• Dysfunctional group dynamics among corporate teams

• Adolescent brain development extends into the mid-20s as the brain reshapes and contours

• Do parents parent in the ways they were parented?

• Daniel Kahneman distinguishes the “experiencing self” vs. the “remembering self”

• Complex post-traumatic stress disorder and how it differs from narcissism 

Please check out the library of available blog articles and podcast recordings.

• The Psychology of Complaining



• Could This Be "the One"? On Compatibility and Exclusivity

The Men's Group Seminar: “Experiencing” vs. “Remembering”

Throughout his career, psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has made pioneering contributions to various domains of scientific inquiry including behavioral economics, decision-making and intuitive judgment, and hedonistic psychology. A primary concern in his work is the prevalence of cognitive biases and how thinking, feeling, and perceiving are substantially impacted by faulty assumptions and errors of logic and reasoning. A focus of Kahneman is the distinction between what he calls the experiencing self and the remembering self. As he and his colleague Jason Riis explain, “When we are asked ‘how good was the vacation’, it is not an experiencing self that answers, but a remembering and evaluating self, the self that keeps score … It is a basic fact of the human condition that memories are what we get to keep from our experience, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.” 

Kahneman explores the paradoxes and problems implicit in how we live life as opposed to how we evaluate life. He argues that actual experience and the narratives we construct about experience are motivated by unique factors, are associated with different types and degrees of happiness, and influence decision-making and action in disparate and often flawed ways. For example, according to Kahneman evaluative memory (mobilized by the remembering self) is highly prone to distortion; due to numerous errors of perception including the peak/end rule, what actually occurred is often confused and frequently made illusory by our construction of experience. 

In the next in-person meeting of the Men’s Group Seminar on Saturday, March 18, 2023 (10:15 to 11:30 AM), we will explore Kahneman’s views of the cognitive processes involved in living and remembering, as well as the implications of these two dimensions on well-being. The TED talk “The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory” and YouTube interview “Experiencing Self and Remembering Self,” along with the article “Living, and Thinking about It: Two Perspectives on Life,” will be the focus of the seminar.    

To register for this upcoming in-person seminar, please see the directions below.

The Relationship Group Seminar: “Ghosts from the Past”: On Being Triggered and Repeating the Past 

Previous failed relationships remain “alive” in our minds, many experts believe, our former partners “ghosts” who are surprisingly influential even years after our being involved with them. Unfortunately, these ghosts are well capable of impacting our self-concept and current relationships in profoundly negative ways, often sabotaging our efforts to find and/or sustain love. The term “getting triggered,” so well popularized in modern culture, is code for how the past – and the former lovers (as well as family members, friends, co-workers, etc. ) occupying this past – impinge upon the present.  To be triggered implies a blurring of perception in which what is happening in a current relationship is experienced inaccurately through the traumatic lens of the past. Functioning through three unique yet often overlapping pathways (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral), our predictable response to being triggered usually results in the creation of new relational trauma, adding to the damage that already burdens us from previous relational trauma. These “ghosts form the past” keep us stuck as they resurrect a familiar set of circumstances, a host of tendencies, patterns and memories that do not change, but in fact tend to repeat, the past. 

In the next in-person meeting of the Relationship Group Seminar on Saturday, March 18, 2023 (11:45 AM to 1:00 PM), we will explore how the “ghosts from our past” impact, and even get recreated, in the present. Our discussion will address the following topics: what is meant by “trauma bonding” and the various ways we stay psychologically “attached” to prior lovers, even those who were abusive; the notion of “grief regrets,” i.e., defined by psychologist Randi Gunther, Ph.D. as “the emotional combination of responses that make people feel that they could have or should have done something that could have saved the relationship”; and how memories of past relationships, even highly conflictual or toxic ones, may be distorted and/or “eulogized,” forming barriers of jealousy and secrecy with our current partners.   

To register for this upcoming in-person seminar, please see the directions below.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Group: One Opening Remains

A new psychodynamic psychotherapy group (for women and men) has recently formed in my practice. There is one opening left before the group reaches its maximum membership. Referrals are welcomed (please contact me at 949-338-4388 or at jt@jamestobinphd.com). This therapy group utilizes the emerging dynamics among group members as a basis from which to examine characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to others. The group is a therapeutic experience and entry occurs only after a pre-group screening interview and preparation phase.