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The Third Casket: How Shakespeare Taught Us to Choose the Thing We Cannot Refuse

A man walks into a room and finds three boxes waiting for him. One is gold, one is silver, one is lead. He has been told that his whole life turns on which one he opens, and that the rules forbid him to open more than one. The woman he wants stands beside the boxes, unable to help him, bound by a dead father’s will. This is the casket scene from The Merchant of Venice, and it is one of the strangest moments in Shakespeare, because the test is rigged twice over. It is rigged inside the play, where Portia’s dead father designed the riddle so that only a man who can see past surface will win her. It is rigged outside the play, in the deeper sense Freud uncovered in 1913, where the choice was never free at all, and the man was always going to reach for the box that means his death.

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The Placebo Button

The elevator in my building has a door-close button that does nothing. I learned this the way everyone learns it, which is to say I pressed it for years under the impression that it was speeding up my departure. The button lights up. It makes a small click when pressed. It provides every sensory signal of function. What it does not do is close the door any faster than the door was going to close on its own. The elevators in most American buildings installed since 1990 have door-close buttons wired to nothing, because the Americans with Disabilities Act requires the door to stay open long enough for a person using a wheelchair or walker to enter, and the button that overrides that requirement is accessible only to the fire department with a key.

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The Inwardness of Things: McGilchrist, Panpsychism, and the Question We Cannot Settle

The oldest question in philosophy is also the question philosophy has done the worst job of answering. We know that we are conscious because we are reading these words and something is happening as we read them. We feel the weight of our hand on the table, hear the room around us, register a flicker of agreement or doubt as the sentences arrive. None of that requires argument. Descartes drew the line in 1637 with the Discours de la Méthode, and the line still holds. The trouble starts as soon as we look up from the page.

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The States That Will Not Be Commanded

There is a class of human experience that answers to no direct order. You cannot tell yourself to fall asleep. The instruction arrives at a locked door. Sleep refuses the simple transaction of command and execution. Instead, it assembles itself once certain conditions are present, and those conditions include, strangely enough, the act of picturing yourself already inside the state you are trying to enter. Lying down begins it. Closed eyes continue it. Imagining yourself asleep, entering the self who has already arrived, completes the condition, and only then does sleep agree to appear.

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Kick the Bot, Fear the Dog: Street Psychology and the Coming Age of Mechanical Animals

The first time you see a sidewalk delivery bot, you smile. It is impossible not to. The thing is knee-high, usually white or pastel, rolling along on six stubby wheels like a cooler that gained sentience and decided to take itself for a walk. It carries burritos, or prescription medication, or someone’s iced latte, and it navigates curbs and crosswalks with the earnest determination of a toddler heading for a puddle. You watch it pause at an intersection, calculate its moment, and trundle forward with a confidence that borders on optimism. Your first instinct is to root for it.

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Psychology of Delusions: Why We Cling to False Beliefs

Delusions aren’t just quirky thoughts; they’re deeply held beliefs that defy logic and evidence. They’re like stubborn weeds in the garden of the mind, refusing to budge even when confronted with the most compelling counterarguments. But why do they take root in the first place? Often, it’s because they serve a purpose, acting as a psychological shield against the harsh realities of life. Think of them as a mental coping mechanism, a way to cushion the blow of painful truths or overwhelming anxieties. The DSM-5, the psychiatrist’s bible, defines them as fixed beliefs resistant to change, often arising from complex emotional and cognitive landscapes. They’re not mere whims, but rather a reflection of a deep-seated psychological need.

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The Narcissistic Mother

The Narcissistic Mother is a classically-defined psychological condition that infects, and ruins, many mother-daughter and mother-son relationships. The tenets of such a motherhood are created equally in the evil dyad of the purposeful and the poisoning.

My new book — Mother Narcissus — is autobiographical fiction inspired by the Narcissistic Mother meme, and it has taken me over a half-century to write because the confronted themes and unconditional threats are not insoluble and are always voluble. Soon enough, the day comes when one must stand up to stare down all the vicious demons, no matter how else they are perceived by others.

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