Psychology https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us Standards of Care The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28985 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:45 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-standards-of-care 606-4-wild-preview.jpg 606 - Wild - Pitts The Feeding Some leeches have two jaws. Others have three. Some have teeth on their tongues. There are protective leeches who hover over their eggs, and leeches who carry their newborns in pouches like tiny kangaroos.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28988 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-the-feeding 606-26-rios-preview.jpg 606 - Rios - Glatt Sunbeams

God and the Doctor we alike adore / But only when in danger, not before; / The danger o’er, both are alike requited, / God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.

John Owen

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28984 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-sunbeams 606-49-wild-preview.jpg 606 - Wild - Sunbeams Indecision “Whether you go up the ladder or down it,” / says the Tao, “your position is shaky.”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28937 Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/603-indecision Sunbeams

In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.

Newt Gingrich

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28818 Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/sunbeams-political-wisdom-quotations-596 596-49-duval-preview.jpg 596 - Duval - Sunbeams Anger Management Dr. B. spun a finger in the air, his signal to let the games begin. I think I called Michael a “no-good fucking loser,” a put-down one of my bosses had once leveled at me. I watched Michael’s hands form fists and the whites of his eyes get bigger.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23855 Wed, 31 Jan 2024 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23855-anger-management Memory: Short-Term Loss, Long-Term Gain I am not so sure it is “we” who look back. The commemorating imagination seems to come alive on its own. We are not the sole instigators of remembering; memory seems to push itself on us.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22280 Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22280-memory-short-term-loss-long-term-gain Gray Matter Seeing and hearing are selective. We register what is needed at the moment and unconsciously ignore other input. It may seem that our eyes are like a camera and our ears are like microphones, objectively recording everything, but . . . our senses are not at all like those devices.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26710 Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26710-gray-matter The Best Defense The most dangerous weapons of war in the twenty-first century are not bullets and bombs; they are the weaponization of this rage, mistrust, alienation, and other tangles of trauma, which make all forms of violence more likely.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23074 Thu, 28 Oct 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23074-the-best-defense Sent Away Some of these children do need help, but is this the right type of help? Over the years counselors have been charged with sexual abuse, physical abuse, and predatory behavior.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23464 Thu, 22 Jul 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23464-sent-away This Mortal Coil I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that almost everybody on earth is currently more aware than usual that they’re going to die. . . . People are becoming more racist, xenophobic, and willing to engage in hate crimes than they were in the recent past, for example. But being reminded that we’re going to die can also bring out the best in us, making us more altruistic — at least, toward people we consider to be part of our group.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25916 Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25916-this-mortal-coil Parting The Clouds All the data so far suggest that a single treatment, or two treatments, with psychedelics can relieve depression for an extended period, because the psychedelics cause the patient to see the world differently.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27294 Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27294-parting-the-clouds Not So Different After All With the coronavirus we have another interesting issue: how we eat wildlife. Ecologists and conservationists have been saying for fifty years that we shouldn’t be eating everything on the planet.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24764 Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24764-not-so-different-after-all Filling The Void If we focus on people who are using opiates . . . we can say there’s an upsetting, awful addiction problem with them, over there, and deal with it in a prohibitive manner. In this way we minimize our vast social problems.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25383 Fri, 01 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25383-filling-the-void Tea Time At 3 AM my eyes snap open. It’s been about fifteen hours since my last fix, and I’m already edging into withdrawal. With a sigh I get out of bed and head down to the basement to make a cup of tea from my store of opium poppies.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22972 Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22972-tea-time In Praise Of Incompetence That word, competence, came to me after my six-year struggle; it came as an alternative, if not an outright escape hatch, to the daily grind of despair.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25883 Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25883-in-praise-of-incompetence From Here To Eternity I was outside of time. Awe, glory, and gratitude are the only words for what I experienced.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25603 Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25603-from-here-to-eternity Misdiagnosed And Misunderstood People often ask if I believe autism is overdiagnosed, if we’re just slapping a label on geeky kids who in previous generations would have been considered merely eccentric. I reply that I believe autism is still underdiagnosed in two groups: women and people of color. The cultural and class bias built into the diagnostic process was so pervasive in the 1980s that psychologist Victor Sanua claimed that autism is rare among families of color. The reality was that people of color often didn’t get decent healthcare.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24905 Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24905-misdiagnosed-and-misunderstood Sunbeams

The timidity of the child . . . is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place.

G.K. Chesterton

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26877 Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26877-sunbeams Sometimes I Think About Suicide Since I started this essay, I have found a relationship of sorts and taken a job with a magazine that some friends started. The difference between a happy ending and an unhappy ending is simply the place you decide to stop telling your story.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21781 Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21781-sometimes-i-think-about-suicide The Long Shadow One of the most important variables, in my experience, is when things happen. If you experience emotionally disengaged caregiving, humiliation, or a sense of being unwanted in the first year or two of life, even if you then escape that environment — maybe you’re adopted, or your parent who was depressed gets better — that early experience can still cause profound social and emotional problems for you all the way into adulthood. On the other hand, kids who have a good first year of consistent, predictable caregiving and then end up in shelters or foster homes and bounce around the system, maybe get sexually and physically abused, and so on — those children often function reasonably well as adolescents.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28171 Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28171-the-long-shadow Sunbeams

I am troubled by my shapeless fears. My God, these anxieties! Who can live in the modern world without catching his share of them?

Vincent van Gogh

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23470 Fri, 01 Jul 2016 23:11:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23470-sunbeams <em>excerpted from</em><br />We’ve Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy — And The World’s Getting Worse Hillman: I would rather define self as the interiorization of community. And if you make that little move, then you’re going to feel very different about things. If the self were defined as the interiorization of community, then the boundaries between me and another would be much less sure.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25019 Fri, 01 Jul 2016 23:09:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25019-em-excerpted-from-em-br-we-ve-had-a-hundred-years-of-psychotherapy-and-the-world-s-getting-worse Who Are You Calling Crazy? Mental illness is a function of consciousness, and consciousness is something we see through a glass darkly. We simply are not prepared to understand it with the same certainty that we are prepared to understand, say, liver disease.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23808 Fri, 01 Jul 2016 23:02:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23808-who-are-you-calling-crazy As We Lay Dying At every deathbed and hospital room, I didn’t see sane dying. I saw sedated dying, depressed dying, isolated dying, utterly disembodied dying. Sane dying would require a childhood steeped in death’s presence, an adulthood employed in its service, and an elderhood testifying to its necessity. Sane dying is a village-making event: lots of people with plenty to do, the whole production endorsing life.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25511 Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25511-as-we-lay-dying The R-Word When he diagnosed my three-month-old, Fiona, with a chromosomal disorder, the redheaded, cherubic medical geneticist did not use the phrase “mentally retarded” — thank God, or the gods of rhetoric, or just the politically correct medical school the young doctor had attended.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21293 Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21293-the-r-word Almost Unendurable Beauty The plastic prescription vial contains thirty doses. I press the cap down, twist it counterclockwise, and shake a cylindrical pill into my hand. It is an ugly gray, like dryer lint, like newly poured concrete, like a bullet. I know my daughter will notice this.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21319 Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21319-almost-unendurable-beauty Beyond Their Years We say children are gifted when their intellectual ability is advanced beyond their age. A four-year-old girl who can pass all the items on an IQ test that an eight-year-old is expected to be able to do would obtain an IQ score in the 200 range. Children who are developmentally advanced are out of sync with their peers, and also out of sync with the expectations of teachers and parents, which leads to vulnerability. They need individualized education and counselors who understand how to work with these children.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22301 Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22301-beyond-their-years The One You’re With I think it’s possible to learn to seek out love at any point in life. In my own life I made a major turnaround as an adult when I discovered how to relate more with people instead of remaining isolated. People can wake up at any time to what they need as human beings regardless of where they started. Positive emotions are our birthright, and we all have access to them. It could be that the families we grew up in didn’t help us to feel them, but the people who raised you can’t take away your capacity to resonate with others. They may have reduced your skills, but the capacity is still there.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22161 Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22161-the-one-you-re-with In The Quiet Room There is nothing to remember. Pale flesh and coarse, dark hair and a mountain of a belly. Hands that lingered too long. A weight that wouldn’t move. No, nothing to remember.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23104 Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23104-in-the-quiet-room