what might have been...


I could have grown up in albuquerque, new mexico. it was somewhere my parents considered moving many years ago when they decided to leave wisconsin. albuquerque has an average temperature in february of 13 degrees celsius and is known for its desert and view of the sandia mountains. buffalo has an average temperature in february of -24 degrees celsius and is known for its lake-effect snow and failing economy. if I had grown up hours from the mexican border instead of minutes from the canadian border, would I wear cowboy boots and speak with a southern drawl? would I still have a mad passion for wild raspberries? would I have come to u of t?


early one morning when I was four or five years old, I climbed into bed with the units and asked my dad, "can a number be less than zero?" if I had kept my goshdarn mouth shut, would my dad have given me all those math puzzles to do while waiting in restaurants? would mom would have simply told us to say 'please' and 'thank you' instead of writing a story about how the three little pigs (named pam, laura and geoff) learned their manners? would I have still fallen prey to the idea that school is fun and decided to set my sights on a career that requires about twenty-some years of it?


back when I was small and totally (rather than mostly) void of common sense, I devised a list of the things I wanted to be when I grew up: mathematician, astronomer, pianist, architect, geneticist, explorer, archeologist, author and pharmacist. I intended on becoming everything on that list. I would dedicate a decade or so to one profession, then move onto the next. (I also intended on living an abnormally long time.) what if physics and first year calculus had not been so scarring? what if I had never realized my pathological fear of the spotlight and decided to study music instead of life sciences?

"Psychotherapy process: the missing link: comment on westen, novotny, and thompson-benner" (abstract)

In this comment J.S. Ablon and C. Marci argue that focusing on the empirical validation of manualized treatment packages misses important information about what is efficacious about a given treatment. Psychotherapy process has demonstrated that treatments may promote change in ways other than their underlying theories claim. Manualized therapies may appear distinct despite important similarities in dyadic interaction. These functional similarities in the emergent transactional process between therapist and patient may help explain the difficulty demonstrating differential outcomes across brands of brief therapy. Rather than focus on treatment packages targeting patient symptomatology, the authors recommend a shift in focus to the empirical validation of change processes coconstructed by therapist and patient in naturalistic settings.


(1) symptomatology?
(2) if I were a drawling, school-hating, archeology and genetics-studying cowgirl from the desert, would I have understood that?