“Ask Dr Neuman” Advice Column
A mother’s lament In the typical way of human affairs, children grow up and become independent Being independent means having one’s own values and being able to express them no matter what others think. In the context of living with parents, it means being able to...
Given the fact that we are in existence for only a limited time, it is natural to ask oneself what is worth doing and what is not. We might otherwise find ourselves wasting time. Time is the only resource we have that we are always depleting and which cannot be...
Depends on how good a friend. Most people have friends. The importance of friendship is usually taken for granted, as would be the importance of having a good job or of having a supportive family. Because it so natural to want friends, it is hard to explain exactly...
Without being especially clever. I routinely see patients, both men and women, who have every reason to think they are bright. Often they were exceptional students throughout high school and college; and a number are working successfully at jobs that require skill and...
I developed an interest in phobias, and in agoraphobia in particular, in 1954, as the result of developing the condition myself. One day without any evident reason I became panicky. I had the feeling I was going to go crazy or scream or in some way lose control of...
Unexpected and previously unknown calamities. I have been practicing medicine for many years. Nevertheless, from time to time I hear about some awful medical condition that has escaped my attention previously. Usually, it has some strange name. Usually it occurs, or...
Ask a writer I am afraid that rejection and failure and disappointment are a regular feature of ordinary life, no matter how successful someone may be. Any set of circumstances in which one reaches out for something: acceptance, approval, the good opinion of friends...
For the same reasons they lie to everybody else. (I have followed my usual practice in this post of disguising the patient.) Someone responded to a previous blog post by asking why her therapist suspected the things she told him about family experiences were not true....
But believing what? There used to be a television program called Candid Camera. The producers would set up strange situations and record how ordinary people reacted to them. For instance, they would place a microphone and speaker in a mail box, the kind of small...
Helping those who have emotional problems The number of people living as patients in psychiatric hospitals has declined over the last forty years by more than one half, partly as the result of new antipsychotic drugs and as the result of new attitudes toward the...
The concept of physical illness is readily understood: the body becomes infected or inflamed, or grows abnormally, or is affected in any number of ways, all of which can be studied conventionally with laboratory tests or under a microscope. But a mental illness is...
The bible has the following recommendations: (Deuteronomy 21:18-21:21) 18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and [that], when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19...