But maybe that is why it is unpopular. People are so committed (unconsciously?) to trying to give (and often failing) their kids a leg up, they don’t want equality of opportunity in a more truly fair market of competition.
“volunteer” experience, favoring fancy private high schools) that the rich have used to give their children a leg up in admissions.
An added bonus is reduced existential terror in parents about saving to give their kids a leg up.
Such a program also would require increased focus on equality in education, eg ending legacy admissions, lotteries for all qualified students instead of looking for things (fancy personal statements,
universal healthcare, and it very much captures anger about the injustice and unfairness of neoliberalism on both the right and left.
I’m not even sure I even like the idea, but it’s odd to me that someone isn’t pushing for it publicly, politically.
It strikes me that this would be incredibly popular if someone sold it. It captures the imagination of the libertarian right (we still have free markets and maybe even lower income tax) and the left (in some ways this is far more egalitarian, esp if you leave in place things like
Do politicians ever try to win by advocating something like Rawls’ “property owning democracy” which rests (heavily) on taxing inheritance (and inheritance-like gifts) to create funds for young people who don’t have inheritance?
Really enjoyed this conversation between @kemtrup.bsky.social & Max Kusovitsky on Winnicott's fear of breakdown--fear of something that has already happened to us & its implications for treatment.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGg0...
I am on the Thinking Mind podcast with Anya Borissova, talking about various conceptual and critical issues around psychiatric diagnosis and classification.
thinkingmindpodcast.buzzsprout.com/277019/episo...
This sort of psychological stance guarantees that one’s closest friends, and those which are in relationships of some kind of interdependence will come under the greatest attack. While enemies will be perceived with a more cool, logical understanding and even empathy. Enemies will make sense.
doing only what they are told, or they are fakers, tricksters, manipulators who need to be punished.
I think politics has been taken over by this absence of mentalization.
works by sacrificing and trusting that allies/friends will sacrifice too seems naive or absurd. Instead it FEELS that it must be that supposed allies are actually getting one over on you, manipulating you.
Such a person then attacks allies, friends as a test to see if they will be perfectly loyal,
One thing to add. If you don’t have the ability “mentalize,” you can’t trust allies and friends. The idea that you and your allies put aside short term self-interest in order to gain more in the long term is virtually unbelievable. Cooperation and mutual advantage that
Neurodiversity and the Myth of Moral Decline
How to spot reactionary critiques of medicalisation
@drrobertchapman.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/neurodiv...
This is a game in which one learns the most awkward ways to move their arms.
Can we do psych without psychoanalysis?
@psychiara.bsky.social offers some thoughts.
www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fr...
… you either get thoughtful acceptance of reality and growth, communication and collaboration to effect realistic change, or you get greater denial of reality, backlash, emotional explosion, attack…
As long as the environment provides for success, life is stable. The baby gets what it wants and feels omnipotent.
But when the environment fails to provide, when the territory can’t be acquired, when the economy gets worse, when greatness doesn’t come just because you say so, well…
When a tyrant or anything like a tyrant is in power, in business or politics- they see the world through the lens of omnipotence. “I want this and that is enough to make it be.” “I want more territory, there it is. I want economic greatness, there it is.”
see and feel the world through the infantile lens of omnipotence with no way healthy, thoughtful way to let go of omnipotence. Instead you see extreme denial of reality, paranoia, lashing out, attempts at manipulation, emotional explosions, malice, extreme neediness, etc.
provide things, in which one is obviously not omnipotent.
But when development goes wrong, the seeds of personality disorder and especially the inability to mentalize (intuitively form competing, realistic hypotheses about why people are treating you this way or that) arise. The person continues to
provided. There is no developed understanding of cause and effect, only a sense of I want and it happens, as if (metaphorically) one is omnipotent.
Ordinary development requires children to reconcile these feelings of omnipotence with reality, esp reality outside of the world in which caregivers
Recent current events in politics cannot be understood well without reference to what psychoanalysts call “omnipotence.” Simply put, the idea is that an infant feels omnipotent in ordinary “good enough” conditions. The baby is hungry and food is provided. The baby wants relief, and comfort is
I can’t find it :(
Colwyn Trevarthan’s work on infants and “musicality” of early relationships and the bodily origins of mental life seem not well known but are so interesting.
Here’s an intro:
Thoughts?
m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX-T...
Some of this is caused by financial incentives in managed care but I sort of doubt that’s the only cause.
You see this in:
-simple categorical dx over dimensional
-brief manualized treatments over depth
-interventions and tools over therapy relationship
-measurement of psych change via simple surveys instead of more complex tools
-move away from pragmatism and pluralism
My Thesis: The root problem of most problems in psychotherapy and psychiatry is an unnecessary and pernicious institutional pressure to diagnose and act algorithmically and simply instead of with complexity and context. Procedure over thinking. Rules over adaptive practical reasoning.
Wise words from C. Thi Nguyen for a world chasing measurements. issues.org/limits-of-da...
Am just starting his book:
global.oup.com/academic/pro...
I can’t say I agree with everything he says but seems worth engaging with.
