We know the adage; it is repeated often: What we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat.

History is available as a source for study and understanding, comprehending how we can change from making war to exploring peace. We beseech and are beseeched; we lament the stubborn...

The holidays, for most Americans almost always means a feast shared in company and the giving of gifts. Since the holidays have been given the connotation of a national homecoming with family near and far, their often habitual celebrations also include indigestion from the acidity of overeating mixed in with...

For all of the obvious reasons, the massacre at Fort Hood, where American soldiers killed American soldiers, captured our immediate horror and attention and snapped us out of our day-to-day regard for our troops which can be summed up by the word "distance." It is a stark reminder of the...

Blaming is a national, international and interpersonal sport, as well as the ultimate way to score political points outside of promises, platitudes and harnessing of the passion of hope. Funny how all of these meet in disharmony on the one year anniversary of Barack Obama's election to the Presidency of...

Columbus Day is coming, one of those holidays that has started to make some of us cringe. Does anyone "discover" a land already inhabited by people who are functioning and trading and respecting the ecology of that land?

We have been trained to see "civilization" as a good thing, to...

On a quest for more honesty, whenever we question the key assumptions of our lives, religion and the visceral ties of tradition as well as the significance of believing (or not) come into play.

For Jews -- religious and secular alike -- there is a need to consider Yom...

One of the more mysterious puzzles I've encountered on a journey to try to comprehend our massive cultural epidemic of distraction includes a lack of implementation of some of the knowledge we have gained about human development through in-depth psychology. Such information is frequently used as manipulation for the advertising...

It is said that you can take the religion out of the Jew, but you will never take the Jewish part out of our intestinal tracts. As a secular Jew, pre-season anticipation of the coming High Holiday still pulls me into mixtures of nostalgia and guilt, of yearnings for the...

The other evening, a friend became cranky once the health care discussion began after dinner, so he turned to me for comfort and clarity about the issues in the newest national team sport of health care reform. Never having enjoyed professional soccer or football, he hadn't been privy to the...

The following blog is a response to the New York Times front page story, "2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake," by Scott Shane published this past Wednesday, August 12. It also provides support for the American Psychology Association's recent adoption of a zero-tolerance policy on...

A probing and shocking book, The Nazi Conscience by Duke University Professor Claudia Koonz, examines the kind of conscience and ethical convictions that spread throughout Nazi Germany while she makes the reader feel close to the same dilemmas. Conscience, as used here, is any set of rules based on...

There is a little girl in my practice, and she is one of the patients with whom I have remained involved while vacationing in Italy. It has been an emergency because the case and the child have been dangerously trapped in Family Court in the State of New York. The...

Writing from her summer home in Borgo a Mozzano, Lucca, Italy

The subject of torture is not new. It isn't new for Army Sergeant Joseph Darby who honorably brought the brutal photos of incidents of torture in Abu Ghraib to his commanding officer in January 2004. It isn't new for...

When there is a celebrity the magnitude of Michael Jackson whose death leaves the future of his children in doubt, you expect dissension and melodrama, especially given the drama with which he lived his life. The carnival atmosphere that surrounded his life almost guarantees a set of press releases. By...

"The Soloist" was released in movie theaters on April 24, 2009. Directed by Joe Write, with a screenplay by Susanna Grant, it stars Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr.

If we aspire to give birth to our own accountability, one of its forms might translate to the notion of "showing...

In his satiric, acerbic, jolting and irreverent wit, the late comedian George Carlin tended to be cynical about most things, though not all. About cynics themselves he said, "Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist."

Perhaps his cynicism about the hoopla he saw regarding the use of...