The Pattern of Autonomy If you’ve ever noticed that cults eventually get weird about sex, good for you. You noticed the pattern everyone pretends is accidental. It isn’t. Cults can survive bad predictions, failed prophecies, and leaders who lie constantly. What they cannot tolerate for long is private autonomy. Sex is where autonomy lives. WHY...
The Cupcake Conspiracy Vanilla is the default flavor of humanity. You do not have to like it; you were just born into a world where ice cream, candles, and basically anything labeled “original flavor” taste like it. But how did that happen? Who decided “normal” tastes like the inside of a cupcake? It started with...
Hospitals will spend millions on robot arms and marble lobbies but need a philanthropist to fund crayons. Meanwhile, studies keep proving that creative arts therapy helps kids heal, parents cope, and staff avoid total burnout. So why is something this obvious treated like an optional extra? Who’s the Mysterious Money Guy? Craig Ponzio is the...
Psychosis sounds like one of those dramatic words TV writers throw around right before a character sprints into traffic. In reality, it is less about Oscar-level breakdowns and more about your brain turning on extra features most people keep in the off position. Think of it as the premium subscription to perception. There are extra...
What Is Consciousness? Consciousness is that little voice in your head that says, “Hey, I exist.” Not the voice that reminds you to buy milk or tells you your ex’s new haircut looks like a failed hedge sculpture, the deeper one. The voice that knows you are you. Without it, you are just a well...
People love to think cults only happen to uneducated people. Then they meet someone who read Freud or Jung once and now explains the entire universe with it. Same brain. Better vocabulary. Cults aren’t a failure of intelligence. They’re a failure of humility.1 Freud and Jung both understood how easily thinking turns into believing. Their...
They’re not. Cults are about what happens to perfectly normal brains when certainty starts feeling safer than thinking.1 Which explains a lot of family dinners. WHAT A CULT ACTUALLY IS A cult is not a belief you dislike. That’s just the internet being the internet. A cult is what happens when a group trains your...
Most people think music is entertainment. It is not. Music is the nervous system’s favorite loophole. It gets past defenses that would slam shut if a therapist, partner, or friend gently said, Maybe you should talk about why you melted down in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.Music hits before meaning. A chord progression goes straight...
I have lost count of how many times someone has asked me,“What do you think about this because you’re a psychiatrist?”1 Or, “Are you analyzing me right now?”2 Or my personal favorite, whispered like I’m scanning their soul with airport security equipment, “You people frighten me.”3 People imagine psychiatrists diagnosing strangers the way botanists identify...
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