Dear reminiscing drama readers, Have you ever been asked, “Do you realize it’s been X years since such-and-such happened?” Like you, I usually have two reactions: 1) Sadness that I’m now that old and 2) Shock that time has passed so quickly. Those were my exact reactions when I realized recently that 50 years has […]
Dear flummoxed-by-the-drama readers, I was asked recently to consult with an organization making good faith efforts to handle one of its members—a drama person. I’ll spare you the gory details but this guy had acted unethically, covered up his transgressions, and denied involvement right up to the time when the evidence became too overwhelming to […]
Dear drama watchers, If you’re a regular reader of The Drama Review—and I think there may be a 12-step group for that—you’ve heard me say many times, “You can’t reason with an unreasonable person.” I recently came across a similar quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed by the Gestapo for his role in […]
Dear drama watchers, In response to the question, “How’ve you been lately?”, we’ll sometimes blithely say, “Oh, I’ve been really busy.” But lately, I’ve been REALLY busy. Between conducting my seminar on the road, maintaining my private practice, and writing evaluations for couples adopting from overseas (a great privilege, I might add), I’ve been busier […]
Dear confused-by-the-drama readers, For several years, I’ve conducted a seminar entitled, Inside the Manipulator’s Mind. If you could actually crawl inside that mind, it’d be a scary and confusing place. You’d probably feel like you were in a real-life episode of The Twilight Zone, introduced and closed by the chain-smoking Rod Serling. Like comedy shows […]
Dear wishing-they-would-grow-up readers, I realize the story I’m about to tell might seem like an illustration in search of a point. But being the Indiana Jones-like risk taker I am, here it is. When I was 12, my dad graciously offered to take me and a friend to the state fair. If you were a […]
Dear sanity-questioning readers, I won’t bore you with details but I’ve rented cars from three different car rental companies in the last two weeks. My Honda was in the middle of a six-car pile-up so it’s been in the shop getting repaired. The repairs took longer than expected so I called the rental company to […]
Dear wishing-for-more-integrity readers, I wrote a magazine article a few years back entitled, “Infecting Your Kids With Integrity” which I’ve posted before on The Drama Review. Drama people are sometimes described as “complex” which usually means, “I can’t reconcile who he is in public with who he is in private. Those things never come together […]
Dear confused-by-drama-people readers, Drama people are nothing if not perplexing. Lundy Bancroft once wrote a book entitled Why Does He Do That? in which he attempts to explain the psyches of abusive men. Indeed, most of us are bewildered by drama people. They dump sand into our mental transmissions and leave us stranded aside the […]
Dear drama-watchers, Have you ever thought about the fact that much of our folk wisdom was originally derived through someone’s hard-earned experience? Take the Jim Croce song, “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” for example. Apparently, Jim was a guy you really shouldn’t mess with. But to make that point, he compares the stupidity of […]