by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 15, 2025 | Psychology, Psychology of Politics
We tend to think of mental illness as a biological fact like a broken leg or a virus. We assume that schizophrenia or depression looks the same in 2024 as it did in 1024. But history tells a different story. If you look at the timeline of psychosis and the specific...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 15, 2025 | Psychology
We live in a paradox. Look around you. Objectively, the world is functioning. The lights are on, the internet is working, and the grocery stores have food. Yet, subjectively, more and more of us feel like we are going insane. We feel a profound sense of alienation, as...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 15, 2025 | Evidence Based Practice and Research Psychology, Evidence Based Practice in Therapy, Psychology, Psychology Topics and Articles
Science-Flavored Capitalism: Deconstructing the Exploitative Cartel of Academic Journal Publishing We often think of science as an absolute public good. We collectively imagine it as a grand, borderless conversation where groundbreaking discoveries are shared freely...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 15, 2025 | Alternative Medicine and Holistic Health, Philosophy for Therapists, Psychology
Joseph Campbell is arguably one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. If you have watched a Marvel movie or read a modern fantasy novel or sat in a screenwriter’s workshop you have encountered his fingerprints. George Lucas explicitly...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 15, 2025 | Alternative Medicine and Holistic Health, Mental Health and Psychotherapy Resources in Alabama, Micro-nutrition and Vitamins for Mental Health, Psychology
Magnolia bark is not a proven treatment for anxiety. Its two main compounds, honokiol and magnolol, strengthen GABA-A receptor signaling in cell and mouse studies, and a handful of human trials, mostly small and mostly of blended products, report modest drops in...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 10, 2025 | Dreams and the Unconscious, Jungian Therapy and Depth Psychology, Psychology
The Ontology of the Other World In the landscape of contemporary psychotherapy, the dream is frequently relegated to the status of a “residue”—a nightly data dump of the brain’s metabolic waste, or at best, an encoded puzzle regarding waking life...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 10, 2025 | Psychology of History, Psychology of Politics
The Architecture of Collective Identity Edward Edinger, in his seminal work Ego and Archetype, describes the fundamental psychological dynamic that governs both individual and collective development: the ego must separate from the unconscious matrix to achieve...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 10, 2025 | Psychology of Media and Culture
The Ontological Crisis of the Moving Image There is a moment in Paddy Chayefsky’s Network where Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves, screams about the dehumanization of experience itself. Written in 1976, Chayefsky was already seeing what we have only...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 9, 2025 | Alabama Local History, Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama exists because of a geological coincidence so improbable it approaches the mythological: it is the only place on Earth where coal, iron ore, and limestone, the three essential ingredients for making iron, occur naturally within a ten-mile radius....
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 8, 2025 | Alabama Local History, Birmingham
A psychological tour through the Magic City’s strangest, most forgotten, and most revealing history Birmingham likes to call itself the Magic City, but magic implies illusion, and what’s truly strange about this place is how much of its real history has...
