Psychology and More

The New York Times Book Review has reviewed a new book by George Makari which looks at the history of Freud’s ideas and the individuals around him who helped inform his theories. The review is not altogether positive, but I found this quote interesting:

Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis - George Makari - Book Review - New York Times:

Over the years, Makari writes, psychoanalysis created “the richest systematic description of inner experience that the Western world had produced.” It addressed “sex, love and death; childhood, parenting and family; cruelty, fear, jealousy, envy and hate; identity, conscience and character; desire and mourning.” Yet rather than the integrated, universal system Freud envisioned, his insights seem more a cabinet of curiosities, not unlike the antiquities displayed on his desk.

Technorati Tags: abnormal psychology, mental illness, psychology

The history of psychology weblog, Advances in the History of Psychology, has a posting on an upcoming documentary about Walter Freeman, who promoted and performed lobotomies on individuals with (and without) mental illnesses. The show will be on this Monday night, January 21st.

Advances in the History of Psychology: PBS Documentary on Chief American Lobotomist:

Freeman developed the transorbital lobotomy (often called the “ice-pick” lobotomy) in the 1930s at George Washington University as a “cure” for many types mental illness. He then relentlessly promoted his procedure, which was inflicted on nearly 3,000 people up into the 1960s.

Technorati Tags: abnormal psychology, mental illness, psychology

The Washington Post published an obituary today for Ralph White. He was a seminal figure in what would become known as peace psychology. I admired his research and writing, and he was an inspiration for me to study peace psychology. Thanks Dr. White.

Ralph K. White, 100; Studied War Psychology - washingtonpost.com:

Dr. White was among the first people to analyze how underlying psychological causes and misunderstandings can lead nations to engage in warfare. He was perhaps best known for his theory distinguishing between empathy and sympathy for one’s adversaries.

Technorati Tags: peace psychology, psychology

One of the topics we will be studying later in the term is memory — specifically, how memory can be easily distorted, or even fabricated. The British Psychological Society’s weblog has an interesting summary of an article demonstrating that memory recall can be distorted by making people aware of stereotypes (a related topic is known as stereotype threat)…

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Gender stereotypes can distort our memories:

Plenty of research has shown that some stereotypes are not only offensive, they can also have a detrimental effect on people’s behaviour.

For example, women’s maths performance suffers after they are reminded of the stereotype that men are better than women at maths.

Now Armand Chatard and colleagues have taken this line of research a step further by demonstrating that being reminded of gender stereotypes can distort students’ memories of their prior exam performance.

Technorati Tags: memory, psychology, social psychology, stereotypes

The Advances in the History of Psychology weblog points to a story about a real-life example of Milgram’s obedience effects…

Advances in the History of Psychology — Milgram Study Comes to Life (Again):

This past August a Massachusetts institution that specializes in the treatment of people with autism, mental retardation, and emotional problems, the Judge Rotenberg center, was tricked into delivering dozens of electric shocks to two of its special education students when staff were ordered to do so over the telephone by a former student posing as a school supervisor.

Technorati Tags: psychology

Ugh. Another awful shooting yesterday. And, another shooter who was psychologically disturbed. Situations like this tend to reinforce the notion that mental illness is associated with violence, and continues to stigmatize the disorders. I always cringe when this kind of media report comes out.

Pure Pedantry has a good posting about the relationships between violence and mental illness, with some good data.

Technorati Tags: abnormal psychology, mental illness, psychology

The New York Times Magazine has an interesting piece on panpsychism—the notion that consciousness is ubiquitous in every piece of matter.

Mind of a Rock - New York Times:

So vexing has the problem of consciousness proved that some of these thinkers have been driven to a hypothesis that sounds desperate, if not downright crazy. Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, psychology

The New York Times has an article about Freud’s theories and how they are increasingly being ignored in psychology departments, yet they are alive and well in the humanities…

Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department - New York Times:

The primary reason it became marginalized, Ms. Eagly, said, is that while most disciplines in psychology began putting greater emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically, “psychoanalysts haven’t developed the same evidence-based grounding.” As a result, most psychology departments don’t pay as much attention to psychoanalysis.

Technorati Tags: psychology

In Introduction to Psychology, we were recently discussing consciousness and non-ordinary consciousness. Hypnosis is one of those non-ordinary states of consciousness which can show some very important changes in perceptual experience, including pain relief. Mind Hacks has an interesting article on a research study underway…

Mind Hacks: Hypnosis as a surgical tool:

Patients were randomly assigned to either a brief 15-minute hypnosis condition, or to another where the patient discussed their concerns with an empathic psychologist (to make sure the effects weren’t just due to having someone their to ‘calm their nerves’).

The study found that patients given hypnosis needed less painkilling medication, were less nauseous, less emotionally upset, and experienced less pain intensity than the patients in the ‘empathic listening’ condition.

Technorati Tags: perception, psychology, hypnosis

It is always surprising when what might seem to be the most innocuous things have an effect on performance…

Cognitive Daily: Does the color red really impair performance on tests?:

In these carefully controlled experiments, the researchers have demonstrated that even brief exposure to the color red does appear to impair performance in a variety of different types of tests!

Technorati Tags: teaching