Saturday, November 23, 2013

Congrats, Magnus!


As I write this, Magnus Carlsen has just recently become the new World Chess Champion. He is the youngest ever at age 22. People call him the "Mozart of Chess."

Congrats, Magnus!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Playing Chess With Women

According to Dr. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, there is, in males especially, the psychological “unconscious conflict” of “murdering the father.” In chess therapy, the game is believed to serve a defensive containment purpose to better manage the said unconscious tendency. While playing, the therapist may then use chess metaphors to provide fitting intervention to the internal distresses of the patient.
Chess is generally dominated by males. But nowadays, there is an increasing number of excellent or world-class female chess players and grandmasters like the Polgar sisters of Hungary. Can the “murdering the father” theory from the chess unconscious apply to women players too? Personally, I believe there could be other factors (e.g. art) involved on why women would play chess or how they’d view the King in the chess play space.
I tried chess with my daughter, Angel, when she was younger. After teaching her the basics, I eventually enrolled her in a chess tournament where she surprisingly won a medal. I noticed that, when she played chess with me, our conversations turned to fun and she’d play impulsively unable to tolerate waiting. That became an avenue for me then to teach her an important life lesson in the atmosphere and metaphors of play therapy.
Possibly, chess can be used as an adjunct to women psychotherapy. If a troubled woman is comfortable in expressing her self and her issues in playing chess, then the game could be incorporated in the sessions.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Mike Tyson Plays Chess With Muhammad Ali

World boxing champs Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali in a chess duel?  Uhmm, here's proof:

http://youtu.be/CJY8YQKFjfo

Mike Tyson, amidst his fame and luxuries in life, once confessed, "I'm bored."  Recently, he launched a TV program entitled "Being: Mike Tyson."

Sunday, October 6, 2013

A Life Lesson

Often, to learn from His moves.

Chess as Mood Therapy in Hospital

Associated Press reported that chess is being used at Siteman Cancer Center and Washington University School of Medicine.


Here's its short news article, 2009:

"A chess-playing program designed to brighten the lives of cancer patients and their caregivers will be offered soon in St. Louis. The Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine will offer 'Chess for Life' beginning Oct. 9. The program was developed in conjunction with the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis.

'Chess for Life' was inspired by Siteman Cancer Center patient Jim Corbett, who found that his mood improved when he began playing chess. Corbett died last December. The program is a tribute to him."


Saturday, October 5, 2013

Chess Therapy for A Young Intellectual

One time, Mark, an Italian university-educated young man visited me in the hospital. He's hungry for chess practices and wanting to inquire about chess therapy. When he arrived, I asked him to join my group session and share a bit about himself. After a short conversation, he's truly a "philosopher" guy immersed in heady ideas and abstract concepts... But, most of all, he was seeing me for therapy. Chess therapy, in particular. Chess did fit him well. As author Ken Younos put it, "It is good therapy for philosophers to play chess."

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Life Is A Kind Of Chess



If you've read my previous posts, you'll observe that I tend to compare life to a game of chess. In chess, it's important to understand that it is you who control the pieces - how they move or what happens to them.

Rather than blaming your opponent or thinking of genes, noise, or other distractions, you're the one called to be in control and responsible for your moves to reach your goals.

This is so in real life. Our psychological and emotional well being depends on how much we understand that we're the ones responsible to control our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

"Nonresponsibility" by blaming or passing on to others the moves we need to make is a favorite pastime! I believe, if one who is in therapy or great distress can establish the thinking that he's responsible for anything that happens or does not happen in his life, then he begins to go far on his journey.

Study how you move, how you feel and think, and what you do. See every defeat as an opportunity for growth. Focus on things that will help you win and reach your goals for balance and well being.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Bobby Fischer and Me

People do get addicted. And the reason why they can't just quit is because they get a kind of relief - temporarily. Turning to material, visible, or concrete things somehow work to make the pain of unmet needs go away. Unfortunately, they're not reliable. They change and we can know what to expect.

 I played chess in the elementary school with the late American world champion Bobby Fischer as my "hero." I studied his games, which helped in my championship tournaments. An interesting thing about my childhood game was that it was as if my personality gets transformed once I imagined myself playing like Bobby. Uhmm, enough for my childhood days!

Going back to Bobby, I knew from his biography that he came from a materially deprived and emotionally abusive home life. His father abandoned him, his mother, and sister while he was almost still an infant. His mother was a devoted parent but could be too domineering for Bobby. In his adolescent and adult years as a world-class chess grandmaster, he'd defy his mother and the world chess establishment. Throughout his later years during his early forced retirement, he would curse and lambast the United States and the whole of Jewish race in world media. He isolated himself, ran away as a "fugitive" from his homeland, and lived as a lonely exile in Reykjavic, Iceland.


On his deathbed at age 64 (chess has 64 squares!), Bobby Fischer was with psychiatrist Dr. Magnus Skulason by his side. According to Dr. Skulason, Bobby told him his feet were aching and asked for a massage. Dr. Skulason narrated, "Responding to my hands on his feet, he said with a terrible gentleness, 'Nothing is as healing as a human touch.' " Those were Bobby's last words. Unfortunately, throughout his turbulent life, it seems that Bobby was never touched enough or often, if at all.

The tragedy in Bobby Fischer's life was that he was trying to medicate the pain of the difficulties of his upbringing that were not his own doing with chess and hostility against the world. His chess genius helped him cope during his youth and adulthood to become one of the world's greatest world chess champions. Eventually, in old age, his demons would return and he needed a bigger coping mechanism because his old "drug" wasn't working any more. But coping is not the same thing as solving the problem or pain.


I theorize that counseling and psychotherapy for Bobby Fischer at any stage could have changed him. Better still, the need for spiritual growth and healing was apparent in Bobby's life even earlier on to make it more permanently joyful and fulfilling. How easy it is to become addicted to physical things and believe they can substitute for our psychological, emotional, and spiritual well being. It happened in Bobby Fischer's life and it was so difficult for him to walk away and heal.