Mike Langlois's Blog, page 3
October 16, 2013
Evocation and Mindfulness: Or, How to Think Better
Like other art forms, video games can be both a mirror and a candle held up to our culture, at times reflecting it and at times revealing things about it. Normally I direct my posts primarily at people: therapists, gamers, educators, parents. But today I want to include the company that produces World of Warcraft […]
October 6, 2013
Mental Health: Yes, There’s an App for That..
Nobody wants to be irrelevant, and many mental health practitioners want to try out new technologies like Apps, but how to choose? Currently the App Store in iTunes makes available 835,440 different Apps, of which approximately 100,000 are categorized as lifestyle, medical or healthcare & fitness. And Android users have just about as many to […]
September 21, 2013
The Internet Is Not A Meritocracy, That’s Why You Hate It
Recently, I had a discussion with a student about social media, and the fact that I usually start off a comment on a blog with “great post!” She noted two things: First, that it rang false to her initially, making her wonder if I even read the posts people write; and second, that despite this…
September 8, 2013
Back To School To Infinity
By now, most people have gone back to school in the U.S., be it teaching or a being a student. According to the Department of Education, 50.1 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 35.3 million will be in prekindergarten through 8th grade and 14.8 million will be in grades 9…
August 31, 2013
Innovation is Dangerous & Gaming Causes Asperger’s
GamerTherapist blog is on vacation and will return with new posts after Labor Day. In the meantime, here is a reader favorite: At its heart, diagnosis is about exerting control. Clinicians want to get some sense of control in understanding a problem. We link diagnosis to prognosis to control our expectations of how likely and…
August 25, 2013
Dopey About Dopamine: Video Games, Drugs, & Addiction
GamerTherapist blog is on vacation and will return with new posts after Labor Day. In the meantime, here is a reader favorite: Last week I was speaking to a colleague whose partner is a gamer. She was telling me about their visit to his mother. During the visit my colleague was speaking to his mother…
August 14, 2013
Breaking Eggs and Holding Your Fire: Some Thoughts on Skills Acquisition
Not too long ago, I was learning how to fire a sniper rifle in Call of Duty. It wasn’t going very well. I kept firing (which you do by holding down the right-hand trigger) and missing. Or I would use the scope, which you do by holding down the left-hand trigger; and then try to…
August 4, 2013
Guild Wars: The Conservative Attack on Online Therapy
“European commerce during the Dark Ages was limited and stifled by the existence of a multitude of small kingdoms that were independently regulated and who suppressed the movement of goods across their borders through a confusing and inconsistent morass of taxation, tariff, and regulation. This forced merchants to find another solution to move their goods,…
July 28, 2013
“Can I Kill You Again Today?”: The Psychoanalysis of Player Modes
In 1947, Virginia Axline published the first edition of what was to become a seminal work in the field it was named for, Play Therapy. In her book she championed the concept of non-directive play, the form of play therapy where the therapist takes in some ways a very Rogerian approach of reflecting rather than [...]
July 20, 2013
Automation
Recently I was washing my hands in a public restroom. The paper towel dispenser was one of those that automatically dispense. There was a towel ready to be pulled off; you took it, and the dispenser automatically pushed another towel out for the next user. I was in the middle of taking my fourth towel [...]
