Wynn Schwartz Ph.D Archive
…the fun of playing…. As a concept, it cannot be reduced to any other mental category. Johan Huizinga, Homo LudensConsciousness is the first example of the selectiveness of enjoyment in the higher animals. Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of ThoughtA Zilch …
A person will not choose less behavior potential over more. Peter G. OssorioNemo me impune lacessit. The Order of the ThistleThe Degradation Ceremonies of everyday life don’t look like ceremonies. Instead, they look like how we go about treating people …
I had a funny thought about dreaming. It woke me up and then I went back to sleep. What I thought, "if I didn’t dream, I’d be too bored to stay asleep". I sometimes go back to sleep to see …
"A person's behavior goes right, if it doesn't go wrong in one of the ways it can go wrong." Peter Ossorio, Place, 1998. Behavior going right requires no explanation. Successful behavior is ordinary. Empathy is ordinary in the same …
Therapy can feel stuck, stymied and aimless, but fits and starts may be a necessary aspect of transformative therapeutic processes. Of course, this is because problems outside of therapy show up in the consulting room.Therapy feels stuck when the domains …
The parent's job is to facilitate their child's growth toward a "good enough" version of what is possible.What is emotional competence? How is it developed? How does trauma and deprivation interfere?I teach a course introducing psychodynamic theory to clinical …
“Truth, justice and the American way” Superman’s Creed “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator…” Thomas Jefferson “… For in psychology, there are experimental …
For many years, I have taught “Introduction to Psychoanalysis” from the vantage point of Descriptive Psychology. The policy I try to follow is to use ordinary language and to avoid concepts and theory that do not actually inform my day-to-day …
Descriptive Psychology is the intellectual discipline devoted to connecting and making explicit the implicit structure of the behavioral sciences. As such, it concerns concepts rather than theories, is pre-empirical, and aims at identifying the full range of what constitutes a …
The following is a paper submitted for publication. This content is largely taken from earlier entries in this blog and from my presentation at the Yale Personhood Beyond the Human Conference.What Is A Person And How Can We Be Sure? …
