The daily news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine brings back many painful memories. The scenes of Russia’s deliberate bombings of hospitals and schools, and the relentless shelling of residential areas fill my heart with sadness and rage, because the United Nation and NATO cannot do anything to stop a madman from destroying cities and […]
Van Tongeren, D. R., & Showalter Van Tongeren, S. A. (2020). The courage to suffer: A new clinical framework for life’s greatest crises. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press. This book provides an “existential positive psychology framework” (p. 3) for mental health clinicians whose clients are struggling with issues that have no solution or hope of […]
My Nonno (grandfather) was a great man in my sight. He lived his life making sure that everyone in his family was provided for, because he loved them so much. As my Nonno got older he began to show symptoms of senility. A year ago he was medically diagnosed with dementia.
The Asian tsunami trauma is a different category of natural disaster in terms of scale and impact. Unlike most natural disasters, which tend to be one-time blows at a specific geographic location, the Asian tsunami catastrophe is almost worldwide in its scale; and its devastating impact on poor and highly populated nations may last for a generation…
Last summer, I learned how to die. Not that I want to practice everything I learn (how often do you actually use that high school trig?). In fact, I wouldn’t mind waiting a while on that one, but it was interesting to sit at the feet of a master…
Men have tiptoed around the subject of death for centuries. They have avoided speaking the word death by using many euphemisms. But in recent years the taboo has been lessened by a great deal of writing that deals explicitly with death. Research papers, magazine articles and books have multiplied prodigiously. So much, in fact, has been written that the Journal of the American Medical Association recently carried an article titled “Dying is Worked to Death.”
A sense of control is fundamental to our wellbeing. An awareness of our agency and efficacy underpins the motivation for much of our behavior – without a belief that we can successfully act upon our environment to fulfill our needs, we no longer have a foundation upon which to proceed.
There is no doubt that times of tragedy as well as conflict in our lives are extremely painful on an emotional level. The gift of these moments, however, is that through tragedy we can achieve a greater sense of clarity into our own character as well as value system. During tragedy and conflict, we have the opportunity to test our strength in character and utilise our abilities
I remember returning to work after my mother died. Suddenly every door to my coworker’s offices was tightly shut. Hardly anyone mumbled a word to me. There was no card. There were no flowers. No hugs. There wasn’t even a kind word from 95% of them.
Does a person who has suffered brain damage and can no longer feed themselves deserve to live, or should they be starved to death?