David Teachout's Blog, page 10

God: A Concept Needing to Be Filled In

Divine love seems inexplicably tied to divine judgment at times. With even a cursory search online the subsequent finding of so many articles and images depicting people of otherwise benign feelings supporting hatred and irrational judgment, the only seeming constant in a species devoted to exhibiting the divine in their lives is divisiveness and cruelty. There is assuredly much to be

A Context for Every Self

“Who we are is a story of our self—a constructed narrative that our brain creates.” (Hood, 2012) The how of that construction provides ample space for frustration when our actions don’t fit what we believe ourselves to be; confusion when what we say is not as clear to others as it seems to be to us; and anxiety when confronted

Stop Saying that Raped Women are Damaged for Life. Just Stop.

Originally posted on ValerieTarico.com:
Girls need to know that a sexual assault doesn’t have to mean a lifetime of suffering. As a mother of two daughters and as a psychologist who has experienced sexual assault, I find myself troubled by some of the language that feminist women (like me) and progressive allies deploy to fight rape culture—in particular the…

Reconnected Value: Working through Moral Injury

Trauma is a profoundly human experience, happening to anyone regardless of gender, race, or profession. The degree of its effect is varied, the form it takes is most certainly tied to environmental and cultural context, and what is called into question are the deepest aspects of our lives. While trauma is often immediately connected in terms of mental health with

Military Service and Moral Injury

Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. The first section, the Latin for “it is sweet and right” served as title for one of the best known poems from the First World War by Wilfred Owen. Posed as a question, Owen’s prose describes military service in terms similar to Smith’s (2010)

Our Evolving Minds: Change in Context

The tempestuous connection between nature and nurture, empiricism and social analysis, science and philosophy, has largely been a concern with self-knowledge. When we look in the mirror, ponder our behavior and seek greater understanding of our relationships, we are caught in a bind of where and how to look. When seeking to offer explanations, do we consider our internal mental states or the external behavioral

Our Journeys of Chance

The lucky-save is a classic story, that event awash with emotional weight, in which the person survived by the merest, slightest, of chances. Were a microphone to be present at the time, the likely most common phrase after would be “Whoa! That was lucky!” though often with a great deal more cursing involved. There’s a compilation, not for the faint

Mastering Your Placebo

Mind over matter, that’s the hope and aspiration explored in fantasy literature and speculative science fiction, promoted through various product-lines and explicitly endorsed in many religious ceremonies and practices. Implicitly, ‘mind over matter’ assumes mind as being something other or above that of physical reality. Placing it nicely in such a nebulous position allows for a great deal of confusion to be generated,

Freedom Through Dependency

To cling to someone for support and emotional safety is only a slight shift in perception away from becoming “clingy.” The former inspires sighs of contentment, the latter of exasperation. For those curious as to how the former becomes the latter, there is no concrete answer as the behavior for both is almost identical and further, largely contingent upon the

Why We Carefully Select Our Delusions

The nature of our mind’s “I” is a delightful example of illusory control. We possess it when we wake up, lose it when we go to sleep and rarely consider the variations that reside between those two states. We hardly ever need to. Contemplation of our conscious lives is left to the supposed fanciful depths of philosophical analysis and is