Practical Philosophies for Living
Much of philosophy today contends that modern life is damaged life. Theodor Adorno tells us that this life is wrong and cannot be lived rightly, while Walter Benjamin observes that, in terms of our structures of feeling and knowing the world, “we have become impoverished”. Adorno and Max Horkheimer suggest that magic died long ago. Wrong life, poverty of experience, and the death of magic: how then can we live? This question animates my thought as psychotherapist and educator. Over two decades of clinical practice have taught me that damaged life can be beautiful life, capable of the most radical kind of joy.
Drawing from the insights of thinkers as diverse as Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler, I work with patients and students to articulate a kind of practical philosophy for living, thinking theory as praxis and strategies for living damaged life as well as possible.
My work imagines the form and content of a psychoanalysis to come by asking how we might remake ourselves and the world in radical joy and affirmation. I believe we can work through the sad passions of modern life. Together we can stop looking away from the pain it causes and begin to imagine a life worth living.