Buy This Man's Book! (update-it's now $17.48)

Wow, it's a fire sale at Amazon. Spread the word. It's now $27.74! This is about the price I had been hoping it would sell for when I launched. That was almost two years ago. Now they want to move them (and so do I).

A Nice Break from all this Winter Stuff

I haven't posted on my trip to FLA over the Christmas/New Year's break. Heading to the beach in late December was fantastic. I recommend it to everyone, especially those trapped in the frigid temperatures this weekend. It was great to see my old friends and check out the life of South Florida. The gators were taking cover as apparently it's cold there if it gets into the 60s.

Reaching for the Stars

The release of the Mitchell report concerning steroid use in baseball essentially confirms what everyone suspected but pretended not to know. People are shocked…shocked that so many players have been implicated. Some new names have emerged, especially pitchers Roger Clemens and Andy Petitte. Still the litany of names is sobering. Furthermore, many sportswriters are saying that there are many more names not in the report but that “everyone” knows they’re doing it. And baseball isn’t even testing for Human Growth Hormone (HGH) at this point. Sports are a reflection of the culture IMHO. So, I’ll briefly ride on my hobbyhorse, namely living in the age of tantalization.

Tantalus was a wealthy king, who was not satisfied with his mortal powers and mortality. Seeking to have what the gods have, he cheats or commits crimes designed to acquire his objects of desire (Nectar and Ambrosia). In one version of the myth he even chops up his son in an attempt to make himself level with the gods. He is caught and punished by being eternally tantalized (seeing what he wants but having it hang just out of reach).

There are many forces in society tempting us toward immediate gratification, and we seem to crave a never-ending onslaught of excitements and powers. The thrills don’t necessarily last too long. So we can set off in search of the next big thing or pick-me-up. Fans liked seeing the legendary records fall or be obliterated, since it is also a thrill to “be a part of history”, even as a witness. In Tantalizing Times –now available at a big discount through Amazon :>)--- I wrote:

Steroids have been the subject of much controversy in recent years. These have tended to be used by male athletes looking to get some kind of edge. They enhance muscle mass, and guys have been able to get pumped up on them and achieve almost unreal sorts of muscle development. They are used to assist the athlete to become stronger and more powerful, in addition to assisting the athlete to develop the body of a Greek god. Questions were raised about the productivity of many athletes as records began to fall in numerous sports. Football players and baseball players have especially been tempted to swallow steroids in the hopes of obtaining athletic immortality. Curiously steroid use has potential health risks and not only enhancement potential. Considering the theme of the book, its risks are almost poetic, namely the potential for shrinking of the testicles and of impotence. Although they temporarily can help one climb to the top of the heap, excessive use could easily produce a person with many of the characteristics of premature aging and impaired capacity to reproduce. Pg. 53

Although steroids affect muscles (more than brain) my focus here lies on the prospect of opening the door for mind drugs as enhancers. The same arguments will be used. In the case of using an enhancer to get the advantage, we abandon whatever investment we have had in something like will power or determination as well as effort. If activities are made easy by intake of pharmaceuticals, then the outcome is privileged over the process and we acclimate ourselves to the notion that anything worth having is worth being acquired via a bottle or needle. In fact it clearly sets the stage for an entitlement viewpoint to reign supreme. Pg. 80

The Perfect Holiday Gift :>)

Well the last few weeks have seen a mega price drop for the book. It now comes into the realm of not so bad, even if I originally had something else in mind. I am up to 80 libraries (well 80 as of a few days ago, now at 76 in one search with an extra one in another, go figure) according to the latest WorldCat check in.

Long Time No Post

It's been a while since I posted. I have been extremely busy, even more so than usual. But my work for a conference got piled on top of other things. I presented a paper at the Internal Federation for Psychoanalytic Education Conference (IFPE). I am also chair of the research committee, so I attended the all day board meeting on Thursday before the conference. It was a good conference in many ways, and I enjoyed seeing many old friends and colleagues, getting to hear about the research of Mark Solms (who is showing via neuroscience that Freud's dream theory still has many legs left), and getting about to some good restaurants in Toronto. I took some pictures this morning. Toronto has a very modern look and feel, and we were sure in an interesting part of town, judging by the restaurants anyway and happenings. The hotel is connected to the Rogers Center, where many Toronto sports teams play. The restaurant inside the hotel overlooks the ball field. That picture didn't come out too well. The CN Tower, evident in the picture, is the tallest made man structure in the world, although it doesn't appear that way when you are standing close up to it.

Even Little Projects can be OK

And this was a little project. I had some small trees cut down and a lot of stumps ground down. I used some of the new space to make a little seated project in the backyard. Not much, but it makes things a tad more interesting.

The Making of a Paper

I'm working on a paper I'll present at the 2007 Conference of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education in a few weeks. Because of the gyrations inherent in many organizations, the panel I organized isn't going to work in the way I was planning. We'll have less time than planned. Sparing you all the bloody details, I've decided (with my panelists) that for a variety of reasons my co-presenter would basically keep her paper at original length, while I would drastically cut mine. Because I was going to tweak the paper anyway, I thought I was simply going to tweak then cut. But, I could see that wasn't going to work. Instead, I used some pieces of the paper I was working on, but reworked it in a very different way.

My paper is titled, "Why Can't the English Learn to Speak", a titled derived from Lerner & Lowe's My Fair Lady. The musical is based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. I use the fictional account of Henry Higgins teaching Eliza Doolittle to speak as proper lady as the backdrop to discuss some of the assumptions behind the push to manualize psychotherapy.

Writing a condensed paper has been quite a challenge, but I let some of the lyrics do the talking, and I try to write this version in a style, which I hope will work for condensing this subject. We shall see. It has been fun in its own way. The posters above show the various versions, and that also illustrates part of the theme of my paper.