Preview of a dream
What comes after America wakes up from its nightmare? Not the pandemic, the other one.
vol. 2 issue 15
Greetings,
The past week has seen a larger than usual uptick in new subscribers, so welcome! However it is that you found me, I am delighted you did. Thank you for your time.
This new wave of readers inspired me in a number of ways. The first was to tidy up all the promotional materials for the site. This led to a much tighter articulation of the connection between the crumbling American Dream and our individual and collective states of mind.
I hope you will take time to read the essay that resulted. It’s on the “about” page. I also updated my bio with more personal details, in addition to the drier list of CV facts. That’s on the about page, too.
This week is podcast Friday. My guest will be Stanford neuroscientist and Sapien Labs founder, Tara Thiagarajan, PhD. She and her colleagues have developed The Mental Health Quotient to better measure and track the mental wellbeing of large populations and, Glory be, to create reliable cross-disorder symptom profiles at the individual level. Translation: better, more reliable mental health diagnosis. It’s a great conversation and takes a surprising turn at the end. Fascinating stuff.
Tomorrow, I expect to publish a long-form piece that unpacks the comment I made weeks ago about the president being our national id. It focuses a depth psychology lens, informed by both Freud and Jung, as well as a touch of modern psychosocial sensibility, on the reasons we elected a narcissist for president. It covers new ground in addition to what we explored last year in this podcast with psychiatrist Dr. Allen Dyer. The piece was inspired by recent reports that since the pandemic erupted, people across the globe have been reporting strange dreams. Here inside the Beltway, it’s been like Lincoln in the Bardo, and the dreamers are complaining about it. Why?
If you’re new and you’ve not already taken a tour through the archives, here are some suggestions for items you might like.
Reflections on mental health and society:
When You Feel Suicidal…
PODCAST: Family Secrets That Hurt; the Life of Harry Dean Stanton
PODCAST: McMindfulness — Is Mindfulness Robbing You of Your Power?
Transgenders and Transitions
What Happens When We Let Others Define Our Truth
The Homeschooling Slog
Re-writing America:
House Concerts Are a New American Paradigm
From the Heart of the Civil War
The Inner Life of RBG
Millennials Seek a New Story in the Stars
The Hypocrisy of Boomers
PODCAST: The Real Reason Congress Doesn’t Get Along
How America is really run:
PODCAST: Not your parents’ Capitalism
PODCAST: Your privacy is a product in a two-sided market
PODCAST: My Days and Nights with the Reagans
Why Doctors’ Souls Get Crushed in This Economy
CVS or Socialism: Our Real Healthcare Choices
Why isn’t CVS/Aetna Part of our Healthcare Debates?
Thanks for reading and listening. See you soon.
Whitney