Paul Dunion, EdD

“Boy, it’s time for you to die!” proclaims an indigenous Chief flanked by tribal elders dressed in their ritualistic garb, about to address an American boy whom they found lost in the jungle and raised.  (From the film ‘The Emerald Forest’, based upon a true story.)  An unspoken tragedy of our times is that it…

I canvased over 300 people representing a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, regarding the word denoting hatred of girls and women. Approximately 94% of those polled correctly identified the word as misogyny.  When asked to name the word defining hatred of boys and men, less than 2% were able to identify the word possessing that…

When I ask a couple in couple’s counseling, “So, tell me about the current status of your intimacy,” they inevitably start talking about their sex life. When I proceed to explain I am interested in their emotional intimacy, the male quickly turns his gaze toward his wife and the female typically speaks of the loneliness…

“Don’t you ever think of others?” “Make sure you share!” “That’s you being selfish again.” These are just a few of the many appeals to giving that so many of us hear along the way. We are encouraged to be exemplary givers, with giving being elevated to heavenly status. The inevitable consequence is that the…

Allegedly, it is life at its best when we are succeeding and life at its worse when we are failing. How do we define success and failure? How do we come to have such a strong attachment to success and a deep aversion to failure? How does our relationship to success and failure define our…

Secular mysticism is the theme of my latest book, “Path of the Novice Mystic – Maintaining a Beginner’s Heart and Mind”. Unlike most spiritual traditions of Mysticism which are connected to a particular religion, Secular Mysticism is not oriented around religion. Secular Mysticism offers us an alternative to either believing we can triumph over life…

Many of us had custodial parents who attended to our basic physical needs for food, shelter and clothing.  However, many of us did not have psychological parents and it serves us to know what it means to have psychological parents. This is especially true when we consider that we typically parent ourselves the way we…

Triangulating happens when two people have a conversation about a third person where they represent the beliefs, feelings or behaviors of the third person.  There are typically several unfavorable outcomes. The first being that the 3rd person’s voice is stolen. That person does not have an opportunity to represent him or herself. The second consequence…

The bad news is that emotional intimacy is not natural. However, couples fall prey to thinking that if there’s enough love and enough kindness, then the depth of emotional connection is inevitable. What is natural is sliding into an enmeshed or fused relationship where one member is sacrificing his or her individuality, typically, in the…

We are encouraged to see times of loss, failure and longing as simply unfortunate. We might gain some wisdom regarding these times of challenge. Mythology is filled with examples of heroes and heroines losing their way, confused, frustrated and unable to compete some assigned task. Might we be able to gain some insight into living…