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Your New Robotic Doc

This holiday weekend I took some time to catch up on my reading and ended up in a place I often end up in. That is the question of how to best configure and offer health care, including care in the area currently termed “mental health.” I put it that way because, as a proponent of integrating mind and body and healing the centuries old Western split between mind and body, I think there really should be no distinction between mental and physical health. Perhaps that is the first point to be made. One short article from the Atlantic Monthly entitled The Robot Will See You Now by Jonathan Cohn generated pages of notes. This article focuses on IBMs Watson, best known for its success on the TV quiz program “Jeopardy,” which apparently is now focused on the medical information available at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. …

Autism, Vaccines and the Trump Administration

“So what’s going on with autism? When you look at the tremendous increase, it’s really – it’s such an incredible – it’s really a horrible thing to watch, the tremendous amount of increase…” (February 14, 2017, reported in the Washington Post) “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor,” Trump said. “And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots. We’ve giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.” (Dec 28, 2007 reported in the Sun Sentinel of South Florida). These, like so many statements from Mr. Trump, leave one with a gaping mouth and not much idea of where to start. And they, now coming from a man in a position of real power and influence, rise to…

Review: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right Author: Jane Mayer NY: Doubleday, 2016 This is a detailed, well-researched look into the monetary forces driving the far right, including movements like the Tea Party (and far, far more). The subjects of the investigative reporting are billionaires (the Koch brothers, the DeVos family and others) who, as Libertarians, believe that no government is pretty much the best government and so have used their money to methodically buy institutions and influence people to conform with their ideals. It is a clear answer to why it was so difficult for President Obama to get things done and why Hillary Clinton’s campaign failed. The book is enlightening and frightening at the same time, and makes it all the more clear that we must be politically active in order to preserve social programs, stop climate change, protect…

My Thanks to Dobby the House-Elf

My Thanks to Dobby the House-Elf These days the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is what’s hot— and with good reason. Tolkien’s world is richly drawn and philosophically based. I haven’t heard anyone mention Harry Potter in months. But, no matter how overshadowed the Harry Potter books are by the giant trilogy, they still have many things to offer us in the psychological realm. Aimed at a young audience, the Harry Potter books are more simply stated which makes them more accessible. In addition, where Tolkien focuses broadly, imbedding individual psychological development in the context of a larger, international and, perhaps, world-wide context, “Harry Potter” author, J.K. Rowling, stays more focused on individual psyches and the relationships formed around those individuals. Most people can easily see the characters known as “dementors” as personifications of the feelings of depression. The Bogart represents those personal internal fears which inhabit us all— and…