In 1964 Norman Cousins, the well-known editor of the Saturday Review, was hospitalized with a painful autoimmune disease.  He suffered high fever, severe pain, and near-paralysis. Mainstream medicine offered little […]

I was in my first year of psychiatry residency, and I was very concerned about a young woman that had been admitted to the inpatient ward. She had long before […]

It has long been conjectured that the way we think, feel, and view the world is determined by the language we use. This has come to be known as the […]

Charles Bonnet was an 18th Century Swiss naturalist and philosopher. His 87-year-old grandfather came to him with some unusual complaints. The elderly man was becoming nearly blind from cataracts in […]

Any medication can cause side effects, ranging in severity from trivial to life-threatening. There can also be psychiatric side effects, such as depression, mania, confusion, or even psychosis. Some medications […]

I had been seeing him as an outpatient for about 8 months. He was a pleasant man, and I enjoyed our interactions. He suffered bipolar disorder, but was also substantially […]

Prologue: It may be helpful to provide some initial perspective on the essay I’ve titled, Phantom limbs and phantom loves: The Nature of Grief. Grief is one of the most […]

The word, neurotheology, was first used in 1962 by Aldous Huxley in his novel, Island. In his book, Huxley described a society that integrated Western science with Eastern philosophy to […]

The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku, which translates into English as forest bathing. It is a method of healing the mind and body by immersing one’s self in nature. The word […]