Lives In Progress

               Jean Campbell, LCSW, CET II, TEP presents "Me Pluribus Unum" sponsored by TEDx          Change is disruptive. It unseats the familiar, and can easily trigger a sense of psychological threat that sets off the stress response, shutting down our cognitive capacities to think things through and make reasoned judgments. Two super-charged realities of 21 st century life - globalization and rapid advances in technology – connect us to complex systems we neither understand nor control. For anyone old enough to remember rotary phones, 8-track tapes and the meaning of “don’t touch that dial” the economic shifts that result from technological disruption are a mix of interesting surprises and nasty shocks. In the pre-remote-control, pre-Skype, computers-are-for-scientists, things-actually-take-time era, the comfort, convenience, and control today’s technology provides is remarkable and welcome.   At the same time, we may experience severe and random upsets as we dis

By Nicholas Wolff, LCSW, BCD, TEP      Sometimes an empty chair is just an empty chair. And sometimes it is a prop that takes center-stage in the national political spotlight. When Clint Eastwood spoke to an empty chair representing President Obama onstage at the Republican National Convention last week, he gave important press to one of the cornerstones of effective conflict resolution, from personal relationships to work teams to political parties to entire nations. In the New York Times Opinion piece "What The Chair Could Have Told Clint" Jonathan Moreno - a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Penns ylvania - shares some insights into the possibilities missed in Clint's interaction with the imaginary Obama. "When Mr. Eastwood set up a chair next to the podium and used it in an imaginary dialogue with the president, I recognized it as a technique from psychodrama — the psychotherapy my father, the psychiatrist J. L. Moreno , st