psychology notes.

Author William Styron (Sophie’s Choice) talks about his...

Sun, 05 May 2013 22:37:14 -0700

Author William Styron (Sophie’s Choice) talks about his struggles with depression, which he chronicled painfully and brilliantly in his 1990 memoir, Darkness Visible.

"Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:22:30 -0700

“Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact.”

- Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

"We need to accept our age. We need to accept many physical and mental illnesses and addictions. We..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:27:46 -0700

“We need to accept our age. We need to accept many physical and mental illnesses and addictions. We need to accept the past. We need to accept others as they are. This isn’t to say we need to like it, or that we can’t work to make the best of each of these entities, but we need to relinquish the idea that we have any power or responsibility to change them. Once people realize they can accept instead of fighting things beyond their control, they realize they have much more time and energy for things they can impact.”

- Ryan Howes, clinical psychologist

A Marriage Counselor Tries to Heckle at a Knicks Game (The New Yorker)

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:53:26 -0700

A Marriage Counselor Tries to Heckle at a Knicks Game (The New Yorker):

(by Jesse Eisenberg, 4/25/13)

Let’s go Knicks!

But let’s also recognize the positive attributes of the opposing team!

Come on, Knicks! But please note that I’m supporting the Knicks because I live in the same city as the team’s arena, which is a distinction as arbitrary as what players are assigned to what team! That is, I could just as easily be supporting the other team were I to live in their arena’s city!

Melo, you suck! And in some cultures you would be revered for such behavior! The Yanomami tribe, for example, will affect a sucking motion to indicate safe passage to a neighboring tribe!

Ref, are you blind? If so, it would be amazing that you’ve been so accurately officiating up until this last play, which, for vantage reasons, appeared to me to be called incorrectly! Of course, I’m judging this as a layman and you have a far more appropriate view to fully evaluate what just occurred! I honor your craft and insight and, in a way, I value your incorrect calls! It means you’re human, and that’s healthy! Feel good about yourself and, in moments like this, remember how many calls you got right! The world is complicated!

DEFENSE! DEFENSE! But also, OFFENSE! OFFENSE! Lest we forget how quickly the offense becomes the defense! These frameworks are constantly in flux!

FOUL? Are you kidding me? If you are, I will say, simply, thank you! Laughter and joke-telling is healthy and can be used to convey messages that may otherwise be too difficult to express!

Get your head out of your ass, you must be the most flexible person I’ve ever seen!

Go for a three! I want to see this game go to overtime! I know it’s difficult to hear, but I believe there is a future for you both! Right now, you’re in the thick of it, you’re blinded by anger, which is normal and understandable! Frankly, I’d be surprised if you weren’t upset! The wounds haven’t yet healed!

There were flagrant fouls, yes! And there were missed opportunities! But there were good moments as well! The national anthem! The jump ball! The halftime show! These were good and right and real! And to discount these good moments is as irresponsible as to count only the bad moments!

In fact, may you both win, regardless of the score! What is a “score” anyway? An arbitrary number assigned in accordance with how many times a ball goes through a hoop? How silly compared to the amount of times you’ve overcome adversity together! Why don’t we count those times? Like when there was a loose ball, and everyone tried to pick it up, regardless of allegiance—there were no “teams” then! There were no egos! There was just a ball that needed picking up!

If we’re going to count the score, why not count smiles? Or pats on the back? Or simple gestures that tell the other person, “Hey, I get it”?

What’s that? I’m being kicked out of the game? Why? What’d I do?

I’m talking too much? I’m being too loud and ruining the experience for those around me?

Well, that’s perfectly understandable! Here we are trying to enjoy a sporting event, and I’m distracting everyone with my misguided enthusiasm, unending commentary, and meticulous analyses that conflict with the spirit of the game!

I can totally understand where you guys are coming from and I will leave on my own accord! In fact, I thank you for your blunt dismissal of me! I don’t think I deserve to explain my position, as my actions have already indicated my lack of regard for the other fans, the teams, and, frankly, the sport at large!

O.K., O.K., I’m leaving!

I hope you all enjoy the rest of the game! May the home team prevail! Or the visiting team! Or, if possible, may they both prevail by transcending the false notion of prevailing!

How Therapy Can Help in the Golden Years (New York Times)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:02:00 -0700

How Therapy Can Help in the Golden Years (New York Times):

Marvin Tolkin was 83 when he decided that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. Until then, it had never occurred to him that there might be emotional “issues” he wanted to explore with a counselor.

“I don’t think I ever needed therapy,” said Mr. Tolkin, a retired manufacturer of women’s undergarments who lives in Manhattan and Hewlett Harbor, N.Y.

Though he wasn’t clinically depressed, Mr. Tolkin did suffer from migraines and “struggled through a lot of things in my life” — the demise of a long-term business partnership, the sudden death of his first wife 18 years ago. He worried about his children and grandchildren, and his relationship with his current wife, Carole.

“When I hit my 80s I thought, ‘The hell with this.’ I don’t know how long I’m going to live, I want to make it easier,” said Mr. Tolkin, now 86. “Everybody needs help, and everybody makes mistakes. I needed to reach outside my own capabilities.”

So Mr. Tolkin began seeing Dr. Robert C. Abrams, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. They meet once a month for 45 minutes, exploring the problems that were weighing on Mr. Tolkin. “Dr. Abrams is giving me a perspective that I didn’t think about,” he said. “It’s been making the transition of living at this age in relation to my family very doable and very livable.”

Mr. Tolkin is one of many seniors who are seeking psychological help late in life. Most never set foot near an analyst’s couch in their younger years. But now, as people are living longer, and the stigma of psychological counseling has diminished, they are recognizing that their golden years might be easier if they alleviate the problems they have been carrying around for decades. It also helps that Medicare pays for psychiatric assessments and therapy.

“We’ve been seeing more people in their 80s and older over the past five years, many who have never done therapy before,” said Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, a professor of research in the department of psychiatry at Stanford. “Usually, they’ve tried other resources like their church, or talked to family. They’re realizing that they’re living longer, and if you’ve got another 10 or 15 years, why be miserable if there’s something that can help you?”

Some of these older patients are clinically depressed. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that more than 6.5 million Americans over age 65 suffer from depression. But many are grappling with mental health issues unaddressed for decades, as well as contemporary concerns about new living arrangements, finances, chronic health problems, the loss of loved ones and their own mortality.

“It’s never too late, if someone has never dealt with issues,” said Judith Repetur, a clinical social worker in New York who works almost exclusively with older patients, many of whom are seeking help for the first time. “A combination of stresses late in life can bring up problems that weren’t resolved.”

That members of the Greatest Generation would feel comfortable talking to a therapist, or acknowledging psychological distress, is a significant change. Many grew up in an era when only “crazy” people sought psychiatric help. They would never admit to themselves — and certainly not others — that anything might be wrong.

“For people in their 80s and 90s now, depression was considered almost a moral weakness,” said Dr. Gallagher-Thompson. “Fifty years ago, when they were in their 20s and 30s, people were locked up and someone threw away the key. They had a terrible fear that if they said they were depressed, they were going to end up in an institution. So they learned to look good and cover their problems as best they could.”

But those attitudes have shifted over time, along with the medical community’s understanding of mental illness among seniors. In the past, the assumption was that if older people were acting strangely or having problems, it was probably dementia. But now, “the awareness of depression, anxiety disorders and substance abuse as possible problems has grown,” said Bob G. Knight, a professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California, and the author of “Psychotherapy With Older Adults.”

A report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that about half of all Americans ages 50 to 70 will be at high risk for alcohol and marijuana abuse by 2020, compared with less than 9 percent in 1999.

In years past, too, there was a sense among medical professionals that a patient often could not be helped after a certain age unless he had received treatment earlier in life. Freud noted that around age 50, “the elasticity of the mental process on which treatment depends is, as a rule, lacking,” adding, “Old people are no longer educable.” (Never mind that he continued working until he died at 83.)

“That’s been totally turned around by what we’ve learned about cognitive psychology and cognitive approach — changing the way you think about things, redirecting your emotions in more positive ways,” said Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist and professor of human development at Cornell, and author of “30 Lessons for Living.”

Treatment regimens can be difficult in this population. Antidepressants, for instance, can have unpleasant side effects and only add to the pile of pills many elderly patients take daily. Older patients may feel that they don’t have the time necessary to explore psychotherapy, or that it’s too late to change.

But many eagerly embrace talk therapy, particularly cognitive behavioral techniques that focus on altering thought patterns and behaviors affecting their quality of life now. Experts say that seniors generally have a higher satisfaction rate in therapy than younger people because they are usually more serious about it. Time is critical, and their goals usually are well defined.

“Older patients realize that time is limited and precious and not to be wasted,” said Dr. Abrams. “They tend to be serious about the discussion and less tolerant of wasted time. They make great patients.”

"All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why."

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:00:31 -0700

““All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.””

- James Thurber

Adult consciousness may be present in infants’ minds,...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:57:26 -0700

Adult consciousness may be present in infants’ minds, study says

By Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times

Babies wise up fast. By the time infants are 3 months old, their unfinished brains are laced with a trillion connections, and the collective weight of all those firing neurons triples in a year.

But the indecipherable babbling and maladroit wiggling so beloved by parents just leave scientists in baby labs scratching their heads. What do those little people know, and when do they know it?

A team of French neuroscientists who compared brain waves of adults and babies has come up with a tentative answer: At 5 months, infants appear to have the internal architecture in place to perceive objects in adult-like ways, even though they can’t tell us.

“I think we have a pretty nice answer,” said Sid Kouider of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, whose findings were published Friday in the journal Science. “Babies as early as 5 months, and probably earlier, are displaying the same neural aspects of consciousness as adults.”

The findings hint at an early shift from a largely passive biological process shared with other animals to the uniquely human ability to ponder ourselves and our surroundings in complex and abstract ways.

Researchers spent the better part of five years fiddling with fussy babies — at 5, 10 and 15 months of age — who had to sit still while wearing a cap with 128 electrodes and watching images flicker before them at eye-blink intervals.

“This was heroic,” said UCLA developmental psychologist Scott Johnson, who was not involved in the study. “It must have taken them forever.”

Said Kouider: “We had to be very patient.”

Researchers have spent decades observing infants’ eye movements, attempting to delve into such issues as memory, cognition and perception. But there is a limit to what they can infer.

“Four-month-olds can predict trajectories of objects, but do they have a conscious projection of a ball? Does she wonder ‘Where is that thing?’” Johnson said. “It’s a question we wrestle with.”

Kouider relied on studies of adult brain waves recorded while subjects were presented with images that flashed for milliseconds. Some images were recognizable, such as a numeral, while the rest were indecipherable. The study volunteers were asked if they had “seen” anything.

In adults, the brain processes fleeting images — ones presented for less than 200 milliseconds — in a way that prevents us from consciously perceiving them. That finding that has broadened scientists’ understanding of subliminal suggestion and priming of human behavior.

But when images flash for at least 300 milliseconds — roughly the duration of an eye blink — brain activity increases exponentially, like a seismometer needle responding to a tremor. That’s also when adults can report that they consciously perceived the image.

The French team recorded equivalent brain waves in the 80 infants who could sit still while wearing their electrode caps. While the adult-like wave forms were somewhat weaker and delayed in 5-month-olds, they were strong and sustained in the older babies, the researchers reported.

Charles Nelson, director of developmental medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, cautioned that the French scientists may be over-interpreting data.

“The study is well done,” said Nelson, who wasn’t involved in the Science study but has done similar research. “They just take the inference too far.”

Brain wave data and brain activity measured by functional MRI scans alone cannot infer a behavioral state, Nelson warned.

“If that were true, I should be able to look at your [EEG and MRI] response and know what you’re thinking or feeling, and we know that is not the case,” he said.

Kouider acknowledged that the study describes brain function, not the content of the babies’ thoughts.

Further research may unveil what babies actually know but just won’t tell us, he said.

Tylenol Found To Reduce Anxiety Over 'Existential Uncertainty And Death'

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:48:13 -0700

Tylenol Found To Reduce Anxiety Over 'Existential Uncertainty And Death':

ecantwell:

Members of the Tylenol groups reported feeling less upset following conversations about death and other existential topics.

“Nobody has shown this before, and we are surprised that the effect emerged so robustly,” said lead researcher Daniel Randles, “that a drug meant primarily to alleviate headaches also prevents people from being bothered all that much by thinking about death. It was certainly surprising.”

One of the study groups was tasked with watching a “surreal [and] confusing” short film by David Lynch and discussing it afterwards.

The researchers found that those who had taken the Tylenol did not experience feelings of existential dread and “looked just like the control group that hadn’t talked about their death or watched the unpleasant [film] clip.”

Best experiment ever?

"To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:20:18 -0700

“To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.”

- Abraham Maslow

newyorker: Richard Socarides shares his experience coming out...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:40:35 -0700

newyorker:

Richard Socarides shares his experience coming out to his father, who was a founder of gay-conversion therapy: http://nyr.kr/Y9vfpa

"Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:08:18 -0700

“Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving…. Accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.”

- Alexander McCall Smith

Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, and Thomas Szasz at The...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:22:51 -0700

Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, and Thomas Szasz at The Evolution of Psychotherapy conference (1985)

Photo

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 07:52:09 -0700

"We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find..."

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:31:55 -0700

“We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.”

- Adam Phillips, Going Sane: Maps of Happiness

Infants React to Angry Voices Even When Asleep (Psychological Science)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:21:49 -0700

Infants React to Angry Voices Even When Asleep (Psychological Science):

via Psych Central:

New research suggests that babies’ brains can process emotional tones of voice, a capability that could potentially lead to problems in dealing with stress and emotions.

Researchers from the University of Oregon found that infants respond to angry tone of voice, even when they’re asleep.

Babies’ brains are very malleable, allowing them to develop in response to the environments and encounters they experience. But this adaptability comes with a certain degree of vulnerability: Research has shown that severe stress, such as maltreatment or institutionalization, can have a significant, negative impact on child development.

Graduate student Alice Graham and psychologists Drs. Phil Fisher and Jennifer Pfeifer wondered what the impact of more moderate stressors might be.

“We were interested in whether a common source of early stress in children’s lives — conflict between parents — is associated with how infants’ brains function,” said Graham.

Graham and colleagues decided to take advantage of recent developments in fMRI scanning with infants to answer this question.

Twenty infants, ranging in age from six to 12 months, came into the lab at their regular bedtime. While they were asleep in the scanner, the infants were presented with nonsense sentences spoken in very angry, mildly angry, happy, and neutral tones of voice by a male adult.

“Even during sleep, infants showed distinct patterns of brain activity depending on the emotional tone of voice we presented,” Graham said.

The researchers found that infants from high conflict homes showed greater reactivity to very angry tone of voice in brain areas linked to stress and emotion regulation, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, caudate, thalamus, and hypothalamus.

This finding is consistent with lab studies on animals that discovered these brain areas play an important role in the impact of early life stress on development.

As such, the results of this new study suggest that the same might be true for human infants.

Researchers believe the findings show that babies are not oblivious to their parents’ conflicts, and exposure to these conflicts may influence the way babies’ brains process emotion and stress.

The study is to be published in the journal Psychological Science.

"Practice giving things away, not just things you don’t care about, but things you do like...."

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:00:56 -0700

“Practice giving things away, not just things you don’t care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don’t bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked.”

- Robert A.F. Thurman

The Dangers of Self-Diagnosis (Psychology Today) “Easy...

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 08:31:37 -0800

The Dangers of Self-Diagnosis (Psychology Today)

“Easy access to information does not negate the need for a professional opinion.”

Re: Ask Me Friday. I am about to go back to school to become a psychotherapist, myself, and am dying to get started on reading some literature. Please direct me to what you recommend as seminal/classic/important works - where to begin? Where to go? I'd love any recommendations. Thanks!

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:56:51 -0800

Well, I tend to be a rather obsessive and wide-ranging reader, and as a result my initial impulse is to recommend thousands of books to you, which I know is now what you’re looking for. I think learning goes on forever, and many different kinds of books can offer many different kinds of things to a therapist, aspring or established. Most days I think there’s probably a good deal more to be learned about human nature by reading Tolstoy or Virginia Woolf or David Foster Wallace than there is from a psychology text book of any kind.

But since your question was specifically regarding important and/or seminal psychological literature, I will try to keep myself to that. :)

So, for starters, read anything you can get your hands on from Irvin Yalom (especially Love’s Executioner and The Gift of Therapy), Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Karen Horney (especially Neurosis and Human Growth), Erich Fromm, and William James. If you need more specific suggestions than that, feel free to let me know…

Do you have any advice for someone considering therapy/counseling as a career? I don't want to go to school forever but if it's absolutely necessary I'm open to it. Is there anything I should know beforehand?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:31:24 -0800

Well, I guess the first thing I should tell you is that you absolutely don’t need to go to school forever to be a therapist or a counselor. There are many different paths to the career, most of which require an undergraduate degree of some kind (not even necessarily in psychology) and then a graduate degree (typically a 2 year program). You can always go to school longer to obtain a Ph’D or PsyD or become a full-on psychiatrist, but none of these are necessary paths to becoming a licensed therapist.

I’m not sure where you’re currently at in your schooling, so I’m not sure how many years that will mean you have to do, but assuming you’d at least planned to get an undergraduate degree in something already, then you’d only need to consider going to school an additonal two years to get yours Masters in a related-field (an MA in Counseling, an MSW, an MFT, etc). Once you have your graduate degree, you typically have to do a few years of post-graduate work in order to acquire the necessary client and supervision hours required to take the licensure exam for your particular state. And, once you’ve done all that, you will be a licensed therapist.

As far as non-schooling or training-related advice, in general I’d say it’s quite helpful to have a huge and deep curiosity about people if you want to do this work for many years, to view psychotherapy as far more an art than a science in general, and to make sure you can take good care of yourself on a personal level while doing the work (including good self-care habits, building and maintaining a fulfilling life outside of your work, and having your own therapist so that you can be aware of your own issues, struggles and blind spots).

Best,

Chad

"We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:32:34 -0800

“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”

- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

(via awritersruminations)