What is the divinity-mortality split? 3 December 2024 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Patriarchy , No Comments Michael Picucci, author of The Journey toward Complete Recovery, coined the term ‘sexual-spiritual split’ to identify “a deep psychic schism” endemic in human culture. I’d like to expand on Picucci’s vision by recognising another psychic […]
Libido disappears when shame is absent 28 November 2022 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Sexuality , Shame , No Comments “My libido is strong. I have a high sex drive.” How often are such phrases used to justify inappropriate, disrespectful, and unhealthy sexual behaviour? How often do politicians, actors and other celebrities make the […]
Patriarchy demands that our relationships are stagnant 5 February 2021 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Patriarchy , 2 Comments “I do.” There are few words we say in our lives that carry more importance than a commitment of marriage. Yet, caught in the feel-good swirl of confetti, popping champagne corks and flying garters, few […]
Humanity runs on a Patriarchal Operating System 18 December 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Patriarchy , 4 Comments For the past 6,000 years, ever since the dawn of patriarchy, humanity has been running on a specific psychological paradigm—the Patriarchal Operating System. What do I mean by ‘running’? I mean breathing, feeling, thinking, eating, […]
What is the ‘false self’? 20 October 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , No Comments In blogs such as What is the unconscious?, What are shame-based issues? and How shame affects arrested development I describe the psychological legacy of patriarchy. Here I pull together various strands to describe some of the ways […]
How to penetrate the unconscious 28 August 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: How-to & step-by-step , No Comments There’s only one way to effect powerful, permanent healing in the human psyche: penetrate the unconscious and release the pain it contains. This is not something we choose to do. It’s something we do when […]
How shame affects life energy 7 August 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Shame , No Comments I’ve written extensively how unconscious shame inhibits us emotionally, causing significant reductions in our quality of life. Yet that isn’t the full extent of damage that it causes. Here I describe how shame literally sucks […]
What is hemispheric dominance? 7 August 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Patriarchy , No Comments Neuropsychologist Roger W. Sperry first proposed the theory of hemispheric dominance in 1960. In my own simplistic terms, hemispheric dominance boils down to three interlocking principles: Brain functions are specialised between the left and right hemispheres […]
What is sexual shame? 1 July 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Shame , No Comments In What is unconscious shame? I described how all the feminine aspects of our being—our emotions, our feelings about our body and our sexuality—have been pushed down into our unconscious by several millennia of patriarchal culture. […]
What is the ‘sexual-spiritual split’? 25 June 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Sexuality , No Comments The ‘sexual-spiritual split’ is a term that comes to us from Michael Picucci, PhD, co-founder of the Institute for Staged Recovery. Writing in The Journey toward Complete Recovery, Picucci describes the sexual-spiritual split as “a […]