GURIDI

A psychoanalyst in search of the logic of the absurd

It is there in our night dreams, in our Freudian slips, in our jokes… Bewildering situations incite us to search for meanings and explanations elsewhere, even when these lie beyond evidence-based facts

DAVID DORENBAUM

OCT 03, 2024 - 05:02 COT

During a therapy session, one of my patients, perplexed by the furor over the U.S. election, tells me: “I’ve never been interested in politics, let alone U.S. politics. So why can’t I take my eyes off that antiquated cartoon character [Trump]?” To which he himself replies: “Because it’s absurd… a farce.” Another patient, middle-aged and with a successful career, comes to see me, tormented by an order that states: “If you don’t pray two hours before going to work, you’ll be fired.” And he asks: “If it’s absurd, why do I do it?” The more vivid his obsessive experience, the more compelling the compulsion.

Did the Pandemic Break Our Brains?

 

Flavio Coelho

Did the Pandemic Break Our Brains?

By Jamie Ducharme

16 september 2024

Not long ago, Mark Chiverton, a 33-year-old in the U.K., noticed he was making a lot of silly mistakes. He’d mix up words when writing emails, or blank on a basic term while talking to his wife. None of these slip-ups were all that concerning on their own—but they were happening frequently enough that Chiverton worried he was, to put it bluntly, “getting dumber.”