Category: Endurance, Recovery & Obligation
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The Fallacy of Subjective Truth
by Brenton L. Delpp There is no such thing as ‘my truth‘ Modern philosophy has increasingly inherited two opposing convictions concerning the human subject. The first elevates the subject into the source of truth itself. Authenticity replaces correspondence, experience replaces reality, and the modern refrain—“my truth”—gradually displaces the older question of truth altogether. The second…
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The Adolescent’s Dilemma
by Brenton L. Delp CBT, the Desert Fathers, a Why Things Are Not So Simple for Young People A fifteen-year-old in a psychiatric hospital may be able to name every coping skill we ask for. She knows deep breathing, grounding, journaling, distraction, exercise, music, positive self-talk, and the importance of reaching out to a trusted…
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Why Moral Relativism Fails
by Brenton L. Delp Locke and the Persistence of Obligation Steven Knight’s motion picture Locke (2013) begins with a man making a turn. Ivan Locke leaves a construction site in Birmingham, approaches the road that would take him home, and instead drives south toward London. The physical movement is slight, almost ordinary, but everything in…
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The Desert Fathers and the Lost Depth of Cognitive Therapy
by Brenton L. Delp Modern cognitive behavioral therapy rests on a powerful and clinically useful premise: human beings do not respond only to events themselves, but to the meanings, interpretations, assumptions, and automatic thoughts through which those events are received. A person is not simply acted upon by the world. He interprets the world, and…
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Is the Term Mental Illness Helpful?
by Brenton L. Delp The phrase mental illness is one of the most familiar expressions in modern psychology and psychiatry. It appears compassionate, medical, and destigmatizing. It tells us that depression, anxiety, psychosis, addiction, trauma, and other forms of suffering are not simply moral failures. It suggests that people deserve care rather than condemnation. In…
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The Problem with “Evidence-Based”
by Brenton L. Delp Few phrases carry more authority in modern medicine, psychology, addiction treatment, education, and public policy than the phrase “evidence-based.” It sounds sober, scientific, objective, and responsible. It appears to separate disciplined knowledge from mere opinion, superstition, ideology, tradition, charisma, and personal anecdote. In principle, this is exactly what it should do.…
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Beyond the Twelve Steps: Recovery, Community, and the Future of Peer Support
by Brenton L. Delp Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most successful voluntary organizations in modern history. Since its founding in 1935, it has helped millions of people achieve and maintain sobriety. Countless lives have been saved through its meetings, its fellowship, and its insistence that one alcoholic can help another where professionals, institutions, and…
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Soul, Psyche, Anima, Mind: A Philological History of Inwardness
by Brenton L. Delp Modern psychology inherited a word before it inherited a science. That word was not originally behavior, cognition, adjustment, ego, or even unconscious. It was soul. Long before psychology became a clinical discipline, a laboratory method, or a therapeutic profession, it belonged to a family of words that named life, breath, inwardness,…
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Self-Worth or A Sense of Significance
by Brenton L. Delp The Limitations of Modern Therapeutic Culture The modern world increasingly confuses self-worth with significance because it no longer possesses stable symbolic structures capable of mediating human meaning outside the isolated individual. What earlier civilizations grounded metaphysically, technologically advanced societies now attempt to generate psychologically. Yet these are not identical realities. Self-worth…
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Toward a Therapy After the End of Miracles
by Brenton L. Delp Addiction treatment now stands under the immense prestige of medical science, and it should. Medicine has earned authority where death, withdrawal, craving, overdose, and recurrent relapse are concerned. It has corrected the cruelty of moralism, clarified the bodily realities of dependence, and supplied interventions that save lives. A serious account of…
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Psychology Without Soul
by Brenton L. Delp “Since uncle Jack died you’ve never been the same.” “Well of course I haven’t, I don’t have uncle Jack anymore, have I?” (Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles) A peculiar confusion governs much contemporary discourse about mental life. The language is now almost automatic. The brain prioritizes. The brain evaluates. The brain…
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When Medicine Became Morality by Other Means
by Brenton L. Delp The modern medical world speaks as though it were simply reporting facts. It presents itself as descriptive, empirical, evidence-based, and therefore beyond the old vulgarities of blame and sermon. Yet anyone who has spent time around discussions of addiction, obesity, depression, sexuality, trauma, chronic illness, or “compliance” knows that medicine very…