S H A M b l o g

A regular reader, Case, gently chastises me as follows: "Since The Secret crowd was on Oprah last week, I've been waiting for a SHAM post on the topic." He also observes, "Isn't The Secret the anti-determinism?", and, helpfully, "FYI, the movie is now free on the web at [ this site ] that aggregates YouTube videos." Case...you got me dead to rights. The last few weeks have been crazed, so rather than watch Oprah's Secret -fest live (which I'm not sure I could've stomached anyway; I'd need several stiff drinks, and I can't start that early in the day), I TiVo'd it for later replay. Alas, the gods of technology decided to have a little fun with me: It didn't "take," for whatever reason. Maybe the Secretmeisters, in their state of profound cosmic contempt for me and my ilk, managed to dispatch some sort of curse into the ethers, and it later came to rest in my video equipment. Or maybe it's a "law of ...

... The speaking gig, which was in Tulsa, went very, very well. Lots of enthusiastic feedback, both during my presentation and in informal meet-n-greets afterwards. Which meant more in this case than it might otherwise, since I was talking (for two hours, remember) to a room full of shrinks—folks, in other words, who know the terrain. I missed no opportunity to remind them that the self-appointed gods of SHAMdom are eating their lunch: i.e., practicing psychotherapy without a license. Heads nodded and murmuring erupted in various corners of the hotel ballroom every time I made a related comment.... Oh, and good steamship round , too. ... Interesting feedback from one attendee arrived in a lengthy email yesterday. I made this same point in SHAM , but he anchors it in his own clinical experience, writing, in part, "It occurred to me that buying help is sometimes a way to delay change. I had that happen early in my career. People would sometimes come to me for help and say that they...