My Profile supplement: Virtue, Vice, the Transcendent, Women.

Virtues Admired:
Ability to laugh at oneself, admit own privileges, accept disagreement, explore different viewpoints, open one's own views to criticism, admit one is mistaken.
Vices Deplored:
Inability in foregoing, passive-aggressive remarks, self-righteousness, controlling/bullying, pretentious bafflegab, asserting one's own opinions in categorical, overbearing manner as though they are absolute truths (authoritative, superior, unquestionable insights not allowing for rival viewpoints). It's natural to think one's own view is more correct, reasonable, enlightened. However, it's courteous and logical to allow that views different from and opposed to one's own may also be reasonable and plausible. Expecting one view to be the definite truth, the correct one, is often inappropriate.

Special Interest:
Notion of the transcendent - mysticism - putative states of affairs which cannot be expressed in logical, factual language (non-conceptual thought?). Notion of forms of justification which do not need to conform to logic. Although I'm a poet and like Rilke and Blake, I'm sceptical of mysticism as a separate form of thought or knowing. I see my poetry as suggestive indefinite meaning hopefully expressed in pleasing language, not as a form of apprehension providing access to a separate realm of truth or deeper reality. ESP if it exists would still be subject to ordinary verifiability and falsifiability.

Afterlife:
Don't believe in personal afterlife; wish I could - chance to make amends to the dead. Like to imagine there is a force of goodness associated with higher human endeavour: intellect, art, equal opportunity, women's rights, emotional awareness of self and others, open critical thinking, regarding well-being of others as of similar value to one's own, moral development, kindness. Like to imagine this force is associated with Athena, Diotima, Hypatia, etc., and has healing, soothing, encouraging powers.

Monotheism:
Think standard Judaic/Christian/Islamic religion could be classed as mental illness. Am amazed (no saddened) that in 21st century people can still take seriously any religion which refuses the ordination of women. Notion of mental illness could be extended to social institutions and cultures.

Women Superior:
As an athletic 69 year old I'm still attracted to women under 50 but realise they are not attracted to me. Think women on the whole slightly superior to men spiritually and morally - women not quite so self-assertive, status-seeking, controlling, insistent that they are right, more nurturing.

my qualifications for writing on psychotherapy

Am I qualified to write on psychotherapy? My life has been unusually strenuous: below average parenting and socio-economic background. Above average psychological deficits. Above average achievement. Considerable experience as a mental health patient/client. Experience as mental health caregiver, support-therapy group leader, and mental health colleague. More than my share of messy personal relationships.

Extensive intense training in clarifying difficult woolly concepts (e.g. mental illness), elucidating underlying presuppositions, and exploring different viewpoints. My M.A. thesis was on: privacy of experience and knowledge of other minds. My Ph.D thesis was on: woolly/nebulous meaning.

As well as being a university philosophy teacher (alas never with the security of a permanent job) I ran a community philosophy group in Victoria, B.C. for a number of years - Diotima. I have two adult sons - one a university math prof in Delaware, the other in pharmaceutical research in Switzerland.

I am a poet, songwriter, musician (guitar/vocals), and racing cyclist. Currently I am focussed on writing up hundreds of music charts arranged for solo guitar and average male voice as an aid for musicians in general.

At age 69 I feel I have reached a stage where I have valuable insights on social issues, psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy, etc. which I would like to share with others before I die.