The APA Monitor has an article on how ‘nervousness’ in 1800s America was treated by sending male intellectuals ‘out West’ for prolonged periods of cattle roping, hunting, roughriding and male bonding.
This, I suspect, sounded a great deal more innocent in the 1800s.
But nevertheless, this sort of intense deliberately masculine physical exercise was thought to be a genuine antidote to brain-exhausting intellectual life.
Among the men treated with the so-called “West Cure” were poet Walt Whitman, painter Thomas Eakins, novelist Owen Wister and future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.
Although the Rest and West cures involved wildly different therapeutic strategies, both were designed to treat the same medical condition: neurasthenia. First described by American neurologist George Beard in 1869, neurasthenia’s symptoms included depression, insomnia, anxiety and migraines, among other complaints. The malady was not just an illness, he said, but also a mark of American cultural superiority.
According to Beard, excessive nervousness was a byproduct of a highly evolved brain and nervous system. A “brain-worker” who excelled in business or the professions might experience nervous breakdowns if he overtaxed his intellect. His highly evolved wife and children could easily succumb to the same malady, particularly if they engaged in excessive study or “brain work.”
The famous neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell wrote of neuroaesthenia that, under great nervous stress, “The strong man becomes like the average woman.”
As a male psychologist who is regularly outclassed by his female colleagues I have learnt this, sadly, to be true, but not, I suspect, in the way Weir Mitchell meant.
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War may not be good for much, but it has proved to be an effective incubator for innovation. I’m not just talking about the Slinky: the development of nylon, polythene, and aerosol sprays also benefitted from conflict.
The urgency of war has also lead to many of the most important innovations in medicine. It was the battlefield surgeon Ambroise Paré who in the 16th century introduced the ligature of arteries (instead of cauterization) during amputation. An effective treatment for leukaemia emerged from nitrogen mustard’s use as a poisonous gas and Dwight Harken operated on wounded D-Day soldiers and demonstrated that shrapnel could successfully be removed via open surgery to the heart.
A recent Royal College of Surgeon’s event, “Disability and the military,” discussed medical progress emerging from more recent conflicts. Most notably the chance of surviving an injury during combat is now much improved. During the Second World War wounded soldiers had a one in three chance of dying. Today this figure in Afghanistan is less than one in ten.
Speaking at the event orthopaedic registrar Major Arul Ramasamy attributes this improvement to a variety of factors. Body armour plays an important role, as have improved helmets and ocular protection. The “continuum of care” is also vital. Treatment now starts the moment an injury is sustained, as all deployed troops are trained in battlefield first aid and carry tourniquets and haemostatic dressings. “We’re bringing some of the stuff that was always left to the hospital out to the battlefield,” said Major Ramasamy.
The injured are evacuated quickly and soldiers receive medical attention, including blood transfusions, on the evacuation helicopter. On arrival at Camp Bastion the team aim for rapid surgical decision making. “The fastest time I’ve seen from a patient arriving to them being operated on is 45 seconds” said Major Ramasamy. To a psychiatrist like me, even thinking about this sort of speed makes my head swim.
Soldiers are now living with injuries that five years ago were considered unsurvivable, such as the loss of two or even three limbs. This brings its own challenges and physically surviving such injuries is only the beginning of a long period of recovery.
David Richmond, an army colonel wounded in Afghanistan, also spoke at the event about his own recovery and that faced by others. The majority of the injured are very young and “under different circumstances they would be in the 6th form at school” he said. “To have your life tipped upside down at that point of your life when you haven’t really worked out who you are in the first place is much more a battle of mind than it is a battle against injury.”
Much of the provision for long term rehabilitation comes from the charitable sector with the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes providing facilities such as Tedworth House. Colonel Richmond was keen to stress that injured soldiers are capable of much, including outdoor activities, and that one of the challenges of rehabilitation is persuading them of this.
It remains to be seen how far the advances in treating battlefield injuries will translate into improved civilian trauma treatment as the advanced continuum of care the military can offer is unlikely to be replicable on civvy street. Few civilian casualties, for instance, find themselves injured whilst standing next to friend trained in first aid.
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I don’t see myself as especially materialistic, and you probably don’t see yourself that way either. The fact is, I don’t know anyone who actually takes pride in acquiring more and more stuff, and many of my friends decry the commercialization of the holiday season. That’s a good thing, because all the evidence says that people who are preoccupied with possessions are not very happy people. Consumerism is linked to anxiety, lousy relationships, and poor mental and physical health.
But let’s not get too self-righteous quite yet. We may not derive our core sense of self-worth from what we buy and own, but does that mean we’re immune to all the cues in our consumer culture? Unless you live in a cave, you have been relentlessly bombarded since before Thanksgiving with images of goods that are novel, luxurious, or necessary for personal fulfillment. Is it possible that these ubiquitous messages might awaken the inner consumer in all of us, leading to all those unsavory social consequences?
That’s the idea that Northwestern University psychological scientist Galen Bodenhausen has been exploring in the laboratory. He and his colleagues suspected that even the purest anti-materialist might, under the right circumstances, respond to situational triggers, and that this mindset might have an immediate, untoward effect on well-being. This happens because a materialistic mindset activates certain values—wealth, achievement, power and status—while suppressing others, notably concern about others. This in turn leads to dissatisfaction with one’s life, and to social disengagement.
That’s the theory, which the scientists explored in four studies. The first was fairly straightforward. Volunteers were seated in private cubicles and asked to rate the pleasantness of various images. Half of them were exposed to pictures of luxury consumer goods—jewelry, electronics, cars—while the others, the controls, saw neutral images. Then, ostensibly as part of a different study, all the volunteers completed measures of positive and negative emotions, and their preferences for activities with other people. The results were clear. Those whose inner materialist had been cued were significantly more depressed and anxious than the control group. They were also less inclined to engage in social activities. Notably, all it took to trigger these negative emotional effects was very brief exposure to pictures—much as you would see in a Christmas catalog or TV advertisement.
To reexamine these findings a different way, the scientists ran another experiment in which they told some volunteers they would be working on a “Consumer Reaction Study.” They had to check a box identifying themselves as “an American consumer.” The controls identified themselves as American “citizens” and participated in a “Citizen Reaction Study.” The purpose of this ruse was to focus only some of the volunteers on their identity as a consumer, to see if this shaped their thinking about values. And it did. When they completed a measure of automatic, unconscious biases, the “consumers” tended strongly toward values having to do with self-enhancement, like wealth, image and success. The “citizens” in the study showed no such bias.
The two other studies were variations on the same idea. As described in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, one showed that consumer cues trigger greater competitiveness; the other that these cues lead to selfish, less community-minded, actions. Taken together, these experiments document the rapid, adverse effects of materialistic thinking on personal well-being. Apparently when people start to seek value outside of the self, in extrinsic things, this mindset leads to a cascade of unpleasant effects: Self-comparisons and competitiveness result in dissatisfaction and anxiety, which in turn diminish trust and the desire to connect with others. In short, a not so wonderful life.
It’s not clear from these experiments how long these distressing effects last. But in a way it doesn’t matter. The ubiquity of these consumerist messages in everyday life—and especially during the holiday season—almost guarantees that, even if any single effect is not enduring, another cue will inevitably follow, reigniting materialistic thinking again and again, every shopping day until Christmas.
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The vast majority of the world’s 7 billion people practice some kind of religion, ranging from massive worldwide churches to obscure spiritual traditions and local sects. Nobody really knows how many religions there are on the planet, but whatever the number, there are at least that many theories about why we have religion at all. One idea is that, as humans evolved from small hunter-gatherer tribes into large agrarian cultures, our ancestors needed to encourage cooperation and tolerance among relative strangers. Religion then—along with the belief in a moralizing God—was a cultural adaptation to these challenges.
But that’s just one idea. There are many others—or make up your own. But they are all just theories. None has been empirically tested. A team of psychological scientists at Queen’s University, Ontario, is now offering a novel idea about the origin of religion, and what’s more they’re delivering some preliminary scientific evidence to support their reasoning. Researcher Kevin Rounding and his colleagues are arguing that the primary purpose of religious belief is to enhance the basic cognitive process of self-control, which in turn promotes any number of valuable social behaviors.
They tested this theory in four fairly simple experiments, using classic measures of self-control. In the first study, for example, they used a word game to prime some volunteers’ (but not others’) subconscious thoughts of religion. Then they asked all the volunteers (using a ruse) to drink an unsavory mix of OJ and vinegar, one ounce at a time. They were told they could stop any time, and to take as much time as they liked, and that they would be paid a small amount for each ounce of the brew that they drank.
The amount they drank was a proxy for self-discipline. The more OJ and vinegar they forced down, they greater their self-control. And as predicted, those with religion on their mind endured longer at the unpleasant task. Since society and religion ask us to tolerate many things we don’t particularly like for the common good, the scientists interpret this finding as evidence of a particular kind of self-control.
Another way to think of self-control, perhaps the most familiar, is delayed gratification—resisting immediate temptation to wait for a greater reward later on. In another experiment, the scientists again primed some of the volunteers with hidden religious words, but in this case they were told (falsely) that the experiment was concluded and that they would be paid. They were told, further, that they could either return the next day and be paid $5, or come back in a week and get $6. This is a widely used laboratory paradigm for measuring the exertion of discipline in the face of temptation, and indeed, almost twice as many of those with religion opted for more money later.
Self-control is costly, consuming a lot of mental resources. Recent research has demonstrated that our cognitive power—in the form of glucose, the brain’s fuel—is limited. The mind and brain can become fatigued, just like a muscle, and when depleted, normal self-control is impaired. The third experiment built on an understanding of this process, often called “ego depletion.” The scientists wanted to see if cognitively depleted people are “refueled” with reminders of religion, so they had only half of the volunteers perform a mentally draining task while listening to loud music. Then they primed half of these depleted volunteers, and half the controls, with religious words.
So at this point, there were four groups: Depleted; depleted but religiously primed; undepleted controls; and religiously primed controls. All of these volunteers then attempted a set of geometrical puzzles, which, unknown to them, were impossible to solve. The impossible task was included to test their persistence against great difficulty—another measure of self-control.
The results were unambiguous. Among those who were mentally depleted, the ones with religion on their minds persisted longer at the impossible task—suggesting that the religious priming restored their cognitive powers—and their patience in the process. They performed basically the same as those who were never tired out in the first place. The scientists take this as strong evidence for the replenishing effect of religion on self-discipline.
The fourth and final experiment was the only one with ambiguous results. The first three studies had shown direct causal evidence of religion on self-control—and downstream effects on enduring discomfort, delaying rewards, and exerting patience. But is it possible that the religious priming might have activated something else—moral intuition, or death-related concerns? In order to rule out these possibilities, the scientists used a completely secular self-control task, one with no moral overlay: the so-called Stroop task. This is the task where one must rapidly identify the ink that words are printed in, rather than read the words. It’s very difficult, requiring mental exertion and self-control.
The scientists primed some with religious words as usual, but others were primed with moral words—virtue, righteous—and still others with words related to mortality—deadly, grave, and so forth. Then all the volunteers attempted the Stroop task on a computer, which measured accuracy and reaction time. The results, as reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, showed that religiously primed volunteers had much more self-control than did controls or those primed to think about mortality. But those with religion on their minds were statistically no different than those with morality on their minds. This was an unexpected finding, and it suggests that activating an implicit moral sensibility may have some of the same effects as religion.
It’s not entirely clear what cognitive mechanism is at work in religion’s influence on self-control. One possibility is that religion makes people mindful of an ever watchful God, and thus encourages more self-monitoring. Or religious priming may activate concerns of supernatural punishment. A more secular explanation is that religious priming makes people more concerned about their reputation in the community, leading to more careful self-monitoring. Notably, almost a third of the volunteers in these studies were self-defined atheists or agnostics, suggesting that these robust effects have little or nothing to do with the suggestibility of the most devout.
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Humans have always had to cope with threats, both big and small. The physical and life-threatening threats that our ancestors faced have largely been replaced by social threats, but they are nonetheless an emotional menace: Insults, rejections and criticism can undermine our integrity and self-esteem, even our sense that the world is a meaningful place. Sometimes we cope with these threats smoothly, and other times awkwardly—sometimes disastrously.
Is there a single, most effective strategy for dealing with life’s constant battering? One way to approach this question is to look at an example of sheer social ineptness, and where better to find this than in the old sitcom Seinfeld, specifically in the character of George Costanza. Jerry’s best friend is the embodiment of insecurity. He’s constantly threatened by pretty much everyone, at least in his own mind, so he is always trying to deflect or defuse or escape one unsettling event or another. How does George cope with the insults he detects everywhere?
George is especially insecure around women, and fans will recall the episode where he has fallen for Paula, a friend of Elaine’s. He wants to know if she returns the feeling, so in his juvenile way he asks Elaine to find out for him, without giving away his hand. Here’s his conversation with Elaine and Jerry a while later:
George: Hey, did you see Paula?
Elaine: Yeah.
George: So what did she say?
Elaine: She . . . likes you.
George: She said she liked me? No kidding, she said that?
Elaine: Yeah!
George: Those were her exact words, I like George?
Elaine: Yep!
George: Ha! Jerry, how do you like that? You see, I get myself in a tizzy. I’m all worked up and for what?
Elaine: For nothing.
George: Ha, ha.
Elaine: In fact, she said that looks aren’t even that important to her . . .
George: You see . . . WHAT?!
Okay, so stop the action here a minute, while I introduce some new research on what’s called “threat reduction.” University of Toronto psychological scientist Alexa Tullett and her colleagues* have been exploring the idea that social threats can be interpreted in different ways—depending on the person and context—and that different strategies might be better for coping with different situations. Paula’s comment to Elaine about looks, while not intended to hurt George, is a direct and personal attack in George’s mind, which is why he reacts so strenuously. He’s sensitive about the fact that he’s a short, overweight, bald man, and this remark simply underscores his inadequacies. So how does he defuse this direct threat to his manhood? Read on:
George: She said looks aren’t important to her?
Elaine: Well, uh, let me rephrase that? She said . . .
George: She thinks I’m ugly. I knew it!
For George, there’s no way around the meaning of this threatening remark. Elaine would like to rephrase it to make it less threatening, or take it back completely—and George would probably prefer that, too. That’s what Tullett calls a direct coping strategy; it specifically targets the threatening event. But direct strategies are often impossible, as it is here: Even unintentional threats can’t be wished away or taken back. So what’s to be done? This is where Jerry finally chimes in:
Jerry: You see, the thing is, there are a lot of ugly people out there walking around, but they don’t know they’re ugly, because nobody actually tells them.
Huh? Okay, this is really lame, but it fits with Tullett’s theory. Jerry is trying to help his pal, who he knows is feeling really bad right now, but he fundamentally misunderstands how George is being threatened. Jerry, in his clumsy way, is trying to say: It’s okay, looks really aren’t that important and you’re a good and normal person—just like a lot of people who aren’t Hollywood handsome. But that is not what George wants to hear. He is not interested in a general defense of his value as a human being, and he doesn’t care that others share his situation—all he cares about is that his looks are under attack. It’s no wonder he’s confused by Jerry:
George: So what’s your point?
Jerry: I dunno . . .
Elaine: The point, George, is that she likes you.
Most of us would agree with Elaine here, I think. But again, she is missing the point as George sees it. She is responding, on George’s behalf, to an abstract threat—on George’s general likability—and sidestepping what truly matters to George, as his final remark illustrates:
George: Oh! So what! I’d rather she hate me and thought I was good looking. At least I can get someone else.
So here it is in a nutshell. Elaine and Jerry’s strategies are completely understandable. They are trying to bolster their friend’s self-esteem by telling him one, his predicament is common and, two, he’s popular in spite of his looks. But they don’t get that they only thing that matters to George at this moment is that a woman has denigrated his looks. Nothing short of a diet, toupee, and perhaps plastic surgery will deflect this direct, concrete threat in a direct and concrete way—that or “someone else” who might actually see him as handsome.
Tullett and her colleagues describe their ideas about social threats and coping strategies in the on-line version of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. The gist is that when we construe a threat as concrete, we tend to respond in relatively direct and concrete ways. By contrast, if we see a threat as more general and abstract, we have more options for making things okay, including affirming values and beliefs that seem entirely unrelated. That’s what both Elaine and Jerry are trying to do, but they fail because they can’t get inside George’s head and feel the personal attack he feels.
So how does George finally deal with Paula and her unintended slight? Here they are later on:
Paula: What’s the matter?
George: Well I spoke to Elaine . . .
Paula: Hey, look! No shave!
George: No. Why should that make any difference to you?
Paula: It doesn’t.
George: Of course not. You don’t care what I look like.
Paula: That’s right, I don’t.
George: I suppose I could just pull this [his tucked shirt] out and walk around like this and you wouldn’t care?
Paula: Not a wit.
George: Hmmm. I suppose we could go to Lincoln Center and I’d be wearing sneakers and jeans and that would be fine, too?
Paula: You can wear sweatpants.
George: I could . . .
Paula: You could drape yourself in velvet, for all I care.
George: Velvet . . .
This scene is open to interpretation, I think. But when George does reappear, ecstatic and draped in velvet shortly afterward, it’s clear that he has defused the threat in some way. He’s a shallow man, so it’s unlikely that he has embraced the higher belief that looks are superficial. More likely, he has affirmed a new belief about himself, one that trumps his homeliness, and one having something to do with velvet.
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Hannibal Lecter is arguably the world’s most famous psychopath. I know—he’s not real. Still, the anti-hero of The Silence of the Lambs embodies the chilling constellation of traits generally associated with this rare mental disorder. A highly intelligent physician and psychiatrist, Lecter is superficially charming, even urbane—at least when he’s not cannibalizing his innocent victims. He is rarely emotional, and despite the brutality of his crimes, he shows absolutely no evidence of empathy or a guilty conscience.
That’s what makes psychopaths so mysterious and incomprehensible—the lack of normal human feeling. How could somebody’s child develop into that kind of merciless automaton? What did Hannibal Lecter’s inner life feel like as he was growing up?
One leading idea is that this psychopathic derangement is linked to childhood temperament, specifically fearlessness, which lays the groundwork for the development of full-blown psychopathic disorder in adulthood. There is evidence to support this notion: Psychopaths have great difficulty learning about pain—learning to avoid electrical shocks and loud noises, for example—and their ability to recognize fearful faces is also impaired. Perhaps most notably, psychopaths don’t respond normally to fear-inducing punishments—making it very hard for parents and others to teach them right and wrong.
Despite the popularity of the so-called “fearlessness hypothesis,” a growing number of experts question whether it goes deep enough. Perhaps, they argue, the problem is even more fundamental, perhaps neurological—a problem with attention, which makes psychopaths unresponsive to fear-provoking cues in the world. According to this competing theory, psychopaths appear fearless because they aren’t paying close enough attention to the things that normally scare people? This theory has inspired clinical interventions that train kids to consciously focus on emotional cues around them—an approach that has not been especially successful.
Now another group of psychological scientists is going even further, suggesting that the roots of the disorder may reach deep into the unconscious mind. Patrick Sylvers of the University of Washington, working with Patricia Brennan and Scott Lilienfeld of Emory, suspected that psychopaths may suffer from a deficit in “preattentive processing”—the constant, automatic scanning of one’s surroundings that takes place outside of conscious awareness. Theoretically, if children lack this basic cognitive machinery, they would never learn to decode normal signs of danger, and without this acquired fear, they would fail to socialize into adults with conscience.
At least that’s the theory, which the scientists decided to test in the laboratory. They recruited 88 boys, between 7 and 11 years old, who had troublesome histories both at school and at home, and screened them for what’s called “callous unemotionality.” This includes an unsettling disregard for others’ needs, shallow emotions, and lack of remorse and empathy—very similar to the core traits of the adult disorder. They also tested them for impulsivity and conduct problems, and for signs of narcissism, like bragging a lot, which is also seen in many adult psychopaths.
Following this screening, the scientists gave the boys a visual test that measures unconscious emotional processing. Specifically, they wanted to see if the test subjects, compared with normal boys of the same age, were slower to become aware of fearful faces that were flashed rapidly—so rapidly that they were not registered by the conscious mind. If so, this would be evidence that the troubled boys are not automatically assimilating threatening cues in their world. They also flashed happy, disgusted and neutral faces for comparison.
The results, reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, were clear and provocative. Indeed, they comprise the first evidence ever that kids with psychopathic traits have a significant deficiency in their automatic, unconscious processing of certain cues—especially fear cues but also cues for disgust. Fear and disgust are closely related in the primitive mind, and the findings suggest that these troubled kids have a fundamental impairment in recognizing—“in the blink of an eye”—any kind of social danger. So perhaps the childhood roots of Hannibal Lecter’s murderous personality lay not in fearlessness itself, nor even in his conscious thought processes, but rather in his general social cluelessness.
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One of the cornerstones of alcoholism recovery is what’s called “emotional sobriety.” The idea is that alcoholics and other addicts, if they hope to stay sober over the long haul, must learn to regulate the negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and—ultimately—relapse. It’s a lifelong project, a whole new way of thinking about life’s travails.
But the recovery literature also says “first things first”—which simply means “don’t drink.” Especially in the early days of recovery, alcoholics are counseled not to analyze why they are addicted, or how they might have avoided alcoholism: “Don’t think and don’t drink” is the maxim. One day at a time, do whatever it takes—prayer, exercise, meetings—to distract the mind from the compulsion to pick up a glass.
These are really two very different kinds of emotional regulation, when you think of it. Distraction is unthinking—cognitive disengagement from thoughts of alcohol and the anxiety of craving by any means possible. It’s a blunt instrument in the toolbox of recovery. By contrast, long-term emotional sobriety requires the slow, steady rethinking of all the people, places and things that once did—and could again—throw us off kilter.
Recovery programs teach these fundamental principles of emotional regulation because, surprisingly, addicts don’t know them intuitively. But they apparently do come naturally to many healthy people. That at least is the conclusion from some new research out of Stanford University, which has been examining the strategies that people choose for dealing with negative emotions of different kinds and intensities. Psychological scientist Gal Sheppes and colleagues had the idea that people process different kinds of emotional information differently–and at different stages. If an experience or thought is especially intense and threatening, people can nip it in the bud early. They simply disengage and don’t pay attention, in that way blocking negativity from awareness, much as newly recovering alcoholics are advised to do. This keeps potent negative thoughts from ever gaining force.
Milder negative emotions are often not blocked out, but they can still be regulated by a second cognitive mechanism, which engages negative emotions for elaborate processing. This requires storing the negative thoughts and emotions in memory for reappraisal and reinterpretation. At least that’s the theory, which the scientists have tested in a series of laboratory experiments. They hypothesized that healthy people would tend to distract themselves quickly from intense emotional experiences, and that they would tend to engage with milder, less threatening experiences, in order diffuse their emotional power.
They recruited volunteers and had them view photographs depicting different levels of negative emotions. A low-intensity photo, for example, might show a woman holding her head, in an ambiguous state of distress, while a high-intensity photo might show a woman in extreme distress, with blood streaming down her face. The volunteers looked at a series of such photos, half a second each, then they narrated, out loud for five seconds, how they were processing the emotion. Volunteers and observers characterized the volunteers’ regulatory strategies as either distraction or engagement and reappraisal.
The results were unambiguous. Many more volunteers opted for cognitive engagement when confronted with a low-intensity photo, and many more chose to distract themselves from high-intensity photos—suggesting that switching strategies is a normal, healthy way of dealing with negativity in life. The researchers also gave the volunteers a “surprise” memory test at the end of the experiment, and found—as expected—that memory for the emotional photographs was impaired whenever volunteers opted for distraction and disengagement. This suggests that distraction, as a strategy for emotional regulation, works by not allowing the emotional information to enter memory at all.
Emotional photographs are powerful stimuli for priming negative emotions, but even so, the scientists wanted a test that was closer to real-life events. So in another experiment, the scientists used the anticipation of electrical shocks to create a life-like state of anxiety for volunteers. They hooked them up to electrodes, with which they administered 20 shocks of varying intensity. But just prior to each shock, the volunteers viewed a brief written description of the intensity level of the upcoming shock, allowing them time—12 seconds on average—to choose and use a strategy for regulating their anxiety before getting zapped. The scientists crunched together the data on shock intensity and cognitive choices, and the results were essentially the same as before. As reported in the on-line edition of the journal Psychological Science, volunteers were much more likely to opt for a reappraisal strategy when confronting an unpleasant but tolerable shock, and they were much more likely to try distracting themselves when they anticipated a strong and intensely painful shock. In short, people have the cognitive flexibility to adapt their regulatory choices for the situation at hand.
It’s not surprising that people naturally choose to engage with only mildly unpleasant emotions. Reinterpretation of emotional events has long been known to be an effective coping strategy. The findings on distraction run contrary to a long-held view that it’s important to engage with intense emotional challenges—and harmful to avoid them. But this view has been losing some of its hold recently. Evidence is mounting that, under extremely adverse conditions, some emotional disengagement may indeed be tonic. This appears to be true for disaster victims; for people with severe, ruminating depression; and of course, for alcoholics in early recovery.
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Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 film Suspicion is a masterful psychological study of love and money. Cary Grant plays the charming but irresponsible Johnnie Aysgarth, who dazzles the frumpy Lina McLaidlaw, played by Joan Fontaine. Only after their elopement does Lina begin piecing together the truth about her husband: He is broke, a habitual gambler, a liar, an embezzler—and possibly a killer. Indeed, everywhere Lina looks she sees signs that Johnnie is plotting her murder to secure his fortune.
What makes this thriller so powerful is that it plays off two of our most potent human impulses. Everyone yearns to connect, to be liked and wanted, to love—that’s the psychological foundation of friendship, marriage and human community. But equally powerful is our basic need for personal freedom and self-sufficiency—including financial independence. Money makes us feel strong and secure and unencumbered, so we want to conserve it. But what happens when this fundamentally anti-social impulse—to disconnect and remain apart—conflicts with our most social human urge to connect?
A team of psychological scientists has come up with an ingenious way to study this question in the laboratory. Jia (Elke) Liu of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, and her colleagues* recruited a group of men and women to fill out a questionnaire on a computer. The questionnaire wasn’t really important. What was important was the background of the computer screen: For some of the volunteers, the screen showed currency, while for others it showed seashells. The currency was an unconscious prime, intended to get only some of the volunteers thinking about money—and security and self-sufficiency and freedom.
Immediately afterward, the volunteers went into another room, where they took part in a ten-minute conversation with another person. Unknown to the volunteers, this person was part of the study, a confederate who had been given instructions beforehand. In some cases, the confederate mimicked the volunteer’s actions—deliberately but unobtrusively matching posture and gestures; in other cases there was no mimicry. Normally, this kind of subtle mimicry fosters rapport and good feelings; it’s a way of signaling a desire for human connection, which is what the scientists wanted to do here.
So some of the volunteers were primed for thoughts of money, and the rest were not. And half of each of these groups was then exposed to pro-social mimicry, the rest not. The idea was to see how these thoughts and feelings interact in the mind. The scientists suspected—and predicted—that social mimicry would have a perverse effect on the volunteers’ emotions if done in the presence of money—threatening them rather than bonding them. In other words, what would normally be a welcome sign of human affiliation would be seen as a threat to personal freedom—the lab equivalent of receiving a marriage proposal from someone who you suspect is a gold digger.
So it was love or money. And the results, reported in the on-line version of the journal Psychological Science, clearly support the view that money and love conflict in the human mind. When the scientists measured the volunteers’ unconscious feelings, those with both money and mimicry on their minds were the ones who felt most threatened. And they were only threatened by those who made the gesture of affiliation, as if they were suspicious of this common way of expressing warmth. What’s more, they found those who mimicked them to be personally less likable–not anybody they would choose to spend time with. It appears that, head to head, the longing for freedom trumps the urge to connect. Put another way, love is powerful, but money can transform this deep emotion into another potent human emotion–suspicion.
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In the fall of 2010, 17 students at New Jersey’s Ramapo College, along with six of their friends, were hospitalized for severe alcohol intoxication after a night of partying. Soon after, a similar event occurred at Central Washington State College, where nine students became ill and required hospitalization. One student reportedly had a blood alcohol level of .3 percent, dangerously high. The culprit in both these cases was identified as Four Loko, a caffeinated, fruit-flavored malt beverage that had been on the market since 2005. Ramapo immediately banned the drink from campus, as did the state of Washington. As other reports of injuries and blackouts came in from around the country, dozens of other colleges and universities followed suit, warning students to avoid the beverages or banning them entirely.
In November 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration effectively banned caffeinated alcoholic beverages. The agency warned four brewers, including Phusion Projects, which makes Four Loko, that these “energy drinks” were a public health concern—and that they could only remain on the market if the caffeine was removed. The companies complied, decaffeinating their products, but not before entrepreneurs bought up huge quantities of the energy drinks, creating an expensive black market for what became known as “blackout in a can.”
The appeal of Four Loko and similar drinks, for its largely youthful market, is obviously getting drunk—but not in the usual way. Some clinicians believe the caffeine, a stimulant, counters the soporific effects of alcohol—so that drinkers can stay awake longer, and consume more alcohol, before passing out. That is what the FDA believed and argued—and that was the rationale for the ban on caffeine as an ingredient.
But the scientific evidence on this point is far from conclusive, and some questions still need answers. For example, Phusion Projects itself argued—in defending Four Loco—that the drink was really “comparable to having coffee after a meal with a couple glasses of wine.” And the company has a point. Four Loko should have the same effect as wine and coffee—but it doesn’t, and why not? Why does this particular beverage leave people so inebriated that they require emergency hospitalization?
Psychological scientist Shepard Siegel of McMaster University, Ontario, thinks he may have an answer, and if he’s right, even the decaffeinated energy drinks still on the market may pose a health threat for some. The real culprit in Four Loko, Siegel argues, may not be the caffeine at all, but rather the fruit flavors—and their effect on alcohol tolerance.
Four Loko doesn’t taste like beer or other malt beverages. Instead it tastes like fruit: watermelon, lemon lime, blue raspberry, and so forth. This is significant, Siegel says, because of the psychology of alcohol tolerance. It’s been known for many years that drugs—including alcohol—have an enhanced effect if taken in connection with unfamiliar cues. So, for example, people who only drink at home, in the den after dinner, will likely get higher when they drink at a wedding—even though they drink exactly the same amount of booze. Similarly, a habitual scotch drinker comes to associate alcohol with the taste of scotch, and as a result becomes more tolerant of scotch’s alcoholic content over time. It takes more scotch to get a buzz. But if that scotch drinker consumes the same amount of alcohol in a novel form—say as a banana daiquiri—then he or she will respond like a less experienced drinker.
This robust phenomenon is known in the jargon of the field as “situational specificity of tolerance,” and it can be explained this way: Tolerance gets connected to specific cues because—out of our awareness—we prepare ourselves for the physiological consequences of alcohol intake as soon as we see a cue that alcohol is on its way. This preparation tends to diminish alcohol’s effect, leading to tolerance over time.
Siegel proposes, writing in the on-line version of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, that this may be what’s occurring with Four Loko. He cites one food critic, who described Four Loko as “malt liquor in confectionary drag.” It’s synthetically fruity and “biliously colored”—in short, not the customary taste and look of booze. Four Loko may be especially potent as an intoxicant because of its unfamiliar cues.
In theory, of course, one could become a regular watermelon Four Loko drinker—just as some are martini drinkers and others Cabernet drinkers. Tolerance would develop the same way over time. The problem may come from Four Loko aficionados switching around—drinking watermelon one time, then cranberry-lemonade, and so forth. The switching of flavors—situational cues—weakens tolerance, increasing the chances of drunkenness and blackouts.
Such switching may be more likely now, Siegel believes, because of Four Loko’s newest marketing strategy. Earlier this year, Phusion Projects announced a new product, called Four Loko XXX Limited Edition. This drink is now available in four new fruit flavors, but—more important in terms of psychology and tolerance—each flavor is available for only four months. What that means is that even if a drinker comes to like—and tolerate—Green Apple Limited Edition, that flavor will soon be gone, to be replaced by Blueberry Lemonade, with new and unfamiliar cues.
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Established on 15 October outside St Paul’s and watched over by a statue of Queen Victoria, the Occupy London Stock Exchange (LSX) camp continues its controversial settlement in central London.
Paul, a doctor whose day job is as a sexual health specialist in South London, shows me around. For a movement with no apparent leadership, lurking somewhere must nevertheless be an effective organising team. The camp is clean and alongside the accommodation are larger tents with information, welfare, first-aid, and “university” roles.
Paul tells me of the chaotic establishment of the camp: “The police were stopping us from going into Paternoster Square,” he says. Corralled, the protestors’ current spot was chosen by default. “There were a lot of police,” he continues. “When I woke up in the morning, I was really surprised we were still here.” The police eventually withdrew the following morning.
We drop into the university tent where Professor Ted Honderich, UCL professor emeritus of the philosophy of mind and logic, is hosting a discussion; an erudite debate is underway concerning the nature of capitalism. Immediately outside the disparate aims of the Occupy movement are clear from the posters that now adorn the pillars facing M&S on the north side of the camp. “More to life than money,” reads one, whilst others variously call for defence of public services, Julian Assange’s release, as well as more niche concerns.
Defending the NHS is a motivating factor for some protestors for whom the recent takeover of Hinchingbrooke hospital by Circle augurs future unacceptable developments. David stays in the camp, doing his job remotely via a laptop from the nearby Starbucks. He’s also first aid trained and works shifts in the camp’s first aid tent. “I’m here to put pressure on the government to look seriously at the Robin Hood (aka Tobin) tax,” he says. “I’m concerned about the cuts in public services and especially the NHS.” He sees the Tobin tax as avoiding cuts that would otherwise be inevitable.
A large sign outside the mediation tent reads “No drugs” and suggests concern that some camp visitors might mistake Occupy LSX for the Glastonbury Festival. “There’s a problem about having a thing like this in the centre of a city,” explains Paul. “It attracts people who are homeless or have addiction problems.”
As a consequence, a welfare tent was established with the involvement of two consultant psychiatrists. Paul says this required some consideration. “There was part of me that said we are not about caring for people, we’re here for a political purpose,” he says. The welfare tent’s presence is not entirely altruistic to my mind. The camp’s continued existence remains precarious, and a responsible, civic-minded community is harder to demonise and evict. Asides medical involvement in the welfare tent, a medical team also wrote a report on site safety, hygiene, and sanitation.
In Starbucks I meet Simon, a part time nurse also involved with the first aid tent. A target at past protests, Starbucks is in fact warmly regarded by all I meet at Occupy LSX. As well as Occupy’s de facto common room, early on the café allowed the protestors use their toilet before alternative portable ones were sourced.
“We do have two facets to the organisation. There’s the progressive widespread attempt to verbalise certain issues and get them fed into the media, and then there’s the occupation and the collaboration of people living together and trying to maintain a site,” says Simon. By chance at an Arab Spring protest earlier in the year, Simon had been impressed by the protestor’s medical facilities and sought to bring similar facilities to Occupy LSX.
These from scratch facilities may be laudable, but what is the actual message of the camp? “It’s pro-activism here” says Simon. “There are very few groups that are excluded. I’ve yet to meet anyone down here who thinks that we shouldn’t make our corporations pay more tax or that services should be cut over sourcing additional sources of income.”
What I hear the loudest from the protestors is that Occupy LSX is about creating a space for people to articulate arguments about the government’s economic policy and its consequences: unemployment, increasingly expensive education, and the privatisation of the NHS. The vague sense of unease many of us feel is here, amplified and expressed.
The criticisms are obvious. The camp has no manifesto and articulates no alternative. In focussing on bankers it victimises a small part of society, when the true causes of the current crisis are less straightforward. Contrary to their claims, the activists have no mandate to represent the “99%.”
But I’m inclined to be generous. Expecting protestors to have a fully developed alternative before they raise their voices represents an unrealistically high expectation. But whatever I think, they have no inclination to pack up their tents yet. At the time of writing a third camp is forming in an abandoned UBS building in the City.
Paternoster Square remains closed indefinitely. When I stood by the security barrier peering in, armed only with an iPhone, a security guard approaches menacingly. Curiously, here’s a press release from Mitsubishi Estate – Paternoster Square’s owners – describing the square as a “public space.”
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It’s widely accepted that individuals can be disturbed or troubled of mind. What is controversial is how we should understand this.
Asides psychiatrists, many professional disciplines work and research in the field of mental disorder. Each discipline approaches the subject from their own viewpoint, using their own conceptual model to explain what they find before them.
Alas there is no single model that has complete explanatory power. To fully understand an individual’s difficulties it is often necessary to borrow from several. This would be the favoured approach from an eclectic practitioner. In practice it’s easy to favour a pet model which most closely fits one’s world view and defend this against those supported by others.
The on-going debate about the merits of drug treatments versus talking therapy can be viewed as a clash of models: biological versus psychodynamic/cognitive.
The disease or biological model
This model holds that any dysfunction that effects mental functioning can be regarded as ‘disease’ in a similar way to dysfunction that affects other parts of the body.
In the disease model, a disorder affecting mental functioning is assumed to be a consequence of physical and chemical changes which take place primarily in the brain. Just like any other disease a mental disease can be recognised by specific and consistent signs, symptoms and test results. These distinguish it from other diseases.
Psychiatrists who adhere to the disease model are often referred to as ‘biological psychiatrists’ (as in ‘he’s very biological’).
With a biological approach comes a preference for physical treatment methods, primarily drugs, but also ECT.
This model best applies to schizophrenia
The psychodynamic model
The central tenet of the psychodynamic model is that a patient’s feelings have lead to problematic thinking and behaviour. These feelings may be unknown to the patient and have formed during critical times in their life, due to interpersonal relationships.
These unknown (or unconscious) feelings are uncovered during therapy. Therapy can take place over a large number of sessions and over a time period of a year and beyond.
During therapy a relationship builds up between therapist and patient. The emotions that the patient attaches to the therapist are collectively known as ‘transference’, and those the therapist attaches to the patient collectively as ‘counter transference’. By understanding these feelings a patient may gain an understanding that they can take with them to future relationships.
This model is applied broadly, but has limited applicability to the most severe mental disorders.
The behavioural model
The behavioural model understands mental dysfunction in terms theory emerging from experimental psychology.
Symptoms, as understood by the behavioural model, are a patient’s behaviour. This behaviour has come about by a process of learning, or conditioning. Most learning is useful as it helps us to adapt to our environment, for example by learning new skills. However some learning is maladaptive and behaviour therapy aims to reverse this learning (counter conditioning).
This model best applies to phobias.
The cognitive model
The cognitive model understands mental disorder as being a result of errors or biases in thinking. Our view of the world is determined by our thinking, and dysfunctional thinking can lead to mental disorder. Therefore to correct mental disorder, what is necessary is a change in thinking.
This model will be familiar to anyone who has trained or undergone cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT aims to identify and correct ‘errors’ in thinking. In this way, unlike psychodynamic therapy, it takes little interest in a patient’s past.
This model is widely used, but classically applies to depression and anxiety.
The social model.
The social model regards social forces as the most important determinants of mental disorder. The social model takes a broader view of psychiatric disorder than any other model. It regards a patient’s environment and their behaviour as being intrinsically linked.
In some ways it is like the psychodynamic model, which also sees patients as moulded by external events. However whereas the psychodynamic model sees mental disorder as highly personalized and its determinants not immediately recognizable, the social model sees mental disorder as based on general theories of groups and caused by observable environmental factors.
Example
For someone who develops persistent depression following the death of a close relative :
“This can be perceived in several ways by psychiatrists. One sees the depression as a pathological event that is directly due to the biochemical changes occurring in the brain of someone who is predisposed to pathological depression through an accident of illness. Another sees the depression as a reactivation of unresolved childhood conflicts over an early loss. Another regards the depression as part of the normal mourning process that has got out of control because the person’s thoughts become fixed in a negative set which sees everything in the most pessimistic light. Yet others conclude that the mourning response has been exaggerated primarily by society or see it as an abnormal form of learning which is no longer appropriate for the situation but is receiving encouragement from some quarter (positive reinforcement)”
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Identifying mental illness in historical figures is a favourite hobby of psychiatric sleuths. Particular scrutiny has been paid to the lives of painter Vincent van Gogh and composer Robert Schumann. Both spent time in asylums, but their correct diagnoses remain in dispute. Similarly, descriptions of symptoms of mental disorder have been identified in creative works dating as far back as Shakespeare in the 16th and 17th centuries and the playwright Sophocles in ancient Greece.
Until recently depiction of mental disorders in comics (also known as graphic novels) has attracted less interest. This may be because of their historic association with younger readers, but comics are now read by people of all ages and are gaining more attention, particularly in healthcare. Long running series such as Batman have multiple characters who display symptoms of mental disorder, and works such as Couch Fiction and Psychiatric Tales have storylines specifically about mental health issues.
Looking at the psychopathology of comic book characters is an interesting diagnostic challenge and also a newly used approach to medical education. A comic book convention earlier this year was held to educate the public about psychiatric conditions. Various comics were studied, with Batman being heavily scrutinised.
Batman
Mental illness is ubiquitous in Batman’s Gotham city. “Over the years, the stories of the Batman comics have been intensely psychological,” says psychologist, writer, and visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Vaughan Bell.
The longevity and popularity of Batman comics and films make it one of the best known representations of mental illness. Arkham Asylum, Gotham’s sanatorium for the “criminally insane,” towers both literally and metaphorically over the city. Many of Batman’s adversaries have either escaped from there, or are destined to return there.
In Batman, “the fictional explanations of what causes madness tend to be particularly detailed,” says Dr Bell. The disorders often bear little relation to those seen in clinical practice, however. In Batman comics “two main themes are used to explain the development of madness,” says Dr Bell. “The influence of trauma and the pursuit of forbidden knowledge.”
The personas of Batman and his arch enemy the Joker are both trauma-induced. Batman’s crusade against crime begins with witnessing the death of his parents. The Joker becomes a villain when, as told in The Killing Joke, he falls into a toxic river shortly after the death of his wife.
Batman’s response to his traumatic experience is to become a masked vigilante. Objectively this is unusual behaviour, but not in Gotham city, where spandex-clad criminals are the norm. In contrast, the Joker is unable to show such a “mature” response and turns to crime. Both can be considered madness owing to trauma.
On the other hand, it is those who seek to know who also suffer. For example, being a psychiatrist in Gotham city’s Arkham Asylum is a particular “risk factor” for mental ill health. “A remarkable number of Arkham inmates are former psychiatrists who have been driven to madness as a result of their work as investigators of the human mind,” says Dr Bell. “Rarely are psychiatrists, psychologists, or neuroscientists portrayed as anything except figures of fear.”
Harley Quinn is an example of a disturbed psychiatrist, although her presentation has little resemblance to an established psychiatric disorder.
Quinn, originally Dr Harleen Quinzel, is an Arkham psychiatric intern who becomes fascinated with the Joker and offers to psychoanalyse him. During treatment, the Joker’s influence causes her to abandon her previous life and personality. She falls in love with him and helps him escape on several occasions.
Accuracy
The portrayals of mental disorder in the Batman characters such as the Joker and Harley Quinn are often highly inaccurate. This has been of interest to American psychiatrists Eric Bender, Praveen Kambam, and Vasilis Pozios.
“In the real world we don’t necessarily see someone either becoming a hero or a villain following a single traumatic event,” says Dr Bender, questioning the verisimilitude of the back stories of Batman and the Joker.
Dr Bender also says that the term “criminally insane,” although liberally used in the Batman stories, is not a term that is used either legally or in psychiatry.
Batman storylines often combine syndromes, and sometimes the use of terminology is just plain incorrect.
“The Joker is the character who is most commonly referred to as ‘psychotic’,” says Dr Kambam, “but in over 70 years of stories you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of actual psychosis depicted.” Classically, the definition of psychosis is a mental state seen in serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, when a patient has disorganised behaviour and thinking.
“What the Joker actually displays more of is psychopathic traits,” says Dr Kambam. Psychopathic traits include manipulativeness and a lack of empathy.
Reaching out
Drs Bender, Kambam and Pozios are using the depictions of mental states in Batman as a way to talk to the general public about psychiatric disorders. The histories of comic book characters are well known and, unlike other public figures, can be discussed without fear of impropriety.
Pioneering this form of medical education, they held a seminar at Comic Con, a large comic convention held in San Diego in July 2011.
“We looked at whether the character of Bruce Wayne [Batman] displays any symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the film Batman Begins,” says Dr Pozios. During the seminar they explored the nature of PTSD and the challenges in making a diagnosis. They felt that Batman had symptoms of PTSD but does not meet the full diagnostic criteria.
Audience questions also provided an opportunity to correct misperceptions. One audience question was, “If Batman doesn’t have PTSD then is it better to say that he has schizophrenia?” This refers to the common misunderstanding that schizophrenia means split personality.
“That’s not correct,” says Dr Bender, “schizophrenia is a psychotic illness.” PTSD is an anxiety disorder.
Beyond the bat cave
Many other comic book characters are amenable to psychiatric scrutiny. Could we diagnose the Hulk with an impulse control disorder? And how has Superman been affected by being the last survivor of his planet?
Mental disorder is also depicted in characters who are not superheroes. “The examination of mental illness in comic form goes well beyond that seen in genre comics,” says Ian Williams, a general practitioner and comics artist. “Batman comics primarily aim to entertain, and their interest in mental disorder is second to this. Other more thoughtful works address the subtleties of mental disorder directly, and aim for a more realistic depiction,” says Dr Williams. “Comics are able to convey an immediate visceral understanding in a way that conventional texts cannot.”
“The handling of mental disorder is particularly effective in The Long Road Home by G B Trudeau,” says Dr Williams.
G B Trudeau draws the well known newspaper comic strip Doonesbury. In The Long Road Home he examines the life of a Doonesbury character following active duty in Iraq.
“The comic documents how the character’s life changes after he loses a limb traumatically,” says Dr Williams. “The author spent time in rehabilitation centres in order to make the approach more realistic.” The character develops PTSD, becomes withdrawn, and has constant flashbacks.
Another comic, Depresso, by Brick, examines depression. “The visual metaphors in Depresso are very powerful,” says Dr Williams. “Especially when he likens depression to being entombed in wet shrinking concrete.”
Brick’s approach to doctors is interesting. “Brick takes a deliberately provocative point of view to his medical care,” says Dr Williams. “He is by nature suspicious, and this influences his view of the psychiatrists who treat him.”
Dr Williams also recommends Psychiatric Tales. This is a collection of 11 strips about psychiatric illness, which was published to acclaim in 2010. Its author, Darryl Cunningham, worked as a healthcare assistant on psychiatric wards and also had his own problems with mental illness.
“Psychiatric Tales is patient centred and humane as Cunningham has experienced mental illness from both sides,” says Dr Williams. “Despite the seriousness of the subject he has a light touch and the book is funny and informative.”
Rich medium
Comics are very accessible as they are quick and easy to read. Their ability to juxtapose image and text means that they are a rich medium for both storytelling and documenting.
Established comics such as Batman have featured mental disorder for many years. Although the characters’ disorders in Batman often display a high degree of artistic licence, they can still be used as a teaching aid and may engage an audience who would otherwise lack interest.
Non-fiction comics such as Psychiatric Tales are often more realistic and can provide us with valuable insights into the lives of psychiatric patients.
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When critics state that psychiatry lacks both a firm logical foundation and a grounding in psychology and neurobiology, Prof MacKinnon thinks that they have a point. In addition he considers that psychiatrists have no clear concept of ‘the mind’, the organ we treat. This is in contrast to other medical specialties; whilst a psychiatrist would struggle to explain what ‘mood’ is for, a renal physician could easily relate the dysfunction of a diseased kidney to its proper physiological function.
It is these failings that Trouble in Mind seeks to address. The unorthodoxy of its approach is to build up, from first principles, a functional model of the mind (‘a function of brain’) and to place psychiatric problems within this working system. With the brain’s shape and structure as a starting point, three further levels of increasingly complex cerebral activity are examined in detail. At each level adaptive function is linked to the dysfunction seen in mental disorder
Trouble in mind threatens to be a classic of non-mainstream psychiatric thinking. It has a novel approach that makes intuitive sense. MacKinnon’s influences are clear. McHugh and Slavney have been colleagues, and he cites their classic The Perspectives of Psychiatry (amazon.co.uk / amazon.com) several times. As an ‘introduction’ it is cunningly aimed at trainees who may be open-minded enough to pick up and run with its ideas. But alas it ultimately fails to deliver.
The concluding chapter ‘psychiatric mind’ is problematic. This is dedicated to the treatment of mental illness as a problem of the adaptive mental functioning the book describes. As the book’s crucial denouement one might expect this chapter worthy of detail but curiously it is only twenty pages long and MacKinnon’s argument is left underdeveloped and unfinished. The reader is left without adequate guidance as to how a disciple of these insights might integrate them into everyday practice and research.
Perhaps a second edition could address this shortfall. I hope so, as MacKinnon has a good point to make, a clear command of his subject and this book is well written and never dull.
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Smile or Die is social critic and author Barbara Ehrenreich’s examination of the stronghold that positive thinking has on America.
She first encounters this close-up when diagnosed with breast cancer. She is encouraged to be positive about her condition, almost to the point of considering it a gift allowing spiritual growth. Rather than embrace this way of thinking, she finds it sinister, and the pink ribbon she is offered infantilizing.
Looking further afield, Ehrenreich finds that the notion that positive thoughts lead to positive outcomes is pervasive. She can find no scientific evidence for this, but regardless the notion has become the basis for several best selling books, including The Secret. The threat is, Ehrenreich writes, that if you do not think positively then you will not thrive.
Ehrenreich says that positive thinking has also percolated into the work sphere. She identifies this as a source of social control. People who are laid off are told this is an ‘opportunity’. This then feeds into the current American paradigm whereby misfortune is never the fault of the system, but rather in an individual for not thinking positively enough. How could social inequality be important if you can become rich simply by thinking about it?
The solution? Ehrenreich would like to see herself as a realist, not someone who champions despair. Instead we should try to see the world as it really is.
By a stroke of luck that’s what I’ve been trying to do for many years.
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Last week’s riots took place across different nights in multiple cities and involved no one ethnic group. The reasons behind them are complex and a unifying theory is likely to be evasive.
Many of the explanations for the riots have been made to fit around already established political agendas. The left has focused on deprivation and an excessively greedy society, while the right has blamed police numbers and a lack of discipline and boundaries.
With such widespread disturbance, it’s more than likely that any explanation will have some merit. The explanations favoured by our political elite will have very real consequences.
Criminal?
According to some on the right the riots were largely criminal acts of opportunistic looting and vandalism. This cannot be discounted, not least as there are reports of the looting being highly organised. However it does not have sufficient explanatory power to be the complete story behind the disturbances.
Political?
The night of the riots involved widespread looting of consumer goods, with institutions of the state left largely untouched. On this basis, they could be described as “apolitical.” However simply because the riots were not purposeful does not immediately disqualify them from being political.
Alongside their ostensibly consumerist goals, the riots challenged the police for control of the streets, flouting law and social convention. This is arguably a political act.
Naomi Klein writes of the riots as a “nighttime robbery” following the “daylight robbery” of recent massive banking bailouts and subsequent austerity programme. “When you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance—whether organised protests or spontaneous looting.”
Driven by consumerism?
The looting during the riots was mostly of consumer goods, leading them to be described as “aspirational.” This explanation for the riots centres on what we value in society and the ability of some people to afford this.
In a consumerist society, like that in the UK, the idea of social identity through consumerism is promoted. Yet economic hardship has left many people unable to afford consumer goods.
This article argues that “Far from disregarding the values of society … the young people who were involved in property theft were enacting the very values that are communicated to them every day through advertisements and public culture.”
Failure of the criminal justice system? Poor relations with police?
It was striking how many of the rioters didn’t cover their faces. Why did they think that they wouldn’t go to prison?
There may be genuine tensions between some communities and the police, and this has been the trigger to previous serious UK rioting. In October 2010 for instance it was reported that black people are 26 times more likely than whites to face stop and search.
A breakdown in society?
This is an argument favoured by the left. Its proponents feel that a large section our society has no stake in it and that the riots were an understandable response to the brutality of the poverty they experience.
Put another way, society relies on collaborative behaviour. The majority of us are pro-social, at least in part, as we are convinced that it is in our best interests. If people feel themselves to be disenfranchised, by a society that offers little educational or employment opportunities, this does not apply. In the absence of mainstream ways of gaining self worth, some look inwards and create their own self esteem through their involvement in gangs, with violent consequences.
The Prime Minister David Cameron has also talked about societal breakdown, and blamed in part the bad example set by our elites.
This paper links budget cuts to social unrest.
Parenting/lack of respect?
This is a related argument to that of the “broken society.”
Some of the rioters were minors, suggesting both inadequate supervision and a failure to introduce pro-social values. A judge was critical of a family who did not turn up to the court appearance of their 14 year old daughter.
Are the riots symptomatic of breakdown elsewhere? Some people have written that, due to the intervention of the state, parents are no longer able to adequately discipline their children. As a result children are growing up with a dangerous sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility.
In times of economic downturn some family units can become fragmented. The father of the 14 year old mentioned above said that he was unable to attend court as he has two jobs.
The power of the crowd?
Other explanations floated for the riots have touched on crowd psychology. This might seem to explain the relative normality of some of participants.
One psychologist was quoted as likening the riots to those seen in jails where “there is no higher purpose, you just have a high volume of people with a history of impulsive behaviour, having a giant adventure.”
Deindividuation, where social norms are compromised when people are in groups, has also been mooted. “That violence is an epidemic is not a metaphor; it is a scientific fact,” writes Gary Sultkin who likens violence to that of disease spread. Some sociologists write here that crowds are irrational (but then offer to explain them).
Professor Stephen Reitcher, professor of social psychology and expert on crowd psychology is unimpressed.
Architecture?
Anna Minton writes in her book Ground Control about how current trends in city planning have led to a transformation of public space. Designed with the objectives of profit and safety paramount, physical environments in the city are being created which “reflects the stark division of the city creating homogenous enclaves which undermine trust between people.”
The gentrification of large parts of previously disadvantaged areas has led to different communities – between whom communication is almost non-existent – living in close proximity as discussed in this London Review of Books blog.
“Historically” writes architectural historian Wouter Vanstiphout, “there is a correlation between large-scale urban projects and upsurges in urban violence.” But, “it is much too soon to say anything,” he says, “about the relationship between the gentrification of Brixton, or the coming of the Olympics to London, and the current explosion of violent alienation”
A unified theory?
The number of people involved in the riots is in the thousands, in cities of several million. As of 17 August the Met had charged 1005 people and made 1773 arrests. Therefore we should be wary of making generalisations about communities based on a relatively small number of their members. All of the above explanations hold some truth, and the discourse is about which we afford the greatest weight.
At a structural level The UK’s “knowledge economy” benefits some people but excludes many others. Many people are able to accumulate the skills and qualifications necessary to thrive. However for reasons of upbringing and opportunities, others are unable to benefit. Social mobility remains poor.
Inner cities are particularly disadvantaged. In some communities single parent families are common, and role models are lacking. Family life is difficult if family members are obliged to take multiple low paid jobs. There are few activities available for young people and unemployment is high.
In addition, the example set by UK elites has been poor and low income groups have disproportionately suffered from austerity cuts. The money spent on the Olympics has had little effect on surrounding areas. Expensive consumer goods are available for sale to the affluent middle class for whom city living is now fashionable and more affordable in previously run down areas.
Did something have to give?
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Anyone can learn to have lucid dreams, and this ebook tells you how. Lucid dreams are those dreams where you become aware you are dreaming, and can even begin to control the reality of the dream. Adventure, problem-solving and consequence-free indulgence await! And for those interested in the mind, lucid dreams are a great place to explore the nature of their own consciousness. The ebook is written as a sort of travel guide, telling you what you need to take on your journey and what to expect when you start to lucid dream. It finishes off with a quick review of the scientific literature on lucid dreaming and links and references for further reading if you want to continue your exploration of lucid dreaming.
I wrote this with friend, and lucid dreamer, Cat Bardsley. My wife Harriet Cameron provided some beautiful illustrations which you can find throughout the book (and on the cover you can see here). The book is Creative Commons licensed so you can copy it and share it as you will, and even modify and improve (as long as you keep the CC licensing). It’s available on smashwords on a pay-what-you-want-basis (and that includes nothing, so it is yours for free if you’d like).
“Control your dreams” is my second self-published ebook. You can also get “Explore your blindspot” from smashwords (which is completely free, and also CC licensed). The wonderful folk at 40k books published my essay The Narrative Escape last year (and after doing all the formatting and admin associated with these two new ebooks I am more and more in awe of what they did).
Sweet Dreams!
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New Scientist reports that Uganda has been hit by a new outbreak of the mysterious ‘nodding syndrome’ or ‘nodding disease’ that seems to be an unknown neurological condition that only affects children.
There is not much known about it but it seems to be a genuine neurological condition (and not an outbreak of ‘mass hysteria‘) that has devastated the lives of children in the region.
Affected children show a distinctive head nodding (although I would describe it more as lolling than nodding) and show delayed development neurologically and stunted growth physically. This apparently leads to malnutrition, injuries and reportedly, death.
The ‘head nodding’ is also reported to be prompted by food and eating, and by feeling cold, although these triggers are not as well verified.
If you want to see video of the symptoms the best is a seven minute piece from Global Health Frontline News although there’s also a good shorter report from Al Jazeera TV.
This brief Nature News article summarises what we know about it although from the neurological perspective there is good evidence from a preliminary studies that epilepsy and brain abnormalities are common in those with the condition.
There is some suspicion that it might be linked to infection with Onchocerca volvulus, the nematode parasite that causes river blindness, but early studies don’t show consistent results and ‘nodding syndrome’ isn’t prevalent in some other areas where the parasite is common.
One of the most mysterious aspects is why it only seems to affect children and currently there are no theories as to why.
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We tend to think of translation as a problem of grammar but a brilliant post on Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists demonstrates how even concepts about what the mind is can vary across languages.
In Korean, the concept “maum” replaces the concept “mind”. “Maum” has no English counterpart, but is sometimes translated as “heart”. Apparently, “maum” is the “seat of emotions, motivation, and “goodness” in a human being” (Wierzbicka, 2005; p. 271). Intellect and cognitive functions are captured by the Korean “meli” (head). But, “maum” is clearly the counterpart to “mind” in terms of the psychological part of the person. For example, there are tons of Korean books about “maum” and body in the same way that there are English texts on “mind” and body…
Interestingly, Russia, which kind of sits between East and West uses “dusa” as the counterpart to the psychological part of the person. “Dusa” is often translated as “soul”, but also sometimes as “heart” or “mind.” “Dusa” is associated with feelings, morality, and spirituality. The “dusa” is responsible for the ability to connect with other people. This meaning seems to lie somewhat more with the Eastern conception than with the highly cognitive concept of “mind.”
The Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists blog is generally excellent by the way.
I also recommend this great post on female attractiveness, wait-to-hip ratio and why evolutionary psychology needs spend more time working with other cultures before it can really talk about likely evolutionary explanations.
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A popular mantra of modern neuroscience tells us that free will is an illusion. An article in the New York Times makes a lucid challenge to the ‘death of free will’ idea and a prominent neuroscientist has come out to fight the same corner.
Neuroscientists began making preparations for the funeral of free will shortly after Benjamin Libet began publishing his experiments in the 1980s showing a consistent build-up of electrical activity from the brain’s motor cortex before participants were consciously aware of their desire to move.
Since then, many more neuroscience studies have shown that brain activity can precede conscious awareness of specific choices or actions – with the implication that our conscious experience of decision-making is nothing but a secondary effect that plays little role in our actions and reactions.
The idea that ‘free will is an illusion’ is now consistently touted by neuroscientists as an example of how brain science is revealing ‘what really drives us’ and how it explains ‘how we really work’. But philosophers, the conceptual engineers of new ideas, have started to find holes in this popular meme.
Probably the most lucid mainstream analysis of why neuroscience isn’t killing free will has just been published at The New York Times where philosopher of mind Eddy Nahmias takes the mourners to task using a narrow and largely irrelevant definition of free will.
So, does neuroscience mean the death of free will? Well, it could if it somehow demonstrated that conscious deliberation and rational self-control did not really exist or that they worked in a sheltered corner of the brain that has no influence on our actions. But neither of these possibilities is likely. True, the mind sciences will continue to show that consciousness does not work in just the ways we thought, and they already suggest significant limitations on the extent of our rationality, self-knowledge, and self-control. Such discoveries suggest that most of us possess less free will than we tend to think, and they may inform debates about our degrees of responsibility. But they do not show that free will is an illusion.
Nahmais makes the point that the ‘death of free will’ idea makes a fallacy he calls ‘bypassing’ that reduces our decisions to chemical reactions, implying that our conscious thinking is bypassed, and so we must lack free will.
He notes that this is like saying life doesn’t exist because every living thing is made up of non-living molecules, when, in reality, its impossible to understand life or free will without considering the system at the macro level – that is, the actions and interactions of the whole organism.
Interestingly, a similar point is made by legendary neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga in an interview for Salon where he discusses his new book on free will. He also suggests it’s not possible to understand free will at the level of neurons without making the concept nonsensical.
These contrasting concepts about free will may yet be solved, however, as Nature recently reported on a new $4 million ‘Big Questions in Free Will’ project which brings together philosophers and cognitive scientists to work together to understand how we act in the world.
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‘Space madness’ was a serious concern for psychiatrists involved in the early space programme. A new article in history of science journal Endeavour tracks the interest in this ‘dreaded disease that never was.’
Much to the surprise of NASA mental health professionals, those who volunteered to be astronauts were neither “suicidal deviants” nor troubled by their separation from the earth, but the media ran with the ‘space travel as psychic trauma’ idea anyway.
‘In answer to the question, “‘What kind of people volunteer to be fired into orbit?” one might expect strong intimations of psychopathology’. Or so thought two Air Force psychiatrists selected to examine America’s first would-be astronauts. Researchers of the 1950s who considered the problem of human spaceflight often speculated that such work would attract only suicidal deviants, and that merely participating in such a voyage would overwhelm the human psyche of otherwise healthy people. The popular culture record of the time seemed to confirm their suspicions, with science fiction films frequently offering up megalomaniacs, egotists, and religious fanatics terrorizing planets in their cinematic space cruisers.
It is not surprising, then, that the psychiatrists working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1959 feared the worst of the men selected to be America’s first astronauts: that they would be impulsive, suicidal, sexually aberrant thrill-seekers. The examiners, though, were surprised – and a little disappointed – when tests revealed the would-be spacemen to be sane, poised professionals able to absorb extraordinary stresses. Flying jet airplanes in Cold War America had conditioned the men to control their fear, and even the most spirited among them were effective in orbit.
The idea that humans could travel into space and not be traumatized by their experiences, though, was unpalatable to large numbers of journalists and screenwriters, who expected that such journeys would produce some form of psychic transformation. By the early-1970s, popular culture depicting unhinged astronauts became commonplace, even as NASA’s astronauts demonstrated a remarkable ability to absorb the stresses of long-duration spaceflight. A Space Age malady with no incidence among human populations, ‘space madness’ is the stuff of Hollywood: a cultural manifestation of popular fears of a lonely, dehumanizing, and claustrophobic future among the stars.
Unfortunately, the article is locked, because the likes of you and me would just make the place look scruffy, but we covered some of the early discussion on what might cause ‘space madness’ previously on Mind Hacks.
And if you’re interested in the modern astronaut psychology don’t miss a 2008 article from The Psychologist on how NASA select their space travelling colleagues.
I would also like to mention that if someone from NASA is reading that I am free at *any time* to start astronaut duties. I also already own a space pen and am fully competent in its use.
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Have been doing research for Book The Second, and came across an interesting finding I’d never seen before. It was a cite to a Japanese study, which found that 12% of women and 6% of men (all college students) reported having imaginary friends.
These numbers struck me as shockingly high. I haven’t yet read the original study, so I’m commenting on a summary, but I have to wonder how the survey question was worded. For example, if someone asked me, “Do you sometimes have involved conversations with people who are not physically present?” my answer would be yes. But I don’t think of myself as having imaginary friends, and the thought that other people do, or might, intrigues me.
I have vivid memories of having an imaginary friend in childhood. This was a boy, named Randy (Randy??), and I remember him as having red hair. But after I turned about ten or so, Randy simply vanished, and no other imaginary friends emerged to take his place.
I wonder now if my loneliness would have been more bearable if I had created imaginary friends as an adult. I remember taking real comfort from Randy when I was about eight: I have distinct memories of the “two of us” building a fort out of sofa cushions. Perhaps I could have summoned up a similarly comforting sense of companionship as a solitary adult, in my thirties. But I don’t do that now, even though I live alone, and I don’t seem to have any propensity to do it.
I’ll follow up if I can locate the original Japanese article. Whether I track it down or not, I find the notion of adults having imaginary friends incredibly rich and intriguing, and somehow reassuring.