Since the beginning of the new year, I have heard again and again about the new work of Austrian film maker Michael Haneke, whose signature works includes "Funny Game," "The White Ribbon," and "Cache." This latest work, "Amour," has been described as riveting and compassionate, yet totally unnerving and depressing,...

My client found it unbelievable. "Here I am 37 years old, a wife, a mom, a nurse valued by patients and staff, and I am hurt -- no, correct that, devastated -- by a supposed friend and her group of friends."

My client went on to explain that after an...

I disagree with much of the descriptive PR focus on the 2012 independent drama film, The Sessions, written and directed by Ben Lewin, a polio survivor. More about this soon.

This film, entitled The Surrogate when it deputed in the 2012 Sundance Film Festival (where it won the U.S. Dramatic...

Changing, precarious economic times have placed many liberal arts colleges in jeopardy. Some deeply respected schools have closed, while the question of relevance and justification haunts many others; a liberal arts education has been attacked as both too costly and unnecessary for job training. Some individuals, such as Peter Thiel,...

Like millions watching the first Presidential debate, I was both flabbergasted and bitterly disappointed at what at the time seemed like excruciatingly painful missed opportunity to express understandable anger and aggression. I screamed at both moderator and President to point out obvious duplicity and the true, spoken (when he did...

There are moments every therapist knows well. These are times when clients reveal what is really in both their hearts and minds, without knowing they are doing so, and from this kind of authentic but unrealized disclosure, solid work grows.

This kind of thing also happens on political stages and...

It has been all over the news, so you have probably heard. But, if you have given yourself a break from the news of late (if so who could blame you!) you have to hear this: God has revealed Herself, and yes, She is female; and She has decided to...

OK, I've had it, really had it! This blog is in defense of Kristen Stewart. Please read on...

I have found it unbearable to read (as well as impossible to ignore) the fallout of Kristen Stewart's (age 22!) involvement with the director, Rupert Sanders (age 41!), in her latest...

Yes. Oh, yes. I was a Fareed Zakaria Groupie. Was I ever!

I did not discover the Yale and Harvard grad at the earliest part of his career. (If you do not know about it and are interested, Wikipedia will wow you. Drink water or something as you read. Stay...

Victoria Kennedy, the widow of the late Ted Kennedy, has confirmed that when the Supreme Court upheld the president's overhaul of our nation's health coverage she received a telephone call from Nancy Pelosi, who told her that her husband can now rest in peace.

No doubt Pelosi, Kennedy and...

I barely know what time it is, as I just got back from a memorial service in Paris for a very dear friend. But I was greeted with an urgent message from my daughter that I immediately had to catch up with the latest episode of Mad Men, titled "The...

Unless you have been living under a rock you know that Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, a CNN political contributor and a working mom, in uncharacteristic emotional blindness, stated on CNN's AC360 that Ann Romney has "actually never worked a day in her life."

In so doing, Rosen made it...

OK, fellow lovers of nostalgia. We know just who we are. We are those who love to put our feet up for terrific diversion -- knowing in Mad Men we will experience phenomenal style and extraordinary period accuracy over substance -- and so what! For four seasons we have lived...

1. Without risk, there cannot be life.


During youth and the years of building educational, professional and personal lives it is necessary to reach out and try new things, sometimes facing deep obstacles. Perhaps we yearn to follow a path that our parents object to, either personally or in other...

In the escalating political climate of ugliness, division, disregard for educational opportunity, and religious unrest and confusion, a new book has led to more bricks thrown at a White House many have seen as a touchstone for hope and opportunity.

This latest memoir by Mimi Alford, Once Upon a Secret:...

The recent events at Penn State and the ongoing uncovering of sexual abuse of hopeful innocents have sickened and saddened. If you live in Pennsylvania, as I do, the tragedies seem endless and terribly close to home -- the violated young children; college students shamed by their university leadership; the...

In my last blog I wrote about love that can be expressed, sometimes for the first time, from a dying parent. Now I am going to focus on the result when rage, disappointment, and hate are expressed from the grave.

I urge readers who are estranged from, frustrated by, and...

My office phone, also in my home, rang at 6 a.m. My client's voice a whisper due to shock. Her mother, enduring a long illness yet completely coherent the evening before, had died peacefully in her sleep an hour before. This day was my client's 30th birthday.

One of my...

Hundreds of thousands of dollars later Dominique Strauss-Kahn, his wife Anne Sinclair, and his lawyers are rejoicing at what an August 24th New York Times headline called a "Quick and Quiet End to the Strauss-Kahn Case." Perhaps this group should hold the champagne...

Meanwhile Manhattan DA, Cyrus R. Vance,...

"YOU are going to Walk with the Philly SlutWalkers on August 6th , AND dress in a slutty way?" a very good and savvy friend asked me for the second time --- her voice incredulous.

"Yes, I am -- in an age appropriate slutty way," I responded.

"What's that?"...