Author: Leland van den Daele

  • Symptoms are not the Disease

    Symptoms are not the Disease

    The practice of psychology and psychotherapy is oriented to the treatment of symptoms. This is true because a rough analogy exists between mental and physical distress, and insurance pays for symptomatic relief. For this reason, psychologists and psychotherapists append a diagnosis to the client, and, in accord with recommended guidelines, target symptoms. The elimination or…

  • Psychological Treatment and Understanding Depression and Anxiety

    Psychological Treatment and Understanding Depression and Anxiety

    An inhabitant of the variegated landscape of experience is pain. Within this landscape, physical pain has location, distribution, coloration, brightness, sharpness, intensity, duration, and slope. Physical pain has texture and flavor. Pain signals injury, damage, threat, imbalance, dysfunction. Pain informs attention and correction of the cause of pain through feedback. The mitigation of pain guides…

  • What is psychological maturity?

    Maturity is usually associated with physiological change and age. The term is borrowed by analogy to describe psychological and emotional change that accompanies age, as if growing old ushers in the full ripening of psychological depth and breadth. Unfortunately, not so simple. Psychological maturity bears some relation to physiological maturity for body/mind networks/systems are elaborated…

  • How to Get your Motion Quotient

    How to Get your Motion Quotient

    After years existing in the happy land of child development theory, as new parents, we have the opportunity to bridge theory with practice. As an aside, we much prefer the eloquence, clarity, and cleanliness of theory to the nastiness of practice. Nevertheless, practice we must, since our baby, Leopold, does not take to theory –well,…