Here is a slide show of Wittgenstein quotes I put together for the online course, Investigating Wittgenstein. Happy pondering! Investigating Wittgenstein ...
My colleagues and I at the East Side Institute have been leading online seminars and study programs for about ten years. They’re more like written conversations than formal classes, because even though there are readings and assignments, we’re not grading or evaluating anyone. No one’s getting university or continuing education...
I’m excited to be leading a Revolutionary Conversation sponsored by the Institute this fall—the subject of which is Ludwig Wittgenstein and his views on language, logic, learning and looking. Wittgenstein was a unique, eccentric and brilliant 20th century philosopher who took apart nearly every concept that underlies how psychology, education and...
I spent the past weekend in Philadelphia at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. One of the events I participated in was a half-day professional development course. My task was to share aspects of my version of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) in relation to the issues...
December 27, 2013 Last week I was invited to be profiled in The Psychologist, the monthly publication of the British Psychological Society. Their “One on One” section features informal, off-the-cuff interviews with psychologists, designed to show the range and diversity of work and opinions. The editor sent me a list of...
May 29, 2013 To New York Times columnist and cultural and political commentator David Brooks, psychiatrists are not heroes of science but “heroes of uncertainty.” Such is the title of his May 27, 2013 Op-Ed piece. Brooks takes the compilers of the DSM-5 and contemporary psychiatry to task for presenting their field...
May 9, 2012 The Institute jumped into the free webinar field at the beginning of this year. It's much simpler than I would have thought! We give people access to an audio or video. After listening/viewing, they can join an hour-long live chat, email questions and comments, or do nothing. I’ve led the...
January 9, 2012 To go a bit deeper into the underlying problems with the theory and practice of psychology that the controversy over the DSM-5 exposes, I invite you to do some philosophizing. What assumptions must people be making— about persons; therapy, the therapeutic relationship and therapeutic discourse; illness, cure and treatment; emotions...
October 26, 2011 Question: What's it like to participate in an academic conference taking place in China and on the topic of contemporary capitalism? Answer: An academic conference. Which is to say that you have to do the work to create human connection/conversation outside the rigid conference structure of one person after another...
October 17, 2011 Last week in The Thought Leadership of Fred Newman we played with the Newman play in which Lev Vygotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein are in therapy with a social therapist (referred to in my last post). I asked folks to break up into four groups and perform the readings of the...