Psychology

It determines what we see, what we do, what we feel. It controls our emotions, our thoughts, and our conscience. What is this remarkable element of the human mind? It is called perception. Perception as defined in the Merrian- Webster Dictionary as the following- 1 a : awareness of the elements of environment through physical sensation b: Physical sensation interpreted in the light of experience 2 a : quick, acute, and intuitive cognition : APPRECIATION b : capacity for comprehension Perception. As hard as it is to define it, it is impossible to correctly conceive a “correct” or “right” way to use it.

Perception varies with not only humans, but with virtually all other animals as well, whether through instinct or with conscious thought. Let us take this a step farther. When a bee looks at a flower that is meant for feeding from, they do not only notice the colors the human mind sees. The bee sees a yellow “run-way” directly into the core of the flower, guiding it into the source of nectar. This brings us to the question- “is what we see real, or is what we see our own reality? “. What the human mind sees is only three dimensions.

Since Albert Einstein first conjured the cientific possibility of a fourth dimension, human beings have longed to see it. Many people assume that it does not exist simply because they cannot see it. They are not able to see the yellow “run-way” into the heart of a flower, but to the bee and an ultraviolet light, that “run-way” is certainly real. People’s physical use of their own perception is very limited, as such noticeable in the “tunnel-vision” effect. A good example of the Tunnel Vision effect is a perception or thought such as “if I cannot see it, it simply does not exist”.

We as humans are limited not only to what we can sense, but how we perceive what we ense. Such is a formidable question. What if that fourth dimension does exist, what if we can see it , only our brain cannot perceive it being there, therefor it never exists in the first place. I would consider that as a paradox. Where does perception come from? Is it a result of the upbringing and surroundings of an individual (animal or human), or is it a result of genetics? Certainly I would believe that conditioning has a great impact on an individual’s perception.

An example to that would be as such : A dog is abused, beaten, and starved by a group of owners in a kennel. The dog is then recovered by the humane society and adopted by a local family. The dog in turns bites one in the family every time a hand is raised near it as a motion, for food or otherwise. The dog has been conditioned into fear. However, due to the conditioning, the dog perceives the hand motions differently than would a newborn pup. The dog perceives such hand actions as a premonition that it is about to be hit or harmed in some way.

I can only conclude to myself that there is a distinct possibility that conditioning has the ability to alter perception in a great amount. People often mistakenly identify people for others in many circumstances everyday. For example, I got on the bus to go to school a few weeks ago, and sat down next to a person whom I believed I had talked to the day before regarding a topic. I started to say something, I looked up and realized the person was a totally different person than whom I believed I was talking to.

I had seen the person who I thought I was talking to when I got on that bus. The physical features, the voice, etc. all matched. However, a neuron must have misfired because there was an entirely different person altogether in that seat. I went o another seat, pondered it over, and realized how speculative human identification is. Often victims of rape, robbery, or other crimes are asked to identify their assailant in a police lineup. Seventy two percent of people misidentify suspects in police lineups the first try. The reason?

The person sees who they “saw” when they were attacked. I would presume that during an attack, a person would be more concerned about staying alive than noticing the exact physical characteristics of the individual who is attacking. Since the brain is overworking to do multitudes of tasks at the time of an attack, I would ssume that a person would not pay particular notice to the appearance of the attacker. This is why human visual identification is so controversial and hard to support. Perhaps the person *did* see that person who attacked them in the lineup.

People often fill in the gaps of a picture and story to make everything seem clear to them and the authorities. Therefor, human visual identification cannot be trusted simply due to people’s differences of perception. When I look at and read the Bible, I regard it as an awesome literary work, but not something I would base or live my life upon. However, there are those who perceive the Bible as not only words on a page, but as the guiding force behind humanity. Religion and perception do not go well together simply due to the vast differences in opinion among the human race.

What I perceive as fact is that Jesus Christ did not ascend into heaven, and that the Bible is merely a literary work. A book to be concise. However, what Christians perceive as fact is the exact opposite. Often, there are those in the religious or family oriented lobby industries who try to suppress what I read or hear based upon their own erception, Perhaps this is stretching the links of perception, but I believe that the perceptual differences among people are the original roots of censorship.

One group of people or person perceives something as obscene or “harmful”. Another group perceives *the same thing* as intellectually stimulating or entertaining. Such is why I consider perception as not only having to do with human psychology, but with politics and beliefs as well. I consider perception to be not only what a person senses, but what they get out of what they sense. I listen to hard-core rock and like the sound of it. However, an adult would most likely label it as simply “noise”.

The perceptual differences among people is the *single* biggest speed bump in attaining world, civil, and domestic peace. Our differences are small, but great in bounty. I see white, you see black. Never will all people in the world agree on one particular topic, however we can learn to respect the perception of that topic. Until people understand the roots of problems is how they perceive them, and that it is only a problem if you make it a problem, peace and respect are unattainable goals.

Psychology covers a vast field, and one interesting aspect of it is personality. Personality by itself involves various issues. Some of which basic aspects are Psychoanalytic, Ego, Biological, Behaviorist, Cognitive, Trait, Humanistic and Interactionist. Though personality as a subject fascinates me a lot, what interests me the most in this subject is behaviorism. For me different types of behaviors are amazing to learn about, mainly the behavior therapy, collective behavior, crime and punishment, and Social behavior and peer acceptance in hildren.

I chose Behaviorism over the other aspects because I believe Behavior determines human personality and is very interesting. You can tell what one is by his behavior, and one behaves according to what place he has in society. By doing this paper on Behavior, I hope to get a better understanding of, if behavior develops a personality or if personality guides behavior. I also see behaviorism helping me in the future with my personal and professional career by understanding human personality and behaviour better than I do.

No matter what our major is, if you can determine one’s personality by his behavior you can really get your work done from that person and understand the better than you would otherwise. This person could be your employee or your employer. Behavior Therapy Behavior therapy is the application of experimentally derived principles of learning to the treatment of psychological disorders. The concept derives primarily from work of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov.

Behavior-therapy techniques differ from psychiatric methods, particularly psychoanalysis, in that hey are predominately symptom (behaviour) oriented and show little or no concern for unconscious processes, achieving new insight, or effecting fundamental personality change. Behavior therapy was popularized by the U. S. psychologist B. F. Skinner, who worked with mental patients in a Massachusetts state hospital. From his work in animal learning, Skinner found that the establishment and extinction of responses can be determined by the way reinforcers, or rewards, are given.

The pattern of reward giving, both in time and frequency, is known as a schedule of reinforcement. The gradual change in behavior in approximation of the desired result is known as shaping. More recent developments in behavior therapy emphasize the adaptive nature of cognitive processes. Behaviour-therapy techniques have been applied with some success to such disturbances as enuresis (bed-wetting), tics, phobias, stuttering, obsessive-compulsive behavior, drug addiction, neurotic behaviours of normal persons, and some psychotic conditions.

It has also been used in training the mentally retarded. Collective Behavior Much of collective behaviour is dramatic, npredictable and frightening, so the early theories and many contemporary popular views are more evaluative than analytic. The French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon identified the crowd and revolutionary movements with the excesses of the French Revolution; the U. S. psychologist Boris Sidis was impressed with the resemblance of crowd behavior to mental disorder. Many of these early theories depicted collective behaviour returned to an earlier stage of development.

Freud retained this emphasis in viewing crowd behaviour and many ther forms of collective behaviour as regressions to an earlier stage of childhood development; he explained, for example, the slavish identification that followers have for leaders on the basis of such regression. More sophisticated recent efforts to treat collective behavior as a pathological manifestation employ social disorganization as an explanatory approach. From this point of view collective behavior erupts as an unpleasant symptom of frustration and malaise stemming from cultural conflict, organizational failure, and other social malfunctions.

The distinctive feature of this approach is a eluctance to take seriously the manifest contest of collective behaviour. Neither the search for enjoyment in recreational fad, the search for spiritual meaning on a religious sect, nor the demand for equal opportunity in an interest-group movement is accepted to face value. An opposite evaluation of many forms of collective behaviour has become part of the analytic perspective in revolutionary approaches to society. From the revolutionist¦¦s point of view a much collective behavior is a release of creative impulses from the repressive effects of establish social orders.

Psychology is very hard to define due to it’s very nature and the wide range of topics that it covers. No two books will give exactly the same definition of ‘psychology’ or what subject matter it covers. However most definitions would suggest psychology to be the ‘scientific study of behaviour and mental processes. ‘ An astonishing variety of topics is covered under this definition for example topics can range from ‘obesity’ to ‘living with a divided brain’, from ‘expression of aggression’ to ‘childhood amnesia’.

No one today can afford not to know psychology as it touches every aspect of life. For example: How does the way your parents raised you affect the way you raise your kids? What effect does stress have on your immune system? How effective is psychotherapy when treating depression? How should instruments in a nuclear power station be designed to minimise human error? Can men care for infants as ably as women?

Psychologists work on these and many more questions which need to be answered as through psychological theories and research we can learn to better understand ourselves, what motivates us and how to handle situations in a better way although each situation and the individuals involved in it are unique, some things could be applied to real life. For example parents may learn that reward is better than punishment when handling their kids.

Also such theories and research have and will continue to influence laws concerning a number of areas such as capital punishment, pornography, sexual behaviour (for example sexual deviancy) However as most questions like the ones mentioned above relate to the ‘psyche’ (a totality of inner experience lacking in spatial dimensions) the problem is: How do external observers investigate someone else’s psyche systematically if they cannot understand it with their senses?

Behaviourism, a movement in psychology, maintains ‘we cannot study the psyche at all because its immateriality renders it inaccessible to measurement. ‘ This is where experimentation comes in. An experiment is a ‘method of investigation in which the researcher manipulates the situation in order to bring about a change in the research participant’s behaviour. ‘ Behaviourists, use cause-effect methodology to measure the directly observable: the environment and behaviour as this is essentially the only way one can get an insight in to the answer of any of the above questions.

However many psychologists object to this exclusively behavioural definition saying that a complete denial of the psyche prevents them from making inferences about the phenomena behind behaviour. If psychologists can explain behaviour by referring to consciousness, cognition, thought or emotion, then they can risk a much richer range of predictions about behaviour. Thus many psychologists regularly construct theories about the psyche, but still choose to base them on the experimental observation of behaviour played out in measurable environmental circumstances.

Therefore experiments are essential as they allow determination of cause and affect as psychologists are interested in finding about more about human behaviour and the mental processes that underpin it. For example if we wanted to find out if absence really does make the heart grow fonder (Does ‘absence really make the heart grow founder? ). Is it enough simply to look around and make informal observations and on that basis come to a conclusion we feel happy with?

Of course in one sense it is, and as naturally inquisitive people, we do this sort of thing all the time as a means of forming our own opinions. But the fact of the matter is that such a process inevitably leads different people to different conclusions – because we each focus on different information, have different experiences, have different agendas. Thus some people think absence really does make the heart grow fonder while others think the opposite, that Absence leads the heart to wander; or Out of sight, is out of mind.

To know which is correct or when each is correct and, more importantly, why, we need to act as scientists, not lay-scientists. Using the scientific method to answer such questions differentiates psychology from other disciplines that address similar questions. The scientific method is a procedure for acquiring and testing knowledge through systematic observation or experimentation (e. g. , through use of empirical methods) and plays an essential role in achieving the goals/objectives psychology has set out for itself.

Psychology sets out to:- cientifically study behaviour and mental processes promote human welfare Research is ‘any honest attempt to study a problem systematically or to add to man’s knowledge of a problem’ (Penguin Dictionary of Psychology) The goals of psychological research are: describe behaviour explain behaviour predict behaviour control behaviour In order to investigate psychological theories, psychologist have a number of research methods they could use. For any method there is a compromise between conflicting advantages and disadvantages.

Some of the methods available to psychologists are experimental/scientific, field experiment, natural experiment, correlation, observation, case study, survey, cross-sectional, longitudinal and cross-cultural. They are not necessarily exclusive for example you can have a cross-cultural observation. A brief explanation of a few of the methods:- Experimental: the relationship between two things is explored by deliberately producing a change in one variable (the independent variable, IV) and recording what effect this has on the other variable (the dependent variable, DV).

This method is advantageous as it can be well controlled and replicated however it can be very artificial thus making it hard to generalise to real life. Observational: behaviour is observed in its natural environment. All ‘variables are free to vary and interference is kept to a minimum’ No independent variable is manipulated but nevertheless a hypothesis can be tested. It is most often used with young children, wild animals, uncooperative subjects, when something is studied for the first time and when there are ethical objections to manipulating variables, e. looking at the effects of death.

This method boasts high ecological validity and if the observer remains undetected most experimental effects are avoided e. g. experimenter bias and demand characteristics. However you can’t infer cause and effect, there are a lack of controls and it can’t be replicated. Case Study: detailed account of a single individual: personal history, background, test results, ratings, interviews and so on. It is advantageous as it relates to real life, gives rich qualitative data and may be the only way to study atypical behaviour.

On the otherhand it is time consuming and expensive, is not very scientific, is unstructured, unreplicable and unreliable. A limited sample also makes it hard to generalise to the population as a whole. In conclusion psychologists do experiments as they are interested in finding more about human behaviour and the mental processes that underpin it. Experiments are needed in order to do this as observation is not very reliable were as experiments are scientifically based and usually allow determination of cause and affect thus helping to solve the many mysteries of life.

In order to answer this question it is important to understand the definitions of both psychology and science. The word ‘psychology’ comes from the Greek ‘psyche’ (or soul) and ‘logos’ (or study), which came to be known as the ‘study of the soul’. The American Heritage Dictionary defines psychology as: 1. the science dealing with the mind and with mental and emotional processes 2. the science of human and animal behavior.

In its pure definition the dictionary has provided us with a clue to the answer, it describes science as: 1. systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, etc. 2. ranch of knowledge, esp. one that systematizes facts, principles, and methods 3. skill or technique In order to prove this claim we have to look at whether or not psychology can fill this definition above. Scientific study is a valid way of coming to an understanding of life, and can be very useful in every area of life. Science develops theories based on what is observed. It examines each theory with rigorous and scrupulous tests to see if it describes reality. The scientific method works well in observing and recording physical data and in reaching conclusions which either confirm or nullify a theory.

During the mid-19th century, scholars (although at that time probably termed philosophers) wanted to study human nature with the aim of applying the scientific method to observe, record, and treat human behavior that was deemed as unnatural. They believed that if people could be studied in a scientific manner, there would be a greater accuracy in understanding present behavior, in predicting future behavior, and, most controversially, in altering behavior through scientific intervention. There are many areas of psychology, each attempting to explain behavior from slightly different perspectives;

Social psychology is concerned with the effects of social situations on human behavior. Personality theorists study individual behavior. Comparative psychologists study animal behaviors across the range of species Physiological psychologists are concerned with the biological basis of behavior. Developmental psychologists study principles and processes responsible for change throughout life. Cognitive psychologists investigate memory, thought, problem solving, and the psychological aspects of learning.

Analysis of behavior studies the conditions under which a behavior can be learned and the ituations that cause that behavior to occur. Learning is an area of psychology exploring how new behaviors are learned and maintained. Clinical psychologists study ways to help individuals and groups of individuals change their behavior. Industrial and organizational psychologists are concerned with the physical and social aspects of people’s work environments as they affect work output. Community psychologists use scientific methods to study and solve social problems.

As Western describes, the psychological paradigm is a collection of assumptions used to make sense of a subject area or xperience, this can be applied to psychology itself. Psychology lacks one unified paradigm but has four perspectives that search for its understanding; The pyschodynamic perspective believes that behavior is a result of unconscious processes, personal motivation and early childhood experiences. It’s most famous advocate was Sigmund Freud. Its method of data collection rely heavily on interpreting discussion, dreams and fantasies, actions, case studies and a limited amount of experimentation.

The behaviorist perspective believes that behavior is learned and selected by environmental consequences. Its method of data collection relies heavily on experimentation conducted in the scientific laboratory where the factors studied can be controlled; or it may take place in a real life setting where more natural behavior is studied and far more variables exist. The cognitive perspective believes that behavior is a result of information processing, storage in the brain, transformation and the retrieval of information.

The methods of data collection used are again experimentation but with much use of computer modeling. The evolutionary perspective believes that psychological rocesses echo the evolutionary processes of natural selection. Its method of data collection includes the deduction of explanations for behavior, and comparisons between species and cultures. It also involves a limited amount of experimentation. Of these four perspectives all lend common similarities to the traditional sciences. All have elements of controlled experimentation, as does physics or chemistry.

Cognitive perspectives use computer modeling, as does mathematics. There are similarities, but there are also differences to any other sciences, such as the study of dreams and fantasies. The methods of experimentation and research in psychology is completed on a scientific basis. Psychological experimental research would involve the manipulation of a situation to examine the way in which the subjects of an experiment react, in order to observe cause and effect. The experimenter manipulates independent variables and the subjects responses would prove the dependant variables.

By measuring the subjects responses, the experimenter can tell if the manipulation has had an effect. Psychological hypotheses are sought to operationalise – to turn an abstract concept into a concrete argument. This process is scientific in its element. The hypothesis is framed, variables are operationalised separately, a standard procedure is developed that is maintained throughout the experiment, subjects are scientifically selected, results are tested and conclusions drawn. Control groups are often used, similar in essence to control chemicals used in chemistry.

These control groups are not exposed to the manipulation but instead to neutral conditions, providing a standards to compare results. In some cases researchers carry out blind studies where subjects are kept unaware of the aspects of the study. Double blind studies have been used in the past where the researchers are kept blind too. A scientific subject knows its own limitations. Psychology attempts to study complex phenomena in laboratory and field situations where validity is called into question. Results contrast with differing personal understandings of researchers which will always differ to some extent.

In a physical science a variance of error may be intolerable above 2%, in psychology 50% may be an acceptable level. Every psychological experiment and theory is evaluated with the same level of criticality as that of the traditional sciences. Questions are asked over the theoretical framework, the results validity and its relationship with the hypothesis, the quality and range of sample and if it is representative, the conclusions that can be drawn form the data and broader conclusions that may be apparent.

Finally the studies are questioned on their meanings and ethics to operationalise the original hypothesis. Psychology has adopted the scientific mode. However, from a strictly scientific point of view, it has not been able to meet the requirements of true science. In attempting to evaluate the status of psychology as a cientific study, the American Psychological Association appointed Sigmund Koch to conduct a study, employing over eighty noted scholars in assessing the facts, hypotheses, and methods of psychology. In 1983, the results were published in a series entitled ‘Psychology: A Study of Science’.

Koch describes what he believes to be the delusion in thinking of psychology as a science: The truth is that psychological statements which describe human behavior or which report results from tested research can be scientific. However, when there is a move from describing human ehavior to explaining it there is also a move from science to opinion. Here it is important to make the distinction between psychology and psychiatry. Academic psychology is a scientific project, initiated by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig at around 1885.

His work was the study of the average adult human mind, and the scientific method used was introspection. His approaches have long since been abandoned, as have many of his ideals, but not the basic idea of understanding and describing human functioning within a scientific context. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is no more a science than that f civil engineering. Ideally, scientifically investigated therapeutic techniques and methods are used together with ethical and philosophical principles in order to achieve a desired outcome. Psychotherapy, then, is a mixture of a craft and an art and may not be called a science.

Psychology breeds many conflicting explanations of man and his behavior. Psychologist Roger Mills, in his 1980 article, “Psychology Goes Insane, Botches Role as Science,” says: “The field of psychiatry today is literally a mess. There are as many techniques, methods and theories around as there are researchers and therapists. I have personally seen therapists convince their clients that all of their problems come from their mothers, the stars, their biochemical make-up, their diet, their lifestyle and even the “karma” from their past lives.

These opinions are describing psychotherapy and not psychology in its core. Remembering that psychology is the scientific study of the behavior of humans and animals, we should look at their methods of study. As we have seen, psychologists use scientific methods in an attempt to understand and predict behavior, to develop procedures for changing behavior, and to evaluate treatment strategies. Mitchell and Jolley discuss the question of whether psychology is a science in the first chapter of their text ‘Research Design Explained’ (3rd Edition).

Their conclusions support the claim that psychology is a science. They discuss the facts that psychology produces objective evidence that can be replicated (replicated with the same success as physics and chemistry experiments). That it unearths observable, objective evidence that either supports or refutes existing beliefs and creates new knowledge. And that psychology is open- minded about claims, even those that go against common sense and ceptical about ideas that, even though they make sense, have not been supported by any research evidence.

If we can define a science using subjective methods then Psychology is definitely a science. Psychology represents an empirical science, its methods demanding empirical testing of hypotheses. Many empirical results of psychology are subject to personal interpretation and intense dispute. This can be seen as a function of the phenomena that is psychology. But the key to resolving these disputes is to turn back to the empirical methods and pit alternative interpretations against each other.

Academics have always been interested in how the mind works and indeed psychology has existed in one form or another for many years, but other subjects, especially philosophy, have often overshadowed it. Often it was seen as not scientific and philosophical in the sense that there seemed to be no concrete answers within the subject. Now it is one of the most popular subjects to study and has a firm place within the sciences. It is interesting to consider how this formulation of psychology as a science arose and how this new psychology and the old psychology have been merged together.

The aim of this essay is to consider Wundt and James’s involvement in this transitional process between philosophy and psychology. The evidence presented should show that Wundt and James were extremely instructive and influential figures in the history of psychology. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, the son of an Evangelical pastor, was born near Manheim, Germany, on 16 August 1832. He was from an academic family with members who were scientists, professors, government officials and physicians.

He was often inattentive in his own schooling and was a habitual daydreamer. He failed his first year of high school and was sent to Heidelberg to live with an aunt. Here he improved academically and graduated at age 19. He decided to embark on a career in medicine and indeed excelled in this area. His achievements lead him into the field of physiology and he decided to proceed into the academic side of this subject by becoming a lecturer. As a lecturer at Heidelberg Wundt earned a very low salary so he began to teach courses privately.

His first course in experimental physiology he taught in his own home and attracted only four students. Wundt wished to further his career by both private teaching and private studies. His studies at this time were connected with earlier work in the fields of physiology and astronomy however these studies also carried implications for a future science of psychology. It was in these scientific experiments that Wundt developed his ideas for a hybrid of philosophy and physiology, which would eventually become psychology. He formulated two branches of psychology.

The branch he is most famous for is experimental psychology. In this he took his experiences as a philosopher studying the mind and experiences in physiology studying the body and created a new area of science. He believed the mind could be studied in relation to the body and by controlled experimental conditions new hypotheses could be formulated and either supported or not in this new field. He did not believe however, that the experimental method would prove enough to provide a balanced view of the science of psychology.

He also devised what he termed Volkerpsychologie (ethnic or folk psychology). This embraced especially the study of language, myth and custom. Once he had devised these two new branches he began to actively pursue them. In the summer of 1862 Wundt offered a new course of lectures on the experimental side entitled “Psychology from the standpoint of Natural Science”. He also wrote “Lectures on the Human and Animal Mind” (published in1863 and 1864) which was the start of Wundt’s investigation into Volkerpsychology.

Wundt resigned from his post and became even more dependent on and involved in his private studies. In 1867 Wundt was invited to write for a journal entitled “Recent Advances in the field of Physiological Psychology”. His article aroused more attention than anything else he had written and convinced many that a new scientific psychology was truly on the horizon (Fancher, 1996, page155). In this way Wundt began to become an extremely influential man. He had defined this new science and succeeded in making it an independent subject.

He had written the first widely read articles on this new area and he had begun to devise explicit rules for his experimental method in psychology. As his ideas grew so did his influence and this was apparent in 1874 when he produced his book Principles of Physiological Psychology. As well as clarifying his ideas and this new area it was also heralded as the first genuine textbook for Psychology. In 1875 he accepted a full professorship at Leipzig and it is here that Wundt cemented his place as one of the great innovators of psychology.

He installed the first fully-fledged programme in experimental psychology and as he became more established his area grew dramatically. By 1879 he had the first working research laboratory explicitly devoted to experimental psychology and students flocked to study this new science with him. In his new official “institute” of psychology graduate students could study for PhDs in experimental psychology. He was extremely important as he trained the first generation of psychologists.

In 1881 he founded the journal Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies) this meant that his research laboratories could publish their findings it also meant that word of this new domain of science could be more widely spread. By the 1900’s there were more than 100 psychology laboratories world-wide and psychology was recognised as an important and academic subject. Wundt continued to publish right up to his death in 1920. It is mostly his institutional developments that have lead to Wundt often being regarded as the ‘father’ of psychology.

If Wundt was the founder of psychology then William James was the man who brought the science to life in the United States. He has been described as the first of the ‘new’ psychologists in the U. S. William James was born on 11 January 1842 in New York City. He was the eldest child of a wealthy, unconventional family. His father moved the family around America and Europe and was plagued be panic attacks and nervous problems. All the children were educated privately and in this unusual household they were encouraged to formulate and discuss their own personal opinions from an early age.

James as a child was interested in and showed great aptitude at art but this career was quickly terminated by his father. James was encouraged to go into science so in 1861 James went to Harvard, where he first studied chemistry and then changed to physiology. In 1864 he enrolled at Harvard’s Medical School. After suffering from health problems James’s future was uncertain and after suffering episodes similar to his fathers he was in despair. However, he completed his medical degree but his interests were beginning to emerge in another field-philosophy.

His career still unstable and the fact that he had no real experience in any area worried James, but at last in 1872 he got he opportunity he had been waiting for. He was asked to teach on a newly instituted physiology course at Harvard. James excelled as a teacher provoking enthusiasm and interest from his students. He was charming and vivacious and very much involved personally with many of his students. He conveyed his own love of a subject to his students beautifully and with ease. James had no formal training in this area and often was learning the material himself days or hours before his lectures.

He soon renamed the course ” The Relations between Physiology and Psychology” and while he was working on his book The Principles of Psychology, between 1878 and 1890, he focused exclusively on psychology. As James’s interest in psychology grew so he was determined to spread its message. He was extremely influential in this area as he brought the new science to life and taught in a way that all could understand. He had himself benefited from his readings with regard to his nerve problems and was determined that his students would see psychology’s worth and importance in everyday life.

In 1890 James’s book The Principles of Psychology was published and even when not original, an old theme was given new life by its brilliance of formulation (Watson, 1963, page 325). James proved himself to be an accomplished writer and his exciting way of conveying psychology lead to it quickly becoming the leading psychology text in English. In later years James’s interest in psychology dwindled and he worked more in philosophy. However, James can be seen as the man that not only spread the new science academically but who brought it to the people.

As well as instilling great interest in his students he also wrote another book Briefer Course in 1892 which was read by people from all walks of life. He helped bring psychology into the classroom by applying its theories to everyday life. He was extremely important in the spread of psychology around the United States. James was influential in a way that previously academics had been wary of. Wundt liked to control all his research but James positively forced his students to think for themselves and to take psychology forward as a science.

James had no particularly new psychological ideas for his students to adhere to and he encouraged and inspired them to develop their own individual approaches. Three of James’s students G. Stanley Hall, Mary Whiton Calkins and Edward Lee Thorndike went on to contribute significantly to the development of American psychology. Wundt certainly had no startling new theories with relation to psychology but he succeeded in merging physiology and philosophy and making psychology an independent subject in its own right.

He modelled his innovations on the progressions he saw in the other sciences. Although not a inspiring man he was the first man who could be called a psychologist without qualifying the statement by reference to another, stronger interest (Leahey, 1980,page 241). He also wrote the first texts on psychology and this succeeded in highlighting this new domain of science. Wundt’s experimental psychology has influenced the psychology seen today and has helped to cement psychology’s place within the other sciences.

James had no fresh ideas about psychology; indeed his own interests seemed to lie with philosophy. However, drawing on his own experiences of psychology’s real life uses he gave the subject meaning for all. He allowed this new psychology to be read and understood by the masses. He inspired and encouraged his students and was definitely influential in the future of psychology due to the high calibre of students he gave to the field of psychology. `If Wundt founded psychology then James could be said to have brought it alive and to the people.

The common view of hypnosis is that it is an altered state of consciousness, a trance-like state characterized by intense concentration, extreme relaxation, and high suggestibility. Many who accept this view also believe that hypnosis is the way of accessing the unconscious mind, thereby allowing the recovery of repressed memories, multiple personalities, and even memories of past lives. Since at least the 1960’s this view of hypnosis has been seen as a myth by scientifically-minded psychologists, who deny that hypnosis is an altered state which somehow allows the hypnotist to communicate directly with the unconscious mind.

There are two distinct, though related, aspects to the mythical view of hypnosis: the myth of the altered state, and the myth of the unconscious mind as a reservoir of repressed memories, numerous personalities, past lives, and for some, mythical insights and occult truths. Thoughts of hypnosis began in the 1970’s with an Australian physician Franz Mesmer who would rely heavily on the power of suggestion. Franz’s last name is where the term mesmerize came about. Later the term hypnosis emerged through an English surgeon named James

Braid. Hypnosis is a Greek word, which means sleep. Braid used it to describe the hypnotic state people would be in after hypnosis. We now know that hypnosis is not sleep, but an altered state of consciousness. Many people believe the hypnosis is mythical and magical. Those supporting the mythical view of hypnosis often cite studies which show that during hypnosis the brain shows electrical changes and that the brain waves under hypnosis differ from those during waking consciousness. There are many problems with the realism of hypnosis.

Many people feel that it’s brought up upon the troubled people themselves. One clue as to the falsehood of the common view of hypnosis is the fact that it usually occurs under very dramatically different social settings: The showroom, the clinic, the classroom, and the police station. Showroom hypnotists usually work bars and clubs, and their subjects are usually people those idea of a good time is to join dozens of hundreds of others in a place where alcohol is the main social bonding agent.

The subjects of clinical hypnotists are usually people with problems who have heard that hypnotherapy works for relieving pain or overcoming an addiction, fear, weight problem, etc. Another group of people who get hypnotized are college students who take psychology classes. Finally, some hypnotic subjects are people who have been victims or witnesses of a crime, but can’t remember enough details to help police investigators who encourage them to undergo hypnosis to help them remember.

There are many facts that claim that hypnosis is not a reliable tool. Most of what is know about hypnosis, opposed to what is believed, has come from studies on the subject, not the hypnotists. We know that there is a significant correlation between being imaginative and being responsive to hypnosis. We know that those who are fantasy-prone are also likely to make excellent hypnotic subjects. We know that hypnotic subjects are not turned into zombies and are not controlled by their hypnotist.

We know that hypnosis does not enhance the accuracy of memory. We know that a person under hypnosis is very suggestible and that memory is easily filled in by imagination and by suggestions made under hypnosis. We know that confabulation is quite common while under hypnosis and that many states do not allow testimony which has been induced by hypnosis because it is intrinsically unreliable. We last know that the greatest predictor of hypnotic responsiveness is what a person believes about hypnosis.

Some things that hypnosis is used for are to help you lose weight, quit smoking, find out different things, reincarnation, and many other things. The most controversial is its use in past life regressive therapy. According to its advocates, hypnosis opens a window to the unconscious mind were memories of past lives are stored. How memories of past lives get into the unconscious mind of a person is unknown, but advocates loosely adhere to a doctrine of reincarnation even though a doctrine does not require a belief in either the unconscious mind or memories of past lives.

The only evidence that has been reported is the fact that while hypnotized many subjects report events from past lives. Hypnosis is an interesting subject in almost every person’s eyes. Whether the whole concept is true, is not really known. It is said that people who believe in hypnosis are easier to hypnotize, while those who don’t believe can’t be hypnotized at all. There is still quite a mystery about the whole subject that everyone is waiting to be solved.

Psychoanalysis is a system of psychology originated by the Viennese physician Sigmund FREUD in the 1890’s and then further developed by himself, his students, and other followers. It consists of three kinds of related activities: (1) a method for research into the human mind, especially inner experiences such as thoughts, feelings, emotions, fantasies, and dreams; (2) a systematic accumulation of a body of knowledge about the mind; and (3) a method for the treatment of psychological or emotional disorders.

Psychoanalysis began with the discovery that HYSTERIA, an illness with physical ymptoms that occurred in a completely healthy physical body–such as a numbness or paralysis of a limb or a loss of voice or a blindness–could be caused by unconscious wishes or forgotten memories. (Hysteria is now commonly referred to as conversion disorder. ) The French neurologist Jean Martin CHARCOT tried to rid the mind of undesirable thoughts through hypnotic suggestion, but without lasting success.

Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician, achieved better results by letting Anna O. , a young woman patient, try to empty her mind by just telling him all of her thoughts and feelings. Freud refined Breuer’s method by conceptualizing theories about it and, using these theories, telling his patients through interpretations what was going on inside the unconscious part of their minds, thus making the unconscious become conscious.

Many hysterias were cured this way, and in 1895, Breuer and Freud published their findings and theories in Studies in Hysteria. Traditional psychoanalytical theory states that all human beings are born with instinctual drives that are constantly active even though a person is usually not conscious of thus being driven. Two drives–one for sexual pleasure, called libido, the other called aggression–motivate and propel most behavior.

In the infant, the libido first manifests itself by making sucking an activity with pleasurable sensations in the mouth. Later similar pleasures are experienced in the anus during bowel movements, and finally these erotically tinged pleasures are experienced when the sexual organ is manipulated. Thus psychosexual development progresses from the oral through the anal to the phallic stage. (Phallic, in psychoanalytic theory, refers to both male and female sexual organs. )

During the height of the phallic phase, about ages three to six, these libidinous drives focus on the parent of the opposite sex and lend an erotic cast to the relation between mother and son or between father and daughter, the so-called Oedipus COMPLEX. However, most societies strongly disapprove of these sexual interests of children. A TABOO on incest rules universally. Parents, therefore, influence children to push such pleasurable sensations and thoughts out of their conscious minds into the unconscious by a process called repression.

In this way the mind comes to consist of three parts: (1) an executive part, the EGO, mostly conscious and comprising all the ordinary thoughts and functions needed to direct a person in his or her daily behavior; (2) the id, mostly unconscious and containing all the instincts and everything that was repressed into it; and (3) the superego, the conscious that harbors the values, ideals, and prohibitions that set the guidelines for the ego and that punishes through the imposition of guilt feelings.

Strong boundaries between the three parts keep the ego fairly free from disturbing thoughts and wishes in the id, thereby guaranteeing efficient unctioning and socially acceptable behavior. During sleep the boundaries weaken; disturbing wishes may slip into the ego from the id, and warnings may come over from the superego. The results are intrapsychic conflicts, often manifested in dreams (see DREAMS AND DREAMING), sometimes even in frightening NIGHTMARES. Freud elucidated this concept in his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900; Eng. trans. , 1913).

Something very similar to the weakening of boundaries during sleep sometimes happens during ordinary daytime activities when some impulses from the id manages to cross the epression barrier to invade the ego and cause faulty actions such as slips of the tongue. Psychoneurotic symptoms occur if psychologically hurtful experiences during childhood have left the repression too weak or have distorted the ego, or if overstimulation has left the id wishes too strong, or if the delicate balance between ego, id, and superego has been upset by injury or other events.

Any kind of psychic trauma may lead to the ego becoming an area of intrapsychic conflict between the intruding id, the threatening superego, and the powerful influences emanating from the surrounding environment. Furthermore, the damage done to the basic psychological structures by traumatic experiences leaves those structures weakened and with defective functioning. Such conflicts and defects can cause intense ANXIETY and severe DEPRESSION. In order to keep functioning effectively, the ego attempts to maintain control by achieving some sort of compromise between the contending forces.

Often such compromises appear in the form of inhibitions or compulsions that affect behavior. Abnormal behavior and the anxiety, depressions, and PHOBIAS that go with them are called psychoneurotic symptoms in psychoanalytic theory. Neurotic character is the phrase used to designate a consistent pattern of neurotic behavior. When the damage abnormally distorts self-esteem, the resulting disturbance is called a narcissistic personality disorder, or a disorder of the self.

Patients seek psychoanalytic treatment because they suffer from one or more of a variety of psychological symptoms such as anxiety, depression, sexual and other inhibitions, obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, irrational angers, shyness and timidity, phobias, inability to get along with friends or spouses or co- orkers, low self-esteem, a sense of feeling unfulfilled, nervous irritability, and blocked creativity. The defects and repressed conflicts that cause these symptoms are usually indicative of a psychoneurosis or a narcissistic personality disorder.

Normal ego functioning and the joy of life that comes with easy relationship to others are seriously interfered with or sometimes lost altogether. Psychoanalysis does not promise a quick cure but holds out the hope that through better understanding of oneself and of others one can achieve an amelioration of symptoms as well as a smoother and more effective socialization f one’s behavior. Psychological maladaptations usually originate from painful misunderstandings or outright failures in the child’s relationship to his or her parents.

Sometimes parents lack the appropriate and attuned empathic understanding that children need. Sometimes severe physical or mental illness or the death of a parent or sibling causes serious psychic wounds. Consequently, even in adults, there remain ever-present though usually unconscious fears that the early hurtful experiences will now be repeated again with others. Transference is the unconscious expectation that the old injuries and insults will now again be uffered, only this time at the hands of friends, spouses, children, bosses, just about anybody–as if transferred from the past into the present.

Transference makes one have irrational expectations from the people with whom one lives and works. For example, one may feel a need to be appreciated by one’s supervisors similarly to a child’s needing approval from his or her parents. Frustration of these expectations may evoke immature rage or other immature behavior. Transference causes great distress, but it also makes treatment possible. The method of treatment seems simple at first. The patient reclines on a comfortable couch in the analyst’s office with the analyst seated behind the patient.

The recumbent position, as well as not being able to see the analyst, minimizes distraction and allows concentration on inner experiences, thoughts, wishes, fantasies, and feelings. The patient is instructed to say absolutely everything that comes to mind without censoring anything, a technique that is called free association. This brings about a state of regression in which long- forgotten events and painful encounters are remembered, often with great clarity and intense emotions.

At the same time, because of transference, the patient experiences the analyst as well, as if he or she were a figure from the past, perhaps resembling a parent. The analyst often can trace the connection between the patient’s current fantasies and feelings about the analyst and the origin of these thoughts and emotions in childhood experiences. The re-experienced conflicts and traumas, together with the accompanying fears and feelings, then are interpreted by the analyst.

The patient learns to recognize the connections between the past and the present. The combination of insight together with the powerful emotional re- xperience during the regressed state brought about by the analytic method cause a reorganization of the psychological structures into more healthfully adaptive patterns. The analyst’s friendly and calmly explaining attitude that is devoid of any moralizing or other biases creates an atmosphere in which, most of the time, all human failings and foibles can be looked at, talked about, and finally resolved.

Typically, an analysis lasts for a few years, with four to five sessions per week of about 45 minutes each. In this way the psychoneuroses and the narcissistic personality disorders can be treated successfully in a majority of atients. Serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, and the psychoses caused by organic malfunctioning of the brain cannot be cured by psychoanalytic treatment, though the patient can often benefit from psycho-pharmacological treatment–sedatives, tranquilizers, anti-depressants–in combination with psychotherapy.

In the United States most psychoanalysts are physicians who, after medical school, first specialized in PSYCHIATRY and who then were trained as psychoanalysts in an institute for psychoanalysts. Institute training typically akes from five to seven years. Outside the United States many non-medical psychologists and other behavioral scientists have been trained as psychoanalysts, and recently non-medical candidates are being trained in increasing numbers by American institutes.

rom the beginnings in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory and practice have continued to develop into the present modern practices. Initially, Freud believed that forgotten sexual seductions of children were the cause of neurosis and that remembering the trauma and emotions was therapeutic. He later modified nd elaborated his views into the theory of infantile instinctual drives as the motivating force for normal behavior and, when miscarried, as the cause of neurosis. Drive psychology gradually expanded into a closer study of the ego’s ways of coping with the instinctual drive, the so-called ego psychology.

Continuing research has discovered much evidence that the early relationships between children and parents, the so-called object relations, have the greatest impact on later psychological development. The influence of the care givers, especially during infancy, leaves a lasting imprint on the personality. Emphasis on the object-relations theory developed by Melanie KLEIN characterizes psychoanalysis in much of Britain and Latin America. In the United States a particular aspect of object relations, namely their effects on the sense of self and on self-esteem, are being studied by a growing number of psychoanalysts.

Initiated by Heinz Kohut, self-psychology is being developed by his followers into one of the main concepts that make up the body of psychoanalytic theory. Self-psychology is a psychology of subjective experience. The self- psychologically oriented psychoanalyst, in addition to considering the usual sychoanalytic data of inner experiences such as dreams and free associations, emphasizes the use of empathic immersion by the analyst into the life experience of the patient as an essential source of data for treatment and for theorizing.

Self-psychology postulates a nuclear self at the core of the individual. A cohesive, vigorous, and balanced self lends the person a sense of self and of well-being. Any experience with objects, including persons, that evoke and strengthen the self are “self-object” experiences and are needed by every human being from birth to death in order to sustain a cohesive self. Absence of or faulty self- object experiences cause a loss of cohesion with attendant fragmentation of the self.

In addition to their clinical application, psychoanalytic theories have been used as guides to doing research in certain social sciences as well as in the humanities. Some cross-cultural anthropological investigations, for example, have used interviewing techniques that were based on the psychoanalytic method. Some psychohistorical studies have employed the theories of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of the dynamic forces underlying historical events.

Biographical research has been enriched by adding the insights of psychoanalysis, and the resulting psycho-biographies have added a dimension of depth to the understanding of some outstanding persons, as, for example, in Gandhi’s Truth (1969) by Erik ERIKSON. But it is in the application of psychoanalysis to artistic and literary criticism that analysts, especially Freud (on Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo), Kurt Eissler (on Hamlet), Jacques Lacan (on Edgar Allen Poe), and Heinz Kohut (on Thomas Mann), have made their most widely known contributions.

Research in the theories and methods of psychoanalysis presents special difficulties. In contrast to the natural sciences, psychoanalytic data are private, subjective, and often non-repeatable inner experiences. They are grasped by introspection and by empathy and, therefore, are not publicly verifiable in the same way that natural science data can be demonstrated. Nevertheless, continuing attempts to compare and to check findings with colleagues in a worldwide psychoanalytic community, in addition to finding confirmation of psychoanalytic concepts from research in contiguous sciences, provide a measure of verification.

In the world of psychology therapist raise a question whether or not they should disclose personal information during psychotherapy. Several therapists have suggested that therapist self-discloser can have a positive impact on treatment. From this view, self-discloser by the therapists may elicit greater discloser by the client enhancing the possibilities for client self-exploration(e. , Bugental, 1965, chap. 7; Jourad, 1971, chap. 17; Strassberg, Roback, DAntonio & Gable, 1977).

In addition, self-discloser is thought to encourage an atmosphere of honesty and understanding between client and therapist, fostering a stronger and more effective therapeutic relationship). However many other therapist disagrees with that statement.

They reply psychodynamic theorist since Freud have generally regarded therapist self-disclosure as detrimental to treatment because it might interfere with the therapeutic process, shifting the focus of therapy away from the client(e. g. , see cutis, 1982b; Freud, 1912/1958; Greenson, 1967, chap. 3). In addition, it is argued that therapist self-discloser may adversely affect treatment outcome by exposing therapist weakness or vulnerabilities, thereby undermining client trust in the therapist(e. , see cutis, 1982b, 1981)

According to the journal These differences in identifying therapist self-disclosures may be of importance in the evaluation of their impact on treatment. For example, theoretical concerns about therapist self-discloser have emphasized the risk of shifting the focus of therapy away from the client. However when therapist self-disclose, are in direct response to comparable client disclosers the presumed risk of alerting the focus of treatment is likely to reduced.

What exactly is the definition of insanity? Insanity is being in a mental state of mind that does not allows you to make correct decisions on events that are occurring at that moment. But this definition is not always the same through out the United States. One persons definition is not always the same as the next. This comes into conflict when trying to decide someones fate in court cases, and this is especially important when it involves a minor that has committed a serious crime. As an example to the seriousness of some of the crimes, look at all of the school shootings that have been occurring throughout the United States.

What are we to do with young children that are now sentenced to prison for life without parole? To call them insane is not the answer. We need to find something that can be done to help stop the huge number of young people in the correctional system. Because the huge amount of money it costs to house inmates per year is extreme, and it is costing the taxpayers enough money already to house the adult inmates. We need to find alternate solutions other than sending these young men and woman to prison for the rest of their life, and causing them to legally go insane.

What can we do to prevent these young adults from committing such extreme crimes? We need to look at the home and see if anything is wrong there first before anything else is even looked at. Because, to take away the children from their parents is only a good if they are part of the problem. Parents are extremely important in a child life and set the foundation for what is to come in the future from him/her whether in the positive or the negative. There are many reasons for there being problems at home.

It could be the lack of supervision by an adult, the absence of punishment, and many more reason why the child is not having a good home life. There are still many more reasons why child resort to violence when faced with a problem. What can we do to help prevent a poor upbringing for children throughout the U. S? The American people need to stop putting such an emphasis on material belongings, and put it on the well being of our friends and family. We have families with everything in the world but their children have dont even know who their parents are.

Then we have the exact opposite with ones that have very little but have a very close family life. To help with the family we need to get the parents more active in the childrens life. Whatever has to be done it has to be something that brings the family closer together. You might be asking what else can we do to change these young people if the problem is not at home. What these kids do when they are not at home is another main concern. Whether it be the friends they hang around with, drugs and/or alcohol, sex, and the activities they do when they are out. The peer pressure effect has link to all the other problems.

Kids want to fit in no matter what they have to do to get in the group (click) they will do it. In the Columbine High School shooting the two young gentlemen April 20, 1999 is the day when many childrens lives changed at Columbine High School by two young men that just did not fit in. They were said to be members of a group called the Trench Coat Mafia. This was a group out casts at the school. This school shooting also happened on a day well known to many for drugs and racists. It was the 110th anniversary of Adolph Hitlers birthday. These kids had been planning this attack for over a year.

They had practice making explosives and perfected their shooting skills well in advance. Why they did this no one will ever know because after they were finished their rampage through the school shooting as many people they could they turned the guns on themselves and ended it all. Where would these kids get the idea to do such a thing as this to their fellow students? What was going through their minds when they thought of committing this crime? If it was because they were not treated the way they wanted to be or anything else, it does not matter because nothing is going to make it okay to kill.

There have been many shootings popping up around the United States involving teens and not only their peers but also their families. This is alarming, because we now have children turning on their parents because they say that they were not satisfied with the way their parents took care of them. This brings us right back to where we started, with the problems at home blossoming and coming to school. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Luke Woodham murdered his mother then went to his school killed two classmates and wounded seven more. He confessed to all of the charges except for murdering his mother.

He said that he had no recollection of the events that took place that afternoon at his house. Woodham insisted that a man, know as Grant Boyette, egged him on about killing his mother and ex-girlfriend. Grant is a member of a cult-like group known as the Kroth. The big question is would Woodham have done what he did if his mother would not have like talk on the phone to a cult member. Where was his mother when he was on the phone for several hours the day before the shootings? These are questions that never will be answered because she is now died.

She was brutally beaten and stabbed in an act of rage by the by her own son. Another shooting in an Oregon community, by a young man named Kipland Kinkel. He also murdered his parents and two classmates at his school. Why do these young kids throw their whole life away? They are going to grow up in prison and there is nothing we can do to help them because of the way that our correctional system works. They have committed a serious crime and have been found supposedly to have the capacity of an adult. If this is the case why arent all of the ages for such things as smoking and drinking dropped also?

All of these children that have committed these crimes are never going to be aloud to be free for the rest of their lives due to the length of their sentences. What are we as citizens expected to think of our justice system when we see a fifth teen year old kid sentence to life without the possibility of parole five times. We now have to pay millions of dollars to house this kid for the rest of his life because he had no one there when he needed it. As in Luke Woodham case he had no one to talk to except for a cult member that knew he could get Luke to do whatever he wanted by pushing and pushing him, until he got him to say yes.

Why would anyone want to do anything to a young man like this is beyond my belief except for stupidity. You might be asking what is some ways that we can protect our children in schools. Well the schools are now putting in locks on doors that only open from the inside, cameras on the inside and the outside of the school, more police presence in schools, and teaching students how to manage their anger by talking to people about their problems instead of resorting to violence. There is no reason for young men and women to be killing each other over words.

Parents need to take an active role in their childrens life and show then what they also had to go through when they were in school. Nothing has changed between when they went to show and us, but it has changed in how the children of today respond to the problem in which they are facing. What can be causing are kids to grow up in such a manor that everything has to be resolved with violence. Well it is easy to blame it on the time period or their surroundings, but it has more to do with what they feel is right by what they experience everyday in their lives.

Single parents are at the highest percentage than ever before. This only increases the effect of what the children think is right. So if the parents are not there to so them right from wrong that is besides the police and the authority figures at schools and other places kids go. If they are not taught how are we to blame them for wrong. Discipline is lacking in this country. More and more children are ruling the house instead of the parents. Why is this you ask?

It is because of the laws that are being passed in Congress that say you cannot hit your child. If a kid does wrong who is to say you cannot hit him/her for disciplinary reasons. If it goes beyond discipline then it is abuse but when your child can call the police for you just grabbing them, then there is something wrong. Do you think that there is insanity in your local schools? In every school around the country there is that one student that is not liked, does not fit in, wears old cloths, and is always made fun of.

Exactly when do you think he will crack? Could be today or tomorrow, but he will break because he/she has it in their mind that there is no other way to solve their problems. If we could only show them that there is other ways of solving their problems we may be able to prevent another useless slaying. If only the people of America would look in the mirror and see that if they would change they could make it a better place for all. But this is the hardest part because it involves everyone not just a few.

Self interest is a driving force; it is motivation. Motivation leads to progression and without progression early man would never have gotten past learning about fire. There is no single purpose of self-interest, it is for the individual to decide, but it is my motivation to live and I am convinced that it raises the standards of life. All things naturally progress because they adapt. According to Darwin, the strong survive; that is, the members of a species best suited to their environment. Progress is a number of different things but it generally means a forward movement.

In one of its forms it is characterized by events like the industrial revolution and scientific revolution. These events are considered progressive because they have helped man control the environment around him with greater ease and precision. Self-interest serves to better my life. It encompasses both hobbies and passions. Hobbies are relaxing and promote self-enjoyment. Therefore, I work hard and endure the days of unpleasant chores because I am motivated to participate in my hobbies like racing sailboats and driving cars. Bettering my life through self-enjoyment allows me to contribute in a more affective way to society.

A person who has spent a weekend participating in their hobbies and passions will be much more relaxed than someone who has been working without any self-satisfaction. A relaxed person is a more productive person and productive people tend to give of themselves in society. Motivation towards self-enjoyment leads to an overall improvement in society. Without motivation would Einstein have had any reason to invent the theory of relativity? Self interest is the driving force behind invention and creativity. Most hobbies need capital to be participated in.

The production of capital coincides with contributions of ideas and new products to society. The advantage of inventions and theories like the theory of relativity is that they provide the building blocks for machines and appliances. Such advancements contribute to society and allow our nation to adapt to the furtherance of the current times. All modern conveniences are products of progression; geniuses were motivated by their self interest, which is most likely exploring the unknown, to developing such items as the telephone, TV and car. Self-interest is not greed, but can however lead to such.

Greed and corruption are the downfalls of self-interest and the market system. People whose motivation is to make money and nothing more have deranged priorities, in my opinion. These downfalls lead to homeless people and a world that is not perfect. The downfalls of the market system occur because people are obsessed and fascinated by power. Some people believe that money is power; to some extent this is true, but not entirely. There are people that take extreme measures to gain control of money and this leads to actions such as robbery and murder.

Gambling addiction is a disease that has its foundation in the obsession of self-interest and money. The competition and sportsmanship in sports has been corrupted by greed and has lead to less than enthusiastic play by the athletes. The rainforests of the world have been chopped down because the greed of individuals to make money off it s resources. The rainforests of the world have also been saved by environmentalists who have a self-interest in helping society and preserving the environment.

A person can have self-interest in community service and still be motivated to help others; helping others improves society as a whole. Self-interest doesnt have to be selfish or greedy. Choosing a job that gives you satisfaction and self-gratification is self-interest but it also promotes a greater place to live. There are internists that work only for their own self-promotion but there are also volunteers who work because it feels right in their heart. When I worked at Cold Spring Harbor lab I worked selfishly; I wanted something spectacular on my transcript.

However when I worked in the Oncology wing of Huntington Hospital I did it because it felt good. I was giving back to society; by assisting the elders who had once looked out for me. My efficiency was consequently heightened at the Hospital as compared to the lab. It was because of my motivation which in turn lead to a better product or work ethic. Self-interest is why America was against communism and why captivated people fight for freedom. Freedom is the ability to participate in self-interest and that is why it is so preciously defended throughout the world.

The problem with freedom is that without responsibility it can be dangerous and unjust. Freedom allows people to become individuals. Without freedom, individuals are nothing but numbers in a population. The purpose of self-interest is to allow individuals to shine and bring out whats best in them. Letting individuals be individuals is very important to the success of society and that is the purpose of self-interest. In communism the workers are deprived of pursuing their self-interests. Their jobs are given to them and they receive limited funds to pay for their endeavors.

Competition among companies and co-workers ceases to exist because there is no possibility for promotion. Workers dont have motivation and without motivation they dont work as hard. This keeps society from reaching further progression. The standard of living in communist societies is lower and the technology they have to ease daily lives is not nearly as available as it is to us because their societies arent as competitive. The incentive of individual self-interest produces competition. This competition results in the catering of goods that society wants, at the cost people are prepared to pay for.

This happens because people are driven to do whatever society is willing to pay for. Some conservative people are against the progression of society. They defend the fact that things are good and need not be changed. Many religious people are against self-interest and change; the fact is that following religion is self-interest. Conservative people are people who arent willing to take risks. They stick with what is proven and they progress very slowly, if at all. Religious people do not usually advocate self-interest but they dont realize that freedom is what allows them to take a part in their religion.

Economics was started and is motivated by self-interest. Ancient society could function without economics, however, modern culture cannot. When social life was intertwined with work and religion it was possible to not participate extensively in self-interest but people were still motivated to work because it was a means of survival. Before more efficient forms of trade and transportation were developed, people in ancient society had to produce everything essential to their life within their own small living community.

These people were motivated to work hard because if they didnt they wouldnt receive the essential requirements to live like shelter and food. In todays world where social and business life are separate it isnt possible to not have self-interest. Instead of working just to survive, people work for capital to help fund self interests, like vacations and hobbies. There isnt the same motivation in work because it isnt for a means of survival; people feel that they can take risks because they can always fall back on financial aid or well fair.

The purpose of self-interest is progression of ones self and society. The process towards self-interest is driven by motivation. It is the motivation of self-satisfaction that drives people to be passionate about items and activities. A person is an individual because what they choose to be interested in molds their personality. There would be nothing unique about people if it wasnt for self-interest; our society would be a very dull place. Self-interest drives motivation, which equates to the progression of our world.

Jerry Spence startes off by asking why do we argue? He says that he doesn’t like to argue and he doesn’t like people that do. The confused me at first. He askes why not ty to get along, and besides when he argues he loses. He says we were born to make a winning argument just as we were born to walk. Mr. Spence says that we are so bound up, so mute. From the moment we have been conditioned to avoid confrontation. We have been taught not to let our emotions show. By the time we become adults the word argue calls up dark and negative feelings.

Many throughout our lives have forced up to accept their ways, their relugion, their values, ect… The key to our freedom is embarrassingly obvious. We need only to give ourselves permission, to unlock to doors. The key is to give ourselves permission to peer out of our closets and to look around, to ask questions and demand respect. We need to speak out and just to be. Most people are afriad to argue because it just causes trouble. Our arguements turn sour, the words ugly, the passages to the heart close, and the feelings of love are replaced by the hurt and the anger. But, fear is ourr ally.

Fear confirms us. Fear is our energy that is convertible to POWER-our power. We need to learn not to afraid of our fear but to embrace it. If you feel your fear, you can also feel its power and you can change its power into YOUR power. First, to win an argument, exhaustive preparation is essential. The most prepared person will usually win. In the preparation process, you must thoroughly research and understand your case, and you must also thoroughly research and understand your opponent’s position. You should know and understand the facts and arguments of your opponent better than he or she does.

Second, you must have a profound understanding of the thinking and emotions of the decision maker(s) – in his case, the jury. Your argument should be framed to harmonize with the decision makers’ values, wants and needs. You must understand the prejudices of the jurors and address the built-in objections they may have to your arguments. You must help them to understand the motives of your client and identify with them as their own. In other words, empathize with the jurors and help them empathize with your client. Mr. Spence emphasizes that, in order for the jurors to believe your arguments, you must argue from your own sincere belief.

You also have to talk to them in their own language, treat them with respect and relate with them so they can relate back to you. If you act superior to them, you will probably make them your enemies and never gain their trust. Mr. Spence says that, in your personal relationships, you may find the only way to win an argument is to lose. If the only way to win your point is to destroy the relationship, you may find it’s better to concede. This was an excellent book on argumentation skills. However, first you have to define what it is to win.

What do you want to get from the argument and what are you willing to risk to get that? Through several examples he works out how to win by losing, how to win by empowering others, how to win by redirecting the prejudice of others or using that prejudice to your advantage, etc. He spends a great deal of time discussing the importance of using stories to illustrate points and does a fine job of it. The book is filled with stories and experiences from his real life courtroom experiences and how his arguments affected the jury, sometimes in a manner that surprised him and sometimes in the manner he expected.

Even when the results were a surprise he explains why, after thinking about it, the decision went the way it did. The book is highly slanted toward the argument styles of a lawyer in front of a jury. However, it is useful to anyone in any potentially argumentative situation where a position has to be taken and defended. How to argue, how to win, when to argue, when to shut up, it all starts with deciding what it is to win and then moving to that point. It includes sections on arguing in the marriage and the workplace. The one about handling arguments in a relationship is an interesting chapter.

I particularly enjoyed reading How To Argue And Win Every Time because of the insights Gerry Spence shared about himself, including his prejudicial dislike of corporate executives. Studying How To Argue And Win Every Time can help you in your personal relationships, in personal selling and in writing advertising. It should be required reading for aspiring lawyers and highly recommended for anyone else. In How to Argue and Win Every Time, Spence shares the philosophy that has made him such a formidable and persuasive advocate. Gerry Spence portrays himself as a simple country lawyer.

His easy and pleasant appearance is not what one might expect from such a high-powered attorney. His ” aw shucks ” personna is credible because it is true. Spence’s appearance and mannerisms are no affectation. They are real; and here lies the first lesson that he teaches the reader. In order to argue winningly, he argues; one must tell the truth. Indeed, one must sometimes delve deeply into the matter at hand in order to discover the essential truth. To Spence, the winning argument must always have credibility with the jury. Argument is discovering what you truly believe and stating that strongly.

Spence also realizes that it is extremely important to listen with empathy to the other side of the argument. This is so critical in our everyday lives. We must listen not to refute but to learn. Many times we will be able to avoid an argument altogether and quickly reach common ground. At the very least, we will be able to clearly understand where the other side is coming from. Even though Gerry Spence is a lawyer, he addresses the types of argument most of us will face. He writes about how to win argument in love relationships as well as business relationships. He even has a separate chapter entitled, ” Arguing with Kids.

Spence builds his argument chapter by chapter. He carefully lays out his well-reasoned case in such a manner that the reader may find her or himself nodding in agreement. Spence’s skills in the art of persuasion may remind you of a master in the martial arts. I found this book an easy and enjoyable read. How to Argue and Win Every Time is filled with many chunks of wisdom. Some of the insights have been stated before, but the book contained a surprising amount of unique, original material. Do I now win every argument? Well no, but I must say that I have avoided several since reading this wonderful book.

In this paper, it is tried to explain the first force (Behaviourism) and the third force (Humanistic Psychology) and, compare differences and similarities between them. Each school of thought in psychology was sometimes born as a reaction to the previous ones or a new version of them. Although behaviourism is very popular, reactions to it and alternative thoughts are also strong in modern psychology. The debate between structuralism and functionalism was only the prelude to other fundamental controversies in psychology. In the early 1900s, another major school of thought appeared that dramatically altered the course of psychology.

Founded by John B. Watson (1878-1958), behaviourism is a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behaviour. It is important to understand what a radical change this definition represents. Watson (1913) was proposing that psychologists abandon the study of consciousness altogether and focus exclusively on behaviours that they could observe directly. In essence, he was redefining what scientific psychology should be about. The shift in direction of psychology was caused by his belief that the power of the scientific method rested on the idea of verifiability.

In principle, scientific claims can always be verified (or disproved) by anyone who is able and willing to make the required observations. However, this power depends on studying things that can be observed objectively. Otherwise, the advantage of using the scientific approach -replacing vague speculations and personal opinion with reliable, exact knowledge – is lost. For Watson mental processes were not a proper subject for scientific study because they are ultimately private events. After all, no one can see or touch another’s thoughts.

Consequently, if psychology were to be a science, it would have to give up consciousness as its subject matter and become instead the science of behaviour. Behaviour refers to any overt (observable) response or activity by an organism. Watson asserted that psychologists could study anything that people do or say -shopping, playing, chess, eating- but they couldn’t study scientifically the thoughts, wishes, and feelings that might accompany these observable behaviours. Watson’s radical reorientation of psychology did not end with his redefinition of its subject matter.

After Watson, behaviourists eventually came to view psychology’s mission as an attempt to relate overt behaviours (responses) to observable events in the environment (stimuli). A stimulus is any detectable input from the environment. Behaviourism’s stimulus-response approach contributed to the rise of animal research in psychology. Having deleted consciousness from their scope of concern, behaviourists no longer needed to study human subjects who could report on their mental processes. Many psychologists thought that animals would make better research subjects anyway.

One key reason was that experimental research is often more productive if experimenters can exert considerable control over their subjects. Otherwise, too many complicating factors enter into the picture and contaminate the experiment. Obviously, a researcher can exert much more control over a laboratory rat or pigeon than over a human subject, who arrives at a lab with years of uncontrolled experience who will probably insist on going home at night. Thus, the discipline that had begun its life a few decades earlier as the study of the mind now found itself heavily involved in the study of simple responses made by laboratory animals.

Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the mind. Behavior can be described and explained without making reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind). Behaviorism is a doctrine, or a set of doctrines, about human and nonhuman animal behavior. An important component of many psychological theories in the late nineteenth century were introspection, the study of the mind by analysis of one’s own thought processes.

It was in reaction to this trend that behaviorism arose, claiming that the causes of behavior need not be sought in the depths of the mind but could be observed in the immediate environment, in stimuli that elicited, reinforced, and punished certain responses. The explanation, in other words, lay in learning, the process whereby behavior changes in response to the environment. It wasnt until the twentieth century that the scientist began to uncover the actual mechanism of learning, thereby laying the theoretical foundation for behaviorism.

The contributions of four particular scientists are Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, and B. F. Skinner. A Russian neurophysiologist, named Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), found that if he consistently sounded a tone at the same time that he gave a dog food, the dog would eventually salivate to the sound of the tone alert. Through this research he discovered a basic mechanism of learning called the Conditioned Reflex.

A Conditioned Reflex is if a neutral stimulus (i. e. the tone) is paired with a nonneutral stimulus (i. the food), the organism will eventually respond to the neutral stimulus as it does to the nonneutral stimulus. Perhaps the strongest application of classical conditioning involves emotion. Common experience and careful research both confirm that human emotion conditions very rapidly and easily. Particularly when the emotion is intensely felt or negative in direction, it will condition quickly. His findings raised the possibility that many of our responses, like those of the dogs, were the result of a simple learning process.

In other words, our loves and hates, our tastes and distastes might be the consequences of nothing more mysterious that a conditioning process whereby various things in our environment became \”linked\” in our minds to other things that we responded to instinctively, such as food, warmth, and pain. Clearly, classical conditioning is a pervasive form of influence in our world. Behaviorism was first developed in the early 20th century by the American psychologist John B Watson (1878-1958). Watson was credited with the founding the behavioral movement.

This is not because Watson made major contributions to the theory of behaviorism but rather because he publicized the empirical method and made it the battle cry for a new school of psychology, aggressively opposed to subjective approaches. The dominant view of that time was that psychology is the study of inner experiences or feelings by subjective, introspective methods. Watson proposed to make the study of psychology scientific by using only objective procedures such as a laboratory experiments designed to establish statistically significant result.

Watson supported his rejection of the introspective method by demonstrating, in a classic experiment, that a supposed subjective emotion such as fear could, like the salvation response of Pavlov’s dogs, result from a simple, objective conditioning process. With the help of an associate Watson conditioned a fear of rats into an eleventh month boy. Before the experiment, Albert had no fear of rats. On the first day of the experiment Albert was shown a white rat. Watson than struck a medal bar with a hammer that caused a very loud noise. The first time it was done the boy was simply startled.

As it happened again and again, he began to show signs of fright, crying, falling over, crawling away from the rat. After several time Albert showed this reactions without the noise. Thus a conditioned fear reaction had been established. American psychologist and educator, born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, was Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949). He joined the psychology faculty at Teachers College of Columbia University in 1899, where he served as adjunct professor of educational psychology from 1901 to 1904 and as professor of psychology from 1904 until his retirement in 1940.

By using trial-and-error experiments with animals, Thorndike formulated his so-called law of effect, which stated that responses that lead to \”satisfying\” consequences are strengthened and therefore are likely to be repeated, while responses that lead to \”unsatisfying\” consequences are weakened and therefore are unlikely to be repeated. Thorndike’s specialty was the \”puzzle box,\” into which he would put various animals (chickens, rats, cats) and let them find their way out by themselves. He was the first psychologist to study animal’s behavior in an experimental psychology laboratory and apply the same techniques to children and youths.

Through Thorndike used objective methods in his experiments, Watson did not consider him a behaviorist, for he used subjective terms such as satisfying and unsatisfying to describe his observations. For the early behaviorist, all reference to inferred mental states were unscientific and therefore to be avoided. Yet despite its subjective wording, Thorndike’s law of effect had laid down another fundamental principle of learning: the importance of reward in the learning process. Following the pioneering discoveries of Pavlov and Thorndike, B. F.

Skinner (1904-1990) contributed to the development of learning theory. He began the study through precise experimental analysis. In the course of these experiments he was able to pinpoint basic principles that have allowed us to study human behavior in a precise way and to change human behavior by arranging the social and psychical environment. Skinner is the only major figure in the history of behaviorism to offer a socio-political worldview on his commitment to behaviorism. Skinner’s major contribution was to refine Thorndike’s discoveries and to demonstrate their application to everyday life.

Like Watson, Skinner was interested in the control of behavior, and he saw in Thorndike’s law, which he renamed principles of reinforcement, the basic mechanism for predicting and controlling human behavior. Skinner pointed out that our social environment is filled with reinforcing consequences, which mold our behavior as surely as the piece of salmon molded the behavior of Thorndike’s cat. Our friends and families control us with their approval or disapproval. Our jobs control us by offering or withholding money. Our schools control us by passing us or failing us thus affecting our access to jobs.

Thus Skinner stated outright what Pavlov had merely suggested: that much of our behavior is based not on internal contingencies but based on external ones. According to traditional behavioral theory, all behavior falls into two categories, respondent and operant. There are ten principles of learning. Respondent learning is the process by which you learn a conditioned response. A conditioned response is a neutral stimulus that is the result of repeatedly pairing the neutral stimulus with a non-neutral or an unconditioned stimulus that would have naturally elicited the response.

In respondent behavior the organism responds to the environment; in operant behavior the organism operates on the environment in order to achieve a desired result. In operant conditioning the likelihood of a response is increased or decreased by virtue of its consequence. Having taken a certain action, the organism learns to associate that action with certain consequences. Reinforcement operates on behavior in many ways. In positive reinforcement a response is followed by a positive rein forcer, with the result that the response increases in frequency.

The first semester at college I got an 4. 0 gpa when my parents found out that I worked so hard for the grades and did so well the rewarded me with one hundred dollars, to show that hard work and dedtication pays off in the end. A second type of reinforcement that increases the frequency of behavior is negative reinforcement. It is a conditioning procedure in which a response is followed by the removal of an aversive event or stimulus, thereby promoting the response. There was one class that I was doing very poorly in.

Almost every test I had gotten a C on. I figured out that the problem was that I was not studying enough for the test. So I began to put more effort into studying for my test and it worked I never got less than a B on every test after that. A third type of reinforcement is punishment. It is the process in which the person, in order to avoid a consequence, stops performing a behavior. Now this is the type of reinforcement that I have a lot of experience in. When I was younger my brother and I would constantly fight.

My parents tried to change my ways by sending me to my room for days but eventually I got out. There methods were good because today he is my best friend. In addition to defining respondent and operant conditioning, psychologist have identified a number of other mechanisms associated with learning. The most important of these mechanisms is extinction, the elimination of a response by ending the conditioning that created it. When I was younger I remember coming home from school one day, and everyday I had to cross a dangerous street.

Well one day I didnt cross in the crosswalk. Well when I got home I got into so much trouble that I never did that again. Another important aspect of learning is the process of generalization. Generalization is, whereby once an organism has been conditioned to respond in a certain way to a particular stimulus, it will respond in the same way to a similar stimuli without further conditioning. In other words, the conditioned response automatically \”spreads,\” or generalizes, to thinks that resemble the conditioned stimulus.

An example to this is in Watson’s experiment with little Albert’s spontaneous fear of rabbits, and other animals that resembles a white rate. The opposite side of the coin from generalization is discrimination that is learning to distinguish among similar stimuli and to respond only to the appropriate one. People learn to discriminate between similar stimuli, between a friendly smile and a malicious grin. When one turns to have reinforcing consequences and the other does not. When I was a little boy I loved the ice cream man.

There would be so much noise going up and down my block but I could always hear his music over all the noise. Shaping is a critical process to operant conditioning. Throughout this process there is a positive reinforcement of successive approximations. The basic assumptions of behaviorism are that psychology’s task is to study behavior, or the responses an organism makes to the stimuli in its environment; that psychological research should be empirical, based on measurement; that behavior can be controlled and predicted, and that the major component of behavior is learning.

Psychologists have been interested in how the human brain works and how stimuli are processed and interpreted. The brain is a highly complex organ that is the center for all our human functions. The more we know about how it works and how efficient the brain is, the better psychologists will be able to analyze human behavior. The stoop test has been used for many years to investigate how we process information. Laterality is one of the factors in which the stroop test can be used to investigate.

Many researchers have examined laterality in the Stroop task. Dyer (1973) showed that presenting the word and the color separately to the left and right fixation did not alter the Stroop effect. Interference and facilitation were still factors (MacLeod, 1991). There are many instances of the left hemisphere showing more interference during this kind of testing. Aine and Harter (1984) studied this same effect and found that activity associated with interference occurs in the left hemisphere, effecting the response time and error-rate measured.

Similar results were found in a study conducted by Posner, Walker, Friedrich, and Rafal; (Citedin, Macleod, 1991) they found that the left parietal and frontal lobe may be involved in disengaging attention. Many other variables such as gender, bilingual ness, even handedness have been proven to alter the Stroop effect. This experiment investigated how visual field position and differing stimuli influenced the reaction time in naming ink colors. Based on the information above and past studies, these hypotheses were formulated. The time to name the ink colors will vary with visual field position.

The slowest time should occur when the stimulus appears in the right visual field because of its association with the left side of the brain. The time to name congruent stimuli should be faster then the time to name incongruent stimuli. The time to name ink color will vary with both visual field position and type of stimuli. Time to name ink colors for congruent stimuli should not vary much with visual field but the time to name ink color of incongruent should increase as the stimuli gets color to the right visual field. Methods Participants

This study contained a total of fifteen students from the University of Tampa’s upper level psychology class. Thirteen of the participants were female and the remaining two were male. In addition to this class thirty six students from other classes were also used in this study. Materials I-Mac G3 computers and a program from Old Mississippi University were used to test the lateralized Stroop effect from http://psychexp. olemiss. edu. The name of the actual program was the Lateralized Stroop Experiment. The stimuli used by this program were colors that appeared laterally on a computer screen.

Not only did the colors appear laterally but in differing hemispheres on the computer screen. The colors were in the form of written words. For example the word “red” was shown in green font. This was be an example of an incongruent stimulus because the written color word did not agree with the font color shown. An example of a congruent stimuli is be the word “red” in red font. Design and Procedure The experiment had a 3×2 design with two independent variables. The first independent variable was visual field position.

The words appeared to the right, left, or middle of the field of vision established by a pulsating focal point used to initiate each trial The second independent variable was the type of stimuli (congruent or non-congruent). The appearance and screen location for each trial is randomly assigned. The dependent variable was the reaction time it takes to submit a response.

The dependent variable (response time) was calculated by the time between a word’s appearance and a key press that indicated the font color of the stimulus into the computer. ” represents the color red, “4” represents blue, “6” represents green, and “8” represents yellow. First the website http://psychex. olemiss. edu was connected to via the internet. After an in depth overview of the experiment is read by the participants, each will have to agree to a consent form. Then practice for the experiment is begun. This practice helps the participants to become familiar with the number- color codes that are necessary for the program to record the reaction time of each response.

After the practice trials are completed and proficiency is proven, a number-color code is acquired the actual experiment can be conducted. The participants elected to complete 72 trials. A correct trial run was recorded and admissible for inclusion in the PsychExps database if it was correct. Each trial begins with a pulsation plus sign that serves to establish a focal point on the computer screen. Research participants press a key when they are ready for a word to be presented. Next there is a delay of 1 to 3 seconds before the word appears.

When the words appear they are written vertically on the screen. The central axis of the word is designed to be approximately 3 degrees of visual angle to the right or left of the fixation point on lateral presentations, though the actual visual angle will vary depending on monitor size and the distance of research participants from the monitor. This should be a constant in the experiment with each participant about 11 inches from the monitor and a standard size monitor. On the central presentation, the word axis is at 0 degrees relative to the fixation point.

Display times are fixed at 150 msec to assure that laterally presented words are experienced in a single visual hemisphere. With four words (red, blue, Green, and yellow) that are printed in a word-color congruent form or non-congruent form appearing at any of three positions (right, left, or center), there are 24 possible stimulus events. The reaction time type of stimuli is measured and recorded for each trial. After the experiment is completed the result must be printed out and analyzed.

We as teenagers are often defined as shallow, naive, and sometimes uncompassionate youngsters. Most of this recognition comes from our common failure to take social risks and possess an open mind. We are all one student body, yet we are so separated in many aspects. Much of the segregation exists because we are unable to look past appearances. What gives designer clothes, thick lensed glasses, or different hairstyles the authority to determine if we are people who are worth knowing? Would you feel hurt if people rejected you because you had a few pimples on your face?

Would it be fair? These days, there is too much emphasis on looks. If everyone would take a brief moment to see the shining wit or loving personality in a person instead of his or her body, then the world would unmistakably be a better place. There are many truly great and natural differences among people. Nerds are not football players. Their talents, skills, and capacities are not the same. An unalterable condition in human society is that the lowest cannot be made equal with the highest. Nature is vain.

However, these conditions are dapted to benefit both individuals as well as the community. Life requires varied aptitudes, diverse services, and miscellaneous types of people to carry on its affairs as life as a whole. Drawn by our natural tendencies to fall into peer pressure, in our feelings of inadequacy, we constantly seek to form exclusive associations or cliques. Within these groups, we should discourage any exclusion based on the wrong reasons such as appearances, which many people cannot drastically change.

It is important to remember hat our harmony depends on our effort and ability to accept others in whatever form they come, even if they are different in ethnicity, religion, or appeara! nce. All forms of conformity are self sacrilege. We are in a state of many changes, a chance to try new things, and to discover who we really are. Ones struggle to be their own person inside as well as out is an admirable task that calls for courage. Do not ridicule those who walk down the hall with mismatched socks pulled up to their knees, or those who wear bright, patterned clothing.

They are only expressing themselves nd sharing their uniqueness. Our inability to individualize people is a weakness that we must not dismiss. The recognition of our rights, individual and collective, include our most basic obligation: respect for our peers. Next time, think about what is in a hairstyle, or what is in make-up. Sadly, they both have too much significance in our superficial expectations. Man is a person endowed by our Creator with gifts of body and mind. We are all created in His image and likeness. We, as imperfect sinners, do not have the right to judge or question His wisdom.

Rather we are obliged to regard our bodies as good and honorable. Mankind is not wrong when he regards himself superior to bodily concerns. For by interior qualities, he can overcome the whole sum of mere things. The intellectual nature of the human person needs to be perfected by wisdom, for wisdom gently attracts the minds of mankind in a quest for love of what is true and good. It is important to remember when wisdom and understanding is present, man can pass through visible realities to discover the real person within. Never judge a book by its cover.

Appearances can be deceiving. Within the most unattractive people can lie the most caring hearts. They are able to give to uncaring people, like ourselves, the gifts of forgiveness and friendship. Just imagine that each gift is wrapped with unconditional love and delivered with the most genuine smile. Let there be no more victims of discrimination. Ignore the false perceptions of beauty that society has imposed on us. Remember, true beauty lies within. As soon as one realizes that in their heart, everyone may be better known, better loved, and better served.

In psychology there are six modern psychological perspectives. These perspectives are behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, sociocultural, and biological. Each perspective has its own unique way of explaining the human behavior. I believe to truly explain the complex mental processes and behavior, each perspective must be examined, not limited to just one. The following is my explanation and comparisons between two of these perspectives: psychodynamic and behavioral.

“The behavioral view is defined as the psychological perspective that emphasizes the power of the environment to influence behavior. Zimbardo, page 17) The behavioral view is often referred to as behaviorism and was developed by psychologists who disagreed with the cognitive view. Instead of looking at the mental processes, behaviorists look at humans externally by observing the effects of people, objects, and events on behavior. The stimulus-response connection, developed by behaviorists, explains human behavior by stating that each response has a stimulus. An example would be a loud noise (the stimulus) causing a person to jump (the response).

True behaviorists claim that thoughts, feelings, and motives do not play a role in determining behavior. Thoughts and feelings are not the cause, but the result. B. F. Skinner is quoted as saying, “The crucial age-old mistake is the belief thatwhat we feel as we behave is the cause of our behaving. ” (Zimbardo, page 20). “The psychodynamic view is defined as a psychological perspective that emphasizes unconscious memories, needs and conflicts as the causes of behavior. ” (Zimbardo, page 17) Psychodynamic psychologists look at the cause and mental conflict that trigger behavior.

Importance is put on the unconscious motives and discords. Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, which is considered the most well-known of the psychodynamic theories. (Zimbardo, page 19) Frued explained the mind as having pressures that build up and when these can no longer be contained, then the unconscious mind releases these pressures. (Frued, pages 13-15) These pressures might be jealousy and desires from early childhood relationships. For the troubled mind, this release must be more dramatic than the release normal people get from everyday activities.

This may result in violence or other bizarre behavior. (Zimbardo, page 19) The behavioral and psychodynamic view points seem to differ more than they overlap. An example of a situation where psychologists from both disciplines might agree is with a teenager’s low self-esteem. The behavioral view point would claim that something had to have ‘stimulated’ this feeling for it to result in a response of a low self-esteem. Psychodynamic psychologists would believe that something from the teen’s past childhood experiences is causing pressure that the mind is having a hard time releasing.

In this case the behavioral stimulus is the psychodynamic pressure and the response is the releasing of the pressure as low self-esteem. While examining these two very different psychological perspectives, I have come to the conclusion that no situation or particular behavior can be attributed to just one reason. If a situation is looked at through only one perspective, then many questions are left unanswered. This is why I do not believe that any perspective is ‘wrong,’ nor do I believe any perspective is completely and solely ‘right. ‘

Psychology covers a vast field, and one interesting aspect of it is personality. Personality by itself involves various issues. Some of which basic aspects are Psychoanalytic, Ego, Biological, Behaviorist, Cognitive, Trait, Humanistic and Interactionist. Though personality as a subject fascinates me a lot, what interests me the most in this subject is behaviorism. For me different types of behaviors are amazing to learn about, mainly the behavior therapy, collective behavior, crime and punishment, and Social behavior and peer acceptance in children.

I chose Behaviorism over the other aspects because I believe Behavior etermines human personality and is very interesting. You can tell what one is by his behavior, and one behaves according to what place he has in society. By doing this paper on Behavior, I hope to get a better understanding of, if behavior develops a personality or if personality guides behavior. I also see behaviorism helping me in the future with my personal and professional career by understanding human personality and behaviour better than I do.

No matter what your major is, if you can determine one`s personality by his behavior you can really get your work done from that person and understand the better than you ould otherwise. This person could be your employee or your employer. Behavior Therapy Behavior therapy is the application of experimentally derived principles of learning to the treatment of psychological disorders. The concept derives primarily from work of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov.

Behavior-therapy techniques differ from psychiatric methods, particularly psychoanalysis, in that they are predominately symptom (behaviour) oriented and show little or no concern for unconscious processes, achieving new insight, or effecting fundamental personality change. Behavior therapy was popularized by the U. S. sychologist B. F. Skinner, who worked with mental patients in a Massachusetts state hospital. From his work in animal learning, Skinner found that the establishment and extinction of responses can be determined by the way reinforcers, or rewards, are given.

The pattern of reward giving, both in time and frequency, is known as a schedule of reinforcement. The gradual change in behavior in approximation of the desired result is known as shaping. More recent developments in behavior therapy emphasize the adaptive nature of cognitive processes. Behaviour-therapy techniques have been applied with some success to uch disturbances as enuresis (bed-wetting), tics, phobias, stuttering, obsessive-compulsive behavior, drug addiction, neurotic behaviours of normal persons, and some psychotic conditions.

It has also been used in training the mentally retarded. Collective Behavior Much of collective behaviour is dramatic, unpredictable and frightening, so the early theories and many contemporary popular views are more evaluative than analytic. The French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon identified the crowd and revolutionary movements with the excesses of the French Revolution; the U. S. psychologist Boris Sidis was mpressed with the resemblance of crowd behavior to mental disorder.

Many of these early theories depicted collective behaviour returned to an earlier stage of development. Freud retained this emphasis in viewing crowd behaviour and many other forms of collective behaviour as regressions to an earlier stage of childhood development; he explained, for example, the slavish identification that followers have for leaders on the basis of such regression. More sophisticated recent efforts to treat collective behavior as a pathological manifestation employ social disorganization as an explanatory approach.

From his point of view collective behavior erupts as an unpleasant symptom of frustration and malaise stemming from cultural conflict, organizational failure, and other social malfunctions. The distinctive feature of this approach is a reluctance to take seriously the manifest contest of collective behaviour. Neither the search for enjoyment in recreational fad, the search for spiritual meaning on a religious sect, nor the demand for equal opportunity in an interest-group movement is accepted to face value.

An opposite evaluation of many forms of collective behaviour has become part of the analytic perspective n revolutionary approaches to society. From the revolutionist¦¦s point of view a much collective behavior is a release of creative impulses from the repressive effects of establish social orders. ¦¦Revolutionary theorists such as Frantz Fanon depict traditional social arrangements as destructive of human spontaneity, and various forms of crowd and revolutionary movements as man¦¦s creative self-assertion bursting its social shackles. ¦¦ (MSN behaviorism Search/types of behaviors.

Crime and Punishment Psychologists have approached the task of explaining delinquent ehavior by examining in particular the processes by which behaviour and restraints on behaviour are learned. (MSN behaviorism Search/crime and punishment) Criminality is seen to result from the failure of the superego, as a consequence either of its incompletes development or of unusually strong instinctual drives. ¦¦The empirical basis for such a theory is necessarily thin. Behaviour theory views all behaviour criminal and otherwise as learned and thus manipulable by the use of reinforcement and punishment.

Social learning theory examines the manner in which ehaviour is learned from contacts within the family and other intimate groups, from social contacts outside the family, particularly from peer groups, and from exposure to models of behavior in the media, particularly television. Mental illness is the cause of a relatively small proportion of crime, but its importance as a causative factor may be exaggerated by the seriousness of some of the crimes committed by persons with mental disorders.

Severe depression or psychopathy may lead to grave offenses of violence. Social Behavior and Peer Acceptance The peer relations literature is replete with studies showing that hildren who demonstrate certain kinds of social behaviors while refraining from other types of behaviors tend to be liked by their peers. For example, children who play cooperatively and show leadership abilities usually enjoy high peer acceptance (Hatzichristou & Hopf, 1996; Lass, Price, & Hart, 1988).

On the other hand, children who display high levels of aggressive behavior or who interact with their peers in argumentative, disruptive, and socially inappropriate ways are often rejected by their peers (Coie & Dodge, 1988; Dodge, 1983; Dodge, Coie, Pettit, & Price 1990). Shy and withdrawn behavior, uch as not playing interactively with peers, watching peers play rather than joining in, and wandering around a classroom or playground, also tends to be associated with low peer acceptance (Lemerise, 1997).

A study was designed to isolate the types of social behaviors that predict kindergarten children¦¦s peer acceptance when considering several types of social behavior simultaneously. The outcome of that question is important to help parents, teachers, and others who work with young children understand what social skills to specifically foster and promote in order to enhance hildren¦¦s perceptions of their peer acceptance. Previous research has discovered developmental differences in the associations between social behaviors and peer acceptance.

Aggression, for example, is linked with problematic peer relations from early childhood through adolescence, while socially withdrawn behavior begins to be associated with low peer acceptance in middle and late childhood (Rubin, Bookwork, & Parker, 1998) Adult perceptions of children¦¦s confidence in their own peer acceptance also may influence their social behaviors. Adults who believe children are not onfident about their peer acceptance might provide more opportunities to help these children develop play and friendship skills that could, in turn, lead to more confidence in their peer acceptance.

For example, a teacher who believes a child lacks confidence in his or her peer acceptance might pair the child with another child who is confident about her peer acceptance, in order to provide a model of behavior. In summary, this study investigated the associations between aggression, shyness/ withdrawal, prosocial behavior, friendship skill, and social behavior problems and peer acceptance in kindergarten students.

Children¦¦s own feelings of peer acceptance, sociometric ratings from peers, and teacher and parent perceptions of children¦¦s confidence in their peer acceptance were included in the regression analysis to isolate the social behaviors that predict kindergartners¦¦ peer acceptance across informants. The present study also investigated differences in social behaviors and peer acceptance among children of different genders and varied ethnic backgrounds in a diverse school and community. After doing this paper I came to the conclusion that behavior shapes personality.

The research nvolving children to learn social acceptance, showed us clearly that how one behaves makes him what he is. I believe the same for adults. I believe if one behaves in a certain way for a long time, not only society with believe you are what you are behaving as but he himself will start believing he is what he is behaving as. Also I have learnt to be more patient with people because I take a step in the further and think why a person would behave in a particular way. I now can see a clear difference between normal and abnormal behaviours to the knowledge I have gathered by reading about Skinner, Freud, Dollard and Miller.

Interference and facilitation are two important aspects of automatic processes. Interference refers to the range to which one process encumbers performance of another, whereas facilitation indicates the extent to which one process assists performance of another. Through practice and maturation, reading progresses from a controlled process to one that is automatic, lessening the demands on attentional resources. Stroop reported one of the first studies, which provided support for this, in 1935.

He combined the word object/property dimensions in the same stimulus to create one of the most researched phenomena in cognitive psychology: The Stroop effect (MacLeod, 1991). He found that it was faster to read words than it was to name the corresponding object or their properties, including their color. Due to its key in understanding attention, the study that lead to many other related investigations, originated by examining interference in reading automaticity. Stroop furthered his research by creating tasks involving color naming and reading.

He first compared the time it took to read color names printed in incongruent ink colors to a base line reading of color words. For the second part of his study, Stroop compared the time it took to name the ink color when congruent with the color word (e. g. , blue printed in blue ink) to the time it took to name the ink color. By comparing the response times in the interference conditions to the control conditions he found that it took people longer to respond to the color of the ink when printed in a color incongruent to the color word (Stroop, 1995).

The words interfere with naming the color; yet, the color does not interfere with reading the word. The nature of the Stroop effect results as a consequence of automaticity. People have difficulty ignoring the meaning of a word because, through practice, reading has become an automatic process. The two main explanations accounting for the Stroop effect in the past have been cognitive attentional processes involved in learning, controlled and automatic. As previously mentioned, when a process is automatic (for example reading), it is not only faster; it also does not rely on other cognitive resources.

Controlled processes, for example color naming, are slow and demand more attentional resources. The theory is that an automatic process cannot successfully suppressed without causing interference of a controlled process. The second explanation, relative speed of processing, argues that the two processes involved in color naming and word reading are accomplished in parallel, but that word reading is carried out faster, assuming that the faster process will then interfere with the slower ones such as color naming (Dunbar and McLeod, 1984 as cited in Mel, 1997)

Although other compelling explanations for the Stroop effect are accessible, the generally accepted account involved automaticity. This study attempts to question the conclusion that suppression of the automatic process of reading results in interference of a controlled process such as color naming. We examined the above, hoping to further the interference effect, by not only having color words presented in incongruent colors, but to have the words themselves presented in congruent colors.

When the task is to respond to the color of the letters as opposed to the written words it is assumed that interference takes place by suppressing the automatic process of reading in order to respond to the color of the letters. A further delay in response time times would most likely occur as a consequence of the participant first attempting to make sense of reading the words and then responding to the color of the word that is presented. Independent measures include congruency and the dependent variables were response time and accuracy.

The commercialization of intelligence may be one of the most controversial issues American education has faced in the twentieth century. Lewis M. Terman introduced the concept of classifying students through IQ tests to the public at a time when society was probably eager for any solution psychology could offer for their social and educational problems. Between the 1890s to the early 1920s, many novel problems were arising in America’s educational system.

A substantial amount of these problems were most likely caused by mere overpopulation; urban school enrollment was ncreasing at an unprecedented rate as immigrants flocked to the United States, a marked shift of families from rural to urban areas was also adding to school overcrowding, and finally newly enacted and enforced compulsory education laws were causing children to actually be present in classrooms. In a society where efficiency was of top priority, school administrators began focusing on new goals. Attention to college preparation shifted considerably to life preparation; people were being educated on how be useful members of society, not for higher education.

Yet, at the same time, administrators may not have been ready to give up the ideals of American education and therefore were searching for a way to preserve academic traditions. On top of this, the costs of educating so many children were astronomical; education needed to be factorized and streamlined. Thus, the arrival of the IQ test came at what was probably a critical turning point in education philosophy. However, many questions regarding the philosophy and implementation of the intelligence tests themselves still remain. First of all, when did psychology first begin to affect education?

What was the original purpose of the tests and how has this principle evolved over time? What groups were behind the IQ tests and whom did they aim their standards at? What has public sentiment been toward the tests? Lastly, what have been the lasting effects of the intelligence quotient? [i] Education as a Science: Thorndike’s Infusion of Psychology into Social Policy During the time of Edward L. Thorndike, psychology itself was still a fledgling science, striving to prove itself through experiments and empirical data on human behavior.

As a former animal behaviorist, Thorndike carried this meticulous nature over to his work on individual characteristics of humans, namely intellect and learning. Like many psychologists of his day, Thorndike found a lack of positions available for traditional psychology students and was forced to turn to new fields, such as child study and teacher education programs. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Thorndike had fully committed himself to education and began collecting data on learning theory.

One of Thorndike’s more important revelations established his career; in 1901; using empirical vidence, he disproved one of the central theories of 19th century education by proving that learning difficult subjects like Latin and Greek does not in fact exercise and increase the strength of the mind. Thorndike then expanded this theory to say that intellect was genetically influenced and could not be improved nor changed in any way. [ii] In 1910, Thorndike himself argued for the necessity of psychology in educational theory.

He stated in his book The Contribution of Psychology to Education that “Psychology contributes to a better understanding of the ims of education by defining them, making them clearer; by limiting them, showing us what can be done and what can not; and by suggesting new features that should be made parts of them. ” He argued that psychology gave definition and meaning to people’s perceptions of culture, knowledge and skill, and also that learning and comprehension were futile if they were not passed onto the next generation.

Therefore, psychology was salient to education in that it not only defined concepts, but it designated the best methods to pass the knowledge on. He conceded that ere classroom experience could indeed tell the best methods of teaching, but affirmed that psychological research was necessary to explain why methods were successful. This methodological inquiry into the why behind learning is probably the most important contribution of science to education. [iii] Thorndike then went on to define his new science with “Laws of Learning.

” As with other sciences, Thorndike was quick to point to problems that needed to be focused on and solved within the educational system; namely, the aims, the material or subjects, the means, the methods nd finally the results of education. He held that the most important aims of educational psychology were to find the most efficient means to educate men. Finally, and perhaps one of Thorndike’s more accurate observations of education, were his Laws of Exercise and Effect.

The Law of Exercise stated the more frequently an action is connected with a response, the more likely the action would be learned. The Law of Effect basically stated that a positive response to an action would bring a person to repeat and therefore learn said action. These two laws helped to set the foundation or future learning theorists. [iv] Toward the end of his career, Thorndike believed that science could solve all of the social ills. More importantly, he rejected G. Stanley Hall’s developmental theory and advocated genetic psychology.

This inflexible system did not allow room for growth and Thorndike capitalized on this by proposing a moral scale to measure people by. This idea could have set the foundation for the future proponents of the IQ test; Thorndike’s rigid scale of morality could have easily been transformed to the scale of intellect used to classify children throughout the 1920s.

Meditation is defined as a mind-body technique, which practices awareness, and induces tranquility in order to connect the mind and the body. It is also described as “mental fasting,” implying clearing and cleansing of the mind by the absence of distractions and negative emotions (Leikin, 2003). It has shown to benefit its users psychologically, physically, as well as spiritually. Meditation works by bringing about a relaxed and healthy state by physiologically and biochemically altering the body. It is characterized as a state of rest, while allowing the body to become more alert.

This is accomplished through a dramatic decrease in metabolism, in turn, relaxing breathing patterns, and thus slowing activity within the nervous system. Upon completion of meditation one is more likely to show faster reactions to certain stimuli, a greater level of creativity, and a more conscious understanding and comprehension (ICBS Inc. , 2004). Vast health and spiritual benefits can be observed, as well. This paper will describe and discuss how meditation came about, the context in which it was used in the past, reasons for its use as compared to modern uses, as well as, ways in which meditating can heal the body and soul.

It will also compare different forms of meditation, including; what each method entails, examples of postures to achieve each method, and results that can be achieved. Meditation was originally practiced spirituality in many ancient religions, including Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and most commonly, Buddhism. The founder of Buddhism, Siddharta Gotama became the master of the art of meditation and went on to teach it to his followers. He became known as “Buddha,” (“Enlightened or Awakened One. “) (Saunders, 2000). Buddhism is one of the world’s oldest and largest religions, starting over 2500 years ago.

With Buddha as their leader (not as their God), followers learn the Four Noble Truths; First, “all existence is suffering,” secondly, “there is a cause for this suffering,” third, “the cause may be brought to an end,” and fourth, “the discipline necessary to bring it to an end is enlightenment (also known as, Buddhism)” (Saunders, 2000). Buddhists basic beliefs entail interconnectedness with everyone and everything, there is no beginning and no end (which involves the concept of reincarnation), and the law of “cause and effect,” or kharma.

However, Buddhists believe that kharma can be under our control with the practice of meditation. In this way, meditation can be used to “burn away” our bad kharma by replacing negative thoughts, actions, and attitudes with positive ones. Meditation brings the ones who practice it spiritually closer to the world, by reducing suffering and kharma and eventually allowing that person to become free both (Zen Mind International, 2004). This is just one example of religious use of meditation, which allows for spiritual benefits.

As mentioned, it is quite apparent that meditation carries spiritual benefits along with it, even without implementing religion. Although, presently, many people begin practicing meditation with the intent of achieving its physical benefits, most will go on to incorporate meditation into their spiritual well being (ICBS Inc. ,2004). They find that meditation is a way in which to spiritually grow, and to become one with their God (if religious) and with the universe.

They also find themselves more aware of their environment and their interconnectedness with the world around them, as well as feeling rejuvenated and possessing vitality, which compares with the feelings received by Buddhism. There are a few reasons and explanations for these similar feelings. For one, this interconnectedness is thought of coming from the act of emphasizing breathing and breathing exercises while meditating. By this act, one shares that breath with the world and the world shares breath with you (The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc. ,2004).

Your body also is made up of and emits magnetic fields. Meditation and consciousness allows the body to emit the magnetic field further than usual, allowing for more communication, emotions, and feelings to be given off and received (The Institute for Applied Meditation Inc. , 2004). Also, many people who practice meditation for its spiritual benefits claim that it allows them to find meaning and fulfillment in their life, allowing for a feeling of being accomplished, as well as easier acceptance of unwanted events, and more self-confidence (Trivieri, 2001).

As you can see, regardless of whether meditation is used for religious or non-religious reasons, similar emotions and feelings are equated with both. However, in addition to its spiritual benefits, meditation is used, today, in the health care field as a form of healing and disease prevention, both physically and psychologically. Although these medical benefits were recognized many years ago, meditation was not initially utilized for that purpose (Smith, 2004). The 1970s brought about the beginning of recognizing the vast range of health benefits accomplished by meditation, and using them for that purpose.

Articles were first published in The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, which discussed these advantages that meditation can produce(Lukoff, 2002). A huge advocator of meditation, named Dr. Herbert Benson, completed an enormous amount of research on stress combined with meditation in the 1970s, and published much of his findings in the Scientific American, American Journal of Physiology, and also wrote a book called The Relaxation Response (Lukoff, 2002). At Harvard, he studied how stress causes the sympathetic nervous system to become activated, producing what is commonly known as the “fight or flight” response (Castleman,1996).

This response causes much undue stress on the body, including increased heart rate, increased respiratory rate, increased blood pressure, increased oxygen consumption, increased lactate production, increased cortisol production, as well as increased muscle tension. Through Benson’s studies, it was proven that practicing meditation had the opposite effects of stress on the body (i. e. decreased heart rate, decreased respiratory rate, decreased blood pressure, decreased oxygen consumption, decreased lactate production, decreased cortisol production, and decreased muscle tension) (Castleman,1996).

Benson then created a form of transcendental meditation (originally developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India (Leikin,2003))that was non- religious, so that all people, regardless of whether they practice a religion or not, could enjoy the advantageous benefits that transcendental meditation produced on the body (Lukoff, 2002). As discussed above, stress relief (induced by lowered heart, breathing, and respiratory rate, as well as lowered blood pressure, oxygen consumption, lactate production, cortisol production, and muscle tension) is one physical benefit of meditation (Trivieri,2001).

However, meditation has the power to do much more than just this. Meditation has also shown to reduce cholesterol levels, thus decreasing the risk for cardiovascular disease. Also, because breathing techniques are so heavily concentrated on during meditation, air flow is improved, therefore being beneficial to people with any sort of breathing disorder such as asthma or emphysema. Meditation also reduces free radicals in the body. These free radicals are toxic forms of oxygen molecules, which promote tissue damage, a major source of aging and disease in the body.

It also lowers the core body temperature, which has shown to increase life expectancy. Consequently, people who chronically practice meditation appear more youthful, age less quickly, and have an increased life expectancy (Trivieri,2001, Chopra, 1991). All sources overwhelmingly agree that meditation has the ability to assist in the treatment of a vast rage of disorders and diseases. The reason behind this is stress. Not only does a disease cause direct physical stress on the body, but the person it inflicts is usually mentally stressed knowing of the disease or disorder, as well.

For example, a person who has chronic pain, whether it be from an injury or arthritis, usually experiences some sort of mental anxiety, as well as physical stress of the pain on the body. Stress and anxiety actually cause intensified pain, thus leading to even more stress and anxiety. Meditation can break this cycle because of its ability to reduce factors associated with stress (heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol levels etc. ), and consequently reduce pain. This also goes for such problems as infertility, irritable bowel syndrome, and premenstrual syndrome, all of which cause a person to experience stress, depression, and/or anxiety.

By eliminating the stress you can reduce or eliminate the problem (Jaffe,1980). As mentioned before, meditation can help those with breathing disorders. When a person has a difficult time breathing, it raises the fear and anxiety of suffocation, causing even more difficult breathing. By relieving this stress, along with practicing breathing exercises during meditation, a person will have fewer incidents of these breathing episodes. Two other disorders that are caused by stress and that can be relieved by meditation are insomnia and ulcers (IBCS Inc. ,2004).

A study was also done regarding cancer patients and meditation, involving 73 patients who attended at least 20 sessions of intense meditation. Nearly all of them reported reduction in stress, anxiety, or depression. More than 50% reported a greatly improved quality of life and more than 20% had a reduction of growth or shrinkage of their tumor (ICBS Inc, 2004). Meditation can also assist people with drug addictions who are physically and psychologically dependent. Practicing meditation can reduce the anxiety and pain associated with withdrawl and/or relapse (ICBS Inc,2004).

There are two major techniques for meditating and they will be discussed and contrasted. The first method is called concentration meditation, and the other, mindfulness meditation. Concentration meditation is defined by focusing on an object (an image, a sound or a word). It also employs breathing techniques, and minimizing distractions by always focusing on that chosen object. This increases awareness of the mind and allows the body to breathe more deeply, using less oxygen, and thus decreasing heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, etc. (ICBS Inc. , 2004).

There are so many forms of this concentration meditation, including chakra, yantra, and mantra meditation. A chakra is a believed energy center in the body. There are seven of the chakras along the spinal column and three of them (the third, fourth, and sixth) are used for chakra meditation. The third chakra is the center for strength, the fourth for happiness, and the sixth for wisdom. By focusing on these chakras during meditation, strength, happiness, and wisdom will be gained (Zen Mind International, 2004). A yantra is an ancient geometrical design, which represents happiness and clarity.

During yantra meditation, the focus is on the center of the design and once the mind is quiet enough, the focus is extended outward until the entire design is being concentrated on. A mantra is a sacred word or phrase, meaning “speech” or “prayer”(White, 2000). During Mantra meditation, this word or phrase is repeated, focusing on breathing technique, as well as the sound and energy that the mantra brings. The mantra will also help you to focus your mind on a single entity, thus bringing you inner peace and clarity (White, 2000).

The second form of meditation is mindfulness meditation, also known as “vipassana” by Buddhists (Castleman,1996). This is quite different from concentration meditation. Instead of pushing out thoughts and focusing on one particular object or phrase, in mindfulness meditation the person is attentive to all of the passing emotions, sensations, images and sounds (ICBS Inc. , 2004). Although attentive to these entities, the person should not become involved in or react to them, but simply be accepting and nonjudgmental of them.

This form of meditation does impose the same health benefits as concentration meditation, it is simply done in a different way. Mindfulness meditation is said to help a person gain a more non-reactive and understanding mind, especially in times of stress or fear and also allows a person to react less impulsively, and so effectively and efficiently (ICBS Inc. ,2004, Castleman,1996). There are certain things that are needed in order to properly and correctly practice meditation, especially when first learning. The first thing needed is a quiet place.

It should be a comfortable environment with little or no distractions (Jaffe,1980). However, after becoming accustomed to meditation, it will be easy to do in any environment. A second thing that is necessary is a comfortable, yet poised posture. A classic and common posture used in meditation is called the Half Lotus Posture. It is sitting with legs crossed and head and spine upright and straight ( Jacobs, 1996). This could be uncomfortable for some people, especially ones first starting out. However, this posture is practical in maintaining awareness and in not falling asleep.

An example of another posture (and one in which falling asleep can occur) is called Shavasana. In this position, the person lays flat on the floor with legs apart and arms at sides (Jacobs, 1996). A third item needed in meditation is an object to concentrate on. For example, in Chakra meditation, the object would be an energy center in the body, In Yantra meditation, it would be a geometrical design or picture, and in Mantra meditation, the object would be a word or phrase. Also, in mindfulness meditation, the object would be any or all emotions, sounds, and sensations experienced (Jacobs,1996).

The fourth and final necessary thing needed in meditation is a passive attitude. One should focus on breathing technique, obtain internal silence, relax muscles, and engage all senses (Jacobs,1996, Jaffe,1980). Without this, full concentration cannot be reached. When meditating, one needs to be able to be completely focused and relaxed in order to achieve the full benefits of this practice. Although this task is difficult at first, after some practice, it can easily be achieved (ICBS Inc. , 2004). I, myself, have used meditation in certain times of my life when stress prevailed.

I found that it was difficult to perform, at first, because of the uncomfortable posture and the difficulty of clearing the mind. However, it is very relaxing and it gives the body a freeing and cleansing effect, after a bit of practicing. I find that it does help to alleviate stress by calming the body. Just the act of deep breathing alone is helpful in this task. I believe that this practice can be useful to me in the future, as I follow my career path. I am studying to become a physician assistant, and I would recommend meditation to my patients who experience stress or anxiety, or have a diseases who’s symptoms are amplified by stress.

As you can see, it is quite apparent how much power the mind possesses and how it affects both the body and the soul. This mind – body connection can be the key in overall health and wellness, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and this can be achieved through the practice of meditation. Not only will meditation reduce stress, and thus cause a healing domino effect throughout the body, but it can also be extremely useful in both religion and spirituality, creating inner peace, content, and a feeling of wholeness.

Have you ever seen or heard a commercial and then suddenly had an urge for something? Your urge may have been the result of subliminal messaging. “Subliminal messaging” can be defined as a technique of projecting information below an individual’s threshold of sensation or awareness (The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin on Subliminals” 1). These messages were everywhere from radio broadcasts to Disney movies to commercials.

In 1958, a survey taken by Ralph Hauber showed that out of 42 people interviewed: 50 percent thought of subliminal messages to be unethical and 50 percent thought of them as unethical” (The Subliminal Scares: “Hidden Persuasion” 4). I feel that these messages are extremely unethical and the messages are taking away people’s privacy. The man responsible for inventing subliminals is James Vicary. This man used social science and psychology to develop a new method to promote sales.

It took a lot of in depth research and patience to develop a new way of advertising, but Vicary developed a method no one will ever forget (The Subliminal Scares: “Hidden Persuasion” 1-2). In 1957, Vicary announced that he had designed a subliminal projection machine, which was capable of flashing unnoticeable messages during big-screen movies (The Subliminal Scares: “Hidden Persuasion 2”). When people were introduced to these unnoticeable messages they all basically asked the same question: “What’s the point? Why advertise something when you can’t see what it is?

The point is very simple. Let’s say that the subliminal message, “Eat nachos”, is flashed during a movie you are watching. You may not have wanted nachos before, but now you have a sudden craving for them. Since it was a “subliminal message” you were not able to see it. However, you subconsciously read the message. This method may be useful to advertisers, but it is harmful to the viewers of the ad. The very first experiment using subliminals took place in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1956.

It took place in a movie theater during the movie “Picnic. The words ‘Drink Coca-Cola’ and ‘Hungry? Buy popcorn’ were flashed periodically using Vicary’s machine. As a result, there was an increase of 18 percent in the sales of Coca-Cola and a 58 percent increase in popcorn” (The Subliminal Scares: “Hidden Persuasion” 3). The results of this experiment baffled millions of people, but this technique, they thought was assaulting people’s minds. As you can see, right from the start, this method was controversial. After the Fort Lee experiment, many other people wanted to try this subliminal advertising.

In 1958, many radio stations began experimenting with it. One particular radio station, WAAF Chicago, tried to use a subliminal during a song. The disc jockeys pre-recorded barely audible phrases designated as ‘Phantom spots. ‘ These phrases were faded under musical recordings or dropped into pauses in the DJs’ dialogue in quick low voices (The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin” 4). This experiment failed because listeners heard the phrases. The experiments didn’t stop at movie theaters and radio stations.

Television programs also ran a series of subliminal experiments. A television station, BBC-TV in England, was the first to use a subliminal message during a regular broadcast. After the program was over, viewers were asked to report whether they noticed anything unusual. Of the relatively few who responded, only a small percentage correctly identified the message (The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin” 3). As people were seeing more and more tests being done, they became more and more concerned.

Most people had the same opinion: “it was a sneaky advertising device used to influence audiences to react, in a manner contrary to their normal likes and dislikes, to information that they could not ‘see’ or ‘hear'” (The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin” 1). United States Representative William L Dawson made an attempt to persuade the FCC to request that all radio and television stations to stop using subliminals. However, the FCC didn’t see it necessary to forbid them. In fact, the FCC referred to Section 326 of the Communications Act.

The section states, ” The FCC is prohibited from censoring broadcast material, including advertising” (The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin” 4). After much concern and many attempts, some progress was eventually made. At a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters in 1958, the broadcasters had made some changes to the NAB Broadcasting Code. The new and improved code states:”Any technique whereby an attempt is made to convey information to the listener by transmitted messages below the threshold of normal awareness is not prohibited” (The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin” 7).

Although this was passed, some people were still not satisfied. Representatives Wright and Hosmer took an extra step to outlaw the use of subliminal messages. On March 12, 1958, they proposed Bills HR. 10820 and 11363. These bills would make the use of subliminal messaging illegal. Although the bills were taken to the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, no hearings were held. These bills were not even taken into consideration by the people needed to stop the subliminal messaging. Right now the only restriction on using subliminals is the amended NAB Broadcasting Code.

The Subliminal Scares: “FCC Information Bulletin on Subliminals” 7) Passing the NAB Broadcasting Code most likely made and continues to make people feel better about advertising. They can put aside the fear of being manipulated into buying things. How does advertising businesses feel about the restriction? They feel that they do not need subliminals to be successful. Of course it would help, but overall they are not worried. subliminal scare finally died down as we entered the 1980s. In the 1990s, a new controversy arose: it was said that our children were being exposed to sexual subliminal messages.

Some of the most well known Disney movies have been accused of incorporating sexual gestures into the popular cartoon movies. A conservative Christian group by the name of the American Life League (ALL) studied the alleged sexual subliminals. (The Subliminal Scares: “Subliminal Survives” 2). Disney movie amongst the controversy was The Little Mermaid. On the cover of the videotape box, there appears to be a picture of a penis on the sea castle. Although most children would probably not notice, ALL was outraged. In one scene on the Little Mermaid, Arial and the Prince get married.

ALL noticed a suspected bulge on the priest that was said to be an erection. Another Disney movie that ALL was disgusted with was The Lion King. When a character plops onto the ground, a cloud of dust rises into the air and they say dust spells out the word S-E-X. Even though the scene is only about two seconds long, the words are very noticeable. In Aladdin, another Disney movie, a character was meant to say, “Scat good tiger, take off and go”. Instead, ALL heard, “Good teenagers, take of your clothes” (Subliminal Survives 2).

ALL insists that these types of messages are corruptive to children, however there has not been any legal action taken against the animators of the Walt Disney Company, but many parents are disturbed by ALL’s allegations. (The Subliminal Scares: “Subliminal Survives” 2). Since then there have not been any reports of subliminals being used. But now the question is: Have advertisers taken up another form of subliminal advertising? Is there some sort of influential ads being displayed on the Internet? The new advertising technique called profiling strongly resembles subliminal advertising.

By using this method, advertisers can watch what you do on the Internet. Then they try to promote things that resemble what you like on each website you visit. This invaded people’s privacy just like Vicary’s subliminals in 1956. They were unethical before and profiling is following in its footsteps. (Academic Universe: “Profiling” 1-3). Vicary’s controversial method of subliminal messaging has made people aware that they can be influenced by anyone at any time. Even our children were in danger of being influenced by these messages.

At least there were some measures taken, in order to protect us from being manipulated by these messages. I don’t feel that there was enough emphasis on the method. I believe that if things were taken care of in 1958, we wouldn’t be facing the profiling problem today. Whether it is embedded messages in commercials and television shows or Internet profiling, advertisers should not manipulate people. It is important that people recognize the techniques that people may be using to make us think a certain way. Subliminal messages are unethical and they are unnecessary.

Psychoanalysis is a system of psychology originated by the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud in the 1890’s and then further developed by himself, his students, and other followers. It consists of activities such as using methods for research into the human mind, a systematic knowledge about the mind, and a method for the treatment of psychological or emotional disorders. Psychoanalysis began with the discovery of “hysteria,” an illness with physical symptoms that occurred in a completely healthy physical body, such as a numbness or paralysis of a limb, loss of voice, or blindness.

This state could be caused by unconscious wishes or forgotten memories. Many women of the 1800’s were diagnosed with hysteria, given the disorder was thought to be primarily female. Freud began telling his patients, through interpretations, what was going on inside the unconscious part of their minds, thus helping the unconscious become conscious. Many cases of hysteria were cured this way, and in 1895, Freud, along with another fellow physician, published their findings and theories on the study of hysteria.

In The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas, the character Lisa does not exhibit the above form of hysteria, but rather a manifestation of reality. Her own reality has become too imprisoned, and she escapes it by creating another Lisa that is nothing like her person. The traditional psychoanalytical theory states that all human beings are born with instinctual drives that are constantly active even though a person is not usually conscious of them. Two drives, one for sexual pleasure and the other called aggression, motivate and propel most behaviors in people.

Lisa creates a very intense sexual drive for her fictive person. Readers may speculate that this creation may have been brought about by experiences beginning at birth. In the infant, the libido supposedly first manifests itself by making the act of sucking the thumb an activity with pleasurable sensations in the mouth. Later, according to Freud, similar pleasures are experienced in the anus during bowel movements, and finally these erotically tinged pleasures are experienced when the sexual organ is manipulated.

Thus psychosexual development progresses from the oral through the anal to the phallic stage. During the height of the phallic phase (about ages three to six), Freud notes that these drives focus on the parent of the opposite sex such as in the relations between mother and son or between father and daughter. These drives are known as the so-called Oedipus and Electra complexes. These complexes may also spread to other relationships, such as Lisa’s viewing of the love affair between her mother and uncle.

However, most societies strongly disapprove of the sexual interests of children, and Lisa never spoke of what she saw to anyone but Freud. She also, in the event of her mother’s death, fell subject to a withdrawn father who did not meet her needs for affection and attention as a growing child. This may have helped lead to her repressed sexual “rage. ” Also, taboo on incest rules almost universally. Parents, therefore, influence children to push pleasurable sensations and thoughts out of their conscious minds into the unconscious by a process called repression.

Repression is what Lisa learned most about in her childhood. In this way the mind comes to consist of three parts known as the ego, id, and superego. The ego is mostly conscious and comprises all the ordinary thoughts and functions needed to direct a person in his or her daily behavior. The id is mainly unconscious and contains the instincts and everything that was repressed into it. And finally, the superego is the conscious state that harbors the values, ideals, and prohibitions that set the guidelines for the ego, and punishes the person through feeling of guilt.

Strong boundaries between the three parts keep the ego fairly free from disturbing thoughts and wishes in the id, ensuring effective functioning and socially acceptable behavior. During sleep the boundaries weaken, and disturbing wishes may slip into the ego from the id. This often causes us to manifest in our dreams. Freud interpreted this concept in his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams.

Something very similar to the weakening of boundaries during sleep may happen during ordinary daytime activities when some impulses from the id manage to cross the repression barrier and cause faulty actions such as “slips” of the tongue. This may occur often if psychologically hurtful experiences during childhood have left the repression too weak, distorted the ego, or strengthened the id too much by over-stimulation. Any kind of psychic trauma may lead to the ego becoming an area of conflict between the intruding id, the threatening superego, and the powerful influences emanating from the surrounding environment.

Furthermore, the damage done to the basic psychological structures by traumatic experiences leaves those structures weakened and with defective functioning. Such outcomes can cause intense anxiety and depression. In order to keep functioning effectively, the ego attempts to maintain control by achieving some sort of compromise between the contending forces. Lisa could not separate her self from her problems, and therefor fell victim to them. Her life was not focused, but she managed to create clarity in the release of her sexual self.

Patients seek psychoanalytic treatment because they suffer from one or more psychological symptoms such as anxiety, depression, sexual inhibitions or manifestations (such as with Lisa’s conflict), obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, irrational anger, shyness, phobias, low self-esteem, a sense of being unfulfilled, nervous irritability, and many more. Psychoanalysis does not promise a quick cure but holds hope that through better understanding of oneself and others, one can achieve an correction of symptoms as well as smoother and more effective socialization regarding behavior.

It has been found that many psychological problems originate from painful misunderstandings or outright failures in the child’s relationship to his or her parents. The method of treatment seems simple at first. The patient is instructed to say absolutely everything that comes to mind without censoring anything, a technique that is called free association. This brings about a state of regression in which long-forgotten events and painful encounters are remembered, often with great clarity and intense emotions.

The analyst often can trace the connection between the patient’s current fantasies and feelings about the analyst and the origin of these thoughts and emotions in childhood experiences. These conflicts and traumas, together with the accompanying fears and feelings, are then are interpreted by the analyst. If treatment is successful, the patient learns to recognize the connections between past and present. The combination of insight and the emotional re-experience during the regressed state can cause a reorganization of the psychological structures into more healthfully adaptive patterns.

From the beginnings in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory and practice have continued to develop into the present modern practices. Initially, Freud believed that forgotten sexual seductions of children were the cause of neurosis and that remembering the trauma and emotions was therapeutic. He later modified and elaborated his views into the theory of infantile instinctual drives as the motivating force for normal behavior and as the cause of neurosis if repressed.

Continuing research has discovered much evidence that the early relationships between children and parents, have the greatest impact on later psychological development. The influence of the care-givers, especially during infancy, leave a lasting imprint on the personality. Any experience with objects, including persons, that evoke and strengthen the self are “self-object” experiences and are needed by every human being from birth to death in order to sustain a cohesive self.

Absence of or faulty self-object experiences cause a loss of cohesion with the self. Lisa’s character was a prime candidate for Freud’s psychoanalysis. She followed many of the stereotypical guidelines set by Freud’s studies. Her reality failed her, so a more vibrant one was created in order to suppress years of secrets, neglect, and the pain from it all. Her character was eventually brought back into a state of reality, but it was too late to “save” her. The true reality that faced her was the grimace of death of her true “self” in the end.

Psychoanalysis had its beginning with the discovery that a person in complete physical health could experience an illness with physical symptoms that stemmed from things trapped in the subconscious known as hysteria. Charcot, a French neurologist tried to liberate the mind through hypnosis. A Viennese physician, Josef Breuer, carried this purging further with a process based on his patient, Anna O. , revealing her thoughts and feelings to him. Sigmund Freud took Breuer’s method and made generalizations that grew into conceptualizations and eventually into the theories of psychoanalysis.

Freud would listen to his patients, and then use these thoughts to interpret what was happening in the unconscious part of their mind. This was explained as bringing the unconscious to consciousness so it could be dealt with through therapy. Breuer and Freud’s successes with this method led to the foundational publication of Studies in Hysteria in 1895. Freud continued his practice of theory until it became the system of psychology known as psychoanalysis, a system that is the single most influential theory of psychotherapy in our time.

A brief look into psychoanalysis is seen through the foundations of Freud’s theory. Freud began with his study of the three forces of the psyche: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the unconscious and contains most things inherited and the all-encompassing instincts. The ego is the conscious and must control the ever-demanding id by serving as its link to the external world. The ego is a regulator and responds to a stimulus by adapting or fleeing, regulating, and seeking pleasure while avoiding displeasure. The superego is actually managed by the id.

It carries the responsibility of the limitation of satisfactions and the representation of other persons’ influence, especially the influence of parents, teachers, and other role models. It also represents the impact of racial, cultural, and societal traditions. The instincts, which are mostly a part of the id, are the cause of every human behavior. Behavior is further made up of two basic instincts that are Eros (love) and Death (destructive and aggressive). Eros is responsible for establishing and preserving the unity of relationships.

The Death or destructive instinct carries the purpose of undoing connections and unity through aggression or destruction. They either work together to form attraction or in competition to create repulsion. Simply put one may be bashful or impotent or aggressive to the extreme of being a sex murderer. To carry his study further, Freud considered the sexuality of an individual. Through this particular study, Freud contends that one must go back to birth, which is the manifestation of an individual’s sexuality.

The oral phase is where life begins and that is why babies explore everything with their mouth, the center of all sensations. The following phase is the anal or sadistic-anal phase where excretory functions are the center of everything. Pleasures are experienced in the anus during bowel movements. Finally these erotically tinged pleasures are experienced when the sexual organ is manipulated. Thus psychosexual development progresses from the oral through the anal to the phallic (in psychoanalytic theory phallic refers to both male and female sexual organs) stage.

During the height of the phallic phase, about the ages of three to six, these libidinous forces focus on the parent of the opposite sex and lend an erotic cast to the relationship between parent and child (son/mother or daughter/father). This focus is known as the Oedipus phase for boys and the Electra phase for girls. The phallic phase is followed by a period of latency where sexual drives lay dormant until puberty when they are reawakened and individuals become more aware of the sexual roles they will play as an adult. The further structure comes with Freud’s description of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious.

The conscious is driven by pleasure and is locked away from the conscious. Repression, as well as similar disorders, forms the barrier between the conscious and unconscious. The preconscious can be accessed by the conscious even though it is no longer being thought about. The psychoanalyst must find the line between what is merely a part of preconscious and what is part of the unconscious. Freud’s dream analysis was determined the gateway to the unconscious. The preconscious and unconscious had to be unlocked and evaluated in the beginning cases known as hysteria and in a multitude of psychological disorders.

As the disorders become neuroses treatment became necessary for a mentally healthy life. This treatment is used on patients that seek psychoanalytic treatment because they suffer from one or more of a variety of psychological symptoms such as anxiety, depression, sexual and other inhibitions, obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, irrational angers, shyness and timidity, phobias, inability to get along with friends or spouses or co-workers, low self-esteem, a sense of feeling unfulfilled, nervous irritability, and blocked creativity.

The defects and repressed conflicts that cause these symptoms are usually indicative of a psychoneurosis or a narcissistic personality disorder. Normal ego functioning and the job of life that comes with easy relationship to others is seriously interfered with or sometimes lost altogether. Psychoanalysis does not promise a quick cure but holds out the hope that through the better understanding of oneself and of others one can achieve an amelioration of symptoms as well as a smoother and more effective socialization of one’s behavior.

Psychological maladaptations usually originate from painful misunderstandings or outright failures in the child’s relationship to his or her parents. Sometimes parents lack the appropriate and attuned empathic understanding that children need. Sometimes severe physical or mental illness or the death of a parent or sibling causes serious psychic wounds. Consequently, even in adults, they remain ever-[resent though usually unconscious fears that the early hurtful experiences will now be repeated again with others.

Transference is the unconscious expectation that the old injuries and insults will now again be suffered, only this time at the hand of friends, spouses, children, bosses, etc. as if transferred from the past into the present. Transference makes one have irrational expectations from the people with whom one lives and works. For example, one may feel a need for the approval of a supervisor similar to the same feeling of need a child has towards his parents. Frustration of these expectations may evoke immature rage or other immature behavior.

Transference causes great distress, but it also makes treatment possible. The method of treatment seems simple at first. The patient reclines on a comfortable couch in the analyst’s office with the analyst seated behind the patient. The recumbent position, as well as not being able to see the analyst, minimizes distraction and allows concentration on inner experiences, thoughts, wishes, fantasies, and feelings. The patient is instructed to say absolutely everything that comes to mind without censoring anything, a technique that is called free association.

This brings about a state of regression in which long-forgotten events and painful encounters are remembered, often with great clarity and intense emotions. At the same time, because of transference, the patient experiences the analyst as well, as if he or she were a figure from the past, perhaps resembling a parent. The analyst often can trace the connection between the patient’s current fantasies and feelings about the analyst and the origin of these thoughts and emotions in childhood experiences.

The analyst then interprets the re-experienced conflicts and traumas, together with the accompanying fears and feelings. The patient learns to recognize the connections between the experiences during the regressed state brought about by the analytic method which causes a reorganization of the psychological structures into more healthfully adaptive patterns . The analyst’s friendly and calmly explaining attitude that is generally devoid of any moralizing or other biases creates an atmosphere in which, most of the time, all human failings and foibles can be looked at, talked about, and finally resolved.

Typically, an analysis lasts for a few years, with four to five sessions per week of about 45 minutes each. In this way the psychoneuroses and the narcissistic personality disorders can be treated successfully in a majority of patients. Serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, and the psychoses caused by organ malfunctioning of the brain cannot be cured by psychoanalytic treatment, though the patient can often benefit from psycho-pharmacological treatment – sedatives, tranquilizers, anti-depressants– in combinations with psychotherapy.

The longevity of success using psychoanalysis becomes a testimony to Freud’s in-depth study of the human mind. His forty plus years of work in the field were spent on the development of the main principles of psychoanalysis along with the techniques and methods used by the analyst. His work was furthered by his daughter and later adopted then adapted by Erikson. What seemed so revolutionary in the 1890’s and beyond has now become widely accepted by most all schools of psychological thought and its study.

Stress is a part of day to day living. As a college student I experience stress meeting academic demands, adjusting to a different schedule every week, or developing relationships with others. The stress I or anyone else experience is not necessarily harmful; in fact, stress is a normal part of life. Although we tend to think of stress as caused by external events, events in themselves are not stressful. Rather, it is the way in which we interpret and react to those events that makes them stressful, and will either make us peak performers or not.

People differ greatly in the type of events they interpret as stressful and the way in which they respond to such stress. For example, speaking in front of a large crowd can be stressful for some people and relaxing for others. There are several and symptoms that you may notice when you are experiencing stress. These symptoms basically fall into three categories. They are feelings, thoughts, and behavior. When a person is under stress, they will normally show symptoms from each category.

When a person’s feelings are affected by stress, they become very anxious, irritable, and even scared. If you let your feeling and emotions be ruled by the stress you are under, you may quickly lose friends; or worse, lose yourself. You must learn to control your feelings when under extreme amounts of stress. A person’s thoughts are also seriously affected by stress. When a person’s thoughts are affected, they begin to have low self-esteem, the inability to concentrate, they constantly have the fear of failure, and they are often preoccupied and forgetful.

Behavior is another factor which is influenced by stress. When someone’s behavior is affected by stress, they may have difficulty speaking, they can become very impulsive, and they can either become very nervous (apparent by the high pitched voice) or very sad and cry for no apparent reason. All of these symptoms can be dealt with many ways; however, the following seem to be the most effective. Many people find that Yoga and other relaxation techniques are very effective in reducing or even eliminating stressful feelings.

Healthy friendships and relationships can also provide the means to control those feelings which are ruling you. Having a serious talk with a best friend or significant other can really help to bring back that sense of joy and satisfaction in your life, and can also give a renewed burst of energy and refresh your mind. Exercising has also proven to be a wonderful stress reducer. Regular exercise has been proven to increase energy, reduce tension, and relax muscles.

Becoming aware of your own reactions to stress and recognizing, accepting, and working within your own limits can also greatly reduce the amount of stress placed upon you. Stress can become very dangerous if allowed to go unchecked. If a person’s stress level is too high, medical and social problems can result if not dealt with correctly. People under extreme amounts of stress can become accident prone, and increase their usage of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. They sometimes lose their appetite, or go the other extreme and overeat.

Some people even get seriously ill when they cannot cope with stress. They will have symptoms such as diarrhea, indigestion, vomiting, and severe headaches, or even literally get sick with colds and flus. If a person is under extreme amount of stress and cannot seem to be able to cope with it, they can even become dangerous to others, or even suicidal, and need to seek professional help. A certified counselor or therapist can help a person to gain insight into their reactions to stress and the most effective ways to deal with it.

Time management can be very helpful when dealing with stress. Stress most often is a result of not managing time correctly, and as a result things begin to pile up and people begin to feel swamped by everything. There are many ways to manage your time so that you will not feel overburdened. Set goals which you want to accomplish. This will clarify what you want to do and give you the energy and focus to do it. Making a schedule will help incredibly. Fill your schedule with lots of time for leisure as well as work.

That way, you’ll enjoy your playtime because you’ll be doing it at the right time, not when you should be working. And when you are working, you won’t resent it because you’ll know that your leisure time is coming up soon. Making a schedule will hopefully keep you from procrastinating as well. Procrastination is a very common stressor, or cause of stress, and can be avoided easily. A certain amount of stress can be good. It can produce an excitement or rush that acts as a catalyst, therefore motivating you to do better work, cope with a problem, or give more of yourself.

The important thing is to be aware of stress so that you can deal with it. The only difference between peak performers and those who are not is how that stress is dealt with. Stress is a direct result of how we respond to different events. If we are feeling stressed by something, we need to take a step back and take stock of the situation. Ask yourself “How can I deal with this situation in a way that will not cause me undue amounts of stress? ” When the answer to that is found, you are on your way to leading a less stressful life.

Perception. As hard as it is to define it, it is impossible to correctly conceive a “correct” or “right” way to use it. Perception varies with not only humans, but with virtually all other animals as well, whether through instinct or with conscious thought. Let us take this a step farther. When a bee looks at a flower that is meant for feeding from, they do not only notice the colors the human mind sees. The bee sees a yellow “run-way” directly into the core of the flower, guiding it into the source of nectar.

This brings us to the question- “is what we see real, or is what we see our own reality? . What the human mind sees is only three dimensions. Since Albert Einstein first conjured the scientific possibility of a fourth dimension, human beings have longed to see it. Many people assume that it does not exist simply because they cannot see it. They are not able to see the yellow “run-way” into the heart of a flower, but to the bee and an ultraviolet light, that “run-way” is certainly real. People’s physical use of their own perception is very limited, as such noticeable in the “tunnel-vision” effect.

A good example of the Tunnel Vision effect is a erception or thought such as “if I cannot see it, it simply does not exist”. We as humans are limited not only to what we can sense, but how we perceive what we sense. Such is a formidable question. What if that fourth dimension does exist, what if we can see it , only our brain cannot perceive it being there, therefor it never exists in the first place. I would consider that as a paradox. Where does perception come from? Is it a result of the upbringing and surroundings of an individual (animal or human), or is it a result of genetics?

Certainly I would believe that conditioning has a great impact on an ndividual’s perception. An example to that would be as such : A dog is abused, beaten, and starved by a group of owners in a kennel. The dog is then recovered by the humane society and adopted by a local family. The dog in turns bites one in the family every time a hand is raised near it as a motion, for food or otherwise. The dog has been conditioned into fear. However, due to the conditioning, the dog perceives the hand motions differently than would a newborn pup.

The dog perceives such hand actions as a premonition that it is about to be hit or harmed in some way. I can only conclude to myself that there s a distinct possibility that conditioning has the ability to alter perception in a great amount. People often mistakenly identify people for others in many circumstances everyday. For example, I got on the bus to go to school a few weeks ago, and sat down next to a person whom I believed I had talked to the day before regarding a topic. I started to say something, I looked up and realized the person was a totally different person than whom I believed I was talking to.

I had seen the person who I thought I was talking to when I got on that bus. The physical features, the voice, etc. ll matched. However, a neuron must have misfired because there was an entirely different person altogether in that seat. I went to another seat, pondered it over, and realized how speculative human identification is. Often victims of rape, robbery, or other crimes are asked to identify their assailant in a police lineup. Seventy two percent of people misidentify suspects in police lineups the first try. The reason?

The person sees who they “saw” when they were attacked. I would presume that during an attack, a person would be more concerned about staying alive than noticing the xact physical characteristics of the individual who is attacking. Since the brain is overworking to do multitudes of tasks at the time of an attack, I would assume that a person would not pay particular notice to the appearance of the attacker. This is why human visual identification is so controversial and hard to support. Perhaps the person *did* see that person who attacked them in the lineup.

People often fill in the gaps of a picture and story to make everything seem clear to them and the authorities. Therefor, human visual identification cannot be trusted simply due to people’s differences of perception. When I ook at and read the Bible, I regard it as an awesome literary work, but not something I would base or live my life upon. However, there are those who perceive the Bible as not only words on a page, but as the guiding force behind humanity. Religion and perception do not go well together simply due to the vast differences in opinion among the human race.

What I perceive as fact is that Jesus Christ did not ascend into heaven, and that the Bible is merely a literary work. A book to be concise. However, what Christians perceive as fact is the exact opposite. Often, there are those in the religious or family oriented lobby ndustries who try to suppress what I read or hear based upon their own perception, Perhaps this is stretching the links of perception, but I believe that the perceptual differences among people are the original roots of censorship.

One group of people or person perceives something as obscene or “harmful”. Another group perceives *the same thing* as intellectually stimulating or entertaining. Such is why I consider perception as not only having to do with human psychology, but with politics and beliefs as well. I consider perception to be not only what a person senses, but what they get out of what they sense. I listen to hard-core rock and like the sound of it. However, an adult would most likely label it as simply “noise”.

The perceptual differences among people is the *single* biggest speed bump in attaining world, civil, and domestic peace. Our differences are small, but great in bounty. I see white, you see black. Never will all people in the world agree on one particular topic, however we can learn to respect the perception of that topic. Until people understand the roots of problems is how they perceive them, and that it is only a problem if you make it a problem, peace and respect are unattainable goals.

A hallmark of someone who is engaging in this addiction pattern, but who has not accepted that their behavior is out of their control, is denial. Denial is a psychological defense mechanism that enables a person to continue to engage in a behavior in spite of relatively obvious negative consequences on their life. It’s a way to protect ourselves from seeing or feeling things that are unpleasant. In the case of the gambling addict, there may be repeated warnings from his or her spouse that they will not tolerate continued spending of household savings, job loss, and constant harassment by creditors.

In light of this, the gambling addict will still deny that they have a problem with gambling and will believe that they have complete control over their actions. Denial permits one to distort reality, a very powerful psychological defense; it can have devastating consequences on our life, and the ability to disregard such negative consequences while continuing the behavior is a hallmark of denial. Denial is present, to some extent or another, in all addictions.

It’s necessary, in the development of an addictive process, to experience a sense of denial while the addiction is beginning to take hold. Otherwise we would not continue with the addictive behaviors. Because of denial, the impact of our negative behavior is never fully appreciated until the consequences become so overwhelming that they can no longer be ignored. This is sometimes referred to as hitting bottom. People may continue their behavior indefinitely, with no recognition of the negative consequences of their actions, in spite of numerous personal disasters.

Often an individual will not seek help for a specific problem, unless they’ve recognized that they are no longer in control of the situation and need help. This usually happens at a point when the negative impact of their addiction has become grossly obvious and their denial is broken. It is a process that cannot be rushed. Each person has to discover their own time frame for how and when to deal with their addiction. This, of course, can be very frustrating for family and friends of the addict, who often notice the problem long before the addict does.

Negative consequences of Internet use vary considerably. I have been consulted on Internet cases where employees have been caught using their work computer for personal Internet access (in some cases wasting considerable company time and/or downloading sexually related material onto their computer). In some cases, individuals could be charged with sexual harassment as a consequence of exposing fellow employees to sexually explicit material against their will (even accidentally! ).

There may even be a legal liability for employers who allow (even unknowingly) their employees to use the company network to send personal email or other material that might be seen as objectionable by others. I’ve also seen numerous cases of couples with significant marital or relationship problems due to Internet abuse; at times even resulting in child custody investigations! Everyday I hear or receive stories of people who are getting into trouble with their online behavior at home or at work.

It may take the form of abusing the Net by staying online longer than you had planned, having cybersex/cyberaffairs, or spending too much money online by gambling, stock trading, shopping, or auctioning. . I fear that as broadband access increases from the current 6% level, that we will see an increase in compulsive Internet use; The increase may occur because just as the faster modes of absorption of a drug increases the addictive potential a drug. Broadband Internet access could provide the hit in a much more rapid manner enabling a faster psychological impact and effect.

This may translate into a more habit-forming experience. Few people, except for those who have had a problem, recognize the power and attraction of being online. This is changing rapidly however. Although it is probably not an epidemic, I have little doubt that millions of people are experiencing a negative impact in their lives because of their compulsive use of the Internet and I believe that number will continue to grow. Recognition of both the dark and light side of the Internet will enable us to be served by technology, instead of ensnared by it!

Classical Chinese theory of mind is similar to Western “folk psychology” in that both mirror their respective background view of language. They differ in ways that fit those folk theories of language. The core Chinese concept is xin (the heart-mind). As the translation suggests, Chinese folk psychology lacked a contrast between cognitive and affective states ([representative ideas, cognition, reason, beliefs] versus [desires, motives, emotions, feelings]). The xin guides action, but not via beliefs and desires. It takes input from the world and guides action in light of it.

Most thinkers share those core beliefs. Herbert Fingarette argued that Chinese (Confucius at least) had no psychological theory. Along with the absence of belief-desire explanation of action, they do not offer psychological (inner mental representation) explanations of language (meaning). We find neither the focus on an inner world populated with mental objects nor any preoccupation with questions of the correspondence of the subjective and objective worlds. Fingarette explained this as reflecting an appreciation of the deep conventional nature of both linguistic and moral meaning.

He saw this reflected in the Confucian focus on li (ritual) and its emphasis on sociology and history rather than psychology. The meaning, the very existence, of a handshake depends on a historical convention. It rests on no mental acts such as sincerity or intent. The latter may accompany the conventional act and give it a kind of aesthetic grace, but they do not explain it. Fingarette overstates the point, of course. It may not be psychologistic in its linguistic or moral theory, but Confucianism still presupposes a psychology, albeit not the familiar individualist, mental or cognitive psychology.

Its account of human function in conventional, historical society presupposes some behavioral and dispositional traits. Most Chinese thinkers indeed appear to presuppose that humans are social, not egoistic or individualistic. The xin coordinates our behavior with others. Thinkers differed in their attitude toward this natural social faculty. Some thought we should reform this tendency and try harder to become egoists, but most approved of the basic “goodness” of people. Most also assumed that social discourse influenced how the heart-mind guides our cooperation.

If discourse programs the heart-mind, it must have a dispositional capacity to internalize the programming. Humans accumulate and transmit conventional dao-s (guiding discoursesways). We teach them to our children and address them to each other. The heart-mind then executes the guidance in any dao it learns when triggered (e. g. , by the sense organs). Again thinkers differed in their attitude toward this shared outlook. Some thought we should minimize or eliminate the controlling effect of such conventions on human behavior.

Others focused on how we should reform the social discourse that we use collectively in programming each others xin. Typically, thinkers in the former group had some theory of the innate or hard-wired programming of the xin. Some in the latter camp had either a “blank page” or a negative view of the heart-minds innate patterns of response. For some thinkers, the sense organs delivered a processed input to the heart-mind as a distinction: salty and sour, sweet and bitter, red or black or white or green and so forth. Most had thin theories, at best, of how the senses contributed to guidance.

While it is tempting to suppose that they assumed the input was an amorphous flow of “qualia” that the heart-mind sorted into categories (relevant either to its innate or social programming). However, given the lack of analysis of the content of the sensory input, we should probably conservatively assume they took the nave realist view that the senses simply make distinctions in the world. We can be sure only that the xin did trigger reactions to discourse-relevant stimuli. Reflecting the theory of xin, the implicit theory of language made no distinction between describing and prescribing.

Chinese thinkers assumed the core function of language is guiding behavior. Representational features served that prescriptive goal. In executing guidance, we have to identify relevant “things” in context. If the discourse describes some behavior toward ones elder, one needs a way correctly to identify the elder and what counts as the prescribed behavior. Correct action according to a conventional dao must also take into account other descriptions of the situation such as urgent, normal, etc. These issues lay behind Confucian theories of “rectifying names.

The psychological theory (like the linguistic) did not take on a sentential form. Classical Chinese language had no “belief-grammar”, i. e. , forms such as X believes that P (where P is a proposition). The closest grammatical counterpart focuses on the term, not the sentence and point to the different function of xin. Where Westerners would say “He believes (that) it is good” classical Chinese would either use “He goods it” or “He, yi (with regard to) it, wei (deems:regards) good. ” Similarly zhi (to know) takes noun phrases, not sentences, as object.

The closest counterpart to propositional knowledge would be “He knows its being (deemed as) good. ” The xin guides action in the world in virtue of the categories it assigns to things, but it does not house mental or linguistic “pictures” of facts. Technically, the attitude was what philosophers a de re attitude. The “subject” was in the world not in the mind. The context of use picked out the intended item. The attitude consisted of projecting the mental category or concept on the actual thing. We distinguish this functional role best by talking about a disposition rather than a belief.

It is a disposition to assign some reality to a category. The requisite faculty of the heart-mind (or the senses) is the ability to discriminate or distinguish T from not-T, e. g. , good from bad, human being from thief. We might, alternately, think of Chinese belief and knowledge as predicate attitudes rather than propositional attitudes. Predicate attitudes are the heart-minds function. A basic judgment is, thus, neither a picture nor representation of some metaphysically complex fact. Its essence is picking out what counts as X in the situation (where X is a term in the guiding discourse).

The context fixes the object and the heart-mind assigns it to a relevant category. Hence, Chinese folk theory places a (learned or innate) ability to make distinctions correctly in following a dao in the central place Western folk psychology places ideas. They implicitly understood correctness as conformity to the social-historical norm. One of the projects of some Chinese philosophers was trying to provide a natural or objective ground of dao. Western “ideas” are analogous to mental pictographs in a language of thought. The composite pictures formed out of these mental images (beliefs) were the mental counterparts of facts.

Truth was “correspondence” between the picture and the fact. Pictures play a role in Chinese folk theory of language but not of mind. Chinese understood their written characters as having evolved from pictographs. They had scant reason to think of grammatical strings of characters as “pictures” of anything. Chinese folk linguistics recognized that history and community usage determined the reference of the characters. They did not appeal to the pictographic quality or any associated mental image individuals might have. Language and conventions are valuable because they store inherited guidance.

The social-historical tradition, not individual psychology, grounds meaning. Some thinkers became skeptical of claims about the sages and the “constancy” of their guidance, but they did not abandon the assumption that public language guides us. Typically, they either advocated reforming the guiding discourse (dao) or reverting to “natural,” pre-linguistic behavior patterns. Language rested neither on cognition nor private, individual subjectivity. Chinese philosophy of mind played mainly an application (execution of instructions) role in Chinese theory of language.

Chinese theory of language centered on counterparts of reference or denotation. To have mastered a term was for the xin and senses working together to be able to distinguish or divide realities “correctly. ” Correctly was the rub because the standard of correctness was discourse. It threatened a regresswe need a discourse to guide our practical interpretation of discourse. Philosophy of mind played a role in various attempted solutions. Chinese philosophers mostly agreed (except for innatists) that actual distinguishing would be relative to past training, experience, assumptions and situation.

However, they did not regard experience as a mental concept in the classic Western sense of the being a subjective or private content. An important concept in philosophy of mind was, therefore, de (virtuosity). One classic formulation identified de as embodied, inner dao. De though “inner,” was more a set of dispositions than a mental content. The link seemed to be that when we learn a daos content, it produces de. Good de comes from successful teaching of a dao. When you follow dao, you need not have the discourse “playing” internally.

We best view it as the behavioral ability to conform to the intended pattern of actionthe path (performance dao). It would be “second nature. ” We may think of de, accordingly, as both learned and natural. We can distinguish Chinese thought from Indo-European thought, then, not only in its blending affective and cognitive functions, but also in its avoiding the nuts and bolts of Western mind-body analysis. Talk of “inner” and “outer” did distinguish the psychological from the social, but it did not mean inner was mental content. The xin has a physical and temporal location and consists of dispositions to make distinctions in guiding action.

It is not a set of inherently representational “ideas” (mental pictograms). Similarly, we find no clear counterpart to the Indo-European conception of the faculty of reason. Euclidean method in geometry and the formulation of the syllogism in logic informed this Indo-European concept. Absent this apparatus, Chinese thinkers characterized the heart-mind as either properly or improperly trained, virtuous, skilled, reliable, etc. Prima facie, however, these were social standards threatened circularity. The heart-mind required some kind of mastery of a body of practical knowledge.

Chinese thinkers explored norm realism mainly through an innatist strategy. Innatists sought to picture the heart-minds distinctions as matching “norms” or “moral patterns” implicit in the natural stasis or harmony of the world. Historical Developments: The Classical Period Confucius indirectly addressed philosophy of mind questions in his theory of education. He shaped the moral debate in a way that fundamentally influenced the classical conception of xin (heart-mind). Confucius discourse dao was the classical syllabus, including most notably history, poetry and ritual.

On one hand, we can think of these as “training” the xin to proper performance. On the other, the question of how to interpret the texts into action seemed to require a prior interpretive capacity of xin. Confucius appealed to a tantalizingly vague intuitive ability that he called ren (humanity). A person with ren can translate guiding discourse into performance correctlyi. e. , can execute or follow a dao. Confucius left open whether ren was innate or acquired in studythough the latter seems more likely to have been his position. It was, in any case, the position of Chinas first philosophical critic, the anti-Confucian Mozi.

Again concern with philosophy of mind was subordinate to Mozis normative concerns. He saw moral character as plastic. Natural human communion (especially our tendency to “emulate superiors”) shaped it. Thus, we could cultivate utilitarian behavioral tendencies by having social models enunciate and act on a utilitarian social discourse. The influence of social models would also determine the interpretation of the discourse. Interpretation takes the form of indexical pro and con reactionsshi (this:right:assent) and fei (not this:wrong:dissent).

The attitudes when associated with terms pick out the reality (object, action, etc. ) relevant to the discourse guidance. We thus train the heart-mind to make distinctions that guide its choices and thereby our behaviorspecifically in following a utilitarian symbolic guide. Utilitarian standards also should guide practical interpretation (execution or performance) of the discourse. At this point in Chinese thought, the heart-mind became the focus of more systematic theorizingmuch of it in reaction to Mozis issues. The moral issue and the threat of a relativist regress in the picture led to a nativist reaction.

On the one hand, thinkers wanted to imagine ways to free themselves from the implicit social determinism. On the other, moralists want a more absolute basis for ethical distinctions and actions. Several thinkers may have joined a trend of interest in cultivating the heart-mind. Mencius theory is the best known within the moralist trend. He analyzed the heart-mind as consisting of four natural moral inclinations. These normally mature just as seeds grows into plants. Therefore, the resulting virtues (benevolence, morality, ritual, and knowledge) were natural.

Mencius thus avoided having to treat the ren intuition as a learned product a social dao. It is a de that signals a natural dao. This view allowed Mencius to defend Confucian ritual indirectly against Mozis accusation that it relied on an optional and, thus, changeable tradition. Mencius strategy, however, presupposed that a linguistic dao could either distort or reinforce the heart-mind’s innate program. In principle, we do not need to prop up moral virtue educationally. Linguistic shaping, other than countering linguistic distortion, therefore, ran an unnecessary risk.

It endangered the natural growth of the moral dispositions. The shi (this:right:assent) and fei (not this:wrong:dissent) dispositions necessary for sage-like moral behavior should develop “naturally. ” His theory did not imply that we know moral theory at birth, but that they develop or mature as the physical body does and in response to ordinary moral situations. The heart-mind functions by issuing shi-fei (this-not this) directives that are right in the concrete situations in which we find ourselves. It does not need or generate ethical theory or hypothetical choices.

The xins intuitions are situational and implicitly harmonious with nature. A well-known advocate with the natural spontaneity or freedom motivation was the Taoist, Laozi. He analyzed the psychology of socialization at a different level. Learning names was training us to make distinctions and to have desires of what society considered the appropriate sort. Both the distinctions and the desires were “right” only according to the conventions of the language community. Learning language not only meant losing ones natural spontaneity, it was and subjecting oneself to control by a social-historical perspective.

We allowed society to control our desires. His famous slogan, wu-wei, enjoined us to avoid actions motivated by such socialized desires. We achieve that negative by forgetting socially instilled distinctionsby forgetting language! His implicit ideal had some affinities with that of Mencius except that his conception of the “natural” realm of psychological dispositions was considerably less ambitious in moral terms. Interpreters usually suppose that he assumed there would be a range of natural desires left even if socialized ones were “subtracted.

These would be enough to sustain small, non-aggressive, agrarian villages. In them, people would lack the curiosity even to visit neighboring villages. This “primitivism” still requires that there is a natural level of harmonious impulses to action, but not nearly enough to sustain Mencius unified moral empire. The LATER MOHISTS became skeptical of the neutral status of these allegedly “natural” heart-mind states. They noted that even a thief may claim that his behavior was natural. They watered down the conventionalism of Mozi by appealing to objectively accessible similarities and differences in nature.

Our language ought to reflect these clusters of similarity. They did little epistemology especially of the senses, but supposedly, like Mozi, would have appealed to the testimony ordinary people relying on their “eyes and ears. ” Others (See ZHUANGZI) insisted that any apparent patterns of similarity and difference were always perspectival and relative to some prior purpose, standards or value attitude. Linguistics did shape heart-mind attitudes but neither reliably or accurately carves the world into its real parts. The Later Mohists had given a cluster of definitions of zhi (to know).

One of these seemed close to consciousnessor rather to point to the lack of any such concept. Zhi was the capacity to know. In dreaming the zhi did not zhi and we took (something) as so. They analyzed the key function of the heart-mind as the capacity to discriminate linguistic intention. Zhuangzi takes a step beyond Laozi in his theory of emotions. Zhuangzi discusses the passions and emotions that were raw, pre-social inputs from reality. He suggested a pragmatic attitude toward themwe cannot know what purpose they have, but without them, there would be no reference for the “I.

Without the ‘I’, there would be neither choosing nor objects of choice. Like Hume, he argued that while we have these inputs and feel there must be some organizing “true ruler,” we get no input (qing) from any such ruler. We simply have the inputs themselves (happiness, anger, sorrow, joy, fear). We cannot suppose that the physical heart is such a ruler, because it is no more natural than the other organs and joints of the body. Training and history condition a hearts judgments. Ultimately, even Mencius shi-fei (this-not this) are input to the xin.

Our experience introduces them relative to our position and past assumptions. They are not objective or neutral judgments. XUNZI also concentrated on issues related to philosophy of mind though in the context of moral and linguistic issues. He initiated some important and historically influential developments in the classical theory. His most famous (and textually suspect) doctrine is “human nature is evil. ” While he clearly wanted to distance himself from Mencius, the slogan at best obscures the deep affinity between their respective views of human nature and mind.

Xunzi seems to have drawn both from the tradition advocating cultivating heart-mind and from the focused theory of language. This produced a tense hybrid theory that filled out the original Confucian picture on how conventions and language program the heart-mind. Xunzi made the naturalism explicit. Human guiding discourse takes place in the context of a three-tier universetian (heaven-nature) di (earth-sustenance) and ren (the social realm). He gave humans a special place in the chain of nature,’ but not based on reason.

Animals shared the capacity for zhi (knowledge). What distinguishes humans is their yi (morality) which is grounded on the ability to bian (distinguish). Presumably, the latter ability is unique among animals with knowledge because it is short-hand for the ability to construct and abide by conventionsconventional distinctions or language. One of Xunzis naturalistic justifications for Confucian conventional rituals is economic. Ritual distinctions guide peoples desires so that society can manage scarcity. Only those with high status will learn to seek scarce goods.

His departure from Mencius thus seems to lie in seeing human morality as more informed or “filled-out” by historical conventional distinctions. These are the products of reflection and artifice, not nature. However, in other ways Xunzi seems to edge closer to Mencius. He also presents ritual as part of the structure of the worldimplicit in the heaven-earth natural context. One natural line of explanation is this: while thought creates the correct conventions, nature sets the concrete conditions of scarcity and human traits that determine what conventions will be best for human flourishing. Historical Developments: Han Cosmology

The onset of the philosophical dark age, brought on by Qin Dynasty repression followed by Han dynasty policies resulted in a bureaucratic, obscurant Confucian orthodoxy. The Qin thus buried the technical ideas informing philosophy of mind along with the active thinkers who understood them. The ontology of the eclectic scholasticism that emerged was essentially religious and superstitious. It was, however, overtly materialist (assuming Qi (ether, matter) is material). So the implicit philosophy of mind of the few philosophically inclined thinkers during the period tended toward a vague materialism.

The Han further developed the five-element (five phases) version of materialism. They postulated a correlative pentalogy linking virtually every system of classification that occurred to them. The scheme included the organs of the body and the virtues. Interpretation and analysis of “correlative” reasoning is a controversial subject. From here, the mental correlations look more like a frequency selection from the psychological lexicon than a product of philosophical reflection, observation or causal theory. The Yin-yang analysis also had mental correlates.

Following Xunzi, Orthodox Han Confucians tended to treat qing (reality:desires) as yin (typically negative). The yang (value positive) counterpart was xing (human moral nature). The most important development of the period was the emergence a compromise Confucian view of minds role in morality. It eventually informed and dominated the scholastic Neo-Confucianism of the much later Sung to Qing dynasties. The small book known as the Doctrine of the Mean gave it an influential formulation. It presents the heart-mind as a homeostasis-preserving input output device. The heart-mind starts in a state of tranquillity.

The account leaves open whether this is a result of ideally structured moral input, resolution of inner conflicts, or the absence of (distorting) content. Xunzis view of the empty, unified and still mind seems the proximate ancestor of the latter aspect of the view. The vagueness, conveniently, makes Mencius doctrines fit it as well. The input is a perturbation from the outer world. The output, the heart-minds action-guiding response, restores harmony to the world and the inner state to tranquillity. If the inner state prior to the input is not tranquil, the response will not restore harmony to the real situation.

Han Confucianism filled out this cosmic view of this black-box interaction between heart-mind and world harmony using qi materialism. Qi is a rather more a blend of energy and matter than pure mattertranslations such as “life-force” bring out an essential connection with vitality. This makes it more appropriate for a cosmology that links the active heart-mind with the changing world. Qi was the single constituting element of spirits and ghosts as well. Wang Chungs skeptical, reductive application of qi theory focused on shen (spirit-energy). He did not view its consequences for heart-mind as particularly iconoclastic.

It still lacked a notion of “consciousness” independent of zhi (know). (Our zhi, he argued, stops when we are asleep and so almost certainly it does when we are dead. ) His arguments that nature had no intentional purposes illustrated his reductive behaviorismif it has neither eyes nor ears, then it cannot have zhi (purposes or intentions). This argument would hardly make sense if he had the familiar Western concept of consciousness. Similarly, he argues that the five virtues are in the five organs so when the organs are dead and gone, the virtues disappear with them.

Historical Developments: Buddhist Philosophy of Mind The next developments are related to the introduction of Buddhist mental concepts into China. Most accounts credit a movement dubbed “Neo-Taoism” with “paving the way” for this radical change in philosophy of mind. Wangbis Neo-Taoist system was explicitly a cosmology more than a theory of mind, but interpretations tend to read it epistemically. Wangbi addressed the metaphysical puzzle of the relation of being and non-being. (See YOU-WU) He postulated non-being as the “basic substance. ” Non-being produced being.

He dubbed this obscure relationship as “substance and function. ” Interpretations almost inevitably explain this on the analogy to Kants Noumenon and Phenomenon. As noted, Wangbi had few epistemological interests, but the analysis did have implications for heart-mind theory. He applied the metaphysical scheme to his Confucian slogan”Sage within, king without. ” The mind was empty “within” while the behaviors were in perfect conformity with the Confucian ritual dao. This tilts the Taoist tradition toward the “emptiness” reading of the black-box analysis of heart-mind.

Wangbi also placed li (principle) in a more central explanatory position. This paved the way for its use in translating Buddhisms sentence or law-like dharma. It played roles in both Buddhist epistemology and theory of mind. In sparse pre-Han usage, li was objective tendencies in thing-kinds. (Intuitionists and naturalists took them to be the valid norm for that kindspecies relative bits of dao. ) Wangbi gave it a more essentialist reading in the context of the Book of Changes. He postulated a li guiding the mixtures and transformations of yin and yang.

One should be able to bypass the complexity of the system by isolating and understanding its li. Buddhism introduced revolutionary changes into Chinese heart-mind conceptual scheme. The original Indo-European religion probably originated the familiar Western phenomenalism (consciousness, experience-based mentalism). Indian philosophy came complete with the familiar Western sentential analyses, mental content and cognitive emphasis (belief and knowing-that). It even mimicked the subject-predicate syllogism and the familiar epistemic and metaphysical subjective-objective dualism.

It introduced a semantic (eternal) truth predicate into Chinese thought along with a representational view of the function of both mind and language. Reason/intellect and emotion/desire formed a basic opposition in Buddhist psychological analysis. An inner idea-world parallels (or replaces) the ordinary world of objects. Soul and mind are roughly interchangeable and familiar arguments for immortality suggest both metaphysical dualism and mental transcendence or superiority over the physical. It conceptually links reality (knowledge, reason) to permanence and appearance (illusion, experience) to change.

A universal chain of causation was a central explanatory device and a mark of dependence and impermanence. Two caveats are in order, however. First, although Buddhism introduced a dualist conceptual scheme, many schools (arguably) denied the dualism so formulated and rejected any transcendent self. Second, it is unclear how well the philosophy of mind was generally understood and whether much of it actually “took” in China. One of the early and notoriously unsuccessful schools was the “Consciousness only” school (translated as “Only Heart-mind”) which translated the idealism of Yogacara Buddhism.

The Yogacara analysis was Hume-like in denying that anything linked the infinitesimal “moments of awareness” into a real self. Scholars tend to blame its demise, however, as much on its objectionable moral features (its alleged Hinayana or elitist failure to guarantee universal salvation) as on its conceptual innovations. The most successful schools were those that seemed to eschew theory of any kindlike Zen (Chan) or Pure Land Buddhismor those that opted for intuitive, mystical simplicity (Tian Tai and Hua Yen).

The most important conceptual legacy of Buddhism, therefore, seems to be the changed role and importance of the character li (principle). In Buddhism it served a wide range of important sentential and mental functions. It facilitated the translation of law, truth, and reason. Neo-Confucianism would take it over (with notoriously controversial implications) as key concept in its philosophy of mind. Historical Developments: Neo-Confucianism Neo-Confucianism is a Western name for a series of schools in which philosophy of mind played a central role.

Scholars (somewhat controversially) present these schools as motivated by an anti-foreignism that sought to resurrect indigenous classical systems. These had lain dormant for six-hundred odd years when the freshness of Buddhism started to attract the attention of China’s intellectuals. Resurrecting Confucianism required providing it with an alternative to Buddhist metaphysics. For this, they drew on ch’i metaphysics, the black-box homeostasis preserving analysis of heart-mind, Wang Pi’s and Buddhism’s li and Mencius’ classical theory of the inherent goodness of heart-mind.

The intricacies of Neo-Confucian systems are too rich to analyze in detail here. The earliest versions focused on the notion of qi linkage between the heart-mind and the world influenced by our action. They characterized the tranquil state of the black-box as void. The school of li criticized that analysis as too Zen-like. (This was a typical and damning charge to participants in this movement, although a Zen period in ones development of thought was a common pattern among Neo-Confucians. ) The li school insisted that any adequate account of heart-mind had to give it an original moral content.

It did this by postulating an interdependent and inseparable dualism of li and qi. The li permeates the heart and all of reality, which is composed of qi. The most tempting (and common) elaboration uses the Platonic distinction of form and content, but that analysis teeters on the edge of incoherence. The school fell back on dividing the human mind from some transcendental or metaphysical Tao-mind. This made it dubious as a theory of mind at allin the ordinary sense. It essentially became a metaphysics in which heart-mind was a cosmic force.

One way of understanding the motivation that drove the otherwise puzzling metaphysical gymnastics links philosophy of mind and ethics. Neo-Confucians were searching for the metaphysical system such that anyone so viewing the cosmos and one’s place in it would reliably do what was right. The goal was having the metaphysical outlook of the sage. The criterion of right and wrong was that the sage’s mind would so judge it. If we could replicate the outlook, we would be sage-like in our attitudesincluding both beliefs and motivations.

The effect on motivation and behavior was more important than the theoretical coherence of the system. The complexity of moral choice and human motivation required so many perturbations into their account of the proposed system that it became an almost infinitely flexible rationalization for intuitionism. Mencian optimism about innate heart-mind dispositions proved an uncomfortable legacy. If human nature and the heart-mind are innately and spontaneously moral, it was unclear why we require such mental gymnastics to cultivate and condition the dispositions.

They portrayed the li as inherently good in all things, but somehow humans, alone in all of nature, might fail to conform to its own natural norms. The attempt to explain this via the li qi dualism flounders on the metaphysical principle that the dualism pervades all things. Despite this well known (and intractable) Confucian problem of evil, the school again became the Medieval orthodoxy. Office holding required being able to parrot the view in considerable detail to show their moral character. The school of Heart-mind was a rebellion against that orthodoxy.

We best understand this rival as a species of normative, objective idealism. It saw the actual heart-mind as li and therefore inherently good. The xin projects that li onto the world in the act of categorizing and dividing it into types. Thus our normative, (phenomenal) world is good but that good is a function of the mind. Moral categorization and action are a simultaneous and combined responses of the heart-mind to the perturbations or the disharmonies we encounter. The analysis of mind is functionalthere is no goodness of the

Understanding the Narcissistic Phenomenon The so called narcissistic personality disorder is a complex and often misunderstood disorder. The cardinal feature of the narcissistic personality is the grandiose sense of self importance, but paradoxically underneath this grandiosity the narcissist suffers from a chronically fragile low self esteem. The grandiosity of the narcissist, however, is often so pervasive that we tend to dehumanize him or her. The narcissist conjures in us images of the mythological character Narcissus who could only love himself, rebuffing anyone who attempted to touch him.

Nevertheless, it is the underlying sense of inferiority which is the real problem of the narcissist, the grandiosity is just a facade used to cover the deep feelings of inadequacy. The Makeup of the Narcissistic Personality The narcissists grandiose behavior is designed to reaffirm his or her sense of adequacy. Since the narcissist is incapable of asserting his or her own sense of adequacy, the narcissist seeks to be admired by others. However, the narcissists extremely fragile sense of self worth does not allow him or her to risk any criticism.

Therefore, meaningful emotional interactions with others are avoided. By simultaneously seeking the admiration of others and keeping them at a distance the narcissist is usually able to maintain the illusion of grandiosity no matter how people respond. Thus, when people praise the narcissist his or her grandiosity will increase, but when criticized the grandiosity will usually remain unaffected because the narcissist will devalue the criticizing person. Akhtar (1989) [as cited in Carson & Butcher, 1992; P. 271] discusses six areas of pathological functioning which characterize the narcissist.

In particular, four of these narcissistic character traits best illustrate the pattern discussed above. ” (1) a narcissistic individual has a basic sense of inferiority, which underlies a preoccupation with fantasies of outstanding achievement; (2) a narcissistic individual is unable to trust and rely on others and thus develops numerous, shallow relationships to extract tributes from others;(3) a narcissistic individual has a shifting morality-always ready to shift values to gain favor; and (4) a narcissistic person is unable to remain in love, showing an impaired capacity for a committed relationship”.

The Therapeutic Essence of Treating Narcissism The narcissist who enters therapy does not think that there is something wrong with him or her. Typically, the narcissist seeks therapy because he or she is unable to maintain the grandiosity which protects him or her from the feelings of despair. The narcissist views his or her situation arising not as a result of a personal maladjustment; rather it is some factor in the environment which is beyond the narcissists control which has caused his or her present situation.

Therefore, the narcissist expects the therapist not to cure him or her from a problem which he or she does not perceive to exist, rather the narcissist expects the therapist to restore the protective feeling of grandiosity. It is therefore essential for the therapist to be alert to the narcissists attempts to steer therapy towards healing the injured grandiose part, rather than exploring the underlying feelings of inferiority and despair. Differential Psychological Views of Narcissism The use of the term narcissism in relation to psychological phenomena was first made by Ellis in 1898.

Ellis described a special state of auto-erotism as Narcissus like, in which the sexual feelings become absorbed in self admiration (Goldberg, 1980). The term was later incorporated into Freuds psychoanalytic theory in 1914 in his essay On Narcissism. Freud conceptualized narcissism as a as a sexual perversion involving a pathological sexual love to ones own body (Sandler & Person, 1991). Henceforth, several psychological theories have attempted to explain and treat the narcissistic phenomenon.

Specifically, the most comprehensive psychological theories have been advanced by the psychodynamic perspective and to a lesser extent the Jungian (analytical) perspective. Essentially, both theories cite developmental problems in childhood as leading to the development of the narcissistic disorder. The existential school has also attempted to deal with the narcissistic problem, although the available literature is much smaller. Existentialists postulate that society as a whole can be the crucial factor in the development of narcissism.

The final perspective to be discussed is the humanistic approach which although lacking a specific theory on narcissism, can nevertheless be applied to the narcissistic disorder. In many ways the humanistic approach to narcissism echoes the sentiments of the psychodynamic approach. The Psychodynamic Perspective of Narcissism The psychodynamic model of narcissism is dominated by two overlapping schools of thought, the self psychology school and the object relations school. The self psychology school, represented by Kohut, posits that narcissism is a component of everyones psyche.

We are all born as narcissists and gradually our infantile narcissism matures into a healthy adult narcissism. A narcissistic disorder results when this process is somehow disrupted. By contrast the object relations school, represented by Kernberg, argues that narcissism does not result from the arrest of the normal maturation of infantile narcissism, rather a narcissism represents a fixation in one of the developmental periods of childhood. Specifically, the narcissist is fixated at a developmental stage in which the differentiation between the self and others is blurred.

Kohuts Theory of Narcissism Kohut believes that narcissism is a normal developmental milestone, and the healthy person learns to transform his or her infantile narcissism into adult narcissism. This transformation takes place through the process which Kohut terms transmuting internalizations. As the infant is transformed into an adult he or she will invariably encounter various challenges resulting in some frustration. If this frustration exceeds the coping abilities of the person only slightly the person experiences optimal frustration.

Optimal frustration leads the person to develop a strong internal structure (i. e. , a strong sense of the self) which is used to compensate for the lack of external structure (i. e. , support from others). In the narcissist the process of transmuting internalizations is arrested because the person experiences a level of frustration which exceeds optimal frustration. The narcissist thus remains stuck at the infantile level, displaying many of the characteristics of the omnipotent and invulnerable child (Kohut, 1977).

Kernbergs Theory of Narcissism Kernbergs views on narcissism are based on Mahlers theory of the separation-individuation process in infancy and early childhood. Mahlers model discusses how the developing child gains a stable self concept by successfully mastering the two forerunner phases (normal autism and normal symbiosis) and the four subphases (differentiation, practicing, rapprochement, and consolidation) of separation-individuation. Kernberg argues that the narcissist is unable to successfully master the rapprochement subphase and is thus fixated at this level.

It is essential, however, to understand the dynamics of the practicing subphase before proceeding to tackle the narcissists fixation at the rapprochement subphase. The practicing subphase (age 10 to 14 months) marks the developmental stage at which the child learns to walk. The ability to walk gives the child a whole new perspective of the world around him. This new ability endows the child with a sense of grandiosity and omnipotence which closely resemble the narcissists behavior. However, reality soon catches up with the child as the child enters the rapprochement subphase (age 14 to 24 months).

At this stage the child discovers that he or she is not omnipotent, that there are limits to what he or she can do. According to Kernberg if the child is severely frustrated at this stage he or she can adapt by re-fusing or returning to the practicing subphase, which affords him the security of grandiosity and omnipotence (Kernberg, 1976). The Preferred Psychodynamic model The Psychodynamic literature in general tends to lean towards the object relations school because of the emphasis it places on a comprehensive developmental explanation (i. e. the use of Mahlers individuation-separation model).

Nevertheless, the theory of Kohut has left a deep impression on Psychodynamic thinking as is evident by the utilization of many of his concepts in the literature (i. e. Johnson, 1987; Manfield, 1992; and Masterson, 1981). Therefore in the remainder of the Psychodynamic section a similar approach will be taken, by emphasizing object relations concepts with the utilization of the occasional Kohutian idea. The Emergence of the Narcissistic Personality According to Kernberg and the object relations school the crisis of the rapprochement subphase is critical to the development of the narcissistic personality.

The individual who is unable to successfully master the challenges of this stage will sustain a narcissistic injury. In essence the narcissistic injury will occur whenever the environment (in particular significant others) needs the individual to be something which he or she is not. The narcissistically injured individual is thus told “Dont be who you are, be who I need you to be. Who you are disappoints me, threatens me angers me, overstimulates me. Be what I want and I will love you” (Johnson, 1987; P. 39). The narcissistic injury devastates the individuals emerging self.

Unable to be what he or she truly is the narcissistically injured person adapts by splitting his personality into what Kohut terms the nuclear (real) self and the false self. The real self becomes fragmented and repressed, whereas the false self takes over the individual. The narcissist thus learns to reject himself or herself by hiding what has been rejected by others. Subsequently, the narcissist will attempt to compensate for his or her deficiencies by trying to impress others through his or her grandiosity. The narcissist essentially decides that “There is something wrong with me as I am.

Therefore, I must be special” (Johnson, 1987; P. 53). The Narcissists View of Others Just as the individual becomes narcissistic because that is what the environment needed him or her to be, so does the narcissist view others not as they are, but as what he or she needs them to be. Others are thus perceived to exist only in relation to the narcissists needs. The term object relations thus takes on a special meaning with the narcissist. “We are objects to him, and to the extent that we are narcissistic, others are objects to us.

He doesnt really see and hear and feel who we are and, to the extent that we are narcissistic, we do not really see and hear and feel the true presence of others. They, we, are objects… I am not real. You are not real. You are an object to me. I am an object to you” (Johnson, 1987; P. 48). It is apparent than that the narcissist maintains the infantile illusion of being merged to the object. At a psychological level he or she experiences difficulties in differentiating the self from others. It is the extent of this inability to distinguish personal boundaries which determines the severity of the narcissistic disorder (Johnson, 1987).

Levels of Narcissism The most extreme form of narcissism involves the perception that no separation exists between the self and the object. The object is viewed as an extension of the self, in the sense that the narcissist considers others to be a merged part of him or her. Usually, the objects which the narcissist chooses to merge with represent that aspect of the narcissists personality about which feelings of inferiority are perceived. For instance if a narcissist feels unattractive he or she will seek to merge with someone who is perceived by the narcissist to be attractive.

At a slightly higher level exists the narcissist who acknowledges the separateness of the object, however, the narcissist views the object as similar to himself or herself in the sense that they share a similar psychological makeup. In effect the narcissist perceives the object as just like me. The most evolved narcissistic personality perceives the object to be both separate and psychologically different, but is unable to appreciate the object as a unique and separate person. The object is thus perceived as useful only to the extent of its ability to aggrandize the false self (Manfield, 1992).

Types of narcissism Pending the perceived needs of the environment a narcissist can develop in one of two directions. The individual whose environment supports his or her grandiosity, and demands that he or she be more than possible will develop to be an exhibitionistic narcissist. Such an individual is told you are superior to others, but at the same time his or her personal feelings are ignored. Thus, to restore his or her feelings of adequacy the growing individual will attempt to coerce the environment into supporting his or her grandiose claims of superiority and perfection.

On the other hand, if the environment feels threatened by the individuals grandiosity it will attempt to suppress the individual from expressing this grandiosity. Such an individual learns to keep the grandiosity hidden from others, and will develop to be a closet narcissist. The closet narcissist will thus only reveal his or her feelings of grandiosity when he or she is convinced that such revelations will be safe (Manfield, 1992) Narcissistic Defense Mechanisms Narcissistic defenses are present to some degree in all people, but are especially pervasive in narcissists.

These defenses are used to protect the narcissist from experiencing the feelings of the narcissistic injury. The most pervasive defense mechanism is the grandiose defense. Its function is to restore the narcissists inflated perception of himself or herself. Typically the defense is utilized when someone punctures the narcissists grandiosity by saying something which interferes with the narcissists inflated view of himself or herself. The narcissist will then experience a narcissistic injury similar to that experienced in childhood and will respond by expanding his or her grandiosity, thus restoring his or her wounded self concept.

Devaluation is another common defense which is used in similar situations. When injured or disappointed the narcissist can respond by devaluing the offending person. Devaluation thus restores the wounded ego by providing the narcissist with a feeling of superiority over the offender. There are two other defense mechanisms which the narcissist uses. The self-sufficiency defense is used to keep the narcissist emotionally isolated from others. By keeping himself or herself emotionally isolated the narcissists grandiosity can continue to exist unchallenged.

Finally, the manic defense is utilized when feelings of worthlessness begin to surface. To avoid experiencing these feelings the narcissist will attempt to occupy himself or herself with various activities, so that he or she has no time left to feel the feelings (Manfield, 1992). Psychodynamic Treatment of the Narcissist The central theme in the Psychodynamic treatment of the narcissist revolves around the transference relationship which emerges during treatment. In order for the transference relationship to develop the therapist must be emphatic in understanding the patients narcissistic needs.

By echoing the narcissist the therapist remains silent and invisible to the narcissist. In essence the therapist becomes a mirror to the narcissist to the extent that the narcissist derives narcissistic pleasure from confronting his or her alter ego. Grunbergers views are particularly helpful in clarifying this idea. According to him “The patient should enjoy complete narcissistic freedom in the sense that he should always be the only active party. The analyst has no real existence of his own in relation to the analysand. He doesnt have to be either good or bad-he doesnt even have to be…

Analysis is thus not a dialogue at all; at best it is a monologue for two voices, one speaking and the other echoing, repeating, clarifying, interpreting correctly-a faithful and untarnished mirror” (Grunberger, 1979; P. 49). The Mirror Transference Once the therapeutic relationship is established two transference like phenomena, the mirror transference and the idealizing transference, collectively known as selfobject transference emerge. The mirror transference will occur when the therapist provides a strong sense of validation to the narcissist.

Recall that the narcissistically injured child failed to receive validation for what he or she was. The child thus concluded that there is something wrong with his or her feelings, resulting in a severe damage to the childs self-esteem. By reflecting back to the narcissist his or her accomplishments and grandeur the narcissists self esteem and internal cohesion are maintained (Manfield, 1992). There are three types of the mirror transference phenomenon, each corresponding to a different level of narcissism (as discussed previously).

The merger transference will occur in those narcissists who are unable to distinguish between the object and the self. Such narcissists will perceive the therapist to be a virtual extension of themselves. The narcissist will expect the therapist to be perfectly resonant to him or her, as if the therapist is an actual part of him or her. If the therapist should even slightly vary from the narcissists needs or opinions, the narcissist will experience a painful breach in the cohesive selfobject function provided by the therapist.

Such patients will then likely feel betrayed by the therapist and will respond by withdrawing themselves from the therapist (Manfield, 1992). In the second type of mirror transference, the twinship or alter-ego transference, the narcissist perceives the therapist to be psychologically similar to himself or herself. Conceptually the narcissist perceives the therapist and himself or herself to be twins, separate but alike. In the twinship transference for the selfobject cohesion to be maintained, it is necessary for the narcissist to view the therapist as just like me (Manfield, 1992).

The third type of mirror transference is again termed the mirror transference. In this instance the narcissist is only interested in the therapist to the extent that the therapist can reflect his or her grandiosity. In this transference relationship the function of the therapist is to bolster the narcissists insecure self (Manfield, 1992). The Idealizing Transference The second selfobject transference, the idealizing transference, involves the borrowing of strength from the object (the therapist) to maintain an internal sense of cohesion.

By idealizing the therapist to whom the narcissist feels connected, the narcissist by association also uplifts himself or herself. It is helpful to conceptualize the idealizing narcissist as an infant who draws strength from the omnipotence of the caregiver. Thus, in the idealizing transference the therapist symbolizes omnipotence and this in turn makes the narcissist feel secure. The idealization of the object can become so important to the narcissist that in many cases he or she will choose to fault himself or herself, rather than blame the therapist (Manfield, 1992).

The idealizing transference is a more mature form of transference than the mirror transference because idealization requires a certain amount of internal structure (i. e. , separateness from the therapist). Oftentimes, the narcissist will first develop a mirror transference, and only when his or her internal structure is sufficiently strong will the idealizing transference develop (Manfield, 1992). Utilizing the Transference Relationship in Therapy The selfobject transference relationships provide a stabilizing effect for the narcissist.

The supportive therapist thus allows the narcissist to heal his or her current low self esteem and reinstate the damaged grandiosity. However, healing the current narcissistic injury does not address the underlying initial injury and in particular the issue of the false self. To address these issues the therapist must skillfully take advantage of the situations when the narcissist becomes uncharacteristically emotional; that is when the narcissist feels injured. It thus becomes crucial that within the context of the transference relationship, the therapist shift the narcissists focus towards his or her inner feelings (Manfield, 1992).

The prevailing opinion amongst Psychodynamic theorists is that the best way to address the narcissists present experience, is to utilize a hands-off type of approach. This can be accomplished by letting the narcissist take control of the sessions, processing the narcissists injuries as they inevitably occur during the course of treatment. When a mirror transference develops injuries will occur when the therapist improperly understands and/or reflects the narcissists experiences.

Similarly, when an idealizing transference is formed injuries will take the form of some disappointment with the therapist which then interferes with the narcissists idealization of the therapist. In either case, the narcissist is trying to cover up the injury so that the therapist will not notice it. It remains up to the therapist to recognize the particular defense mechanisms that the narcissist will use to defend against the pain of the injury, and work backwards from there to discover the cause of the injury (Manfield, 1992).

Once the cause of the injury is discovered the therapist must carefully explore the issue with the narcissist, such that the patient does not feel threatened. The following case provides a good example of the patience and skill that the therapist must possess in dealing with a narcissistic patient. “… a female patient in her mid-thirties came into a session feeling elated about having gotten a new job. All she could talk about is how perfect this job was; there was no hint of introspection or of any dysphoric affect.

The therapist could find no opening and made no intervention the entire session except to acknowledge the patients obvious excitement about her new job. Then, as the patient was leaving, the therapist noticed that she had left her eyeglasses on the table. He said, “you forgot your glasses,” to which she responded with an expression of surprise and embarrassment saying, “Oh, how clumsy of me. ” This response presented the therapist with a slight seem in the grandiose armor and offered the opportunity for him to intervene.

He commented, “You are so excited about the things that are happening to you that this is all you have been able to think about; in the process you seem to have forgotten a part of yourself. ” The patient smiled with a mixture of amusement and recognition. In this example the patient is defending throughout the session and in a moment of surprise she is embarrassed and labels herself “clumsy”, giving the therapist the opportunity to interpret the defense (her focus on the excitement of the external world) and how it takes her away from herself” (Manfield, 1992; PP. 8-169).

The cure of the narcissist than does not come from the selfobject transference relationships per se. Rather, the selfobject transference function of the therapist is curative only to the extent that it provides an external source of support which enables the narcissist to maintain his or her internal cohesion. For the narcissist to be cured, it is necessary for him or her to create their own structure (the true self). The healing process is thus lengthy, and occurs in small increments whenever the structure supplied by the therapist is inadvertently interrupted.

In this context it is useful to recall Kohuts concept of optimal frustration. “If the interruptions to the therapists selfobject function are not so severe as to overwhelm the patients deficient internal structure, they function as optimal frustrations, and lead to the patients development of his own internal structure to make up for the interrupted selfobject function” (Manfield, 1992; P. 167). The Jungian (Analytical) Perspective of Narcissism Analytical psychology views narcissism as a disorder of Self-estrangement, which arises out of inadequate maternal care.

However, prior to tackling narcissism it is useful to grasp the essence of analytical thought. The Ego and the Self in Analytical Psychology It is important to understand that the Self in analytical psychology takes on a different meaning than in psychodynamic thought (Self is thus capitalized in analytical writings to distinguish it from the psychodynamic concept of the self). In psychodynamic theory the self is always ego oriented, that is the self is taken to be a content of the ego. By contrast, in analytical psychology the Self is the totality of the psyche, it is the archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of personality.

Moreover, the Self is also the image of God in the psyche, and as such it is experienced as a transpersonal power which transcends the ego. The Self therefore exists before the ego, and the ego subsequently emerges from the Self (Monte, 1991). Within the Self we perceive our collective unconscious, which is made up of primordial images, that have been common to all members of the human race from the beginning of life. These primordial images are termed archetypes, and play a significant role in the shaping of the ego.

Therefore, “When the ego looks into the mirror of the Self, what it sees is always unrealistic because it sees its archetypal image which can never be fit into the ego” (Schwartz-Salant, 1982; P. 19). Narcissism as an Expression of Self-Estrangement In the case of the narcissist, it is the shattering of the archetypal image of the mother which leads to the narcissistic manifestation. The primordial image of the mother symbolizes paradise, to the extent that the environment of the child is perfectly designed to meet his or her needs.

No mother, however, can realistically fulfill the childs archetypal expectations. Nevertheless, so long as the mother reasonably fulfills the childs needs he or she will develop normally. It is only when the mother fails to be a good enough mother, that the narcissistic condition will occur (Asper, 1993). When the mother-child relationship is damaged the childs ego does not develop in an optimal way. Rather than form a secure ego-Self axis bond, the childs ego experiences estrangement from the Self.

This Self-estrangement negatively affects the childs ego, and thus the narcissist is said to have a negativized ego. The negativized ego than proceeds to compensate for the Self-estrangement by suppressing the personal needs which are inherent in the Self; thus “the negativized ego of the narcissistically disturbed person is characterized by strong defense mechanisms and ego rigidity. A person with this disturbance has distanced himself from the painful emotions of negative experiences and has become egoistic, egocentric, and narcissistic” (Asper, 1993; P. ). Analytical Treatment of Narcissism Since the narcissistic condition is a manifestation of Self-estrangement, the analytical therapist attempts to heal the rupture in the ego-Self axis bond, which was created by the lack of good enough mothering. To heal this rupture the therapist must convey to the narcissist through emphatic means that others do care about him or her; that is the therapist must repair the archetype of the good mother through a maternally caring approach (Asper, 1993).

A maternal approach involves being attentive to the narcissists needs. Just as a mother can intuitively sense her babys needs so must the therapist feel and observe what is not verbally expressed by the narcissist. Such a maternal approach allows the narcissist to experience more sympathy towards his or her true feelings and thus gradually the need to withdraw into the narcissistic defense disappears (Asper, 1993).

The Existential Perspective of Narcissism Existentialists perceive narcissism to be a byproduct of an alienating society. It is difficult for the individual to truly be himself or herself because society offers many rewards for the individual who conforms to its rules. Such an individual becomes alienated because he or she feels that societys rituals and demands grant him or her little significance and options in the control of his or her own destiny.

To compensate such an individual takes pleasure in his or her own uniqueness (grandiosity), he or she enjoys what others cannot see and control. Thus, the alienated person “sees himself as a puppet cued by social circumstances which exact ritualized performances from him. His irritation about the inevitability of this is counterbalanced by one major consolation. This consists of his narcissistic affection for his own machinery-that is, his own processes and parts” (Johnson, 1977; P. 141).

The discussion as to whether nature or nurture were the driving force shaping our cognitive abilities, was for a long time considered interminable. In the 18th century, Locke and the English empiricists claimed that individuals were born with a tabula rasa and only experience could establish mind, consciousness and the self. On the continent, Leibniz envisaged the self as a monad carrying with it some knowledge of a basic understanding of the world. Until the 1960s, this dispute was still very vivid in the behavioral sciences: B.

F. Skinner’s school of behaviorism in the USA postulated (as reflexology did earlier) general rules for all types of learning, neglecting innate differences or predispositions. K. Lorenz was one of the protagonists of ethology in Europe, focusing on the inherited aspects of behavior. It was Lorenz who ended the antagonistic view of behavior in showing that there indeed are innate differences and predispositions in behavior where only little learning occurs.

Today, it is largely agreed upon that nature and nurture are intimately cooperating to bring about adaptive behaviors. Probably only in very few cases ontogenetic programs are not subjected to behavioral plasticity at all. Conversely, the possibility to acquire behavioral traits has to be genetically coded for. Today, realising that genes and environment cooperate and interact synergistically, traditional dichotomy of nature vs. nurture is commonly seen as a false dichotomy.

Especially operant conditioning, i. e. e learning of the consequences of one’s own behavior can lead to positive feedback loops between genetic predispositions and behavioral consequences that render the question as to cause and effect nonsensical. Positive feedback has the inherent tendency to exponentially amplify any initial small differences. For example, an at birth negligible difference between two brothers in a gene affecting IQ to a small percentage, may lead to one discovering a book the will spark his interest in reading, while the other never gets to see that book.

One becomes an avid reader who loves intellectual challenges while the other never finds a real interest in books, but hangs out with his friends more often. Eventually, the reading brother may end up with highly different IQ scores in standardized tests, simply because the book loving brother has had more opportunities to train his brain. Had both brother received identical environmental input, their IQ scores would hardly differ.

Judging from just one IQ-test and a genetic analysis, one would come to the conclusion, that the effect of this one little genetic difference created that big difference in IQ-scores. However, knowing the background and history of the two brothers, it is obvious that only the interaction between the genetic difference and the environent created that difference. In theory, one way of quantifying environmental and genetic influences would be to calculate the genetic differences in % basepairs and compare it to the phenotypic difference. However, the question of scale seems amost insolvable.

The idea of mental imagery has always been a controversial subject in the field of psychology. Many psychologists have argued that such a concept is impossible to measure because it can not be directly observed. Though they are right about this, it is not impossible to measure how quickly mental rotations of images are processed in our brains. Subjects in this experiment were presented two shapes simultaneously, via computer screen, and asked to make judgement, as quickly as possible, as to whether the two shapes presented were the same or mirror images.

Two different shapes were used in this experiment, each given as often as the other. During each trial one shape remained stationary and the other was rotated with varying amounts of 0, 60, 120, and 180 degrees. As the angle of rotation increased reaction times were calculated to see if this had any baring on the speed of the reaction. As predicted, reaction times increased along with angular disparity. Rotation of Mental Images: Measured by Reaction Times There are a limited number of ways to discover and understand how the human mind works and reacts to things.

One can not sit and directly observe the brain and eye working together (James, Schneider & Rodgers, 1994). The concept behind mental rotation of images tries to do this by measuring reaction times as the angular disparity of an object increases. Thus, demonstrating the time it takes for the eye and brain to make a connection when presented with a stimulus. Though our experiment was solely limited to calculating reaction times to mental rotations of images, Wohlschlager and Wohlschlager (1998) took this concept one step further to see if mental object rotation and manual object rotation shared a common thought process in our brain.

Wohlschlager & Wohlschlager (1998) based their ideas for this study on a theory, most impressively demonstrated by Cooper (1976), stating that the resemblance of mental rotation to external physical rotation, calls for a mental process that mimics external physical rotation. However, it is pointed out that there is a principal difference between motion perception and mental rotation. Whereas motion perception is a rather automatic process, mental rotation is strategic and shares some characteristics with voluntary actions (Wohlschlager & Wohlschlager, 1998).

In conducting their experiment Wohlschlager & Wohlschlager (1998) used 66 right-handed psychology students who took part in this experiment to fulfill their course requirement. Of the 66 students 30 took part in the mental rotation condition and 30 in the manual rotation condition. As expected, findings showed that there was in fact a strong relationship between the reaction times of the mental and manual rotations. As the angular disparity of both the mental and manual rotations increased so did reaction times. In almost all cases manual and mental reaction times matched each other.

It was also observed by Wohlschlager & Wohlschlager (1998), that manual object rotation did not always follow the shortest path. Findings showed that in some trials students rotated images the longer way around. Thus, it was concluded that mental processes also rotate things the long way around, since reaction times did not differ much between the two groups, ultimately supporting their original hypothesis. Desrocher, Smith & Taylor (1995) conducted a similar experiment with intentions of measuring reaction times.

Only in this experiment the independent variable was not mental vs. manual rotation, but gender. They were interested in seeing if gender differences played a role in regard to reaction times, when presented with either a letter stimuli or picture stimuli. It has been noted that up to the present time, there have been no major findings that show any significant difference in the way men and woman process letter images. In tests, both men and woman performed equally well (Desrocher, smith & Taylor, 1995).

However, in several experiments conducted measuring reaction times when presented with a picture stimulus, men have been said to out perform woman in almost all cases. Overall, when comparing the reaction times of pictures to letters, picture reaction times are said to be generally greater. In conducting this experiment 20 right-handed subjects were used, 10 male and 10 female. Subjects participated in this study either to earn course credit, or for payment of ten dollars per hour. Three things were concluded from this experiment.

First, picture rotations took longer to perform than letter rotations. Second, there were no sex differences in reaction times for either stimulus presented, and third, there was a linear increase in reaction times as angular disparity of both stimuli sets increased (Desrocher, smith & Taylor, 1995). As predicted this study did replicate some previous findings. However, based on the data from this experiment sex differences did not yield a significant difference in reaction times when presented with the different stimuli.

Concurrent with our data, both of the previously mentioned experiments concluded the same thing; reaction times increased as angular disparity increased. Although the objectives in each experiment were somewhat different, there has been a sufficient amount of evidence to support the hypothesis, that reaction times will increase as the angular disparity of objects increase. Method Participants Ten St. Johns University undergraduate students participated in this experiment to fulfill their Research Method Lab Requirement. Materials Ten IBM computers with color monitors were used in this experiment.

To conduct the experiment, students used custom made Mel Lab Software, designed for experiments in perception, cognition, social psychology and human factors. Procedure The experiment consisted of 10 practice trials and 128 actual trials. In order to move on to the actual test students had to get 8 out of the 10 practice trials correct. Once an 80% accuracy rate was obtained in the practice trial, students were then permitted to move on to the actual test. This experiment used two different images, each appearing randomly, and as often as the next.

During each trial an image was presented on the computer screen along side another. The images were always similar; the two different images were never mixed. As each image appeared students had to decide as quickly as possible if the two images were the same or mirror images. Answers were recorded by either hitting the (1) key, if the images were the same, or hitting the (2) key, if they were mirror images. On each trial one image was rotated in respect to the other in varring degrees of 0, 60, 120, and 180, each rotation occurring randomly and as often as the rest.

Results A One Way ANOVA was conducted to look into the findings presented from this experiment. An F(3,36)=9. 392 p < . 001 was obtained, indicating a statistical significant difference in the data collected. Discussion This study was conducted to see how quickly mental images are processed in our minds by measuring reaction times. Our finding, as well as the findings in the two experiments discussed support the hypothesis that reaction times will increase as the angle of rotation increases.

However, when comparing the reaction times between the four groups of 0, 60, 120, and 180 degrees we see that the statistically significant difference we arrived at did not come from all of the groups. In examining the numbers, we see a strong statistical significance between groups 1 & 2, 1 & 3, and 1 & 4. This would be because of the large difference in the number of degrees rotated. When looking at the difference between groups 2 & 3, 2 & 4, and 3 & 4, we see no statistical significance at all. The difference in rotational degrees was not as large between these groups.

Another aspect of the results that I would like to point out is that our experiment only used 10 subjects, who were not randomly picked. Only 20 subjects were used in the experiment conducted by Desrocher, smith & Taylor (1995). I dont feel that these numbers of subjects (20 and 10) are enough to have conclusive results. In order to get an accurate sample of the population more participants should have been used in both experiments. This one fact may have been the reason why part of the results of Desrocher, smith & Taylor (1995) were not concurrent with other findings.

Although the objectives of the two experiments I discussed were different, result were the same regardless as to what the differences might have been. In all experiment including the one I did, results were concurrent. Findings supported the hypothesis that was set forth: As angular rotation increased, reaction time will also increase. Thus, showing reaction times do serve as an appropriate method for analyzing how quickly the brain reacts to mental rotations of images.