Category Archives: psychology

Victor Frankl, Seven Habits, and REBT

Between stim­u­lus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our free­dom.”
– Vic­tor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Mean­ing
As a Holo­caust sur­vivor, Vic­tor Frankl went through some of the most hor­rific expe­ri­ences ever known to man. Yet, from within the

Clinical Depression in the Context of Human Evolution

If evo­lu­tion ensures sur­vival of the most adapt­able species, how did it not van­quish men­tal depres­sion in humans? This ques­tion has been on my mind for sev­eral years, and it is time to exam­ine it in the con­text of a new hypoth­e­sis pro­posed by two sci­en­tists.
Back­ground
Between 30 to 50% peo­ple suf­fer from a major depres­sive

What The Hell Is Divinity?

A few blog posts and con­ver­sa­tions with friends have made me unquiet about the con­cept of Divin­ity: What is Divin­ity and what does it mean?
Back­ground
My friend Asuph wrote about Divin­ity in 2004, when I had not even started blog­ging. He uses Pirsig’s Meta­physics of Qual­ity from Zen and The Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance to describe what

Mentally Challenged, Raped, Pregnant. Abort?

While Barack Obama pro­claims White House sup­port to the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties to which India is a sig­na­tory, the Indian Supreme Court has deliv­ered a land­mark judg­ment in a unique case of young woman in India. My apolo­gies, but the sub­ject neces­si­tates a lengthy post.
Back­ground
Born in 1991, this woman

A to Z of Films Meme (O)

O
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
One of the most pow­er­ful anti-establishment movies I’ve seen, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of a crim­i­nal McMur­phy who prefers an insane asy­lum to prison, and leads a sus­tained revolt against the suf­fo­cat­ing and stul­ti­fy­ing atmos­phere and prac­tices of the bar­baric asy­lum. Unlike main­stream movies, here

A to Z of Films Meme (B)

[I may write a para­graph or two at the begin­ning of each post about some aspect of film-making, shar­ing thoughts, facts, or expe­ri­ences, etc. This may or may not be related to the films I write about.
Do feel free to com­ment on the films, my writ­ing, as well as rec­om­mend and dis­cuss other films. The more

Dreams of An Unquiet Mind

I am amused by peo­ple who say they have no dreams. When even ani­mals dream, how can peo­ple not? An evil thought comes about sub­ject­ing such peo­ple to dream depri­va­tion, if only to advance sci­en­tific under­stand­ing.
I dream both in color as well as in black and white. As with most peo­ple, I have recur­rent dream

Classifying a Blog’s Writing Style

How much can Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence learn from your writ­ing? Your gen­der? Your MBTI per­son­al­ity type? Can some­one find out such things about you from your writ­ing?
uClas­sify is a free text clas­si­fier web ser­vice, using which you can develop your own text clas­si­fiers. Sev­eral have been devel­oped already, the most pop­u­lar being Gen­der­An­a­lyzer and Typealyzer.
Gen­der Ana­lyzer
Gen­der­An­a­lyzer

Lost in the Dark Side of the Moon

I made a new friend when I was about 14 years old. We liked the same music. We read the same books and shared our Phan­tom and Man­drake comics. I used to be fas­ci­nated by his col­lec­tion of Life mag­a­zine, with the stun­ning pho­tographs of Apollo moon land­ings. He used to be fas­ci­nated by my