(1 comments) SHARE        Friday, April 9, 2010
Crossroads (1809 views) This weekend I attended a conference called Crossroads in Topanga Canyon, California. We met together to think about bringing healing circles and talking circles to ever corner and intersection in America. We experienced a healing circle together, which inspired us to think more about what it would mean for health care if all of us to belonged to one. Health care costs will only soar unless people begin to take ca

(1 comments) SHARE        Saturday, March 12, 2011
The Narrative Interview: Day 3 of the Australian Journey (1797 views) Today finds us on Day 3 of our Australian cross-cultural journey. Our focus today is on the narrative interview. How would we interview people if our focus was to elicit their story instead of making a conventional DSM diagnosis. I interview a woman who has been suffering for 12 years and who has finally been offered an antidepressant medication. I show how her suffering can be rendered intelligible through narrative.

SHARE        Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Using Creation Stories In Healing (1783 views) Creation stories are important, because the final story about how you or I got well must be compatible with the story about how we got sick, or the treatment will never work. In my studies of remarkable healings, I found that every person had a plausible story (to them) for how their illness occurred and how they got well

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Health Care and Alternative Health in France (1780 views) I recently had the opportunity to speak at a conference in Paris, France. The conference was about what we call CAM, or Complementary and Alternative Medicine, in the United States, and particularly about the basis for some CAM practices in advanced physics. I had a chance to get an idea about the French health care system as well as check out new research on homeopathy

SHARE        Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Clinic Restructuring (1779 views) I work part-time in a community mental health center in New York. Recently New York's Office of Mental Health has restructured clinical services. I write about what that has meant for quality of care, which inevitably goes down. I argue that this is inevitable in a "fee-for-service" system. I argue that the alternative is to pay physicians to care for panels of people and to do the best job as they see fit for these people.

SHARE        Thursday, March 10, 2011
Coyotes and Reclaiming Indigenous Knowledge (1752 views) Three of us from Coyote Institute have journeyed to Australia to consult with a local aboriginal group on how to incorporate local culture into their health care and other services. This is the first in a series of daily blogs about the trip. I begin by wondering about coyote as a symbolic muse, an animal who lives at the margin and is currently expanding its territory. We discuss templates for the expression of pain.

SHARE        Saturday, September 4, 2010
Ethics for Mental Health (1689 views) The history of the mental health industry involves the management of people who are socially unacceptable, who are defined as excessively different from the rest of us, who live at the extremes of emotions and behaviors. How we treat these people depends upon the stories we carry about how they came to be the way they are. Contemporary stories are impoverished and lead to mistreatment of those who suffer.

SHARE        Sunday, March 21, 2010
Insurance Should Pay For Healing, Not Treating (1642 views) Numerous studies have shown that 80% of primary care visits to health care practitioners involve the ordinary suffering of daily life and not diseases that need treatment, yet we throw pills and potions at these woes as if that is their solution.

SHARE        Friday, July 2, 2010
Community -- Why is it hard? (1546 views) Belonging to community has huge benefits. It's hard because true community includes annoying and irritating people who don't agree with us. It includes people who sometimes act bizarre or socially inappropriately. It doesn't exclude and it minimizes power imbalances. Having true community takes work, because it's easier to be anonymous and let other people be in charge. But the effort pays off, and it's worth it.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Larger Stories of Education (1532 views) Art and play are important in psychology and psychology education. I use the opportunity of attending the National Council of Schools of Professional Psychology annual meeting to speculate about the future of psychology education and to ponder the effects of for-profit institutions on education. I suggest that for-profit education can only be mediocre because real education aspires to creativity and for-profit standardizes.

SHARE        Friday, March 5, 2010
Tapping Creation Stories For Healing and Energy (1428 views) Creation stories are ubiquitous in life. Our families tell us stories of our birth. Cultures also tell stories about their own creation, and people tell stories about how they got sick and how they got well. The story about how an illness arose is particularly powerful and has multiple versions. People's own stories about how they got sick may or may not parallel the official medical story...

SHARE        Thursday, March 4, 2010
Short Sighted Health Insurer Policies Which Refuse to Pay for Healing & Preventive Services Hurt Patients, Cost Fortune (1371 views) I don't know anyone who is happy with their health insurance... I'd like to weigh in on what people don't get with today's health insurance, because I know what I don't get paid by insurance to do.