Checkout Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life by Allen Frances. Here is an excerpt:

With an assist from an overly ambitious psychiatry, all human difference is being transmuted into chemical imbalance meant to be treated with a handy pill. Turning difference into illness was among the great strokes of marketing genius accomplished in our time.

All the great characters in myths, novels, and plays have endured the test of time precisely because they drift so colorfully away from the mean. Do we really want to put Oedipus on the couch, give Hamlet a quick course of behavior therapy, start Lear on antipsychotics?

(Elemental.)

Checkout “Smart Girls at the Party.”

Smart Girls at the Party is a rapidly expanding online network that aims to help the process of cultivating the authentic selves of young women and the young at heart.

In each episode of their anchor show, Smart Girls at the Party, host Amy Poehler, producer Meredith Walker and decorated singer-songwriter Amy Miles, interview girls with interests that run a wide spectrum. Each show concludes with important questions and the legendary dance party (watch for fun cameos).

Smart Girls also offers music, advice, glimpses into other cultures, nice things to put into the world, and even a minute or two with some boys.

We change the world by being ourselves, and being ourselves is a life long quest.

Smart Girls hopes to provide some fun reference materials along the way.

(Foster Parents Rock.)

Checkout “The Museum of Broken Relationships.”

Whatever the motivation for donating personal belongings – be it sheer exhibitionism, therapeutic relief, or simple curiosity – people embraced the idea of exhibiting their love legacy as a sort of a ritual, a solemn ceremony. Our societies oblige us with our marriages, funerals, and even graduation farewells, but deny us any formal recognition of the demise of a relationship, despite its strong emotional effect. In the words of Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse: “Every passion, ultimately, has its spectator… (there is) no amorous oblation without a final theater.”

(Francis Ha.)

Checkout How to Change the World (The School of Life) by John Paul-Flintoff. From an interview:

Don’t most people have their hands full saving themselves?

Yeah, most people are only concerned about their world. They want to change their world so it suits them a little bit better. And that’s not necessarily just a selfish thing. You want to change the world for the people who you care about.

It’s impossible not to be affecting your world. Whatever you’re doing is having an effect on the world around you. If you only are scraping by and you have no time to do anything else, at least notice that what you’re doing is having an effect and repercussions.

(Augustine. Jean Martin Charcot.)

The New Yorker has an article by Paul Bloom titled “The Baby in the Well: The case against empathy.”

Empathy research is thriving these days, as cognitive neuroscience undergoes what some call an “affective revolution.” There is increasing focus on the emotions, especially those involved in moral thought and action. We’ve learned, for instance, that some of the same neural systems that are active when we are in pain become engaged when we observe the suffering of others. Other researchers are exploring how empathy emerges in chimpanzee and other primates, how it flowers in young children, and the sort of circumstances that trigger it.