Backgammon is a good metaphor for life. Success is a matter of both luck and skill.

If you've started on Richard Gadd's new series #halfman, you might want to check out my psychological review of his television debut #babyreindeer. Watch this space for my therapist's perspective on his latest. www.aaronbalick.com/post/the-psy...

“No one’s normal. Just looks like the from across the street.” - DTF St. Louis

🧵 Read it from the beginning.

1/ We may have been spared Musk and Zuckerberg in a cage fight, but we won't be spared this clash of the Titans — or as I'd more crudely put it, the pendulous litigation of their big swinging dicks.

1/ We may have been spared Musk and Zuckerberg in a cage fight, but we won't be spared this clash of the Titans — or as I'd more crudely put it, the pendulous litigation of their big swinging dicks.

Really enjoyed this conversation with Jim Clark on The Great Rom Con podcast discussing all things at the intersection of psychology, therapy, and tech. Worth a listen if I don’t say so myself! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Really enjoyed this conversation with Jim Clark on The Great Rom Con podcast discussing all things at the intersection of psychology, therapy, and tech. Worth a listen if I don’t say so myself! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

So the lesson was, “behaving like the anti-Christ is absolutely fine - just don’t test our patience with blasphemous imagery.” Say the very same people who called Charlie Hebdo an attack on free speech.

The sixties was a top decade for soft back psychology book covers.

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude." AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse - externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all. New piece on what depth psychology makes of this. open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Your therapist wants to give you some space to sit with the unresolved. Your chat bot wants to give you immediate resolution. What’s the cost? open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude." AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse - externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all. New piece on what depth psychology makes of this. open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Your therapist wants to give you some space to sit with the unresolved. Your chat bot wants to give you immediate resolution. What’s the cost? open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude." AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse — externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all. New piece tomorrow on what depth psychology makes of this. open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

When did "I'll think about it a bit longer" become "l'll ask Claude." AI may be running Vygotsky in reverse — externalising the inner dialogue before we've had the chance to think at all. New piece tomorrow on what depth psychology makes of this. open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Right now is the WORST time for AI to become conscious. All the dangers aside, it’s just plain embarrassing.

Right now is the WORST time for AI to become conscious. All the dangers aside, it’s just plain embarrassing.

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Thanks to the input of my subscribers, my Substack has a brand new title! Say goodbye to Applied Psychodynamics, say hello to Depth Psychology in the Digital Age! open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Thanks to the input of my subscribers, my Substack has a brand new title! Say goodbye to Applied Psychodynamics, say hello to Depth Psychology in the Digital Age! open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

When I was learning to drive my dad wouldn’t let me get my license until I could drive stick. Manual, then automatic. In the same spirit I think this applies applies to writing. Learn to write manually first. Only once you’ve managed that and found your voice, should you consider automation.

If you thought things couldn’t get any worse, I hate to break it to you, but the Buffy reboot has been cancelled.

In a world gone made at least GenXers can take solace in the fact that the Brady Bunch House has been preserved for posterity. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t...

It would be a great irony if Trump’s adventure in Iran resulted in regime change at home. I mean, one can dream, right?

I accidentally had to listen to this guy live for more than five minutes. How anyone can take him seriously is really beyond the pale. It’s the emperor wears no clothes in real time. He’s the dumbest guy in the room and every (marginally) smarter guy and gal just sit there and enable him.

“The decline in the influence of religion is due not to religion itself, but to the shallowness of its many practitioners. People who are indoctrinated and mistake obsession for faith, are themselves destroyers of the very thing which they imagine themselves called upon to to protect.” - Idries Shah

Reaching out to Lebanese or Iranian friends and family - at home or in the diaspora - to see if they are okay (they are not) happens far too often. Then it occurs to me that those who so easily accept what’s going on don’t have such people to worry about - and hence don’t really see them as people

“The decline in the influence of religion is due not to religion itself, but to the shallowness of its many practitioners. People who are indoctrinated and mistake obsession for faith, are themselves destroyers of the very thing which they imagine themselves called upon to to protect.” - Idries Shah

Reaching out to Lebanese or Iranian friends and family - at home or in the diaspora - to see if they are okay (they are not) happens far too often. Then it occurs to me that those who so easily accept what’s going on don’t have such people to worry about - and hence don’t really see them as people

Curious what people make of this Sufi maxim: “The learner should know that he gains more from mistakes of his teacher, even if that teacher makes mistakes, than he gains from his own rightness, even if he is himself right.”

“There always comes a time when instruction materials which were originally employed to direct the attention of certain people towards a certain aim are adopted as gospel, or else simplified out of all usefulness and shallowly interpreted.” - Idries Shah (Psychoanalysis and Religion not exempt)

“If you think that you are not self-deluded, just check whether you think well of yourself or not.”

How I found out that my doomscrolling was really a search for hope. I wasn’t doomscrolling at all, I was hopescrolling. www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/as-a...

How I found out that my doomscrolling was really a search for hope. I wasn’t doomscrolling at all, I was hopescrolling. www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/as-a...

A chief danger with AI is that people begin to mistake information with knowledge.

A chief danger with AI is that people begin to mistake information with knowledge.

Psychotherapists learn a lot of theory and a fair bit of technique. But primarily we are trained to listen - really deeply listen. Only once you’ve listened deeply does the rest come into play. AI doesn’t listen. AI compiles.

Even cultified minds eventually have to encounter the reality principle. Sadly for them, this encounter usually results in a concussion.

Psychotherapists learn a lot of theory and a fair bit of technique. But primarily we are trained to listen - really deeply listen. Only once you’ve listened deeply does the rest come into play. AI doesn’t listen. AI compiles.

Funny how even the most incompetent company with a shambolic HR dept. would have had no choice but to sack Trump years ago - how many employment tribunals would be underway? And yet there he is, every single day, not only at work, but the face of the “company”.

Save me from my nerdy inclinations! “Applied Psychodynamics”s is accurate but perhaps too academic. I’m looking for a more accessible title for my newsletter. Participate in my poll and please help me out! Suggestions welcome too: open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Save me from my nerdy inclinations! “Applied Psychodynamics”s is accurate but perhaps too academic. I’m looking for a more accessible title for my newsletter. Participate in my poll and please help me out! Suggestions welcome too: open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Caught yourself doomscrolling again? You may actually be seeking reassurance - not doom. Why doomscrolling is actually hopescrolling: open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

“You have a duty to perform. Do anything else, do any number of things, occupy your time fully, and yet, if you do not do this task, all your time will have been wasted.” - Rumi

That was dark. #nightmanager

Caught yourself doomscrolling again? You may actually be seeking reassurance - not doom. Why doomscrolling is actually hopescrolling: open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

Whenever it comes down to the wire - every time life confronts me with a reality I haven’t chosen or don’t want - I return to Viktor Frankl and remember (to paraphrase): “It isn’t about what I expect from life, but what life expects from me.”

Jeffrey Epstein to Peter Thiel: “Brexit is just the beginning.”

The fact that Liberals are highlighting the constitutional right to carry firearms while Republicans are framing the holding of such arms as evidence of domestic terrorism, is giving me whiplash. 1/2