Henry Steinberger, Ph.D., LLC

08/05/2024

Does anyone want a rather complete collection of books on REBT, by Albert Ellis and others? Please contact me if that interests you. I'd hate to toss them all. The only one I'm keeping is The Civilized Couples Guide to Extramarital Adventure which now sells for $65 online. You might want to look them up and see what's worth taking and selling.

04/06/2022

As a psychologist, often asked about the cause of some behavior or emotion, I just want to say: Happy Birthday Robert Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Check out his TED talk at;
https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_biology_of_our_best_and_worst_selves?language=en I like his answer, even if it is complex, what is clear that our behaviors are multiply determined and anyone who puts it in just one bucket (e.g. it's genetic or it's parenting or it's the environment) is missing the many interactions between all of the factors that go into determining our best and worst behaviors (and emotions). Happy birthday Robert.

How can humans be so compassionate and altruistic -- and also so brutal and violent? To understand why we do what we do, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky looks at extreme context, examining actions on timescales from seconds to millions of years before they occurred. In this fascinating talk, he share...

02/15/2022

This sounds great. I want everyone to know about it. I'd love to hear feedback as people try this new app.

10/23/2021

Fellow professionals an people with addictions would do well to watch this, especially the presentation by Maia Szalavitz

SMART Recovery is a global movement of self-empowering addiction recovery mutual support meetings. We, along with many others, are truly leading the future o...

04/22/2021

It just got posted and it's TODAY, Thursday at 7 pm PACIFIC TIME (go figure - that's 9 pm Central where I am). It's free and might be very helpful. Lucky you checked this page today.

Come to our Free Online Introductory class for our new e-course: Mindfulness for Stress and Anxiety 6 Week Self-Guided Course!

04/08/2021

Dr. Marc F Kern offers some helpful advise on thoughts and urges that I'd like to share with everyone I work with or that you work with.

Intrusive thoughts are involuntary and unpleasant thoughts, images, or ideas that pop into our mind. Here is a simple technique to help disempower their affect on our mental health.

04/05/2021

You might have to click on this to see the entire short article by Stanton Peele.

The Stanton Peele Addiction Website, January 7, 2006. Research increasingly shows that intensive ma*****na use often meets the technical requirements for addiction (or dependence). Analysts use this as evidence of the need to maintain the drug’s illegal status. But the fact of addictiveness is irr...

04/03/2021

The Four Pillars of Wellbeing according to Richard Davidson of the Center for Healthy Minds (consider signing up for their presentations):

03/25/2021

When Neurology Underpins Human Behavior

About this time last year, Foreign Affairs magazine published an easy-to-read article by Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscientist who had spent much of his career studying primates (especially baboons) and who had earlier authored a best-selling book discussing the biological basis of human behavior, both good qualities and bad.
Sapolsky’s 790-page tome, Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst, had already been recapped in a March 2018 essay by Tom Jacobs: “Why we engage in tribalism, nationalism, and scapegoating.”
An even earlier, and not entirely positive, New York Times review of Behave was published when the book was released, written by Richard Wrangham in July 2017.
But it was the more recent Foreign Affairs article, “This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them” that was of interest at Brights Central because of its succinct presentation of the us/them topic, along with its contemporary relevance to the recent rise in nationalism and autocratic leaders across the globe. BC had hoped to share a link to enable Brights easy access to that one.

In the FA article, Sapolsky asks whether humans can overcome the neurological, hormonal, and developmental underpinnings of their tribalism and offers a rather depressing take on nationalism’s cognitive enablers.
“When it comes to group belonging, humans don’t seem too far from chimpanzees: people are comfortable with the familiar and bristle at the unfamiliar. Taming our aggressive tendencies requires swimming upstream.”
The essay surveys elements of human behavior that underpin the tendency to stereotype, to divide into “us/them” categories, and to form “tribes” that thenceforth override other considerations. It's not full-on determinism, however. Sapolsky does offer some prospect that change is possible.
BC had hoped that the FA article would become more accessible (in full, and without a wall) so that we could invite readers to it via the bulletin. To no avail. However, if you are interested in the topic, a short video interview with the professor is available online, touching very briefly (and all too sketchily) on some of the same material.
In such politically divisive times, it can be enlightening to take a hard look at our own biology. It is what we humans are “up against.” In confronting our unhelpful traits, the two aforementioned essay and review articles and the video are places to start.

03/24/2021

Here's an event to promote healthy minds - register for free - event is Monday March 29th at 7 pm CDST: https://mailchi.mp/centerhealthyminds/healthymindslivemarch
See you all there.

Discover new skills for your mental and emotional well-being from researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds. This event will focus on the Healthy Minds Framework consisting of four pillars of well-being that have been studied in the lab and have been shown to ...

03/13/2021

A brilliant metaphor to help us let go of the struggle we experience with our thoughts in less than 3 minutes. Check it out

This entertaining animation illustrates the internal struggles we have with our thoughts and feelings - and how to step out of them. Written and narrated by ...