As a psychiatrist, I would not recommend seeing a psychiatrist who you would not also trust as your psychotherapist. Most US psychiatrists—trained and incentivized primarily as diagnosticians and medication managers—are poor psychotherapists. But, as huge placebo effects...

Pretty embarrassing for all the blue states that Florida (!) is the first state to file a lawsuit like this.

For kicks and giggles here’s a photo of Freud boarding a plane for the first and only time in 1928. He didn’t like it. Have a nice weekend.

Okay then, let’s triple it, or quadruple it if that’s what it takes.

This was as spectacular as expected. Joshua Henry 🤩🥵

And this was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a theater.

Death of a Salesman last night. One of the best productions of any play I’ve seen in years.

It’s heartbreaking to read these horrific accounts of systematic torture. And it’s even more painful knowing there are people I could send this to - people whom I respect, who are otherwise empathic and compassionate - who would likely respond by saying something akin to: “But Hamas…”

Maybe I’m over reading this, but it seems telling that he says we cannot go back to the prior status quo AND says Democrats need to deliver “universal health insurance coverage.” Why not say universal health care or even universal health coverage unless you’re open to ACA-like insurance subsidies?

Yes, speak in plain language as much as possible, sure. But the “jargon” of means-tested v. universal program does indeed matter when it comes to solving the problem of “the rent is too high.” It’s disingenuous to paper over real differences between liberals and leftists by lamenting jargon.

Dying in office because you insisted on clinging to power until the very end instead of letting a new generation of leaders rise should be seen for the shameful, egomaniacal act that it is.

It’s very telling to see Newsom and Jeffries call for further investigation and not immediately tell him to drop out.

World peace might also be accomplished via a revival of Follies with Audra playing Phyllis (and Steven Pasquale as Ben).

My primary litmus test for 2026 and 2028 is an unwavering commitment to tossing Schumer, Jeffries, and those aligned with their corrupt, incompetent politics out of leadership.

I‘m solidly in both of these eras.

Barack Obama doesn’t think there is any political event that requires an immediate response (he took days to post about both Renee Good and Alex Pretti) but you will never see him let 12 hours pass without congratulating a sports team winning a championship. He clearly sees it as his essential duty.

Impeachment and removal needs to be the near-term objective. But more immediately, Democrats need to be screaming from the rooftops that ANYONE who participates in executing these war crimes WILL be prosecuted AND that military members who refuse to follow his commands will be protected & honored.

💯 These arguments against universal programs are an argument FOR class-based segregation. These arguments heighten class divisions; universal programs weaken class divisions. And many rich people are very invested in maintaining class divisions.

I still remember watching the DVD of this for the first time when I was 15 years old, knowing nothing about it before pressing play. Not an exaggeration to say it changed my life.

My god… So much to say about this, but the main thing that occurs to me right now is how little regard our country has for the human rights of children.

Sexuality begins in infancy.

It's like the campaign asked ChatGPT for a progressive policy strategy to improve rural healthcare.

I’m waiting for sing-along Pacific Overtures.

This is all true. In fact, I was just talking about points 2/3 tonight with 8 grad students who are in my pay-what-you-can psychoanalytic consultation/study group for new therapists interested in analytic treatment. And the mere existence of such a group highlights the veracity of the point 1.

As the obsession over whether or not you might agree or disagree that "Israel has a right to exist" has resurfaced, it's worth listening once again to Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt, tear down this ridiculous subject. Pay attention. #GazaGenocide #GreaterIsraelWar

For me, Sondheim’s dramatic brilliance stems from how he musicalizes his characters’ unconscious lives. Sondheim understood his unconscious psychic life well in part d/t his own psychoanalysis. Helping writers access this for themselves may be the best way to further his legacy beyond death.

People who live like this often end up in jail.* *if they’re poor and/or brown

“In the last resort, we must begin to love in order not to fall ill, and we are bound to fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we are unable to love.” - Freud

It’s been said many times by many people, but it’s appalling how so many of these centrists have abandoned the idea that politics is about persuasion.

I saw someone repost this saying that taken at face value, there’s nothing wrong with what he’s said. Except the very first thing he does is conflate the state of Israel with the Jewish people. That’s literally the rotten core of ADL, AIPAC, and right wing Israeli propaganda.

Does the Woke Ginger always have this much charisma, or is it just the awe inspiring AIPAC-approved text he’s reciting?

All this week I've written about how here in IL, dark money and MAGA aligned PACs are spending absurd sums of money to prop up establishment corporate Dems while attacking progressive Dems who are actually willing to fight. MSNOW has the scoop on just how deep this goes: www.ms.now/news/kat-abu...

I was offered a position as a staff psychologist within a VA outpatient mental clinic in 2018, during Trump 1.0. I was told I’d need to maintain a caseload of 150-200 patients. I turned down the job. It was hard to imagine care standards getting worse. But it clearly has gotten much much worse.

💯 Ya know who doesn’t have to think about the price of items at the grocery store, restaurants, or really the price of most anything they want to buy for themselves? Billionaires. Millionaires. Almost all of our US senators and congresspeople.

There's a chance the left-wing candidates (Kat, Simmons, Huynh) could get a plurality of the votes but none of them win. We can't let that happen. Kat has the best chance of beating the establishment candidate. For this and many other reasons, we should all rally behind her.

"Once you ditch needing to be believed, then you have a conversation on your hands. You don’t need to be right. You don’t need to persuade the other person." Therapists are made to "teach" these days. Sometimes I think it's terrible.

A toxic environment poisons people. We should make the environment less toxic so people don’t get poisoned. But just removing someone from the toxic environment doesn’t mean they will no longer be poisoned. We should make less toxic environments AND help people recover from being poisoned.

If you can't solve in a post the hard problem of consciousness the machine is conscious. Check mate mother fuckers

Consciousness is embodied. All irrefutably conscious creatures have organic bodies and are conscious of feelings through their bodies. Claude has no body. Any “feelings” it appears to have are very plausibly explained w/o resorting to a fundamental change to our base understanding of consciousness.

I just left a concert fundraising for the National Immigrant Justice Center to head to Broadview. Here’s why:

Poor sad souls Itching to be switching roles Lucy wants to do Jessie does Jessie wants to be what Lucy was

I appreciate the impulse to appeal to medical authorities, but medicalizing gender has done a lot to shape our current anti-trans hellscape. To be clear, a doctor is as capable of determining a person’s “true” gender OR sexuality as they are capable of determining a person’s “true” favorite color.

Just like there’s no reforming ICE, there’s no reforming this. The AIPAC-funded Democratic establishment has to be entirely dismantled.

It’s maddening that chuck seems more upset he wasn’t fully briefed than the fact that trump has launched an illegal, unconstitutional, immoral war.

A person can be genuinely anti-war, anti-imperialist, and anti-military industrial complex *and* allow for the possibility of military action as an absolute last resort in defense of the right to national self-determination. That's Kat's position, and I think its a popular one in my part of #IL09

Let me re-introduce myself. And why our campaign is doing things differently.

Kat Abughazaleh on Israel "It's important that any solution has full legal rights for anyone living there. And that it's decided by the people that actually live there. We spend so much time as a country interfering in other countries and dictating how they live, and it's just made places worse."

If this is allowed to stand, it will kill thousands of people and cause pointless suffering for many more.

I doubt that anyone will look back on this era of social media and say that it appealed to our better nature. For all the benefits these tools provide, we have to call them what they are: A splitting accelerant.