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by Margie Nichols, Ph.D. A couple of weeks ago, the Pink Therapy group in the UK made news by proclaiming ‘GSD’ – Gender and Sexual Diversities – as the new umbrella term for a community that seems to add letters by the season. Seriously, I’ve seen: LGBTQQIAA- lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, allies….
By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. Recently I saw a special report put out by the Gallup organization on the results of polling done last year. Gallup asked 120,000 people the following questions: ‘Do you, personally, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender?’ This is the largest number of Americans who have EVER been polled about their…
by Margie Nichols What does the placebo effect have to do with psychotherapy – other than to cast doubt on its validity? The placebo effect is the tendency of people to get better if they think they’ve been given medicine or treatment to ‘cure’ them, even when all they’ve gotten is a sugar pill. …
By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. Two things recently have made me think about that important piece of LGBT history, the ‘de-classification’ of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. The first is the news, released this week, that the fifth edition of the ‘Bible’ of psychiatric illness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, will be published in Spring…
by Margie Nichols The November 25 edition of the New York Times Sunday Magazine has a headline that reads ‘What Brand is Your Therapist?’ The story, ‘The Branding Cure: My so-called career as a therapist,’ is written by Lori Gottlieb, herself a newly practicing psychologist. She describes – and mostly deplores – the trend towards…
by Margie Nichols In honor of Thanksgiving, I’m posting this blog I wrote in 2010, along with an update at the end. It’s pretty personal, and when I read it again I realized the theme is as true now as it was then. I hope you enjoy it. One night last week I offered my…
by Margie Nichols Nope, I’m not blogging about gratitude. Though the situation certainly includes many possibilities for that. Just a couple of things I noticed, given so much time on my hands: 1) We Are Animals. Our Bodies Prevail. In our section of Jersey city, where we were asked to wait out the storm…
By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. Last week this was all over the Internet: a London transman named Maxwell Zachs began a petition to the World Health Organization to remove ‘transsexualism’ from its list of ‘mental disorders’ in the ICD, the international disease classification system. Zachs says: “There is nothing wrong with me. I am perfectly healthy….
by Margie Nichols, Ph.D. For the last decade or so, I’ve increasingly felt glimmerings of a consciousness raising in the United States, a growing movement of people dissatisfied with materialism as their sole or primary life goal. They seem to be aware of the ‘Easterlin Effect,’ the oft-repeated finding that above a certain relatively modest…
By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. This is another post about parenting, but from a different perspective. A while ago I wrote about how parenting styles don’t matter. This is about something that does. We know through research that kids who are ‘different’ can be shielded from the effects of a judgmental world through the efforts of…
