Scary, huh? This is one of my more recent pictures. I have better ones, when I was thinner and had more hair, but, hey, this one will due. Maybe I'll put up a more flattering picture later -- maybe a picture of someone else, like a young Marlon Brando or something. Or maybe I could go totally Quasimodo and put up some deformed face and really scare ya!

Let me tell you why I started the Mythos & Logos web site. I started co-editing an e-journal, called Janus Head, in the summer of '98, and I had to start feeling comfortable working with web pages and such. So, I started putting together this often very haphazard, but lovingly created, monstrosity you are now visiting. As I get better at web publishing and HTML, this site will improve aesthetically and, as always, I will continue to add to the pages. I figure this could be a life-long project in my spare time -- mostly, a fun hobby that I do instead of wasting my time watching TV. In the meantime, along with my dear friends Victor Barbetti and Claire-Cowan Barbetti, we have enjoyed our work together on the Janus Head journal, and we continue to be excited about the directions it has taken in the last several years.

Now, there is something pathetically narcissistic about putting up a web site that includes a big 'ol ugly picture of yourself and information about your own silly life that most people could care less about. Then again, over the past year, I've met some wonderful people on the web by creating these pages. I wouldn't even know where to begin, but you know who you are... So, I justify -- or perhaps rationalize -- my narcissism by thinking that putting my mug on this page and telling you a little about myself is a way that you can give my name a face and a personality, and, thus, humanizes me enough that you might care to engage with me -- drop me a line and say hello, suggest a topic for dialogue, or something of the sort. So, go ahead, and e-mail me if you'd like. I like company. By the way, I have had quite a few people e-mail me to inquire about Duquesne's graduate program in clinical psychology, which I attend. Please feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions. Also, I have gotten quite a few letters from students frustrated with papers in psychology or philosophy courses, who ask for advice, direction or for simple moral support. It is my pleasure to do whatever I can to lend a hand in your studies, if you are a student struggling with some topic presented within my pages.

So, who am I? As I write this, I am 30-years-old, born in August of 1970, a Leo for you horoscope devotees, and I have been married to my wonderful wife, April, for 4 years as of May 11 of this past year. I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a modest house that desperately needs a paint job and a new garage door, but, otherwise, is very comfortable and rather cozy. In fact, I am now living in the very house where I was raised as a young pup, before going off to St. Louis for my undergraduate degree (and staying there for 5 years).

Contents of this Page

The Bit About My Dogs and Cat
The Bit About My Wife
My Writing On-Line
More About Me, The Professional
Vita
Hobbies
Music
Movies
Links to rest of site

The Bit About My Dogs and Cat

I have two dogs and a cat. Jake is a mixed breed, predominately beagle,with a reddish coat and he likes to 'talk.' He is very expressive -- really! He has that characteristic beagle bark, and, by now, I've come to know what he's trying to tell me, for the most part. He loves to eat and he's getting chubby, just like his dear old dad, and he always knows when I'm leaving the house because I put my socks and shoes on. He does his dance ritual around the house, which ticks off April because he messes up the carpet. When we got Zoe, they told us she was a rotweiler mix, but, I can tell you, she doesn't have much rotweiler in her other than the black and brown markings on her coat. She's very thin, but extremely lovable, and pretty much lives to be petted. She'll take affection over table scraps any day, whereas Jake would be rather ambivalent. When she does bark, which is not often, she goes "poof," like she's trying to whistle or something. Kitty is the rather unimaginative name of our cat, yet the name my wife insisted on. Personally, I liked the name "Misty," but "Kitty" seems to have stuck (April won, as always!). Kitty likes to sit on her 'thrown' in the living room, which consists of a big, white, overstuffed pillow. Kitty and Zoe are best buddies, and they actually clean each other. Its adorable! Jake and Kitty pretty much keep to themselves since Jake is a bit too rambunctious for Kitty's taste, but they get along just fine. In the mornings, April and I give Jake, Zoe and Kitty the leftover milk from our cereal bowls. We have trained the dogs, who drink much faster, to give Kitty the first dibs on the milk -- and I still think it is hilarious to watch too relatively big dogs subordinating themselves to the cat, who always very politely leaves plenty of milk for the dogs. (Don't you hate when people ramble on about their pets?) Really, though, our pets are one of the highlights of my life, and I never cease to have a rotten day out in the cruel world without arriving home to the unconditional love of my dogs and cat -- and always, always feel like its just not so bad after all.

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The Bit About My Wife

April, my wife, is the same age as me, but born in September, and she works as a social worker at a long-term care facility in Mt. Lebanon, if you're familiar with the Pittsburgh area. She loves her job, and that is a relief, because she has pretty much hated every job she's had since I've known her. After being with April for over 5 years -- 3 of which we have been married -- I still don't understand her politics. This is a person who listens to Howard Stern in the mornings, Dr. Laura in the afternoons, then tunes into Michael Reagan in the evening -- except on Sundays, when she listens to bluegrass and Celtic music on public radio -- but she voted for Clinton and says she did so because she thought he was better looking than Dole. Aside from her strange a-political politics, April is one of the most caring and giving people that I know. She has volunteered her time to many different charities, including Catholic Charities and Beginning Babies with Books, but , mostly, she unselfishly offers her time to her friends and even remote acquaintances -- and she rarely takes credit for her goodness. When you first meet her, she's very shy, but once you get to know her, she'll talk your ear off -- and the more comfortable she is with you, the more you realize she is HILARIOUS! My wife has the best sense of humor -- bizarre, sarcastic, ironic and dry, just like mine, and, put us together, and we are infinitely goofy. April is a self-proclaimed homemaker, who is a wizard at interior decorating and the only person I know who actually enjoys vacuuming.  Most of the time, when I'm working on the web, she's watching TV. I have a contempt for television, which started back when I began studying media communications in undergrad, so while she's watching Cops and Walker, Texas Ranger, I'm reading Deleuze , doing HTML, web surfing or something along those lines. However, we both have a love for off-beat art-house films and have very similar tastes in music. Our favorite thing to do is eating out -- mostly at Tom's Diner -- and, second only to eating, we enjoy taking long drives to places where we've never been.  We make a great pair -- while I'm the space cadet, 'absent-minded professor' type, April is down-to-earth and practical. And where I'm cool and calm under pressure, April gets a bit rattled, so we're a lot like two pieces of a puzzle that just fit very nicely together.

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More About Me, the Professional

As you've seen, Mythos & Logos explores the topics of continental philosophy (mostly existential-phenomenology), psychoanalysis/psychology, and perennial philosophy. That ought to tell you quite a bit about me right there, eh?
I a fifth year doctoral student in clinical psychology at Duquense University -- where I am currently teaching and working at the University Counseling Center. I begin my pre-doctoral internship in August 2001 at University of Pittsburgh Counseling Center. If you haven't figured it out by now, I am quite enamored with Heideggarian existential-phenomenology and, at Duquesne, I actually get to theorize about it and explore practical applications of it (probably the only graduate school where I could do that in the whole United States). I am mostly interested in the implications of Martin Heidegger's thought for the discipline of psychology, clinical psychology in particular, and I draw quite a bit from Medard Boss and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in my work. More recently, I have begun to explore, in a similar way, the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Lacan, all of whom are very different, though all of whom are in the tradition of continental philosophy. In part, I am interested in the on-going dialogue between psychoanalytic thought -- including humanistic and transpersonal orientations -- and continental philosophy. However, I feel that existential-phenomenology still has much to contribute to neuroscience, particularly with Merleau-Ponty's work on embodiment. All of these interests are reflected in the pages I've posted on this web site. My most central interest as a scholar right now is the work I am doing on the phenomenology of emotion. I am interesting in applying my research of joy to psychotherapy. My work is also directed toward a cultural critique of the pervasive instrumental thinking of modernity.