Articles, Columnists, In Person
A night with my invisible friend
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
When my friend had to bow out of an educational event we had planned to attend together, I thought I would be on my own. I never expected to be sitting with a guy who snuck...
Smartphone summer
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
This was the summer of my first smartphone. I wasn’t the last holdout among my friends and family, but I was close.
My wife is going for the record of having the...
Re-thinking what useful means
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Sometimes, the obvious distortions in the thinking of a person with mental illness can lead us to examine our own assumptions about the way we live our lives. One of the most...
Taking the next step
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
I find it hard to believe that it has been a full year since I wrote about “The Retirement Readiness Test,” a three-day weekend rehearsal of a retired psychologist’s...
Airline suicide raises issues for psychologists
By Edward Stern J.D.
On March 24, Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps. One hundred forty four passengers and six crew members died. It’s now believed that the co-pilot deliberately...
Why place matters
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
The man had just explained how his violent behavior was the norm in the poor urban neighborhood where he was raised and I responded with a simple acknowledgement of how...
Extra people
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Flannery O’Connor has a powerful short story entitled, “The Displaced Person,” where she describes the impact of the arrival of a refugee family on a small Southern farm....
When laughter shows the way
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
In all the years I had known him, through hundreds of therapy hours that sometimes left me feeling as hopeless as he did; he had never stopped talking about killing himself. He...
Learning to trust the process
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
The interviews are over, the rankings have been submitted, and the cloud has delivered the names of our interns for the next training year. All of that is done but I am still...
All you need is love
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
In the dead of winter, Valentine’s Day reminds us of the healing power of love in all of its many forms. Cut through the commercial dross of the manufactured holiday and you...