Columnists

Psychotherapy may or may not help someone with mental illness get some relief from painful emotions. In some instances the therapist believes the solution is to immerse you in your pain, in the theory that if you feel your feelings deeply, you will be cured. However, this theory doesn't work for every person with a severe mental illness, and can actually do damage. Yet there are still a number of therapists out there who practice according to this theory. As a result, persons with mental illness may become even more crippled than they were to begin with.

There are numerous reasons why this theory is flawed. The mentally ill individual likely doesn't have the ability to experience his or her pain in a safe manner. Dredging up deep pain can cause a fragile person to become destabilized. The idea that all repressed emotion should be brought to consciousness is a falsehood. No living human being, with a mental health diagnosis or not, is going to have zero repressed emotions. -more-

After several weeks of political brinkmanship, Portugal’s rightwing president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, finally backed off from his refusal to appoint the leader of a victorious left coalition as prime minister and accept the outcome of the Oct. 4 national elections. Silva’s stand down has ushered in an interesting coalition that may have continent-wide ramifications. -more-

It’s likely the US will form a new coalition to wage war on ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. What remains to be seen is who will do the heavy lifting in this coalition. Which nation will be willing to put boots on the ground?

(There are several acronyms used for the same group of jihadi terrorists: ISIS, ISIL – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – and DAESH – an acronym based upon the group’s full Arabic name. While a tiny minority within Islam, ISIS is an ultra-conservative Muslim sect.)

In Hillary Clinton’s November 19 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, she said the US goal should be “to defeat and destroy ISIS.”

Secretary Clinton laid out a plan to defeat ISIS: -more-

On November 20th, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4038, the Orwellianly misnamed "American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015" (SAFE ACT) to drastically limit the number of Syrian refugees able to enter the U.S. In addition, 31 state governors do not want Syrian refugees as do the Republican presidential candidates. The U.S. Senate is unlikely to pass it and even if it did, President Obama said he would veto it. -more-