Michael Ventura
Michael Ventura's biweekly column appears in the Austin Chronicle.
Contributed by Michael Ventura
15 Results
Of Us and Them
Updating Our Picture of Who We Are
An Awareness of the Soul
What Does It Mean to Really Get in Touch with Yourself?
When I was 5 years old, I experienced something that made me feel viscerally, mentally, emotionally, and inescapably connected to everything and everyone around me, while feeling what I can only describe as a sense of privacy so deep and unassailable that "loneliness" doesn't begin to describe it. Thirty-five years later, I felt it again. Read More
We Weren't Meant to Live in "Screenworld"
Why Therapy is the Counterculture We Need
Nowadays, you see screens at checkout counters and laundromats, in restaurants and waiting rooms, and on the dashboards of cars and in their back seats. Isn't there something peculiarly disembodied about it? How does one find or grow a sense of centeredness amid this continually shifting screenscape? Psychotherapy, by its nature and purpose, is Counter-Screenworld. Read More
Confronting Western Definitions of Sexuality and Intimacy
Michael Ventura on Sexuality and Romance as a Personal Journey into the Self
Today, sexuality still seems to be a territory as private and filled with fear as ever it was. We haven't advanced far in our ability to talk of our own sexuality one with another. Part of what makes sexuality scary is that it's a realm all its own: one in which the rational and the measured are overwhelmed and subsumed. It's where we meet ourselves most directly, without filters, without verbiage, and, if we go far enough, without fixed roles. It's where we meet ourselves with and through the Other, a partner as fluid we are. Read More
How Psychotherapy Helps Us Recover the Beauty in Our Lives
Questions for Helping Therapy Clients Reclaim Meaning
Many walk into the therapist's consulting room exactly at the moment that they have been stripped to the core of their being. While not at the physical meeting-point of life and death, they are often at its emotional and spiritual equivalent. One element they seek and are desperate for is beauty; they present a situation that's cut them off from experiencing beauty. All of which leaves us facing one piercing question: What is beautiful in your life? The therapist-client relationship is just about the last functioning shared space in this country where this question can be asked and, more important, heard. Which is why it's so crucial that therapists find a way to ask it. Read More
The New Social Mind
Immigration and Our National Identity Crisis
In our globalized, muticultural world, the individual and the family can no longer be understood solely as separate, discrete entities. Psychology must undertake an immense intellectual task if it's to remain relevant and applicable: to understand how the intersection of personal and group identity has changed and is continuing to evolve. Read More
The 8-Minute Cure
Can Watching Dr. Phil Change Your Life?