With the Institute for Girls’ Development

Gaps and Gains – July 30, 2021 — Understand the Social, Emotional and Academic Setbacks and Gifts (Yes, Gifts!) of the Covid-19 Year with Clinical Implication. Expressive Art Therapy: Explore the Healing Power of the Arts – August 6, 2021   Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Youth: Clinical Tools for Working with Youth Across the Gender Spectrum – August 13, 2021   Effective and Compassionate Clinical Work for Gender-Expansive Children, Teens and Families – September-November, 2021

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Addictive internet games

The Washington Post online had an interesting piece today about teens addicted to onliine games and the havoc such an addiction or obsession can cause in a person’s life. There is, of course, a lot of research and concern about this issue.  The author, Caitlin Gibson, quotes psychologist Kimberly Young, founder of the Center for Internet Addiction. As saying the number of kids affected by such an addiction might (modestly) be estimated at “… 5 percent. But 5 percent of American kids is a lot.” The article points to some resources, such as sthe Center for Internet Addiction and a residential facility called reSTART.  reSTART, the article states is “…the nation’s first therapeutic retreat devoted specifically to Internet addiction.”   Last month reSTART :…launched a new adolescent program…after receiving a barrage of calls from parents desperate to separate their children from video games, consoles, computers and smartphones..” Here in Pasadena, CA…

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On Playing Well with Others

  Ask mathematicians about their experience of the craft, and most will talk about an intense feeling of intellectual camaraderie. “A very central part of any mathematician’s life is this sense of connection to other minds, alive today and going back to Pythagoras,” said Steven Strogatz, a professor of mathematics at Cornell University.  “We are having this conversation with each other going over the millennia.”   The quotation above is from a recent article in the NY Times Magazine about a brilliant mathematician, Dr. Terry Tao, at UCLA1.  I read the whole article with much interest, but this particular statement stood out and made me ponder about how good that connection with others, both currently and across time, must feel.  And I wondered why it is in psychology that we seem to ignore or apologize for our intellectual ancestors, and often complain about our contemporaries unless they are aligned with…

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Statement of Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright – Jan 30, 2017

Statement of Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright – Jan 30, 2017 The following statement from Secretary Albright was emailed to me by the group Organizing for Action.  In addition, Secretary Albright was on the PBS News Hour last Monday night expressing similar thoughts “By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the executive order on immigration and refugees that the President signed on Friday. It bans Syrian refugees from entering our country, suspends the entire refugee program for 120 days, cuts in half the number of refugees we can admit, and halts all travel from certain Muslim-majority countries. I felt I had no choice but to speak out against it in the strongest possible terms. This is a cruel measure that represents a stark departure from America’s core values. We have a proud tradition of sheltering those fleeing violence and persecution, and have always been the world leader in refugee…

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Hyperbolic Geometry (or How I Became a Postmodernist)

This story begins with an almost unbearable 10th grade Geometry class— unbearable because of the attitude of the teacher.  He shall remain nameless, but if he reads this (unlikely to say the least), I’m hoping he will recognize his part.  It was 1963 and I was a good and reasonably devoted student.  Our teacher, however, stated often that girls just couldn’t learn math very well, so he walked around the class during exams whispering hints and answers to them.  However, the powers of the universe (whatever you believe them to be) provided, as they often do, recompense for this disaster of a “learning experience” in the form of a Mr. Peter Drees (whose name I shall happily mention).  Mr. Drees was, I believe, the math coordinator for the school district, and he got it into his head to discover whether he could teach a group of undistinguished 15-year-olds Hyperbolic Geometry. …

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Our current political climate has been the catalyst for thought

Our current political climate has been the catalyst for thought – and for clarification of the position I take as the founder of and impetus behind Illuminated Education.  For most of my career as a psychologist I have described my theoretical rooting as eclectic, drawing from numerous theoretical constructs when considering each case or situation.  I find now, that, although I still value and use all of the theoretical views that have informed my work in the past,  the ideas at the center are similar to those articulated by the Stone Center at Wellesley College and the work and writing of Jean Baker Miller, Judith Jordan and others who were and are associated with what has come to be called Relational-Cultural Therapy (RCT). 1  This is a theoretical stance which, along with other elements, embraces feminism and social justice. Core concepts of this work include the notions that “people grow…

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