The best therapists can do with sadness, anger, and anxiety is to help patients live in the more comfortable part of their set range.

The goal of a life free of dysphoria is a snare and a delusion. A better goal is of good commerce with the world. Authentic happiness, astonishingly, can occur even in the presence of authentic sadness.

Psychology is much bigger than just medicine, or fixing unhealthy things. It's about education, work, marriage - it's even about sports. What I want to do is see psychologists working to help people build strengths in all these domains.

The fundamentalist religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.

I don't see a partisan component to this. I see a certain anxiety. I don't see an anger to the point of blame but people, when they experience pain, want the people they've elected to provide solutions ... Solutions are very limited in a country that believes in free markets.

High taxes on guns and strong restrictions on their availability are the only realistic hope for avoiding many more Sandy Hooks.