Philosophy

29 Dec The End of Knowing as Critical Praxis (Practical-Critical Activity)

Posted at 23:25h in Activity Theory, Critical psychiatry, Culture, Human Development, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Psychology of Becoming, Social Therapeutics 0 Comments

When I have an academic presentation to make or an article to write on social therapeutic methodology, it's usually an opportunity to play around with conceptions I've spoken and written about many times before. I like the challenge of creating new frames ("What do I want to say to this...

26 Dec Brains and Politics

Posted at 23:04h in Culture, Events, Interviews, Overweight Brain, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology of Becoming 0 Comments

On Sunday, December 8th, I had the pleasure of speaking with 75 people from 17 states in the US. They called in to the monthly Politics for the People conversation hosted by Cathy Stewart, VP for National Development at indepependentvoting.org. It was a privilege to be Cathy's guest, to discuss...

22 Mar Japanese Colleagues: Givers in a World Culture of Getting

Posted at 01:45h in Creativity, Culture, Education, Human Development, Philosophy, Play, Psychology, Psychology of Becoming, Psychotherapy, Publications, Social Therapeutics 0 Comments

I spent last week with 16 Japanese professors and graduate students who traveled to NYC for an immersion in social therapeutics, the psychology of becoming, and a first-hand experience with how these "tools-and-results" help people grow by performing our sociality and building community. We had a wonderful time together. By...

09 Feb The Seduction of Objectifying Understanding (the cult of science)

Posted at 03:07h in Language, Overweight Brain, Philosophy, Psychology of Becoming 5 Comments

I’ve been getting lovely feedback from readers since the publication of my book, The Overweight Brain: How our obsession with knowing keeps us from getting smart enough to make a better world. You might remember it from this site, where I published chapters as I wrote them and invited reader...

20 Nov Giving Away Process

Posted at 02:34h in Community Organizing, Events, Human Development, Philosophy, Postmodern Marxism, Psychology of Becoming 0 Comments

This past Sunday, November 18, the East Side Institute held a Community Meeting and Fundraiser. We’ve been hosting these twice a year for the last ten years. We get to share developments, advances and challenges in the organizing work we do at the grassroots and in academia and invite people...

02 Nov The Creative Way to Share What You Think You Know

Posted at 01:25h in Culture, Human Development, Overweight Brain, Philosophy 0 Comments

I've traveled to several cities recently, speaking with students and faculty at different universities and introducing performance and improv to them through workshops. It 's always provocative and eye-opening to challenge the knowing paradigm at a university (for obvious reasons). Inviting professional knowers and knowers-to-be to perform philosophy as a new...

05 Jul Words to Ponder #33

Posted at 00:44h in Culture, Philosophy, What's New, Words to Ponder 0 Comments

At certain points in history, the paradigm that generated so much information comes to function as a hindrance to the use of that information. Fred Newman...

07 Jun Going Somewhere New Together

Posted at 17:27h in Human Development, Philosophy, Psychology of Becoming, Publications 2 Comments

The Overweight Brain: How our obsession with knowing keeps us from getting smart enough to make a better world shows the ways psychology, education and science are permeated with the conceptions that shape how we see, experience and relate in the world as knowers. In the book I try to show...

15 May

Posted at 19:35h in Activity Theory, Community Organizing, Creativity, Culture, Education, Human Development, Learning Environments, Performance Movement, Philosophy, Politics, Postmodern Marxism, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Social Therapeutics, Training/Classes 0 Comments

With deepening social and political crises worldwide, many who want to make a difference find that they need more. They search for new tools, methods, conceptions and approaches to move forward. Since 2004, the Institute’s flagship program, The International Class, has attracted over 100 passionate and creative scholars, researchers, clinicians and...

04 Apr Critical Psychology at the Grassroots

Posted at 17:27h in Critical psychiatry, DSM-5, Human Development, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology of Becoming, Psychotherapy, Social Therapy 0 Comments

Continuing the theme of my last post on how critique and action and practice are and can be related, I share the introduction to the 2010 re-issue of Fred Newman's book Let's Develop! A Guide to Continuous Personal Growth. Newman's social therapy is one of the ways psychology is being...