Is This Website a Cult?

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[Written in 2009. Of note, as of 4/1/13:  I wrote this essay while I was still a therapist; I ended my therapy practice in March, 2010.  Also, when I wrote this essay I didn’t have a paypal “donations” button on my website.  I just put that up a few days ago — so hopefully I can invest more time and energy into this website.]

I have been accused several times over the years of running a cult through this website, or at least of being cultish.  So I decided to put this cult question to the test—according to the Cult Information Centre’s “5 Characteristics of a Cult” and “26 Mind Control Techniques.”

Of course, this is me “subjectively” putting my own website and point of view to the test, but at least it’s a try!

Continue reading →

Fifteen Lies Debunked in Sixty-Five Words or Less

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[Originally posted 12/26/09.]

Lie #1:  Romantic Relationships Help People Grow.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, romantic relationships help people become comfortable, and over the long haul comfort is contrary to growth.  Most people get into relationships in an attempt to create the safe, womblike childhood they never had.  In so doing, they never learn how to love themselves fully—from within.  That is the real relationship.

Lie #2:  We All Have Sexual Needs.

Sexuality is a misplaced lens through which we express of our desperate, anachronistic desire to have been loved fully as children.  Continue reading →

32 Reasons Why The “Schizophrenogenic Mother” Concept Is Incorrect

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[Written in 2008.]

NOTE:  THIS IS A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK ESSAY…

“The schizophrenogenic mother” – a mother who creates schizophrenia in her child – is presently a hated, taboo topic in psychology because it blames mothers.  The only modern articles that refer to the concept anymore label it as incorrect and disproven.  But they invariably fail to say WHY it is incorrect.  So I have taken the liberty of doing it for them. 

[Note, with humor aside:  I actually strongly dislike the term “schizophrenogenic mother” because it lets fathers, who bear half the responsibility for child-rearing, off the hook.  Please keep this in mind as you’re reading this list!! Continue reading →

Children as Antidepressants: 17 Pros and 21 Cons

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[Written around 2008.]

Despite being dramatically over-prescribed, children have long been the most popular antidepressant on the market.  As a natural-born skeptic, I have undertaken a thorough study of the pros and cons of their antidepressant qualities, as follows, though I will leave the final analysis to you:

Pros:

1. Children are easy to procure, long-lasting, and you don’t need a prescription to get one

2. If you’re willing to raise them generically, they can be relatively inexpensive

3. They often work well in (sibling) combinations of two, three, four or more (though be careful of toxic interactions) Continue reading →

What Makes a Psychoanalyst? — A Dialogue Between Patient and Analyst

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[Written in 2008.]

(Note:  Although I am aware that this does not apply to all psychoanalysts, it sure does apply to a lot!)

Patient asks:  What’s the difference between a psychoanalyst and an average therapist?

Psychoanalyst replies:  I have studied the most modern, sophisticated theories of human dynamics, and thus have the tools to understand and unravel the motivating roots of human endeavor…

Translation:  Don’t you know that I spent seventy thousand dollars going to psychoanalytic training after I got my Ph.D.?  Do you deign to suggest that I wasted the money I struggled to earn spending thousands of hours not listening to mere mortals like you?! Continue reading →

How To Use 15 Different Defense Mechanisms To Avoid Reading This Website

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[Written around 2008.]

  1. Denial:  This is all completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with me.
  2. Projection:  Daniel Mackler is crazy, and I do not want to indulge in his sick point of view.
  3. Sublimation:  Why would I want to waste my time reading this junk; in fact, I just feel like going out, getting drunk, and having sex! Continue reading →

The Hypocrite’s Dictionary

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[Written in 2007.  Note added, 12/27/13:  This is a humorous, ironic essay.  It was written tongue-in-cheek.  Sorry I didn’t note that earlier.]

Hypocrites use entirely specialized definitions of words to obscure the truth – and to destroy those who champion it.  Since part of their hypocrisy is that they never fess up – even to themselves – about what their definitions really are, I have taken the liberty of doing it for them.

  • Addiction:  The problem a person is considered to have when his addiction is not acceptable to the norm.
  • Arrogance:  Suggesting to an insane person that you are less insane than he.
  • Blame:  Having the nerve to hold your traumatizers accountable for their actions.
  • Boundaries:  The invisible line surrounding a person’s insanity which you are somehow supposed to respect. Continue reading →

Ten Ways To Be A Vague (Psychology) Writer

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[Written in 2006.]

  1. Use big, complex, technical words. Making sure everyone knows just how smart you are is a great way to hide just how insecure you feel. And who knows, if you use ten or more huge and indecipherable words per page you might just be able to convince yourself!
  2. Beat around the bush. When an octopus is under attack he squirts black ink to throw off his predators, and when writers take forever to get to the point they’re doing the same. Camouflaged writing doesn’t get torn to shreds – but on the other hand no one important reads it. Continue reading →

Thirty-Four Reasons To Circumcise Your Beloved Newborn Baby Boy

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[Written in early 2007.  Note added, 12/27/13:  This is a humorous, ironic essay.  It was written tongue-in-cheek.  Sorry I didn’t note that earlier.]

  1. You give your son a gift by hardening him early on to life’s inevitable pain
  2. Circumcised boys never have to face teasing for having a filthy foreskin – and your bleeding, stunned, little infant will thank you for this later
  3. Moses and Jesus lived productive lives without foreskins – what, you think your kid is special? Continue reading →

Climate Change: The Gods Aren’t Punishing Us – We’re Doing it to Ourselves

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[Written in 2008.]

“Primitive” people throughout history have had a tendency to blame themselves when things go wrong in their world. They struggled to appease angry gods for times of drought and disease and accident and famine, thinking their own moral imperfections and behavioral errors to be the cause. Yet all too often they, with their “self-centered” worldview, were blaming themselves for things which had nothing do with them. The irony is, our modern world, with its global warming, melting polar ice caps, radical loss of species, and massive pollution, is falling apart directly BECAUSE of humanity’s sick actions – and yet now we deny it! Continue reading →

Overpopulation: It Is Time for the Old Species to Die Out

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[Written around 2005.]

Signs of human overpopulation are everywhere, yet few talk about it. There are over six billions humans and their numbers are only expanding. Humans are destroying the balance of the planet at an alarming rate. Other species are going extinct faster than ever before – because of the insanity of Homo sapiens. Forests are being decimated, oceans polluted, ice caps melted, and the air and soil is growing toxic. None of this is a mystery, yet few do the math. Continue reading →

The Death Penalty: A Death Sentence For Societal Evolution

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[Written in 2004.]

Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, wrote at some length about his psychic turmoil over having been a key player in the murder of so many Jews. Shortly after sharing this, in 1947, he was hanged in Poland by a war crimes tribunal. His death was a loss to the world, and tells volumes about the troubling dynamics that led society to murder him. Continue reading →

Evolution Ain’t What It Used Be

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[Written around 2006.]

In biologically evolutionary terms the fittest organisms are those that bear the most offspring surviving to reproductive age.  Many humans still believe this to be a worthy life goal, even an obligation, and feel they are letting down their species, their culture, their families, and their race if they don’t have children.  But how sickening this tribal attitude is!  What about the good of our world? Continue reading →

Gandhi: A Damaged Man Way Ahead of His Time

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[Written in 2004.]

Gandhi embodied courageous introspection and daring public expression of himself. His autobiography, though largely dull, is the work of a unusually self-reflective person. Gandhi was celibate for years and never shied away from speaking about its value, and was honest about his relationship with his wife and with his own sexual self. Continue reading →

Relationships: What Lies Underneath Them

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[Written around 2004.]

People who are not fully enlightened use romantic relationships to hide from the truth. They want to bypass the painful healing process and disappear into false pleasure and false security. They desire either to find the perfect parent they never had or the perfect object onto whom they can project their unconscious rage at their parents – or both. They want someone to finally love them fully, understand them, take them under their wing, protect them, guide them, and be selfless with them. But this is impossible. Continue reading →

Homosexuality: A Chance For Human Evolution

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[Written around 2005.]

Gay people who have come out of the closet have one main evolutionary advantage over straight people: they have experienced a basic pattern of breaking from the family system, and this creates in them a template for truth-telling that can apply to all other areas of life. At some level they know firsthand what it feels like to be rejected and pathologized by the worst of the family, and because they know how to define a part of their identity in spite of it, they take one step closer to enlightenment. Continue reading →

Being in Love is a Disturbed Ideal

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[Written around 2006.]

Although society and most people – and of course popular music – hold being “in love” as the ideal state of human existence, they are all deluding themselves, literally.  Being in love is little more than the state of transferring onto some new person – your “love object” – all your repressed childhood hopes that your parents will finally come to rescue you.  This hope, which is the root of all addictions, is so intense that if you actually believe that it can be fulfilled it sends you into the deepest emotional orbit, more intense even than heroin.  No wonder most people desperately strive for it. Continue reading →

If the Healthiest People Remain Celibate then What Happens to the Future of Our Species?

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[Written around 2005.]

It is ironic that many people, when I speak of celibacy as an ideal, argue that following my lead would drive our species to extinction. In our overpopulated world of nearly seven billion people – who are driving us to the edge! – can we really fear celibacy and the path to enlightenment so much? Continue reading →