Thanks for being onboard with this occasional newsletter!

1.  Queens International:  my writing for their biennial is live!  Data, the Social Being and the Social Network

2.  On Angela Duckworth’s Grit (which I haven’t read, but that didn’t stop me from having opinions about it :) based on all the critiques)

3.  A great podcast, Invisibilia, on psychological themes - including personality change in prison, and acceptance of mental illness

4.  SEOUL SEARCHING - a fantastic Asian American film, in rolling release, in SF starting 7/15

5.  DAZE OF JUSTICE - documentary about Cambodian Americans showing at Asian Art Museum 7/14

6.  THE LAST SEASON - Documentary touching war veterans with PTSD, online for free

7.  Asian Americans band together to write their parents/relatives about Black Lives Matter

8.  Mindfulness, Compassion and Relationship:  Some thoughts on coping with these troubled times, including links to a self-compassion course

9.  A Trump roundup of my blogs to date about Trump, and also some important other articles to consider

10.  David Brooks makes a case for altruism!

 

Thanks for reading!   

 

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After the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting (written up in my blog here "Reportback from the APA: It's About Love") I spent 4 magical days in New York City.  I heard poets Ocean Vuong, Janine Joseph, Wendy Xu and Jennifer Hayashida at the Asian American Writers Workshop; saw the fantastic Shuffle Along on Broadway; and traipsed through many Chelsea Galleries and the Whitney.  Ideas about vulnerability and the core insecurities of being human that arose before and during the APA crystallized in th Whitney’s portrait galleries, as I learned how artists represented those issues on canvas.  More to come on these topics…

    At the Queens Museum, I walked into a talk about Vivian Qin’s artwork KZ (2016) , part of the Queens International.  I asked a question, and one thing led to another, and I was asked to write a response to the technological sculpture from my perspective as a psychiatrist.

    It’s live now: Data, The Social Being and the Social Network 

 

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2.  Angela Duckworth’s Grit is on the bestseller lists.  While I appreciate her accomplishment and idea, I have qualms about character assessment in schools.  I come down on the side of relationship and love rather than work as a source of happiness.  This article comes loaded with a lot of footnotes and links to other critiques of the Grit concept, for those of you interested in a deeper dive.

 

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3.  A patient turned me onto Invisibilia last year, and they’ve just started their second season.  I’ve loved some recent episodes:

The Personality Myth:  Useful for those of us interested in personality change - with a great story about one man’s transformation in prison

 

The Problem with the Solution:  Portrayal of a town in Belgium which integrates people with mental illness into the community, and proposes acceptance, and tuning down emotional expressiveness/criticism/hostility as a therapeutic method.  Of course, we’ll wonder about the limits of this - we obviously don’t accept harm to self or other … but maybe we can go farther in accepting other behaviors

 

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4.  SEOUL SEARCHING  was the Opening Night Film of CAAMFest last year, I wrote about it here.  It’s a great coming of age movie, modeled after John Hughes movies of the 80s, and is one of the best Asian American films of the last decade, IMHO.  It’s on a rolling release, and opening in San Francisco on July 15th at the Roxie.  A MUST SEE!!!!

 

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5.  DAZE OF JUSTICE, Mike Siv’s documentary about Cambodian Americans returning to Cambodia for the International Tribunals, will be shown at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco this Thursday:

Daze of Justice: Community Screening followed by Discussion Panel with Mike Siv

 

 

 

 

My Blogs:

The Power Tactics of Donald Trump 

(This article was banned from Psychology Today’s homepage :)  for being too political and not psychological enough.  Decide for yourself.)

 

10.  We can't end with Trump!  David Brooks recently wrote this fine op-ed on Altruism.

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks again!

Ravi