Psychology Articles

The Wechsler Intelligence Tests are the most commonly used instruments to assess intelligence of children, adolescents and adults. The tests are used world-wide and generate valid and reliable reports of an individuals intellectual functioning. They are used in a variety of settings from school to clinics and in organisational and career guidance settings. It is not uncommon for people to be confused about what the tests measure and how they measure it. This is a brief guide to the Wechsler Intelligence Tests.

The test is divided into two broad categories, each containing a number of sub-tests which are administered to calculate person’s results. The two categories are Verbal scale and a performance scale.

The Verbal Scale

The verbal scale measures verbal abilities such as comprehension of social situations, recall of digits forward and in reverse, long term memory of facts, and verbal ability to think abstractly and make connections of things into categories. These skills are important for school success and in negotiating the social world and understand it. The skills measured are influenced to a high degree by level of education and the efficiency of teaching across the life span. The verbal scale is also useful for assessing attention and concentration skills.

The Performance Scale

The Performance scale of the Wechsler tests is meant to assess intellectual skills without requiring a verbal response. It is therefore a useful way to assess people who cannot speak or who have expressive language difficulties. The scale consists of a number of items such as putting puzzles together, copying visual codes rapidly under the pressure of time, analysing and putting abstract patterns of blocks together and spotting what’s missing in pictures. Although it is thought of as a non-verbal test it is obvious that when looking at visual objects a certain amount of self-talk is going on in a person’s head. However, it’s reliance on non-verbal responses makes is a good companion to the verbal tests on the Wechsler.

The Full Scale Score

The results of both Verbal and Performance scales are combined in a series of statistical computations by the examiner and totalled into a Full Scale score which is the equivalent of an IQ score. The value of the Full Scale score is it indicates, in a general sense, what the person’s overall level of intellectual functioning is but it is influenced at times by wide discrepancies between the Verbal and Performance scales. Therefore it can be either an accurate, overestimate or underestimate of a person’s general level of intelligence.

This brief overview does not do justice to the intricacies of the Wechsler scales but it will, I hope, assist people in coming to a more complete understand of intelligence test results.

David J. Carey, Psy.D.
297 Beechwood Court
Stillorgan
Dublin, Ireland
http://www.davidjcarey.com

Once upon a time there was now, right now. The past has been written by many perspectives but the future is still blank and right now is the act of writing. Narrative therapy is a form of therapy that uses the narrative or story of our way of looking at our life situations. We look for that crack in the lens that tells an alternative way of perceiving our predicaments. Not to change the story but to tell it from a different view. Narrative therapy honors these stories and yet accepts that each view is imbued with meaning that family, society, culture has preordained as the “right” meaning. Existential therapy tends to focus more on the individual stance and with a focus on the “now” instead of the past or future. In turn it examines limits and expansiveness. The four main areas of examination within existentialism are meaning (vs. meaninglessness), freedom (vs. confinement), death (vs. life), and isolation (vs. inclusion) (Yalom, 1980). Narrative therapy and existential psychotherapy can help fill in the gaps leftover by each other. Including a past, present, and future tense and to give meaning to both as an individual and collective stance.

The term meaning has eluded philosophers for thousands of years. To give it a precise definition has proven to be almost impossible. The way we use meaning is a thread that runs throughout most of the major schools of psychotherapy. The view within narrative therapy is that meaning is not a given, nothing is imbued with meaning, but instead it is the interpretation of experience. That interpretation is through the theory of social construction of reality. Accordingly (:”The Social Construction of Reality”, 2009):

“The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other’s actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized. In the process of this institutionalization, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people’s conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society.”

A more general way of stating this is that through language, symbols, and interactive dialogue we give meaning to an experience. First comes experience and then that experience is filtered through these cultural transactions which then creates interpretation. Just because we see the color blue it is only “blue” because that has been the assigned meaning that has happened within a cultural context. A quick formula for meaning in narrative therapy is experience plus interpretation equals meaning.

One of the core tenants of existential psychotherapy is the often quoted phrase from Sartre “existence precedes essence.” Meaning is personally constructed, as compared to socially constructed. There are givens such as we are all going to die that we will all have to face. Meaning then is personally constructed within this framework. Since we are going to die at some point in the future what does the current moment mean? This meaning is believed to come from the individual. We become a more honest or authentic human being when we acknowledge this constraint but ask ourselves what are we going to do about it? First there is just being, as in the present moment, and then from that we create the essence. Meaning within existential psychotherapy tends to be about the over arching beliefs such as the question of “what is the meaning of life?”

A key theoretical move within narrative therapy is to pay attention to what is called the sparkling moment. While a client is relaying the story of what brought them into the therapist office the therapist is listening for an episode within the story that contradicts the main story. A story that tells a different picture of our preferred way of being, as an example, if a client is telling a story of depression then the therapist listens for an event or time that the depression was not present. The telling of this alternative story in narrative therapy is called “re-authoring”. The therapist can help this along by also evoking what is called a “remembering” conversation where a major focus is on the identity of a past significant other who has helped contribute greatly to the client’s life. This could be a friend, a lover, a parent, a musician, or even an author.

To help the client along on this path the therapist needs to stay de-centered, and non-influential. They can do this by helping the client “thicken” the preferred storyline by encouraging the details of what is being told, instead of having a thin description of an event. For example, instead of just saying the weather is nice outside, ask questions about why the client thinks it is nice outside. What is it the smells, the air, the feel, does it remind them of something, The therapist would do well to keep in mind the rich history of existential psychotherapy to help thicken the preferred way of being.

Existential psychotherapy has a rich history of being cognizant of the way we use what Howard Gardner has called multiple intelligences. They are, according to Wikipedia, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, naturalistic, intrapersonal, visual-spatial, and musical intelligences (“Theory of multiple intelligences”, 2009). Howard Gardner has proposed a ninth intelligence which would be an existential intelligence. The existential intelligence would consist of the ability to be able to question bigger issues in life such as death, life, and possible spiritual meaning (“Theory of multiple intelligences”, 2009). Narrative therapy also embraces this notion of multiple intelligences even if this is not explicit. The therapist is encouraged to explore with the client the best possible way of expression. This could be through music therapy, writing therapy, or even art therapy. Existential psychotherapy in conjunction with humanistic psychotherapy has historically promoted the concept of the whole self including from an exploratory angle. The therapist comes not from an expert role but rather from an interest in the genuine person or phenomenological approach. In order to be fully present with this approach the intelligence that the client best works from should be the avenue of exploration for further development.

We are forever in the temporal now but are always focused on future plans, worries, hopes, or even dreams. Likewise when we are not future focused we are past focused. Past focused on our worries, shame, even our doubts. This tends to be the realm of narrative therapy. That is linking a sequence of events through a specific time period and giving that meaning. Narrative therapy struggles with the moment of now. It postulates a center or self as contrasted against the Buddhist concept of the no-self. This stance of a self is referred by a state of an observer researching or remembering the storyline. The concept of the no-self contradicts this position and has no observer but this is in the temporal now. The concept of existence is the current now or the becoming (such as a flower opening up into what it could be). Existential psychotherapy pays tribute to the past and possible future but the main source of temporal time is the now. James Bugental calls this the living moment (Bugental, p.20). While in the phase of re-authoring and thickening the storyline within narrative therapy this existential stance could prove to be very informative. It could also be used within the problem saturated phase of storytelling. If the client seems stuck on issues of the effects or judgments of a particular event then ask what seems to be the current emotions, thoughts, smells, etc. in order to unclog the blockage. Staying in the temporal now there are many facets that could be examined for example the current kinesthetic experience. This is one possible way to help with the issue of being stuck.

Existential psychotherapists tend to narrow in on four different realms for meaning making. They are freedom, death, isolation, and meaninglessness (Yalom, 1980). Each of these realms can be constructed as being on a continuum. Freedom would have two extreme sides to it. On the one end of freedom there would be the complete restraint of any freedom at all. Not having any type of choice such as being shackled in a dungeon. The other end would be complete freedom such as is found in libertine philosophies of everything goes with no restraints. Existential psychotherapists posit that each of us fall somewhere on this continuum. In order to move, to find relief from our struggles with our mental illness or anguish, we need to come to an individual understanding on where we are currently on this continuum and where we would like to go or what we would like to become. For example, if we feel we have too much freedom due to overindulgence with no restraints we might need to move a little on this continuum for more restraint to help us balance out. There is no right or wrong answers but where the individual feels is appropriate. To help thicken the preferred way of being within narrative therapy this theory could seem to be a limitation on what meaning is. This meaning being created by the therapist and client, but I argue that if we use it as a map, it can help keep us focused.

This opinion piece is not meant to be a position that is grounded in a complete theoretical stance. The author acknowledges that both narrative therapy and existential psychotherapy both come from very rich philosophical but very different backgrounds. There have been only a few philosophers that have tried to examine the similarities between post-modernism and existentialism. If one is looking for connections they could always find, in some small detail, those connections but each philosophy is really a different project altogether. The therapeutic stance, or pou sto, are quite a different thing altogether. Narrative therapy does not just use postmodernism as a philosophical background and existential psychotherapy does not just use a strict philosophy of existentialism. Instead these philosophical backgrounds are an applicable way of using these various therapeutic stances for the use of trying to help heal our mental illnesses. As Foucault stated in his last known interview (William V. Spanos, P.153) “For me Heidegger has always been the essential philosopher… My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger.”

What are some of the future directions for thickening narrative therapy with existential psychotherapy? First narrative therapy would do well to further elaborate what is meant by thickening the preferred story. What does it mean to make this story more real or the main focus over the grand narratives? There needs to be more philosophical discussion on the idea of meaning as both forms of therapy have as a major emphasis on meaning making but they just come at it from different angles and different projects. The question could also be asked are these two different therapies as compatible as this author suggests they are. If not, why not? And is there a way forward?

As this story (theoretical positioning) comes to a close it is important to remember that these are questions and not absolute truths. The story can still be changed by adding subtle detail and subtracting the distractions. The one thing that can be stated is that narrative therapy and existential psychotherapy are strangers traveling the same road.

References
1. Bugental, James F.T. (1999). Psychotherapy Isn’t What You Think: Bringing the Psychotherapeutic Engagement Into the Living Moment. Phoenix, Az.: Zeig Tucker & Theisen Publishers.

2. The Social Construction of Reality. (2009, July 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:46, July 8, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Social_Construction_of_Reality&oldid=301080937.

3. Spanos, Williams V. (1993). Heidegger and criticism: Retrieving the cultural politics of destruction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

4. Theory of multiple intelligences. (2009, August 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:07, August 4, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory_of_multiple_intelligences&oldid=306033977.

5. Yalom, Irvin D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Jeff Jones is licensed as an LICSW, clinical psychotherapist. He received his undergraduate degree in social work at Metropolitan State University. He then went on to earn his graduate degree as an MSW from the University of Minnesota. He was certifed as a Narrative Therapist from Kenwood Therapy Center in 2008 and is currently earning his certificate in existential psychotherapy. Jeff Jones is a daily meditator and tries to practice mindfulness in everyday life.

Website: http://www.phoenix-mental-health.com/index.php
Email: jeffjones@phoenix-mental-health.com

If you want to spot a liar there are few easy steps you can take. No one likes being lied to, and no one likes a liar. When someone lies, they are breaking a social bond. This unspoken agreement, based on the rule of treating others as we would like to be treated, is universal. Lying shatters this bond, and mistrust is never a positive characteristic of any relationship. If often makes it difficult or even impossible to ever trust that person again. However, if you learn to catch a liar then you will be able to distance yourself from the people in your life whose lies could hurt you.

One of the easiest and most common ways to catch a liar is by paying attention to eye contact. Usually people will make eye contact with you during about half of your conversation, so if you notice their eyes constantly wavering, especially during a touchy subject, you may be dealing with a liar.

Another method of spotting a liar is by the tone of voice. If their voice wavers, or you notice a variation in pitch or rate of speech during a particular point of the conversation, they might be lying. You should also pay attention to their speech and whether or not they say “uhh” and “umm” more than usual.

Body language, of course, is another important way to detect a liar. If someone often turns their body away from you, covers their face or mouth, or especially does a lot of fidgeting with their hands and legs, they might be trying to deceive you.

Obviously, if someone contradicts themselves, they are probably lying. If they make statements that don’t make sense, or don’t seem to match up with previous statements, you should question their truthfulness. Why don’t their statements match up, and what might be their reason for dishonesty? Can they really just not remember the details, or are they lying?

These are just some of the basic tips of learning to tell when someone is lying. These tips really are just the tip of the iceberg. To really learn these methods of catching a liar, you need to go much more in depth. By reading up on some simple ways to catch a liar, you can eliminate a lot of the strife in your life. If you are able to learn how to tell when someone is lying to you, your personal and professional life will be improved.

Check this page dedicated to lying SaL-spotaliar.net.

Most people think that dreams are not important at all, or that they could have a certain psychological importance, but they don’t believe that dream interpretation is an occupation that deserves their time. If they knew how really important dreams are, they would abandon other activities that don’t help them in any way, or that cannot help them as much as dream interpretation, and start immediately studying the meaning of their dreams.

Dreams are secret messages sent to your conscience by the unconscious mind, which works like a natural doctor, protecting you from the absurd side of your conscience, which is wild, and didn’t pass through the process of transformation that your human side did.

You have to learn how to translate the dream messages indispensably, because you inherit this dangerous enemy in your brain.

Besides that, you are too ignorant, and in fact an idiot, since you use only a tiny portion of your brain on your behalf. The biggest part of your brain belongs to your untamed evil side, that must be transformed if you want to live peacefully and happily.

Don’t be like the people that don’t look for the meaning of the precious messages they receive in their dreams. Their translation represents the beginning of a new life for you!

Many people that cared about the meaning of their dreams have already found their peace of mind, their mental health and happiness, by instantly translating their meaning thanks to my method of dream translation, which is derived from the complicated method of dream interpretation discovered by the psychiatrist Carl Jung.

I have simplified and clarified everything for you, after continuing his research and discovering a lot more.

My students and patients are now helping other people, and translating their dreams for them, because they have become professional dream translators like me.

Once you learn how to do it, it becomes as simple as speaking, for example Spanish, supposing that your mother tongue is English.

You simply learn how to immediately find the most important parts of each dream by finding the main dream symbols. You practically translate the dream, only by translating the meaning of the basic symbols, which is given to you in my ebooks. Then you complete the missing parts, depending on the dreamer’s biography and on the dream’s context.

I’m seeing today the result of the dream therapy I have provided to many internet users since the beginning of 2007, and it is really much better than what I had expected.

Now that many people have already learned how to easily translate their dreams using my method, I can gladly tell you that you won’t find it difficult at all.

I can even tell you that I have many patients and students that have great difficulty in learning whatever subject, because they suffer from grave mental illnesses, and their memory is very poor. But even they have easily learned how to translate their dreams!

Now, imagine how much simpler it will be for you to learn the dream language if your problem is quite banal, and it can easily be solved.

The knowledge you acquire by being able to translate the meaning of your dreams is a precious advantage you’ll have for life, which will also help you become more intelligent and mature. Why should you waste it, like the indifferent people that ignore the value of the dream messages?

Christina Sponias continued Carl Jung’s research into the human psyche, discovering the cure for all mental illnesses, and simplifying the scientific method of dream interpretation that teaches you how to exactly translate the meaning of your dreams, so that you can find health, wisdom and happiness.
Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com
Click Here to download a Free Sample of the eBook Dream Interpretation as a Science (86 pages!).

The hippocampus is involved with putting memories into permanent storage. Hippocampus is a large limbic system structure that has been implicated in learning and memory. Removal of the hippocampus in humans (as was done years ago to treat epilepsy) causes amnesia. In rats, the hippocampus is important for spatial memory, and removal of hippocampus will prevent an animal from learning even a very simple maze consisting of an open field with no walls. Most drugs have effects on the hippocampus. The drug effects on the hippocampus may be related to state dependency and long-term effects rather than acute effects.

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) is divides into two functional units: Somatic and Autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system also has two parts; the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the vegetative involuntary functions of the body on an ongoing basis, and the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares the body sudden expenditure of energy, the fight-or-flight response. Somatic nervous system made up of all of the sensory nerves running from the sensory receptors in the eyes, ears, and skin to the CNS. Somatic nervous system also contains the motor nerves. Somatic system is a voluntary control

Reticular Activating System (RAS) Surround the medulla. RAS is a complicated interconnection of diffuse centers and branching fiber tracts connected in such a way that when one part is excited, the entire system becomes activated. Two diffuse projection systems originated in the medulla and run forward into the higher parts of the brain: the reticular activating system (RAS) and the Raphe’ system.

RAS do two things: Tone, and Generates attention.

Limbic System just under the cortex is a series of interconnected nuclei known as the limbic system. Structure in the limbic system is involved in the control of motivations and emotions and deems to be the site of action of many drugs. Limbic system also connects the structures in the brain. Limbic system is made up of a number of centers including the hypothalamus, which controls eating and drinking; Thalamus works as a gatekeeper, filter system extrasensory information. Hippocampus is a large limbic structure that has been implicated in learning and memory. Amygdala is the emotional center.

The Synapse transfer information between neurons is synapses. A synapse occurs at the end of the dendrites and cell body of another cell. The end of the axon of the first cell may divide into many branches, and these small branches are intertwined with the dendrites of the second cell. It means that synapses occur where the axons and dendrites come close to each other.

Alex Tekan

Conduct Disorder (CD) – What is it?

Conduct Disorder is a condition of childhood and adolescence that causes severe and serious disruption in behaviour. It is the most challenging and difficult of all behavioural and emotional disturbances of children and teenagers. Conduct Disorders are exceptionally difficult to manage and equally difficult to treat. People with Conduct Disorders create huge problems in school, family and community. The difficulties caused by teenagers with Conduct Disorder create havoc in communities and a significant proportion of young people incarcerated for criminal offenses have a conduct disorder.

Children and adolescents with this disorder have great difficulty following rules and behaving in a socially acceptable way. They are often viewed by other children, adults and social agencies as “bad” or delinquent, rather than mentally ill. Many factors may contribute to a child developing conduct disorder, including brain damage, child abuse, genetic vulnerability, school failure, and traumatic life experiences.

Children and teens with conduct disorder often display some, or all, of the following behaviours:

- Harming people or animals
- Bullying, threatening or intimidating others
- Causing fights
- Using a weapon that can cause physical harm to others
- Tortures, physically harms or hurts animals or people
- Confronts people and robs them
- Forces someone into sexual activity
- Destroys Property
- Starts fires deliberation with the intent to cause damage
- Deliberately destroying other peoples property
- Being deceitful, lying, or stealing
- Breaks into someone’s house or car
- Lying to obtain goods or favours or to avoid obligations
- Stealing without confronting the victim
- Serious violations of rules
- Staying out all night despite parental objections
- Running away from home
- Truant from school often

What Causes Conduct Disorder?

There is no definitive answer to this question just yet. Research indicates a variety of factors that influence the development of the condition. These range from genetic and biological, brain related factors to social-economic factors. It is known that about 30-50% of people diagnoses with the condition also have rather severe ADHD. Factors such as being reared in an institution, being fostered to numerous families, harsh and severe parental discipline, living in socially disadvantaged and violent communities all play a role in the development of the problem.

Children and teenagers with CD often have co-existing conditions such as ADHD, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), Mood Disorders, anxiety, substance abuse, or learning difficulties). For these reasons a comprehensive assessment is always important. If co-existing conditions are discovered they must all be treated effectively and this makes successful outcomes even more problematic.

Treatment is terribly problematic because of the complexity of the problem. A contributing factor in the difficulty in treating the condition is the child or teen’s deep-seated distrust of adults. This distrust causes them to be less than truthful and forthcoming about their behaviours, thoughts and moods. Typically these children and teens are uncooperative with treatment and all adults trying to help them.

The prevalence of conduct disorders in people under the age of 17 is about 1 to 4%. Estimate vary widely and some suggest that up to 16% of boys have the condition while only up to 9% of girls have it. Whatever the prevalence or causes Conduct Disorder is an extremely difficult condition and the costs to society are high in terms of crime rates, violence and incarceration of offenders.

David J. Carey, Psy.D.
297 Beechwood Court
Stillorgan
Dublin, Ireland
http://www.davidjcarey.com

For all its utility and mysterious complexity, consciousness is full of defects. The common sense view – largely unchallenged throughout our history — is that consciousness presents us with a picture of how things are “out there” that we are able to view “inside” our minds. Philosophers have called this view the “Cartesian Theatre:” the experience of viewing the world in our minds presupposes a division, on the one hand, between the materialistic world of real objects that have substance and weight and, on the other, the inner, non-materialistic mind that constructs representations of those objects and reacts. This dualism no longer sits comfortably with most scientists and philosophers. Moreover, the philosophical dilemma of dualism leads us to two highly practical problems: misleading appearances of coherence in the world and illusions of agency in the self.

First off, the picture we view in our “Cartesian Theatre” imposes a false unity on our experience. We see a coherent world, seemingly available for scrutiny and systematic thought, but that world does not actually map onto reality. This is the “user illusion,” as it has sometimes been called, based on the analogy of our relationship with our computers where we interface with pictures and programs, not the thing itself. As Edelman has put it: “The take-home lesson is that our body, our brain, and our consciousness did not evolve to yield a scientific picture of the world.”

Damasio has endorsed Dennett’s “Multiple Drafts” model of consciousness to reflect the complexity of how consciousness is actually constructed. Our experience, in the “Cartesian Theatre,” presents a simple and coherent view of the world because the multiple drafts of reality have been invisibly edited and synthesized. We are unaware of the machinery that goes into its construction. In order to present coherent messages suitable for action, vast stores of information that cannot be processed are discarded. Moreover, what is missing, the gaps, are filled in by inference or memory. What we experience consciously, in other words, is a simulation, a fiction.

Psychologists refer to “accessibility” to describe what gets included in the final edit, but many factors enter into the accessibility of information: how recent and how frequent our exposure to it has been, how relevant it is to the actions we are considering, how frequently it has been used in the past, how it makes us feel. This latter point accounts for the relative ease with which information that makes us uncomfortable or that does not accord with our idealized versions of ourselves tends to be discarded. As the psychologist Timothy Wilson has put it: “We are masterly spin doctors, rationalizers, and justifiers of threatening information.”

Dramatic examples of such editing are described in the research on “split brains,” where neurosurgeons have severed the connections between the left and right hemispheres in order to prevent epileptic seizures. Joseph LeDoux, describing this research, noted that patients inevitably compensated for what they did not understand about their own behavior: “Time after time, the left hemisphere made up explanations as if it knew why the response was performed. For example, if we instructed the right hemisphere to wave, the patient would wave. When we asked him why he was waving, he said he thought he saw someone he knew.” The lesson is that, however impaired, the brain does not cease its sometimes heroic efforts to impose unity and coherence on the information it processes.

The second set of illusions has to do with agency. Consciousness fosters the belief that we are in charge of our actions, but the evidence of neurobiology suggests that most of our decisions are made automatically. Our reactions to events are underway before we become aware of them. As Freeman has put it: “taking responsibility for one’s self is more like trying to control one’s teenager than one’s automobile.

Sometimes, of course, it is obvious that making something conscious impedes our reactions to events. LeDoux has noted that “prepackaged emotions” quickly elicit reactions to danger that aid survival, a point that Darwin also made. If we see a stick that moves, our bodies do not stop to figure out if it is a snake before starting to flee.

Indeed, our brains often embark on actions or construe reactions to events without our needing to know what we are doing. Almost fifty years ago, Michael Polyanyi pointed out the importance of “tacit knowledge,” knowledge we take for granted. When we recognize familiar faces, for example, we rely upon such knowledge without knowing we possess it. More recently, psychologists have distinguished between “implicit” and “explicit” memory, highlighting the importance in our daily lives of the information we process subliminally, without consciousness. Similarly, they have studied “procedural memory,” the built-in sets of perceptions and skills that are required for riding a bicycle or driving a car.

But many have argued more broadly that these are merely particular instances of a general truth: consciousness always arises after the fact of perception and response. Freeman notes that awareness “continually runs to catch up with the self, half a second late but backdated.” Damasio puts it this way: “We are always hopelessly late for consciousness and because we all suffer from the same tardiness no one notices it.” In other words consciousness arises from the information we have received, the interpretations we have constructed, and the decisions we have already made. Our bodies and brains have processed that information and constructed a response that is already set in motion when we become aware of it. The evolutionary value of consciousness turns out to be, from this perspective, not in the capacity it provides for us to decide on our actions in advance so much as the opportunity to reflect on the world we perceive and plan new courses of action, after the fact. With it, we can inhibit or alter our behavior, and we can plan better responses for the future. As Damasio put it in the passage quoted earlier, the evolutionary benefit is “forethought.”

Ken Eisold is a psychoanalyst and organizational consultant who has written What You Don’t Know You Know, a book that expands our understanding of the unconscious to include organizations, politics, economics, and public affairs. He comments regularly on current events on his blog: http://www.keneisold.com

From a pre-school child to an American president, CEO to convict, atheist to astronaut – we all have an intrinsic desire to belong; somewhere, or to something.

The most basic and important of these things we can (or want to) belong to is a family. It is our primary support facility, no matter what type of endeavors we undertake in life. Be it in business, our education, or even our personal relationships – we all want the backing of our families.

Actually it goes deeper than that. We need our family. The absolute truth is that without them, none of us would even exist to begin with. No matter if you were one of many children born into a large family with two parents very much in love; or the unplanned child of a solo parent: everybody started somewhere.

The fact is that life can be hard. Not everyone has the same background or opportunities. Some people are born into caring, protective and positive families, where love abounds and help is always close at hand. Others may not be as fortunate, growing up in less positive environments where abuse, violence and disdain may be the norm. In some cases, a person may be brought up in a good loving family but lose them for some reason, whether it be through accident, illness or myriad other situational factors.

As an intelligent and compassionate society, we have a moral obligation (if not a personal commitment) to supplement the support for those less fortunate than ourselves; or at least to make that support accessible to them. The deeper our personal commitment, the more forthcoming we will be with that support. Some people may be more hands-on, and donate their personal time to the support of others – other people may be more protective of their own time but willing to give in a financial sense.

Whichever position we as individuals take, the act of giving (time and/or money) can be rewarding both for benefactor and beneficiary. The old adage, it is better to give than receive comes to mind.

I am also reminded of the golden rule I was taught as a child, that was to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

As it is in our larger community, so it also is in our own families.

A rational person is always there for their sisters, brothers, parents and children, just as a responsible member of the community is there for the elderly woman crossing a busy street, or the lost child in a large department store.

We, as caring and balanced people, need the support of our family, whatever form that family may take, and we also receive benefit from giving that support, by way of feelings of satisfaction and recognition from those we help that we have in fact made their life a bit easier. Feelings of compassion can be strong on both sides, and relational bonds strengthened, each and every time we help one another out.

About the author:

Michael Nunn is a parent and freelance writer. He works as webmaster for http://www.A1LifeStore.com and is a frequent submitter to various social networking and parental help sites. copyright 2009 A1Lifestore

They say when we answer a question it poses two more. That when old mysteries are exposed, revealing new and powerful information, this process eventually uncovers even more awesome unanswered questions. Such is the case with what we’ve discovered in the name of science, best exemplified by the patterns of attraction and connectivity between very tiny, atom, as well as very large, planet, objects, which mathematics helps us explain so well that we are constantly inventing new technological gadgets based upon this new information.

So what are the new questions being exposed? The answer is we’re not paying much attention even to what they are-all of which have at least something to do with our personal emotional experience. If science can explain the behavior of physical objects, can it unravel the spiritual and emotional aspects of being human?

For the most part we prefer to leave personal issues in the hands of lovers, priests and mothers, etc., as sacred events that must not be contaminated by the impersonal-big picture-perspective of science. When we do pay closer attention to human issues scientifically, specifically human nature, what we produce is a very highly over simplified application of reason. All that layman and professionals have in the name of psychology after 100 years of study are various half-assed notions of what’s normal, and what’s abnormal in human function-in other words “pathology”.

How in hell can a perspective based almost entirely upon a negative assumption help us build a positive model of ourselves? Indeed does anybody have a big picture view of what people are really all about? The answer is hardly anyone, though more likely probably no one.

And yet a closer examination of our personal lives reveals, curiously, that in human emotional experience, attraction and connectivity is the most powerful and influential aspect of who we are, and how we understand ourselves. We spend more time doing, fantasizing, moping, regretting, dreaming and hoping for a successful satisfying connectivity experience 10 times more often than we address any other human issue. Some people behave as if doing it meant binging upon nature’s sexual invitation; while others regard it as love, community and/or caring for each other. But all of these descriptions leave what is going on as mysteriously unexplained, in a big picture sense, as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc. were for the longest time in human history, thought to be acts of an angry god.

As 30 years of psychotherapy practice reveals, attraction and connectivity IS the most powerful influence upon human experience. But this doesn’t mean it’s the way things are supposed to be. If we take human intimacy out of all the tiny boxes we try and confine it within-religious marriages, fairy-book fantasies, sexual orgies, etc.-the most obvious thing we discover is that this overwhelming emphasis upon connectivity has been put there not entirely by good influences, but also, perhaps even primarily, by bad ones.

For a child attraction & connection are naturally the principle issues of survival, for the very simple reason that they can’t care for themselves, and need others to do it. The ability to cling successfully to others is essential for them to identify with and incorporate the strengths they need to cope with and understand the challenges of life-thus that irresistible baby-faced smile nature gives them.

But for those human issues to be the dominant force throughout life reveals to what extent we all still, at least to some extent, fail each other as caretakers, or we wouldn’t be so obsessed with connection. There’s only one reasonable conclusion. To a greater or lesser extent we have all had our hearts broken, and it happened originally before we reached age 16. For every failed adult intimacy, with children involved, there is a traumatized child. Divorce, endemic in western culture, is anathema to children. It fractures their lives, and, like humpty dumpty, there is no way to fix it.

Yet for adults it’s necessary to get in and out of relationships in order to find out how better to do them. We’ve never had much of a chance for such exploration before we’ve been so tied up in the knots of tradition and culture. The solution is probably to be found in doing family, in some ways, very differently than we’re used to doing it. Perhaps we need to rearrange the parts and the emphasis.

To mention just one of the many things we have to acknowledge and deal with in a real study of human nature is the following: the principle problem in the traditional family is that children and adults seek gratification at the same emotional trough. Clearly adults will always win that competition; they’re bigger and smarter. Whatever happens to their children will be both unacknowledged and buried for a shrink to dig up later when ambitious people try and figure out what happened for themselves. We pretend we see everything that’s going on between us, and our children; but obviously we don’t.

So what’s the conclusion? That our major emotional preoccupation with attraction and connectivity is both a sign of human virtue; yet is equally an indication of human ignorance, and the mistakes it produces-which hurt just as much no matter how unintentionally they may have been inflicted. As adults we are far too insecure in our connectivity, revealed by how much we’re willing to give up in order to have more and more of it.

The evidence is very simple: we make society and tradition-our connectivity places-more powerful politically than the individual human. Indeed we basically mistrust the individual human-the why our democracy has never matured beyond the writing of the Constitution; and its mistrustful attitude toward a direct vote by the people for all decision-making. So plurality doesn’t win elections or make decisions; politicians and electoral colleges, and their political machinations, do. Indeed it is most likely that my reader is horrified at the prospect of individuals running the world. What a disaster, they imagine, it would be to turn life over to us one at a time.

It’s not that we’re ready to do it now. But why aren’t we working toward that outcome? Clearly the individual human is much better off than they used to be. But in many ways we aren’t, or we would have erased homelessness and generic economic anxiety for most of us a long time ago. Why must the world run on an economy of scarcity when it is perfectly capable of running on an economy of abundance … if we only use our resources wisely instead of profitably?

Returning the discussion to psychology, what’s our preoccupation with connection sound like? The answer is addiction. We are addicted to being too safely connected to each other, far more unwilling than we care to admit to being differentiated from each other, afraid of the conflicts that will ensue with recognition of necessary difference as a normal part of the bearing forces of the universe.

Obviously the answer is for us, as individuals, to grow much stronger and wiser about ourselves, to become capable of handling much more difficulty and responsibility than we presently expect of ourselves. That is if we want, as individual voters, to run the world with all of its problems and complexity, instead of leaving it for others to manage-and then complain about how badly they do it. In order to accomplish that we need also to develop and provide a much higher quality to how we raise our children. Why do we keep insisting that what we do naturally is okay … when it’s not? Are we so fragile we can’t face the truth?

My additional works can be seen at this website: http://donfenn.com

Why should we bother with dreams?
Aren’t dreams just nonsense…just neurons randomly firing?

Evolution has selected for dreaming.
Sleep researchers tell us that all humans and many animals dream several times every night. Dream sleep is so important that experimental subjects prevented from experiencing REM sleep, the part the sleep in which dreams occur, begin to hallucinate after just a couple of nights of deprivation. They effectively begin to dream when they are awake. It is that important to dream. The ability to dream has been evolutionarily selected for because it serves a vital function in human life.

Human beings in all times and places have examined dreams with interest and attention. Mythical and religious characters are portrayed as valuing and being influenced or changed by dreams. The ancient Greeks dedicated temples and trained priests and priestesses to interpret dreams. Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis, out of which developed most other modern therapies, called dreams “The royal road to the unconscious” and Moses Maimonides, the famous Jewish philosopher is famous for saying that “A dream unexamined is like a letter unopened”

Psychoanalyst Paul Lipmann (2008) offers us the following list of what he feels that dreams offer:
They state and solve problems.
They express emotion subtle and loud.
They can express in images and stories those feelings and experiences those experiences that are most difficult to think or talk about when awake.
They can express hidden feelings about one’s relationship to powerful and less powerful others.
They can both dissociate and bind together aspects of traumatic or any experience.
They can help cover pain and shame or can rip apart a scab of defense.
They portray our current problems, past dilemmas, and future possibilities.
They gratify wishes.
They can give expression to the life not lived.

Dreams are unconscious products.
Cognitive psychologists tell us that we can hold approximately seven (plus or minus two if your memory is exceptionally good or bad) “chunks” of information in our minds at once.
That is seven digits in a phone number, seven items of a grocery list. That is not very many and yet we have access to a vast reservoir of memories, concepts and emotional experiences which are called up effortlessly and seamlessly into that famous set of seven chunks. And just as seamlessly those concepts not in immediate use slip out and are put. An amazing system when you think about it… effortless and taken for granted. But what is the system that reaches down and pulls up the information that is needed? Most of the time it is not “conscious intention.”

The unconscious is the system which receives, organizes and makes accessible all of the concepts and experiences that we own. It is simply impossible to be consciously aware of everything we know or to consciously make all the associations between facts that we must in order to make sense of our experience.

Importantly related facts, ideas and feelings may have been accumulated over a lifetime, arriving at different times and out of different life experiences. Consciousness, which is busy figuring out what to make for supper, rarely takes time to sniff around and explore all the potential associations… even to pressing life problems.

Fortunately we have an alternative system to do this work… psychoanalysts call this the personal unconscious . Cognitive researchers call it “automatic processing”,” implicit thought systems” or even “deep psychological processes”. No one tries to pretend that consciousness is big enough or strong to do all the work alone.

When we are concerned about some aspect of our lives or relationships, the unconscious continues to work on the problem while consciousness is busy doing other things. Anyone who has ever had an “Aha!” moment has had the experience of things being brought together unconsciously and presented as a now obvious fact or solution.

Sleep on it!!

The unconscious attempts to offer us larger access to what we know.
One of the main ways that the unconscious is positively integrated in our lives is through dreams. Dreams contain attempts by the unconscious to bring us information and make the arguments that elaborate or counterbalance the conscious attitude.

Typically, our feelings about situations and persons are more complicated and nuanced than what positive thinking, common sense or good manners will endorse.
We have mixed feeling about most experiences.
The birth of a child brings joy but also a curtailment of freedom.
We love and admire our best friend but her success makes us jealous.
We think we want to study to be a lawyer but is it really our father’s dream for us?

Understanding our dreams helps us understand ourselves more fully.
When the conscious attitude agrees pretty well with the unconscious one, dreams will underline, endorse or strengthen belief and resolve.
When consciousness overvalues a person or situation dreams may shrink it down to size by portraying it in an unpleasant way.
When consciousness does not sufficiently value a person, situation or goal the unconscious may elevate the idea, by symbolically representing it as appropriately precious.
Dreams can add new knowledge to consciousness, raise questions or suggest goals or things to be avoided.

A picture is worth a thousand words.
A huge amount of the information that we take in about the world is visual. Almost every important experience has a visual memory of people, places and things attached to it. Since most life knowledge and ideas are tied up in some way with visual images, it is not really surprising that images should be the material that the unconscious uses to represent its ideas.

Dream images may seem strange at first glance. but they are often proven on examination to be extremely accurate visual metaphors of a situation which concerns the dreamer.

A very personal point of view
There is no “one size fits all in dream interpretation. The images in dreams are often often mysterious and bizarre, they may make reference to other times and places or show the dreamer as someone entirely other that what they are in reality.
Dream dictionaries should be used sparingly and treated mostly as sources of inspiration.
The dreamer is the only person who can say whether an interpretation “works”.

Dreams in Psychotherapy
A psychologist who works with dreams in therapy draws on their knowledge of the client’s life situation and life history as well as their training in typical patterns of human response. They work with their clients to understand the dream images in relation to what the client is struggling with or has experienced in life. Together they try to understand what particular relevance and associations that these images have for this particular individual.
Dream work in therapy contributes to the process of deepening self knowledge.
Understanding of the full range of their desires and responses permits the client to invent new possibilities for action and decision… to change their life in ways that make their desires and their actions more congruent.
Dream work deepens therapeutic intimacy and creates a collaborative atmosphere between therapist and client.

Brief therapy centered on dreams
Psychotherapeutic work with dreams may be part of an on-going therapy or may be helpful as a short term process which focuses on understanding a particular situation, for example:
In periods of normal transition such as life passages,
In periods of crisis,
When difficult decisions are being considered
When radically new life experiences must be assimilated.
Sometimes a particularly striking dream or dream series will evoke a desire to question or understand a current or past situation or experience.
At these moments it may be helpful to consider working with a psychologist or therapist who will provide guidance and emotional support and help steady you as you explore the questions
that dream examination raises.

Dreams are part of our system of unconscious re-organization and creative problem solving. They pull the essence of a problematic situation out of the clutter of daily experience so we can see it more clearly. They remind us of what we have nearly forgotten, or of what we have tried to forget and bring together ideas that we knew separately but which click” and create new understanding when brought together. They help us see what we really desire and they point the way to future possibilities that grow out of past experiences.

Susan Meindl, MA, is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Montreal Canada. She has a special interest in Jungian ideas and practices a Jungian approach to psychodynamic psychotherapy

http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/59983