Rooted in a personal background that prioritized intellectual and personal development over material gain and status, I bring a natural inclination to challenge conventional wisdom and explore new possibilities. As a cultural nomad with the gift of the outsider's lens, I learned to navigate the world blending in without losing my core identity. This has allowed me to challenge the invisible scripts—cultural norms, ego constructs, and societal expectations—that too often act as personal blocks and has helped me help others break free from mental constraints to unlock potential and possibility.

 

Looking back, it’s still remarkable to recall the years when adult life dawned. While finishing high school, I was fortunate to have stumbled into the Trips Festival in San Francisco, the seminal event in January 1966 during which the torch was passed from Kerouac and the Beat Generation to Kesey and the Psychedelic Generation. The explosion of counter-culture scene was still a year or so away but gathering force. By the time I arrived at Stanford University in the fall of 1966, life had gone from monochrome to color, and I was ready!

 

My consciousness-raising activities of all kinds were kicked into high gear by Robb Crisst (1929-1975), a mentor and mystic whose teaching introduced me to alternate ways of life and the hero’s journey though the deep reading of Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Throughout the years from 1967 to 1980, I continued my quest for meaning and purpose in the wake of the deconstruction of social reality in 1960’s counterculture. My influences and practices included Suzuki Roshi, Alan Watts, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, Rolfing Structural Integration, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, indigenous peyote ceremonies, Subud, Martin Buber, Gurdjieff, the controversial Werner Erhard EST seminars, and the unavoidable brushes with the Seth Material, Carlos Castenada’s Don Juan chronicles, and various other forms of forgotten New Age creationism. Ironically, I came to psychoanalysis last, a practice that initially appeared  rather too  traditionalabnd conservative, but gradually revealed its radically subversive heart.

 

It's easy to trace a path from the consciousness-raising pursuits that began back then, to those that animate my personal and professional life today, fifty-five years down the road. In recent years, I've had the great satisfaction of integrating years of adventure in my role as a creative consultant to many individuals, including Rich Shapero, on six of his multi-media novels. My musical interests have continued to expand throughout my life, from blues, rock and jazz to the well-springs European opera. I tried to fathom the mythical wisdom I sensed in the latter through a series of published essays on Puccini's Tosca, Verdi's Rigoletto, Otello, and Aida, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, and Mozart's masterpieces Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute (finally cracking the unconscious code of the latter). Eventually this culminated in a co-edited book, Opera on the Couch: Music, Emotional Life, and Unconscious Aspects of the Mind, a collection of psychoanalytic essays published by Routledge in 2020. For anyone with time or interest, nearly all of this can be easily accessed and read on my website leerather.com.

 

Altogether, I’ve been down the right roads, and I’ve been down most of the wrong ones too. I was once told by a Zen monk that there were two paths to awakening. The first path required a disciplined retreat from everyday life to concentrate on an intensive practice with a guru. The second path involved throwing oneself fully into the hurly-burly of everyday life and love, making every possible mistake and bad decision until there was nothing left but the ‘aha” moments. Having crawled from the wreckage more than once, my journey enabled me to slowly integrate the entirety of my experiences. I’ve arrived at a personal conception of life practice aimed not only at addressing personal difficulties, but also intended as a potentially mind-expanding, emotional and existential journey which can break on through to the other side, beyond the absurdities and limitations of the ego, and towards a more creative, playful, and alive experience of being.

 

Here is a short list of reading resources I often refer to in my coaching work.

 

Becker E (1973). The denial of death. New York: Simon and Schuster.

 

Burkeman, O. (2024). Meditations for mortals. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

 

Wallace, J. B. (2023) Never enough: When achievement culture becomes toxic-and what

     we can do about it. New York: Porfolio

 

(Curran, T. & Hill, A. P. (2017). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis

     of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. American Psychologist. Washington,

     DC: American Psychological Association.

 

Gray, S. (Ed.) (2022). How psychedelics can help save the world. Visionary and

      indigenous Voices speak out. Rochester, Vermont: Park City Press

 

Haidt, J.  (2024). The Anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is     

    causing an epidemic in mental illness. New York: Random House

 

Lukianoff, G. & Haidt, J. (2018). The coddling of the American mind: How good

    intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. New York:

    Penguin.

 

Routledge, C. & Vess, M. (Eds.). (2019). Handbook of terror management theory.

      London: Academic Press.

 

Strenger, C. (2011). The fear of insignificance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

 

Twenge, J. M & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in an

       age of entitlement. New York: Free Press.

 

Whippman, R. (2016). America the anxious. New York: St. Martin’s Press.