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Peter Michaelson is an author, blogger, and psychotherapist in Ann Arbor, MI. He believes that better understanding of depth psychology reduces the fear, passivity, and denial of citizens, making us more capable of maintaining and growing our democracy while flourishing in our personal life.
Friday, February 10, 2012 Mark Twain's Mysterious Misery Machine (14 comments)
Perhaps Twain's most significant insight in The Mysterious Stranger is the idea that truth about human nature is not as pleasant as we would like. That in itself is not a popular or pleasant idea. That resistance may account, in part, for why the novel is one of his least popular books.
Monday, January 30, 2012 Four Favorite Ways to Suffer (22 comments)
We have, among many choices, four favorite ways to suffer. We can engorge ourselves at the trough of human misery through feelings of deprivation, helplessness, rejection, and criticism. Chances are good that when we're miserable, we're entangled in one or more of these negative emotions.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 The Deeper Issues that Produce Meanness (9 comments)
"Tips" or advice won't usually help that much in resolving an emotional problem such as meanness. Insight is a better tool. Mean people have psychological issues that can be resolved with insight. People who are frequent targets of meanness also have their issues, since unwittingly they can be attracting aggressive behavior from others.
Friday, January 13, 2012 Our Psyche's Battle to Tame the Ego and End Class Warfare (5 comments)
We won't win the battle of class warfare until the 99 percent shake off the psychological burden of believing ourselves to be somehow inferior to the one percent. Here's the psychological insight we need.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 The Overlooked Factor in Criminal Behavior (9 comments)
Numerous competing theories--including biological, sociological, psychological, and political--are proposed for the cause of criminal behavior. Little consensus is established among the experts. Supporters of each theory barricade themselves and their doctrines against all comers.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 The Three Amigos of the Apocalypse (5 comments)
The three amigos represent negative states of mind. These unpleasant emotions range in intensity--they can rage inside us or just simmer away quietly. We keep them in check when we monitor their presence.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 Three Great Truths from Psychology (9 comments)
The mental health of Americans is extremely important to the health of our democracy. Psychologists are not doing enough to identify and teach the best knowledge from their profession.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 The Hidden Cause of Clinical Depression (14 comments)
Many factors contribute to clinical depression, but the prevailing medical-model treatment approach overlooks what may be the most important factor, one that ties in to personal development and human progress.
Thursday, December 8, 2011 Terrorism and the Death Drive (3 comments)
Terrorists are proving Sigmund Freud right about one of his theories, the death drive. This drive is fueled by elements in the human psyche that, when understood, empower the peacemakers.
Sunday, November 27, 2011 How Inner Fear Becomes Our Worst Nightmare (1 comments)
Unconscious fear creates self-defeating reactions to national and international challenges. We have to expose this inner fear or it might be the death of us.
Thursday, November 24, 2011 The Problem with Positive Psychology (7 comments)
Superficial psychology is an enemy of progress. We have to see deeper into human nature, and overcome our own emotional weaknesses, if we are going to prevail in the political struggle to save and enhance our democracy.
Friday, May 20, 2011 Happiness in the Age of Sorrow (11 comments)
There's a simple formula for finding happiness, one that's been overlooked by most experts. The key to happiness is found in understanding our determination to be unhappy.
Monday, May 2, 2011 Lara Logan's Encounter with Human Perversity (1 comments)
CBS correspondent Lara Logan has shared with us the story of her sexual assault. There is much we can learn about human nature from what she has told us.
Friday, March 25, 2011 Why (Baseball) Owners Hate Good Government (1 comments)
The story of baseball is the story of America. Don't let owners ruin our beloved sport. And don't let un-Americans with that same wrecker's ball mentality destroy good government.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 The Teenage Rebellion of Modern Conservatives (1 comments)
What conservatives hate is not big government but good government. Good government is the triumph of democracy and common humanity, which clashes with the conservative's worship of grandiose individualism and lust for power.
Friday, February 25, 2011 The Primitive Conservative Psyche (28 comments)
There's quite a surprise to be seen when we pop off the top of the conservative skull. Inside is a little dictator in charge of the personality.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 Guarding the Mosque, Church, and State Divide (1 comments)
People who can't separate church and state need to examine themselves psychologically. They would do well to strengthen themselves emotionally and recognize their irrational inner fears.
Sunday, January 23, 2011 The Primary Value of WikiLeaks (2 comments)
WikiLeaks reveals a profound truth at the heart of our relationship to our economic and political leaders.
Sunday, December 19, 2010 The Left's Unconscious Self-Defeat (22 comments)
Some form of self-defeat is at play in the left-wing psyche. Obama is not solely responsible for this collapse. He's manifesting a weakness that's common to most liberals.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010 Dysfunctional People, Dysfunctional Government (1 comments)
Tea Party activists project their own unresolved negative emotions on to the government. Their anger is a cover-up for their own emotional issues. Good government needs smart, wise, insightful citizens.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 Rush Limbaugh and the Power of the Negative (5 comments)
Limbaugh's appeal exposes a vital flaw in human nature: A lot of us are more enamored of the negative side of life than we realize. The Star Wars creators were right to warn us about the power of the dark side.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 America After the Great Bust, 2009 (1 comments)
A verse-case scenario on America's economic, political, and personal predicament.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 Please Put Me on the Endangered Species List
How did the Gould's wild turkey get on the endangered species list and not me? Please put me on that list, where threats of annihilation are taken fairly seriously, except by the odd Bushwhacker in the White House.
Thursday, November 20, 2008 Four Pitfalls for Progressives to Avoid (1 comments)
Progressives can hold onto the power of our new democratic expressionism and pass it along to the next generation if we refrain from the personality clashes, political infighting, and policy civil wars that have undermined our initiatives in years past.
Sunday, November 9, 2008 Change We Need: Replace Our Gravely Flawed Monetary System (3 comments)
More of us need to be educated about the anti-democratic and wealth-destroying aspects of the world's flawed monetary system. We must hold the leaders of 20 nations to account if they try to avoid needed change when they meet in Washington next week.
Friday, October 17, 2008 Will Racist Voters Repent in Time? (7 comments)
Exposing the self-deception of certain people who vote against Barack Obama because of the color of his skin.
Friday, October 3, 2008 Want to Get Even With the Filthy Rich? (1 comments)
We concede our power to the rich. We have created a "reality" that makes their dominance over us seem entirely legitimate. What we've really done is to create a vacuum in our democracy that they have merrily filled. It's time to fill the void with a rebirth of ourselves as truly sovereign people.
Friday, September 26, 2008 Think Economics is Bad -- Take a Look at Psychology
We have a legitimate gripe with economics. But we can be equally disgusted with the field of psychology, which is producing an expanding universe of subprime knowledge and C-rated factoids that are preventing us from getting to the heart of our personal and national dysfunction.
Saturday, September 20, 2008 The Meaning of Sarah Palin (3 comments)
Palin is not charismatic as much as she's the cheerleader for the superficial perspective of life. She's the poster-girl for evolutionary stragglers who want her around as a model of how to ignore reality and pretend they're as evolved as God wants them to be.
Friday, July 11, 2008 How Progressives Undermine Their Power (2 comments)
Do progressives and liberals harbor a hidden fearfulness about confronting the right wing? If so, are we willing to look at it and rectify it?
Friday, June 6, 2008 Tidying Up for the Revolution
We need to keep working at making ourselves finer people and more responsible citizens in order to help facilitate the birth of a social revolution.
Saturday, April 5, 2008 Another Perspective on Hatred, Violence, and War (3 comments)
There may be a hidden flaw in human nature that accounts for our inability to live in peace with ourselves and with the rest of the world.
Friday, March 28, 2008 Race and Gender Soul-Searching (2 comments)
Our own unresolved emotional issues are standing in the way of Democratic unity. Here's a discussion of some of those issues.
Saturday, March 22, 2008 Deeper into Racism (2 comments)
Many people will vote against Obama for racist reasons, while doing so in "good conscience" because they have deluded themselves into believing in the objectivity of the political attacks against him. This is why Obama is particularly vulnerable to negative campaigning. It explains, for instance, why so many are willing to go on believing that Obama is a Muslim.
Saturday, March 15, 2008 America in Capitalist Captivity (2 comments)
Our brain connections and neural pathways are hard-wired by the metaphors, slogans, and enticements of capitalism. Its marketing and technological wizardry has us stranded in the fog of propaganda. Without an awareness of being its adherents, Americans are its fundamentalists
Friday, March 7, 2008 Advice to Right Wingers for Nothin' and Insight for Free
Whether or not Iraq is sidelined in this political debate, this presidential election is, in large part, between those Americans who have begun to assimilate the reality of our horrendous self-defeat in Iraq and those evolutionary stragglers who adamantly refuse to do so.
Friday, February 29, 2008 The Reasons for America's Aversion to Diplomacy (3 comments)
Why aren't we better diplomats? Why weren't we powerful enough in our own humanity to create peace with the Soviet Union? Instead, we produced a nuclear production complex that had already by the mid-1950s exceeded in capital investment the combined capitalization of Bethlehem Steel, U.S. Steel, Alcoa, DuPont, Goodyear, and General Motors.
Saturday, February 23, 2008 Can Old Europe Save America? (2 comments)
We have refused to adopt many of Europe's most sensible refinements, including the metric system, wise gun laws, and inclusive medical care. The latest feather in our stubborn streak is our unwillingness to follow their practice of abstaining from war.
Thursday, February 14, 2008 Political Unity in the Big Tent
There's no need to fall into the darkness of divisive politics. Any negativity we feel toward fellow progressives is our own negativity. We each have to take ownership of it and refrain from spreading it like rancid butter on to our struggle for reform.
Thursday, February 7, 2008 Death to the Hoax of Self-Correcting Free Markets (5 comments)
The excesses of capitalism have been underwritten by ideology, particularly the idea that the market is inherently wise and reliably self-regulating. This conservative idea is an intellectual hoax. We need to drive a silver stake into its heart to terminate it for good.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Uncovering the Psychological Roots of the Bush Tragedy (9 comments)
Great political writing discloses what the subject doesn't know about himself. Bush is unaware of how extensively he lives through an idealized self-image. He identifies with that self-image and refuses (probably out of fearfulness and the restraints of a personality disorder) to step out of the darkness of his self-ignorance.
Thursday, January 24, 2008 Let Them Eat Corn, or Why We Shouldn't Fear a Recession
The Republican Party's great success of recent years has been its production of "The Grand Old Pretense," the theatrical parody showing in the nation's capital and starring Benito Bush and Franco Cheney.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008 Thoughts for Obama and Clinton Down the Stretch: What True Change Involves
Both candidates are running a marathon of hope, with a vision of national unity and a promise of change. We're hoping, of course, they mean real change. Yet their proposals for change skirt major right-wing roadblocks that obstinately block our progress.
Thursday, January 3, 2008 How Conformity Trumps Action on Global Warming
An indepth look at the underlying reasons for inaction on global warming. Or, why we're afraid to save ourselves.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 Eight Epitaphs for Bush
It's the unofficial epitaph-our heart's remembrance-that will take Bush's true measure.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Denial of U.S. War Crimes (1 comments)
What is the degree of our complicity in U.S. war crimes? Is ignorance innocence? Do we secretly avoid knowledge that will enlighten us? Are we afraid to know the truth because such truth requires us to die to our old passive selves and emerge as true citizens demanding redress?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 Pelosi Capitulates to Hatred (3 comments)
If Nancy Pelosi is going to fulfill her destiny, she needs to move toward the hatred, into the hatred, and through the hatred, ablaze with the fervor of the Lady of Liberty and possessed of a willingness to die for us.
Thursday, October 18, 2007 What Can I Do? (4 comments)
Many politically aware individuals have been asking this question, often in mournful desperation. An emotional blockage is often behind their paralysis.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 The Secular Soul of Democracy
We cannot count on the general populace or the Democrats to support our vision of renewal and reform. To save American democracy, progressives must give more credence to the idea that our better nature has to be honed to a sharper edge.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007 Can Hillary Can Her Cacophonous Cackle? (7 comments)
We don't want a cackler for president. The right wing has no fear of cacklers. The right wing needs to be intimidated or it won't go back in its cage.
Monday, June 4, 2007 Henry Kissinger Bombs Again (1 comments)
There he goes again, the old thin-skinned warhorse Henry Kissinger, still sniping at the antiwar left after all these years. In an op-ed this week in the Los Angeles Times, he concludes that rapid, unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster.
Thursday, May 24, 2007 TV Titans Plan Surge against American Character
TV titans and the marketing industry are gearing up to sap our will and make Americans more passive than ever. Their ultimate goal: the debauchery of American character followed by the commercialization of the American soul.
Thursday, May 3, 2007 A Democratic Deterrent against the Politics of Fear (3 comments)
To put an end to the politics of fear, we need to understand the nature of irrational fear. We haven't been able to shake off all of the fears that we carry from childhood. There remains a chronic, often repressed anxiety about our vulnerability and the threat of allegedly hostile, menacing individuals or forces.
Thursday, April 19, 2007 Schwarzenegger's Guilty Thoughts on Global Warming
Arnold Schwarzenegger tried posing last week as an environmental muscle-man. The California governor approves of us driving SUVs and Hummers while trusting in an "enlightened" marketplace to navigate the global-warming crisis. As an action-hero, the governor was a master illusionist. Now, he may be fooling himself.
Friday, April 13, 2007 For Democracy's Sake, Vote for Euthanasia (2 comments)
The issue of euthanasia extends beyond the deathbed to the health of our democracy. Democracy requires us to claim our sovereignty and our authority, so why are certain religious and political leaders treating us like children?
Friday, April 6, 2007 A Psychological Expose' of Creationism's Secret Genesis (48 comments)
Creationism can be invalidated in the eyes of more people by exposing its emotional roots. It's pointless to debate creationists on the specific tenets of their doctrine. Such an approach plays into their defensive strategy and overlooks the source in the psyche of their irrationality.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 The Zen of the Long-Distance Activist
Burned out or not, patriots have to go the distance. Here's a method that's even better than drinking Red Bull.
Friday, March 23, 2007 TV Torture's Toxic Toll
TV torture disguises an especially degenerate form of brutality as a necessary evil to protect national security. In the process, our collective mental health is undergoing shock treatment.
Saturday, March 17, 2007 Rich Little Comes Out of the Political Closet (1 comments)
Impersonator Rich Little's presentation to the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner didn't evoke any laughter at all, except for a few stifled chortles from Jon Stewart, who was seated at the very back of the ballroom. Here, from the White House correspondents own News Impersonation Service, are excerpts from that presentation:
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 Cancel this Year's White House Correspondents' Dinner
The White House Correspondents' Association must cancel its April 21 dinner if it's serious about atoning for its complicity in the American tragedy in Iraq.
Thursday, February 22, 2007 An Appeal to 9/11 Conspiracy Buffs (22 comments)
Can 9/11 conspiracy buffs be persuaded to drop their speculations and join forces with the legions of the left? Perhaps a tour of the shaky substructure of their belief system can return them to their senses.
Friday, February 16, 2007 Bush's Inner War With Iran (1 comments)
George Bush is the mouthpiece for his inner demons. He is in inner conflict between aggressiveness and passivity in his psyche. Any decision he makes about war with Iran will emerge from his inner chaos.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007 Let's Grant Molly Ivins Her Dying Wish
Molly Ivins pursued truth, and in the process acquired the power that it bestows. We can follow in her footsteps.
Saturday, February 3, 2007 Next Time We March--Dance! (2 comments)
Barbara Ehrenreich's sobering new book tells the story of how, over the centuries, the authorities clamped down on public rituals of collective joy and stole from the people the ancient source of human solidarity.
Friday, January 26, 2007 Hating Bush Only Hurts Us (46 comments)
Detaching from our hatred of Bush will only make us more effective in removing him from power.
Saturday, January 20, 2007 Soldier--Read This Before You Go to War (4 comments)
Every soldier needs to make a choice about whether to fight in a bad war. If a soldier goes passively to his fate,he is in greater danger of emotional impairment when he returns home.
Monday, January 15, 2007 The Slaveholder Mentality of Bad-Ass Capitalism (1 comments)
The mentality of bad-ass capitalists is as deluded and degenerate as that of the slaveholders of 150 yeazrs ago.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 Last Al Qaeda Standing
Satire: The last Al Qaeda terrorist reminiscences before his death on Donald Rumsfeld's poetry.
