Recently in The New Yorker Category
At The Sunday New York Times -- seems like late January is NEW NOVELIST MONTH at the NYT, (and at publishing houses for that matter) what with the recent feature on Jim Collins' "Beginner's Greek", and this Sunday's Book review of Tod Wodlicka's "All Shall Be Well," and the Charles McGrath article in the Sunday Magazine about Charles Bock's novel, "Beautiful Children."
The Arts & Leisure also had a great feature on Robert Capa's lost suitcase of negatives which has been recently turned over to the International Center of Photography (which, in turn, was run for many years by Capa's brother Cornell Capa). Need I mention that the Robert Capa was born in Budapest, Hungary as Endre Erno Friedmann. Cornell was also born Friedmann, but kept his first name. And although you might not think Cornell a Jewish first name, it was quite popular at the beginning of the 20th Century in Budapest -- it was also my grandfather's name.
Medicine & Its Alternatives.
An interesting review by Jerome Groopman on "The Cure Within: A history of Mind- Body Medicine" By Anne Harrington. Harrington is the editor of a book on "The Placebo Effect." How alternative medicine came to be preferred to a visit to an M.D, and became a $40 billion business is worth pondering. An article I read recently made the point that many alternative medicines work because of the placebo effect -- that is the belief that they do work is so great, that when the person feels better and eventually is better, they attribute it to the alternative treatment.Everyone knows an alternative treatment that works, and everyone has a "miracle" healing story. The question is to how to set those in context.
Speaking of Groopman, his article on business-like approaches to cancer-cures in The New Yorker, "Buying a Cure," (Jan 28th issue) was fascinating -- and presents a different front of attack on current medical/scientific research practice -- one that while not yeilding "cures" certainly seems to be keeping some cancer patients alive a lot longer -- for which we may all be grateful.
The Sunday LA Times had an interesting feature on "Gossip Girl" and its failure to attract a large audience, despite all its buzz and success on other "platforms" (i.e. the internet). I confess that "Gossip Girl" is my guilty pleasure but the article does beg the looming question --- if everything migrates to the internet, can any of it succeed -- and if so, how?
The Arts & Leisure also had a great feature on Robert Capa's lost suitcase of negatives which has been recently turned over to the International Center of Photography (which, in turn, was run for many years by Capa's brother Cornell Capa). Need I mention that the Robert Capa was born in Budapest, Hungary as Endre Erno Friedmann. Cornell was also born Friedmann, but kept his first name. And although you might not think Cornell a Jewish first name, it was quite popular at the beginning of the 20th Century in Budapest -- it was also my grandfather's name.
Medicine & Its Alternatives.
An interesting review by Jerome Groopman on "The Cure Within: A history of Mind- Body Medicine" By Anne Harrington. Harrington is the editor of a book on "The Placebo Effect." How alternative medicine came to be preferred to a visit to an M.D, and became a $40 billion business is worth pondering. An article I read recently made the point that many alternative medicines work because of the placebo effect -- that is the belief that they do work is so great, that when the person feels better and eventually is better, they attribute it to the alternative treatment.Everyone knows an alternative treatment that works, and everyone has a "miracle" healing story. The question is to how to set those in context.
Speaking of Groopman, his article on business-like approaches to cancer-cures in The New Yorker, "Buying a Cure," (Jan 28th issue) was fascinating -- and presents a different front of attack on current medical/scientific research practice -- one that while not yeilding "cures" certainly seems to be keeping some cancer patients alive a lot longer -- for which we may all be grateful.
The Sunday LA Times had an interesting feature on "Gossip Girl" and its failure to attract a large audience, despite all its buzz and success on other "platforms" (i.e. the internet). I confess that "Gossip Girl" is my guilty pleasure but the article does beg the looming question --- if everything migrates to the internet, can any of it succeed -- and if so, how?
The January 14, 2008 issue of the New Yorker was a particularly strong issue (I'm still catching up on my New Yorkers), with interesting articles by Dana Goodyear on the Scientology Celebrity Center, Ken Auletta on Google and John Seabrook on the scrap metal business (not available in full on line --it is a long article).
Dana Goodyear has found a novel way in to Scientology --through architectural preservation. Her piece uses the Celebrity Center its; restoration, even its restaurant as well as their acquisition and restoration of many other Hollywood properties as a way to discuss the history of Scientology and the importance it places on their relationships with celebrities. Goodyear takes a fairly disinterested and benign view of Scientology as if she was a visitor to a cultural site of a foreign land.
People are always asking what Scientology is, and although Goodyear does not get to what the spiritual element is, or what makes it a religion, she does do a good job of giving a sense of what goes on -- and what "auditing" is.
"Auditing" is, in Goodyear's explanation, "a talking cure" in which one talks about certain traumatic or negative incidents while holding on to a device called an "E - meter" which, the claims is, measures your emotional response to this incident -- repeated uses of which "cleans" one of the negative feelings and allows you to be clear, happy, etc....
Now a confession: I've used an e-meter.
For a while, a few years back, I was seeing someone who was a business coach but was also a therapist. It turned out that she was a former Scientolgist and had risen high enough in the ranks to be a teacher. She had her own e-meter and for a few sessions she brought it out. Did it work? I suppose the Jewish answer is: It didn't hurt.
My personal feeling was that the e-meter itself was ridiculous. But that there was value in repeating the details of negative events until they no longer were taboo.
This seems not unlike a form of Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). Ellis was the father of behavioral psychology -- famous for saying that he got over his shyness with women when he forced himself to speak to 100 women at the Bronx botanical Garden -- after which he was no longer so shy. Ellis was no fan of Freud --- he thought the past was bunk -- you just needed to reprogram yourself with new behavioral patterns. Hmmmm.... Ellis was probably conceiving of his theories around the time L. Ron Hubbard was coming up with his. I wonder if they ever read each other's works?
It is interesting that Scientology which appears to be virulently opposed to psychiatry uses a "talking cure" -- "The Talking Cure" being another name for Freud's psychoanalysis. I've never had the impression that Scientology (or Tom Cruise in his Matt Lauer interview) distinguished between psychiatry and psychology, between psychoanalysis, psychopharmacology and behavioral psychology.
Dana Goodyear writes a blog for the New Yorker, Postcard from LA, and she has been blogging several follow-ups to the article. including today's on the TOM CRUISE SCIENTOLOGY VIDEO (which you can see on Gawker -- it was on youtube but was pulled from there)
Dana Goodyear has found a novel way in to Scientology --through architectural preservation. Her piece uses the Celebrity Center its; restoration, even its restaurant as well as their acquisition and restoration of many other Hollywood properties as a way to discuss the history of Scientology and the importance it places on their relationships with celebrities. Goodyear takes a fairly disinterested and benign view of Scientology as if she was a visitor to a cultural site of a foreign land.
People are always asking what Scientology is, and although Goodyear does not get to what the spiritual element is, or what makes it a religion, she does do a good job of giving a sense of what goes on -- and what "auditing" is.
"Auditing" is, in Goodyear's explanation, "a talking cure" in which one talks about certain traumatic or negative incidents while holding on to a device called an "E - meter" which, the claims is, measures your emotional response to this incident -- repeated uses of which "cleans" one of the negative feelings and allows you to be clear, happy, etc....
Now a confession: I've used an e-meter.
For a while, a few years back, I was seeing someone who was a business coach but was also a therapist. It turned out that she was a former Scientolgist and had risen high enough in the ranks to be a teacher. She had her own e-meter and for a few sessions she brought it out. Did it work? I suppose the Jewish answer is: It didn't hurt.
My personal feeling was that the e-meter itself was ridiculous. But that there was value in repeating the details of negative events until they no longer were taboo.
This seems not unlike a form of Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). Ellis was the father of behavioral psychology -- famous for saying that he got over his shyness with women when he forced himself to speak to 100 women at the Bronx botanical Garden -- after which he was no longer so shy. Ellis was no fan of Freud --- he thought the past was bunk -- you just needed to reprogram yourself with new behavioral patterns. Hmmmm.... Ellis was probably conceiving of his theories around the time L. Ron Hubbard was coming up with his. I wonder if they ever read each other's works?
It is interesting that Scientology which appears to be virulently opposed to psychiatry uses a "talking cure" -- "The Talking Cure" being another name for Freud's psychoanalysis. I've never had the impression that Scientology (or Tom Cruise in his Matt Lauer interview) distinguished between psychiatry and psychology, between psychoanalysis, psychopharmacology and behavioral psychology.
Dana Goodyear writes a blog for the New Yorker, Postcard from LA, and she has been blogging several follow-ups to the article. including today's on the TOM CRUISE SCIENTOLOGY VIDEO (which you can see on Gawker -- it was on youtube but was pulled from there)
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