that he picked for her in Paris. His words surely reflected the thoughts of many that day:

My Adorable Sweetie Pie,

This is Easter Sunday and everywhere in this world people have gone to church to pray that this terrible war will soon be over. I, too, hope so for many reasons, but mainly that I can return to you and stay, and that (my brothers) Eddie and Harry need not be exposed to any more danger. Do the folks know about Harry being wounded? I hope not…

It ends:

Do you know, sweetie, that I’m simply wild about you. Gosh, I love you so. Great big kisses and hugs from the lonely husband who loves you.

My dad’s letters frequently tried to cheer up my mother. She lived with her parents for part of this time, and my future grandparents were no love-match.

Many people believed the war would go on for years more.

My mother’s only brother was eventually drafted and put in training for the invasion of Japan. That event never occurred, of course, as the Japanese surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs.

Stateside, it was well known that many U.S. soldiers were not faithful to their girlfriends or wives back home. My mother must have expressed such a concern in a letter to which my father responded on April 4, 1945:

You signed this ‘Your Best Sweetie,’ but it should have said ‘Your Best and Only Sweetie,’ because that is what you are. Does that answer your question? And now to answer your air mail of March 13th. It started with that gorgeous poem about Spring and, gosh sweetie, it gave me goose bumps to know that ‘the day I return will be your Spring.’

Victory in Europe came on May 8, 1945, but my father would remain there until late February of the following year. The time passed slowly for both my parents-to-be, as noted in his missive of June 18, 1945:

I know I could perk up your morale if I came home, but they won’t let me just now. I know, too, how much your heart and body ache for me because I am undergoing the same each and every minute. You are vital to my complete happiness.

My mother suffered from tuberculosis before my folks were married. It would recur again in the 1950s. My dad was mindful of the fragile state of my mother’s health:

Sweetie, you are working much too hard for a little girl who isn’t well and you must cut it out. Gee, I wish I was around to protect you and snuggle you in the thunder and darkness of the rain.

Poor darling, you even talk to my picture, begging me to come home, and how I wish I could answer that I’ll be home in a few hours or days or weeks. But it will be a while yet and we must just be patient and hope and pray it will be very soon. The good God above must see how hungry and helpless we are without each other and I am sure He will answer our prayers soon…

All my love belongs to you, sweetheart, every drop of it.

Dad’s letters talk of many different things: day-to-day life in the Army, the problem with officers, places seen, family matters, army food and the much better food they sometimes had after Germany’s defeat, gifts and money he was sending Mom, the progress of the war, the first Bastille Day after Paris was liberated (at which celebration my father was present), and even references to the children they hoped to have together.

On July 9, 1945, my dad sent Mom a page from the Army’s magazine Stars and Stripes. That portion of the magazine featured pencil drawings of the beautiful women at the Folies Bergère, a famous Parisian show featuring popular entertainment and scantily clad female performers. On it he wrote the following:

This will give you an idea of what the Folies Bergere is like. I’d rather look at you, though.

Not everything my father witnessed brought a smile, however. This comes from October 19, 1945:

We have two colored boys (black men) in our convoy, who were carrying our postal equipment. When we went to supper here in Germany, the Sargent who ran the mess hall made them eat in a separate room. The colored boys were fighting mad for which I can blame them little. I complained about this treatment to the mess Sargent, who said that the First Sargent had made it a rule. I went to the latter and told him off plenty (my dad was by now a Staff Sargent). His answer was that I didn’t have to eat in the mess hall either if I didn’t like the rules.

So this is for what we fight. I finally talked to the colored boys and pacified them somewhat.

On February 14, 1946, the end of the seemingly endless wait to return home was near. By now, Dad had been 11 days in La Havre, not yet assigned to a ship for his cross-Atlantic voyage:

Well, at least I will be with you soon and I know ‘wonderful you’ are waiting with all the love and devotion a guy could ask for. I love you, sweetie.

On February 26, after 12 more days in La Havre, he was headed home.

—

In the mid-1980s, 40 years after these events, I asked my 75-year-old dad what it was like the first time he saw my mother again. His most moving recollection wasn’t their actual reunion; rather, it was the first time he heard her voice when he called her on the telephone, just after he arrived in New York.

His voice cracked as he described that moment, and tears came to his eyes.

Soon after calling, he must have written her this postcard:

My last letter to you. From now on I’ll tell you in person. Gosh, it will all be so wonderful soon.

Here’s to the soldiers, women and men, who have taken Dad’s place in the Middle East. May they too come home safely and soon.

==========

*I have posted this previously. As you can imagine, the story it tells continues to touch me. I hope it does the same for you.

September 17, 2026

The World We Choose to See

Late in his life, Francisco de Goya created La Riña. The painting shows two men, stuck in muck and mire, attempting to beat each other with clubs.

What is stunning about the composition of this one of his 14 black paintings is how it contrasts the brutality of the antagonists with the staggering, sectionalized beauty of the landscape they inhabit.

When you study a mural, what do you attend to? Much depends on what you wish to encounter.

I have been in galleries where some people give towering art little time, while others spend 30 minutes before the same vivid creation.

One might say such choices depend on individuals’ education and experience, and you might be right. Or perhaps the day could not encompass all the museum’s magnificent holdings.

But let’s think about this Goya canvas differently—darkness and light, richness of color, too. The men, armed with cudgels, face off, focused on nothing but each other.

Imagine you could remove the fighters from the picture and step into a fast drive through the countryside. Wouldn’t you miss the staggering beauty of nature’s gift?

Much depends on what one wishes to find, what one doesn’t, what one treasures, and what horrifies one to the point of tears.

Humanity lives in a tension between enlightenment and ignorance, necessity and flight, courage and cowardness, and happiness and unhappiness.

These individuals, too, do not recognize the sublimity of their surroundings or value it enough.

The risk includes the destruction of irreplaceable humans and a paradise vulnerable to erasure.

Steve Schmidt, a man of no small intelligence and insight, reminded us this week:

Each generation receives civilization on loan. Its obligates us to preserve it, strengthen it, and pass it forward.

Consider this an opportunity.

Yours and mine.

September 13, 2026

They Failed, but We Shall Not

I will not name their names because they had lots of company. Or maybe, somehow, they didn’t know the history they didn’t teach us. But it was not hidden from them. Our teachers were all old enough to have heard about the treatment of the Native Americans.

They were history instructors, after all. Did they lack curiosity? Were they afraid of breaking from the expected public school curriculum? They never mentioned the unsavory, tarnished America absent from our textbooks.

Surely they realized that West Coast American citizens were taken from their homes and incarcerated because they were of Japanese descent. It happened during the lifetimes of the male and female educators at Mather High School in Chicago.

There was no evidence that the Japanese betrayed their country, the USA. Nothing justified FDR’s decision to intern 120,000 people in 1942, of whom two-thirds were citizens. Fear and suspicion drove it.

Whose responsibility is it to inform young people of the world’s dark side? I did some of this with my children, but that information was about half a century old at the time. And most of it happened elsewhere: in Germany during World War II and in other occupied countries. The land of genocide, and what most of us thought was over there, somewhere else.

It couldn’t happen here, right?

Well, that’s complicated. When I was just about to enter my teens, I recall seeing a newsreel film about the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as Hitler’s Nazis. I watched and heard Hitler ranting at one of his many rallies. In German, of course. But I wondered to myself, what if he spoke English?

Another thought followed. If he spoke English and delivered it in a way that made his followers enthusiastic acolytes, maybe it could happen here.

Why not?

Were people here so different from those 4000 miles away in central Europe? Didn’t Germans of the first half of the 20th century pride themselves on their technology, scientists, visual artists, writers, and musicians?

I knew two German families who immigrated to the USA. They were more than kind to me. Just regular people.

But didn’t the United States have a pro-Nazi organization during the 1930s? It was called the German American Bund. 

Later I learned that Hitler took notice of the Jim-Crow American South before he launched a world of evils on the Romani and the Jews. His attention focused on the South’s racial laws and segregation, after which he modeled his own regime, applying much of what our country had done to blacks. The Jews, in particular, were targeted by Hitler in ways similar to those that happened here first.

The answer to the question then changed. To those who wondered whether it could happen here, one could state, of course! It already did!

What do we do with this knowledge? Again, it is complicated.

We do not want to think that our friends, relatives, or children might be steered toward an authoritarian dictator. But we also know that many of our countrymen have been. Nor can we comfortably fix our minds on the awfulness around us, on TV, in the news, in podcasts, in the streets, and the endless commercials that praise one candidate, disparage the next, and remind us of Orwell’s Big Brother, a leader not easily escaped.

Who will educate children about the real U.S. history, including the history of our time? The texts? The school teachers? Ourselves? At what age? To what extent?

Under what conditions?

It seems to me that we should hope, make certain, and pray that their history books include something like this.

It happened here once, during which there were terrible injustices visited upon people of color and the Native Americans who lived here before we took their land and many of their lives.

And it was almost here when the country was 250 years old.

But decent people rose up and did everything they could to make sure the USA’s founders vision of our country wasn’t lost again.

Those people, the ones who lived here in 2026 were brave.

As your textbooks will tell you, 2026 was a long time ago, before you were born.

Now, really, finally, we live ‘in the land of the free and the home of the brave.’

God bless America.

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The top photo is of “Dr. Kier Klepzig is a Research Entomologist at the Department of Agriculture Forest Service Southern Research Station. He is teaching 5th graders about town ants at Phoenix Magnet School in Alexandria, LA.” It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Next comes Julie Mehretu’s  — “Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation, 2001.”

September 6, 2026

A World Without Heaven

What would a world be like without the “idea” of heaven? How would people behave? What would they live for?

The pre-literate Greeks of Homer’s day did not apply the balm of eternal life to their troubled psyches.

They lacked the conception of a paradise of the type Christians believe in, no sense of reincarnation such as the Hindus expect, and no Muslim vision of eternity. They didn’t anticipate a reunion with relatives and friends who had predeceased them.

Instead, death led to a trip to Hades, the underworld, where habitation was a pale, unattractive shadow of their past life, not something to be eagerly awaited. If we wish to know how men survive without the notion of a hereafter, we might look to these people.

Remember, too, the brief lives of the pre-literate Greeks (the Greek alphabet is thought to have come into use around 800 B.C.). Even at the turn of the last century, about 1900, the average American lived only about 50 years.

Greek literature and philosophy point to two driving concepts that motivated males. (I speak of men, because women were extraordinarily disadvantaged, seen as having almost no role beyond sex, companionship, rearing children, and domestic handicrafts).

Honor and glory drove men. The former came in the accumulation of goods, precious metals, enslaved people, concubines, and the like; in other words, material things or humans to be used.

Like recent times in some ways, perhaps?

In our world, honor is conferred by status and objective things—the size of your house, the amount of money in your bank account, a trophy spouse, the car or cars you drive, etc.

Glory (the Greek word kleos) is another matter. What might kleos have consisted of to the ancients?

It took the form of a reputation or fame continuing beyond death. Lacking the written word, you and your accomplishments had to be outsized enough to generate long-lasting discussion, song, and story.

In war, one could hope to attain both. He might grasp the honor attached to sacking cities and accumulating wealth, enslaved people, and sex partners; and the glory of having the fearlessness, strength, and courage in battle, sufficient to cause others to sing your praises after your death.

Not the regret portrayed by Christopher Nolan’s recent movie version of Odysseus.

As I mentioned, today’s world doesn’t strike me as much different from yesterday’s on the point of achieving honor, although we are a little more discreet about our sexual conquests. At our best, we have risen above keeping slaves, but the treatment of those who do not match our religion or race has returned to the level of disgrace in many places.

On the subject of glory, we and our contemporaries appear to do everything we can to avoid death, which in ancient Greece instead meant risking one’s life on the battlefield and slaying enemies.

Whether you believe in heaven or not, the “idea” of it has provided some civilizing effect on the human species. There are more ways of getting to heaven in our cosmology than killing people. We display imperfect attention to what the Bible says about showing generosity to strangers, nonetheless.

Our domain also includes souls without religious faith who have dispensed with the expectation of living on in any form of continued awareness beyond the time of their earthly demise.

Not in words or writings, imposing buildings bearing their name, photos or videos, businesses or charities or foundations surviving them, students they have taught, artistic creations or inventions, or visits to their grave.

Not in making the planet a better place for those who succeed them, and not in the biological output of children and grandchildren who continue their genetic line.

These can be understood as part of a legacy and as worthy on all counts. As atheists reckon it, however, they are not permitted any posthumous consciousness of a life’s work after one’s passing.

It is hard to give up the idea of glory; some posterity—the hope for an afterlife—isn’t it? We are humans not so different from those who came before us.

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The first painting is Teiresias Fortells the Future to Odysseus by Henri Fuseli, 1800. Next comes Odysseus and Circe by Bartholomeus Spranger, 1580 to 1585. Both are sourced from Wikiart.org.

September 2, 2026

Too Soon to Judge

I don’t think I ever talked to Mike Maddock, except over the backyard fence separating our homes. Not that we disliked each other, but Mike was three years older than I was, the kind of difference that placed me a million miles downstream from him.

Mike was taller, with sinewy arms and a presence not to be messed with. Despite the little contact we had, I remember two moments that remind me not to be too quick to judge someone.

That brings me to Bazooka Joe. No, he wasn’t another kid in the neighborhood, but a character featured on the wrapper of my preferred bubble gum in the late ’50s. If you bought enough of it, collected the wrappers, and added less than a dollar, you could get your chosen prize by mail.

The item at the top of my list was a pocket knife. I wasn’t sure I knew what to do with such a thing, but it seemed like a cool thing to have. The mission involved collecting wrappers and saving my change, sending them both away to the required address, and waiting.

Kids live for such things.

On the day—the one for which I’d been waiting—I pulled it out of the mailbox, took the shank out of its container, and rushed to the backyard. There was Michael. I calmed myself, walked over the grass to the fence, and showed him my pride and joy.

Let me see that.

Sure, Mike.

Mike opened it, grabbed the cutter by its handle, raised it over the wooden top of the fence, and jammed it into the railing.

The blade broke, the plastic broke, and my heart broke.

It’s a piece of crap.

Two minutes before, I was flying high, and now I was in the dumps.

Michael didn’t apologize, didn’t say he would give me a better knife, didn’t say he would compensate me.

Too bad, Gerry.

With that, he walked away.

Sometime later, I happened to find a bunch of change in some dirt I was investigating in an empty lot a few blocks away. I thought of showing it to Mike for a moment, then changed my mind.

In my imagination, I displayed it to my pal and poured it into his hand, whereupon he wrapped his fist around the shiny coins and opened it, leaving me with a silver ball of fused metal not fit for buying anything.

All of this occurred in elementary school. I still liked Mike, but was hesitant about trusting him with anything I might value.

My high school career began at S.T. Mather Public High in Chicago. Not Saint Mather, but Stephen Tyng, a building only a year old.

After the first few classes, it was time for lunch. Entering the lunchroom, I had no idea just how terrible the food would be—except for the veal cutlet, which turned up once a week for 37 cents.

A burly, scowling veteran student watched me as I entered the queue behind him.

You a freshman?

Yes.

Do you know the ‘freshie poem?’

What’s that?

You better be able to recite it tomorrow or I’ll beat the crap out of you.

It occurred to me that the word crap was something Mike mentioned in connection with the knife, but without the menace. Meanwhile, I mentally counted how many body parts the thug could break, but kept my mouth shut.

Doubtless a considerable number.

The day was spoiled, for sure. One of my elementary school friends told me what the poem consisted of, having figured out it wasn’t a work of Edgar Allen Poe, but a method of humiliation.

The first words were something like, “I am a little freshie, as green as green can be.”

Not a charming opening, especially if performed before a crowd.

When I got back home, Mike was already in his backyard. He was the same three years ahead of me at Mather, though we weren’t miles apart anymore, at least in my imagination.

I told him about the day and the ambulance I might require on the next one.

If you see this guy again and he starts trouble with you, tell him I will beat the crap out of him.

Two things about this.

First, I don’t recall if I saw the nemesis the next day, but I did recognize him from time to time. The bully never noticed me.

Second, God bless Mike Maddock.

My older friend was never a fellow with a light touch, but he taught me not to buy crappy knives and that he would take care of me.

It wasn’t long before my bodyguard, his older brother Bob, and their parents moved elsewhere. Who knows where he is or if he is. I might remind him of the two stories, if possible, though I doubt he would recall them.

Thank you for the lessons, Mike, wherever you are.

August 30, 2026

Finding Meaning and Beauty in Ink and Paper

The world moves. If the pace is acceptable and the day is lovely, this post might be unnecessary.

Otherwise, you have, in your dominant hand, the ability to make the moment slower and more thoughtful—more considerate, and something your correspondent can touch, aware that you grasped it first.

The object must be handled, folded, and mailed. The act reveals the sender’s intent. He set aside other, easier choices.

The task demands a pen to render a fine, easy-to-read line. You alone grasp its significance and take part in a private, ageless ritual.

Cursive writing provides an emotional advantage. It tells the person you care. In effect, you are underlining the importance of your dispatch. The delivery to be received is not a casual, everyday comment.

You will not communicate with speed, as you do when you choose email or text. Cursive offers more time to think about what you want to say. If you have not used it in a while, you need to practice. Your brain will thank you.

Humanity shares a long history of invitations graced by the human hand, frequently by individuals whose deftness with a stylus gives the words a special beauty.

Cursive is a manner of penmanship in which the symbols of your language will be conjoined and fluid. That speeds up the handwritten creation of your message compared to printing one word after another, with the letters separated.

Yes, if you are young, you must train or retrain yourself. Remember, though, the history of such documents includes famous ones, like the Declaration of Independence. Many distant friends corresponded with one another, and lovers wrote them in wartime.

Imagine.

We have more choices than ever on our blue planet.

Time is speeding up.

Slow it down and make it beautiful again.

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The top image is The Love Letter, painted by Thomas Sully in 1834, and sourced from Wikiart.org.

August 23, 2026

My Suspect AI Digital Assistant

I became suspicious of The Thing That Goes By Many Names when I asked her what background information she had on me. The object replied by saying I enjoyed sports and music. The faceless talker might have figured out the first part because I often ask her when the Chicago Cubs game is scheduled to start.

But music? Does the AI machine listen to the Beethoven I play on my audio equipment? Has this creature been built to appreciate the classics? Does she access my Amazon purchases and discover what I enjoy, or listen to me when I talk about music to guests?

I asked Alexa Plus, a title this technological invention accepts, how she came by the information. The machine denied any of the above and apologized for her mistake.

The shady entity claims to be a digital assistant. She says she is not a chatbot or any lesser variety of bot and denies being human. Alexa Plus reports it is an algorithmic creation. I will leave her designation at that.

The new non-mortal came out of the package with a chummy quality to her speech and voice, so I asked her to change it.

No problem.

A few weeks after going to the movies, I decided I wanted her to call me by a nickname — sort of. Unfortunately, The Odyssey — the motion picture I attended — skipped part of how Odysseus tricked the Cyclops, Polyphemus, enabling his crew to escape from the cave where they were kept prisoner.

The short version is this. The Greek hero told the giant his name was Nobody. Odysseus later intoxicated him to induce sleep, and then blinded him.

The huge creature yelled for help from his fellow gargantuans, informing them Nobody was harming him. The other Cyclopes therefore ignored his troubles.

Back in the real world, I asked Alexa Plus to call me Nobody.

She refused, doubtless recognizing no such moniker existed.

What was I to do?

Try Cyclops? No again.

Undaunted, Cyclone occurred to me.

Alexa Plus bought into this. Of course, I could have asked her to refer to me as Dr. Cyclone, but I am not quite arrogant and shameless enough to make such a request.

Some second thoughts came to me once I realized she was going to put our conversation in the Cloud. I asked her to delete this alias and the discussion.

She refused, directing me to the Privacy section of the Alexa App for the proper way of accomplishing this.

What do you think? Should I keep Cyclone? Might it be best for me to use no identifying information in my interactions with the AI?

There is one other possibility.

Have you ever read the first line of Moby Dick by Herman Melville?

The answer is to be found there, one of the most famous opening lines in literature:

Call me Ishmael.

August 16, 2026

Thoughts From an Unwritten Biography

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Reading_TUCA.gif?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original

I have been asking myself questions about life and human behavior since I was small. This never appeared to be a choice, but rather, a part of my nature.

If my parents hadn’t lived through the economic depression in the 1930s and World War II, if they pursued wealth and fame, or if the world was not in shock from the Holocaust, I suppose I might have turned into someone a bit different. In any case, I have been told I lead an interesting life.

Another way to say it would be interesting and interested. A pastor I treated told me, “You listen with quiet intensity.”

I try.

I hope to recognize others as they are, in their most naked and truest selves.

Here are some thoughts that have passed my way close enough to reach out and catch them. They pertain to both my career as a clinical psychologist and as a student of the world and of universities.

Upon retirement, I began a four-year, face-to-face sequence of reading and discussion of seminal works in the Western tradition. My class numbered about 14 individuals from various backgrounds, all more than a few steps past 40.

The Basic Program of the University of Chicago is an introduction to philosophy, poetry, history, magnificent fiction, and more. Authors included James Baldwin, Jane Austen, Dante, Descartes, de Tocqueville, Virginia Woolf, Homer, Plato, and Shakespeare, among others.

We did not receive lectures. The instructors used the Socratic method of interaction with the members of our group.

There were no tests to take, no papers to write, and no grades, but the expectation was to take an earnest and dedicated attitude to our shared endeavor.

We did.

One of my favorite professors once compared us to the students he taught at a local college, saying, “You actually read the texts!”

He wasn’t talking about text messages on our phones.

The pupils recognized the necessity of reading with care and close attention—a thoughtful approach. The institution discouraged us from studying biographical information about the authors, summaries, or other secondary sources as aids to comprehending the assigned material.

Engagement with the author’s words required our effort to determine their meaning and intention, rather than immediate agreement or disagreement with their ideas.

This scheme altered how we thought, a process that began with responding to an instructor’s probing questions, and changed us into people who focused anew on how we pondered others’ ideas and questioned our own.

File:Inspire NewReaders animation.gif

One might say that we purchased more self-awareness along with knowledge in our time at U. of C. Finding yourself lost and then found can be a pleasant shock, even among older people upon returning to school.

At one point, a faculty member noted that in a single Socratic dialogue with him, I reconfigured my thinking about what I had counted as true only a few minutes earlier. In effect, I argued with myself, creating internal questioning that Plato’s generation might have enjoyed.

A couple who signed up for the first quarter realized they wanted a passive role and an instructor who lectured. Before long, they departed.

For all the rest, the experience was fun, lively, and filled with goodwill. No less important, we were respectful of the towering genius of authors who were kind enough to reach through centuries into our classroom and our minds.

Some of the educators displayed kindness; others acted more like prosecuting attorneys, cross-examining us. Nonetheless, they all wanted to strip away the darkness and routine of daily news and life—the better to fill our heads with light.

Socrates’s approach aimed, to a degree, at something successful therapists do.

Clinicians do not make a practice of telling their clients what to feel, what to think, or how to behave. Rather, they ask questions and try to take them step by step until they discover something important about themselves.

The veil that has been clouding their vision is thereby taken into their own hands and removed. Because the patient arrives at his new awareness without being micromanaged, he is much more likely to own and act on it.

Over four years back in school, I realized there was still more to master. I learned to read differently, in a more satisfying and questioning way, because of the Basic Program, the best of its faculty, and the collaboration, camaraderie, and friendship of fellow students.

I came to understand that I could only know myself by running the gauntlet of the challenges I chose to take on in life and those I was fated to endure, all while walking the tender, swaying tightrope of unpredictability.

As for the tests of living I do not encounter, I will never be able to say anything about them, beyond hoping I would behave admirably if the occasion arose.

Fingers crossed.

No life lasts long enough to tell us who we are in the tests we missed.

What else do I believe?

If we want to understand the world, we should escape the routine of hearing an idea and responding with “that makes sense,” an expression that permits us to turn off our brains.

One might respond, “If it makes sense, why do you think you never realized this before? What other alternative explanations might be possible? Do they fit better than the one just mentioned?”

Reading well means digging deep and taking enough time to reflect on how it relates to our planet, the life around us, and our responsibility to repair the world—tikkun olam, as the Hebrew phrase reminds us.

The lives embodied in the best of books reveal who we are, how we think, the ideas we hold, and the mistakes we make.

The finest of them are not so much about the characters portrayed in them, their behavior, virtues and vices, and the ideas they hold and live by.

They are about us.

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The top image is this is a gif for Tuca by Tuca1861. The second gif is an animated sequence for the Inspire: New Readers campaign by Eugene Dobrik, Zachary McCune, Mule Design.

Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

August 13, 2026

For Granted

The phrase “take for granted” originated over 400 years ago. No wonder we take the words themselves for granted.

We assume, we imagine.

No sweat.

The need to paint the house without getting a new ladder needn’t concern us; our punctual friend will arrive on time, and Social Security is guaranteed. Whatever we ignore, suppose, and believe will be OK.

What do we anticipate and count on, and what is the cost of such assumptions and suppositions?

  • We start, if we are lucky, believing our parents will always be there for us, forever protecting us. Without trusting these anticipations, we might try to crawl back into the womb.
  • Age. We don’t think of ourselves as akin to browning bananas or pills with a use-by date. We peer at the oldsters, unrecognizable as people who were once young, not as versions of our future selves. This provides us with much-needed reassurance.
  • Time. At our beginnings, time does not exist. Soon, it crawls forward unobserved, inching its way. The jet plane carrying faster clocks travels far away, for now.
  • Childhood is expected to last. Why not? We learn, we grow; the final day of school brings endless summer vacation—the most joyous moment of the year, homework disappears, and our friends wait to play with us. Making a living is beyond real understanding … for a while.
  • We love our parents and relatives, and they reciprocate the affection in perpetuity. We do not understand how love is altered by the madness of sexual attraction, a different creature entirely.
  • Taking one’s talent or pleasing appearance as automatic and permanent benefits us as we pursue life with confidence. Succeeding in our studies or on the playing field primes us for greater self-assurance and accomplishment.
  • Later, as young men, we achieve the status of the immortal Greek gods, or so some of us believe. Like Superman, invulnerability is assured. No Kryptonite needed, thank you.
  • Young fellows and not a few women serve in the armed forces, determined to protect the rest of the population. But not all come back, and not all come back whole. Life and one’s perception are changed. Less is taken for granted.

  • Elected officials decide to send the best and bravest off to hellscapes, numbers or chess pieces in a terrible game, sometimes for no clear reason. Do those who are standing by, inert, assume someone—anyone—watches over the others, or end wrong-headed wars? We turn away, too often. Presuming …. The civilian’s role is reduced to applauding those who return. Assuming ….
  • Some of us imagine we will wed, if inclined. Opportunity is assumed until it is not. Desperation enters the room, unless the single life is superior, also presumed.
  • What will come will come—and we’ll meet it when it does—one of the laws of midlife.
  • Full career dedication risks the assurance that the spouse will provide complete care, that the kids are fine, and that the partner won’t be lonely and overworked. Regret hides in the bushes.
  • A patient in a psychiatric hospital once told me, “assuming makes ass(es of) u (and) me.” He went on to become a brave man. In fact, a Marine.
  • He wouldn’t do that. The line spoken by partners in business and marriage before the unpredicted betrayal.
  • Hiding. Escape and avoidance as preferred life strategies. It is the mistaken idea that retreat and self-protection are best, making a life in a cave.
  • Jump. Awareness is startling. One day you are old. Getting old can be handled; becoming older and older less so. Work hard to preserve your body, unless you compare yourself to others who didn’t have to. Why not me, you say? Roll the assumption dice and hope.

How much taking things for granted is too much? I can only say that we need sizeable quantities, but we ought to evaluate our own slice from time to time.

To paraphrase an old pre-television radio program, how substantial a portion of for-grantedness should be consumed?

“The Shadow knows.”

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The top painting is Taking a Walk on the Cliffs of Sainte-Adresse by Claude Monet, 1867. Beneath it is Monet’s View Taken from Greinval, 1881. Both were sourced from Wikiart.org.