Arlene Goldbard

One of the most interesting things about our times is how much is being discovered about the workings of the human mind. I count myself among the many artsy and intellectual types who reject purely functional or biological explanations for feelings as too mechanistic and inhumane (or too inhospitable to my own sense of specialness). […]

I really don’t want to write about this.
I’ve been procrastinating all week, waiting for another blog idea to pop onto my mindscreen, but the only topic that comes up is the aching, bleeding, pulsating Middle East. Or more accurately, the shadowy simulacrum of the Middle East that swirls through cyberspace, swamping everything.
My thoughts and […]

I feel I must stipulate that loyalty is a virtue, because so many wise people think it so. But the truth is, I’m not sure whether loyalty is a good thing, or even what it is.
A friend wrote to me about her own loyal affections, by which I think she meant her tendency to […]

It is reputed that Sigmund Freud died asking this question: What do women want? Everything, I suppose. This week, I discovered one surprisingly specific answer.
If I could take a pill that achieved the effects of daily exercise, I would. But my desire for a hale and limber golden age easily trumps my indolence, so […]

As I sat listening to someone speak eloquently against an injustice he had never directly experienced—you know the kind of thing, a man condemning the oppression of women or a non-Jewish German speaking passionately against the Nazis—an evil little thought arose in my mind. I overheard myself smugly dismissing the speaker as a hitchhiker: What’s […]