Garth Kroeker

a discussion about psychiatry, mental illness, emotional problems, and things that help

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 14: Religion as a Business

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Many religions and other spiritual practices operate partly like a business. There is marketing (proselytization, outreach), branding (symbo...

The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 13: to be a scholar, you had to study theology

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For long stretches of European history, many able people who wanted to study the biggest questions ended up studying religion. That was not ...

The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 12: Benefits of Unfounded Belief

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Another troubling angle on all of this is that people can sometimes latch onto a belief system whose claims are unfounded or causally miscon...

The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 11: Evolution

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Evolution deserves space here because it explains the origins and diversification of life in a way that directly contradicts literal religio...

The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 10: Reading List & Discussion

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Here is a list of recommended books, with discussion: 1. The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. An absolutely devastating critique of religio...
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About Me

GK
I've been a psychiatrist since July, 2000. Most of my clinical experience has been with university students who have come to my outpatient clinic. For the first two years of my practice, I completed a subspecialty fellowship in mood disorders, during which I was trying to help patients struggling with treatment-resistant depression or bipolar disorder. I enjoy trying to combine ideas from different fields within the sciences and humanities--I love the idea of a creative, collaborative, interdisciplinary, yet also evidence-based approach to thinking about the mind, about medicine, and about life. I particularly like to indulge in metaphor and use analogies as a part of my therapeutic style. Yet, I find that much of my work as a physician can be simple and pragmatic, and I believe that there often can be straightforward medical solutions to many of the ailments my patients tell me about.
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