Psychology Articles

From the 1960s, as more African countries emerged into independent life, Western governments and international non-governmental organisations (NGO) have mounted innumerable projects aimed at promoting economic and social development. These projects have employed vast numbers of local people in various capacities from co-directors and technical officers down to semi-skilled workers and labourers. While the project planners and fund providers might have high aspirations of alleviating the poverty and suffering of thousands of people, for many of the local people employed on the ground the work is just another job and a stepping stone to something better. There will inevitably be a few, usually technically and professionally qualified, individuals, however, who find themselves torn between the two objectives of service to the community and pragmatic self-interest. The dilemma may be intensified by an opportunity to attend a training programme overseas.

Often, local employees of development projects are given a chance to train for a short period in the project sponsor’s home country. As time passes the mind wrestles more and more with the question of what should be done at the end of the training period. Should one return to one’s duties back home or take what seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity to seek one’s fortune in a more prosperous country?

At a fundamental level this is a problem that confronts every educated citizen of a developing country. A good deal is understood about the theories of economic development. If governments pursue the right policies it is possible for national economies to grow by a few percentage points every year. If the new wealth is fairly distributed, each citizen could expect his lot to improve gradually in line with the growth in the economy. However, experience has shown that fair distribution is rarely achieved. A few people prosper spectacularly at the expense of the masses. Any advance for the masses is often nullified by population growth. In many cases it has been seen that national economies steadily decline over the years.

But the personal issue goes deeper than that. Even if the efforts of the government and development agencies achieve growth in the economy, is a rate of, say, 5 percent a year attractive to an ambitious young person? Doesn’t one need annual growth rates measured in hundreds and thousands of percentage points if one is ever to have all one wants: a big house, a Mercedes Benz, a BMW, and enough spare cash to keep the extended family happy? Individuals can achieve these high growth rates, not by waiting for economic development, but by finding a way of taking a bigger share of wealth that already exists. Experience of grassroots industrial development brings the realisation that this is what motivates most would-be entrepreneurs.

Yes, human life is too short to wait for economic development. This is understood instinctively even by the bushmen and illiterates back home. They are all intent on seeking ways to escape to a better life. It is only intellectuals who worry about rationalising the situation. Painfully, with this rationalisation can come a desire to leave behind something more durable than wealth. Shouldn’t an educated man or woman also leave his or her mark on the history of his or her country? Could something be done that would make one’s name remembered for generations to come? Could one be like Tetteh-Quarshie, whose name is still honoured after almost a hundred years, as the man who brought cocoa to Ghana?

The quest for lasting fame can be a path of honour. Avarice must be put aside and sacrifices made if one is to serve one’s country in the field in which one is best qualified. The monetary rewards will be modest, there may even be a struggle to survive, but one could forego material comforts for the promise of lasting fame. Will success be achieved, however, even if the sacrifices are made? The work is hard and does not always achieve its objectives. Lasting fame cannot be guaranteed. Can one bring oneself to condemn one’s family to share the deprivations? They deserve the good things in life as much as anyone.

Is consideration of family merely an excuse to justify the pursuit of wealth? Is that what one really wants? Couldn’t wealth, if used philanthropically, also bring fame? After all, it is the wealth of overseas Africans that is building houses in Africa and helping to establish new businesses. Couldn’t such a programme be devised to help far more of the poor by building larger numbers of small dwellings and creating industries with high employment potential? Couldn’t wealth used in this way possibly lead to an appointment as a government minister or a chief executive of a state corporation? Surely the pursuit of wealth does not automatically close the door to the pursuit of fame.

Would staying overseas lead to the acquisition of a personal fortune? It has for a few, but for many more it has led to many years of disappointment. Some are trapped in a foreign land for the rest of their lives and those who return in retirement are often separated from their children who chose to remain in the society they have known from birth. Those who can face the risk of such a fate may choose to cash-in their return ticket, while those who heed the call of duty will report to the airport on schedule.

John Powell To learn more about the intriguing story of the grassroots industrial revolution in the turbulent Ghana of the second half of the twentieth century, read John Powell’s novel The Colonial Gentleman’s Son or his non-fictional account The Survival of the Fitter. More details of these books and photographs of the informal sector artisans of Suame Magazine in Kumasi will be found on the following websites. ( http://www.ghanabooksjwp.com ) http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_28?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+colonial+gentleman%27s+son&sprefix=the+colonial+gentleman%27s+son.

Just imagine being given a jail sentence merely because we could not handle our emotions. Think of the public outcry! But conjure with the idea of being given a thirty, forty, even a fifty or sixty year sentence! The level of public indignation about our human rights would surely dwarf any riots we have seen. Add a final insult and tag us 24 hours a day to remind us of our emotional disorders, and the fury would erupt. Yet this is exactly what many of us do to ourselves. We impose life sentences of emotional self-imprisonment and tag ourselves!

And the metaphor gets even more real and even more horrifying, the more one dwells on it.

Because of trauma, shock, hurt or abuse, we can and we do sentence ourselves more harshly still. We commit ourselves to solitary confinement, guarding our inner most emotional secrets with a level of zeal and shame with is extraordinary. This personal imposition can also originate from guilt, abandonment, rejection, or from humiliation, bullying or molestation.

Yet in our hearts we know that were there ever to be any appropriate system of emotional courts with judge and jury, none would convict us as severely as we have done to ourselves. None would find our case proved as warranting such a fierce punishment.

But just focus on this metaphor one more time- when we have the highest criminal prison population on record. And now ponder on the fact that a vast number of us – walking the streets apparently free, have nevertheless imprisoned ourselves in unresolved emotions!

And our level of commitment to the sentence can be astonishing. It can involve a vow of silence and secrecy to ourselves – something we determine to take our grave. This we can deem preferable to a mistaken belief that if we unburden ourselves we will be emotionally pilloried until our death by relatives and friends, and that should be avoided at all cost!

More weird, emotionally speaking, even when the underlying cause can have been in no way of our making or our fault, we still seek to deny that to ourselves and then compound the denial by buying deeper into the shame, humiliation and rejection as if somehow we deserved it!

That can set in train yet more entangled and constraining behavioural thinking. We can use this misconceived buy-in as a stick to beat ourselves harder than anyone else with the same knowledge ever would – or should. And why ever do we do this? Because we have let ourselves think it is our just desserts! The ‘tagging’ is provided by our self-talk which we encourage sub-consciously to reinforce our worst thoughts about ourselves

And paradoxically we can find we draw strength from our apparent courage and fortitude to shoulder it on our own, when few around us would see any sense or justification in that.

I think it is fair to say that Time once was when maybe this emotional flagellation was deemed to be part of being human and living a human life. Not enough was known then about psychology and the impact of our behavioural thinking.

But no more! No longer is that true. Irrefutable psychological and behavioural truths pile up one on top of another – from one research project after another – each revealing to us ever more about our human nature. More welcome still they reveal to us how we can neutralise and re-frame our reactions to horrific indignities we have endured.

The benefits of encouraging ourselves to end our self-imprisonment, to give ourselves emotional parole and to re-configure the emotional memories and patterns are now well documented.

Why? If for no other reason, because we know now it is no longer necessary for we humans to endure it. And nor is it justified any longer to inflict our emotional shortcomings on others, young or old, for them to replicate what we have done and to resort to emotional self-imprisonment for themselves.

So we should at least talk about these things, share them and unashamedly seek help to understand them. We should cherish the reality that none of us are perfect, that we are unique and most particularly we are blessed with the ability to cure ourselves emotionally.

And if that is not enough, then quite simply accept that we do not deserve this toxic form of imprisonment when help is now at hand. There are number of good proprietary self-discovery books and programmes available to find a new level of happiness.

I strongly recommend you look at the Hoffman Process and at a book called “You Can Change Your Life” by Tim Laurence. Alternatively you may find it helpful to read the self-discovery novel. “Squaring Circles” which I have written. It deals with emotional patterning such as this. It is available from http://www.amazon.co.uk of from http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk in paperback or online through most UK bookshops. I wish you well.

Many have pondered over the millennium the concept of living forever here on Earth, in other words not dying. Some say that death is good because it is the only way that mankind could progress. However when people die with knowledge, observations, and experiences they take all of that with them when they die, and unless they wrote it down we don’t have it.

Therefore, we are doomed to repeat and learn it all over again, and even if they did write it down, the language changes, it’s interpreted incorrectly, and we make the same mistakes again. What if we didn’t have too? Okay so, let’s talk about this for a little bit; specifically let’s talk about the psychological challenges of unlimited life on the human psyche.

In fact, there was a very interesting article in the September-November 2005 issue of “What Is Enlightenment?” The article was an interview with Ray Kurzweil titled; “Chasing Immortality” on page 58 where the interviewer seemed to ask the question that although humans want to live forever and that they have a fear of dying or death, they are not really psychologically able to deal with immortality. To this, I disagree. Let me explain.

Ray Kurzweil said; “psychologically, we are not equipped to live 500 years so if we’re talking about conquering disease and aging, and then just living as human beings in our current form for hundreds or thousands of years, that would lead to serious problems. I think we would develop a deep ennui, a sort of profound despair. We would get bored with the level of intelligence we have in the level of experience we have available to us.”

Whereas, that may be so, it also seems that humans are put under a tremendous amount of stress with the reality that their lives may end, they are also disheartened when loved ones around them die, often too early. I’d say that is psychologically challenging, even more so than extended time periods of life, at least people could have the choice to check out if they wished. To suggest that humans could not psychologically handle an unlimited life is mere speculation, and whereas, some folks may not be able to handle it, others would probably have no problem with it – either way humans would adapt.

And, I am with Ray Kurzweil on this; just because there might be psychological challenges ahead for life extension, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We spend an awful lot of time trying to cure diseases, ailments, and even cancer. We devote vast amounts of resources to extending human life in the short-term. But in the end everyone who has ever lived, has died, or at the present period of human technology; will die. But why I ask, if we have the technology, understanding, and are able to hack the human bio-system creating something which can last for 1000 years, then we should do it.

Lastly, for those who are of a religious context and believe that mankind was not meant to live forever, as he was only meant to be on Earth as a testing period, until which time he would seek eternal salvation with the Savior, then, obviously mankind seems to be able to deal with the concept of heaven and living the remainder of their life experience in there. Thus, a good many folks are already pre-prepared for unlimited life, even if such a story is currently a myth. Indeed I hope you will please consider that point as well, think of all this.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Mind and Memory. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net

When people are asked” what is forensic psychology?”, they usually think of the criminal profilers seen on movies and television shows, when this is only a fraction of what happens in reality. In its most basic definition, forensic psychology is the application of the psychology practice within the law and the legal system. The word “forensic” originated from the Latin word “forensis” which means “of the forum” referring to the Imperial court in ancient Rome. This relatively new specialized branch of psychology was only given official recognition by the American Psychological Association in 2001.

The portrayal of forensic psychology in popular shows, books and movies caused a surge of interest in the field, especially for the past few years. However, these are glamorized depictions of the profession and are not entirely accurate. The people who practice forensic psychology aren’t strictly “forensic psychologists.” They could also be clinical psychologists or child psychologists, but their expertise or knowledge might be required to provide assessment, testimony and recommendations in legal cases. Some of their roles include determining an individual’s competency to stand trial, mental health assessment in insanity plea cases, and specialized forensic assessment of an individual’s personality. For instance, a clinical psychologist might be asked to assess the mental health of a suspect or a child psychologist will be asked to evaluate children subjected to abuse or prepare them for court testimony in criminal or child custody cases.

Forensic psychologists work in jails, police departments, law firms, rehabilitation centers or government agencies and deal directly with lawyers, defendants, victims, families or patients within these institutions. Their responsibilities within correctional institutions involve regular psychological assessments, individual and group therapy sessions, anger or crisis management and other court-ordered evaluations. The work of forensic psychology also includes working with the police departments, to evaluate law enforcement personnel and provide training on criminal profiling and other relevant courses. There are also those who prefer academic pursuits in universities to do further research on criminology, law and the human behavior. Analyzing crime trends, criminal profiling and effective mental health treatments are some of the topics covered by forensic psychology.

What separates this branch from other fields like clinical psychology is that forensic psychology is limited to specific duties in every individual case, such as providing advice on the suspect’s mental capacity to face charges. Learning the answers to “what is forensic psychology?” means dealing with individuals who are getting evaluation and treatment not by choice, unlike in the usual clinical setting where clients volunteer to seek help.

They are also called to provide expert testimony but they must be knowledgeable enough of the legal system to be called as a credible witness for the case. Majority of their role is preparing and delivering their testimony and translating it to legal terms, which has been more challenging since lawyers know how to undermine or discredit psychological opinions. There have been cases of malingering or feigning illnesses so psychologists should know how to recognize the real symptoms as well as evaluate the consistency of information across different sources. A great part of understanding the answer to “what is forensic psychology” means being able to explain or reformulate psychological terms or principles within a legal framework.

For more great information about different branches of psychology, you will want to visit http://whatisforensicpsychology.org/

Carl Jung couldn’t clearly and immediately translate the meaning of dreams, even though he discovered the right method for a perfect dream interpretation. Thanks to his discoveries we can understand the wise unconscious guidance in the dream images. However, his work is obscure and incomplete.

I could simplify the dream interpretation process mainly because I discovered that we can completely trust the unconscious mind that produces our dreams due to its saintly nature. Thanks to my obedience to the unconscious mind, I could discover the existence of our wild conscience (anti-conscience) that generates mental illnesses within our conscience. Therefore, I understood exactly why we dream, while Jung couldn’t understand the real importance of the unconscious psychotherapy.

The unconscious mind works like a psychiatrist and psychologist because we have inherited too much absurdity into the biggest part of our brain. Our animal and absurd anti-conscience keeps trying to destroy our human conscience and control our behavior.

Since I could discover this basic truth, I could clarify Carl Jung’s method and help you immediately understand the meaning of dreams. Now you don’t need to wait for more information in your next dreams, the same way that you don’t need to compare this dream to your previous dreams like Jung used to do. You can instantly understand the meaning of any dream without analyzing other dreams of the same dreamer.

* I discovered that we can easily translate a series of dreams if we’ll translate only the meaning of the most important dream symbols that appear in each dream, and we’ll relate this information to the dreamer’s life.

I also discovered that long dreams without many dream symbols can be translated into only a few words, while the translation of short dreams with many dream symbols is quite long.

I understood that I had to define the meaning of the most important dream symbols in a few words, since they are so important for the comprehension of the meaning of a dream. Carl Jung wrote many pages about the meaning of each important dream symbol.

This was a big complication. If I had to tell an entire story in order to explain the meaning of just one dream symbol to a dreamer, what would happen with the rest of the dream? When would we have time to talk about the importance of this dream in the dreamer’s life?

Thus, I simplified the definition of each dream symbol, besides discovering the meaning of numerous dream symbols that Jung couldn’t understand. I learned how to make fast dream translations without paying attention to all the details of each dream because I had to translate many dreams for the same dreamer in a short period of time.

However, many times the details of each dream are revealing. These details are very important. Thus, I had to find a way to easily identify the important details of a dream, besides translating the meaning of the dream symbols. 

I discovered that the important details of each dream are the ones that appear in many dreams, in similar forms.

I will give you a real example by analyzing three dream scenes from a series of dreams of one of my patients.

In one dream the dreamer was very sleepy; she hardly could open her eyes.

In the next dream the dreamer was afraid of darkness.

In the third dream, a part of her personality was blind (The dreamer dreamt that she was helping a blind girl walk. This blind girl was a part of her personality that was not able to see many things).

Therefore, the fact that the dreamer cannot see her reality is a detail that appears in three dreams, in a different form. This is an important detail.

Here is the meaning of each dream image:

Being sleepy = She was not fighting her absurd anti-conscience; she was resting accommodated instead of paying attention to the dangerous truth. Her anti-conscience was taking advantage of her indifference and destroying her human conscience while she was resting.

Being in the dark = There are many things that the dreamer ignores about herself and her reality.

Since this dreamer was afraid of darkness in the dream, this means that she was afraid of the truth she ignores about herself and her reality. This truth has a painful effect on her psyche.

Being blind = She was not seeing many things. She was acting without understanding what she was doing.

The dreamer of my example is neurotic, but I cannot give you more details about her case. I’m only using the dream images that appeared in her dreams in order to give you a practical lesson.

Therefore, when you’ll perceive that a certain detail repeatedly appears in your dreams, this means that this detail is very important, even though it is not a dream symbol.

* After understanding the importance of certain details I made a research about this matter, looking for all the important details found in each series of dreams of the same dreamers. I discovered that the important details in a dream are the ones that indicate danger.

This information should help you in your dream translations. You can easily translate the meaning of your dreams if you’ll learn the meaning of the most important dream symbols and you pay attention to the important details of a dream.

However, you must also follow the dream logic. This is a very complicated matter that I could clearly understand only after fighting craziness and winning the battle thanks to the unconscious guidance.

The anti-conscience uses craziness in order to destroy our human conscience. Craziness is evilness, but in a camouflaged form. The unconscious mind tries to help us preserve our sanity and show resistance to our anti-conscience’s attacks with a logic based on sanctity. This comprehension helped me understand what to look for when translating the meaning of dreams. 

The fight between our evil anti-conscience and our human conscience (which needs the guidance of the saintly unconscious mind) is the fight between Satan and the human being. This is why most dreams present dangerous situations to the dreamers, they are nightmares, or they are bad dreams not as scary as nightmares, but that make the dreamer feel uncomfortable and sad.

* The unconscious words are the words of a spiritual guide for our human conscience. When we fight absurdity, we are basically fighting evilness.

This knowledge helps you directly understand the unconscious intention when you look at a dream. Therefore, you don’t waste your time with suppositions that are far from the truth.

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.

Click Here to download a Free Sample of the eBook Dream Interpretation as a Science (86 pages!).

When we learn new things, which are contrary to what we’ve learned in the past, we need to data dump the bad probation, and grab onto the new. That’s not always as easy as you think, but maybe there’s a reason for that. Indeed, maybe it’s important to have strong beliefs, if one is to self correct, to learn new things? Okay so, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about this for a few moments shall we;

There was an intriguing piece in Physorg (dot) com recently titled; “New insights into how to correct false knowledge – The abundance of false information available on the Internet, in movies and on TV has created a big challenge for educators,” which was posted on February 7, 2012. The article had stated;

“Students sometimes arrive in classrooms filled with inaccurate knowledge they are confident is correct, indicating it is deeply entrenched in their memory. “Errors that are deeply entrenched in memory are notoriously difficult to correct,” Recent research in cognitive science has shown it is possible to correct false knowledge with feedback — a phenomenon known as the hypercorrection effect. When students answer a test question wrong, the more confident they are in their original answer, the more likely they are to remember the right answer if corrected.”

Now then, I’ve always said this to be true, because when someone finds something to be ironic, or at a place, or contrary to what they believe with their heart, soul, and mind, it tends to shake them out of their belief system. Indeed once they learn the new information, they tend to remember it quite well. This is a good thing, because if you are in martial arts, and you do a particular motion 20,000 times to develop muscle memory through repetition, and then you find out you need to learn to do it a different way, it may take you 40,000 times to fix the problem.

However, with the brain it doesn’t seem to work that way, it appears that the brain can self correct. At least as per this study, but there have been other psychological studies which have also shown something similar in this regard, and that is that people more often learn from their successes rather than them are there mistakes. In this case however it appears that their newfound success is correcting their mistake, therefore they remember it. That sounds rather ironic, but, it also makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?

Interestingly enough, this is one of the challenges with artificial intelligence. They need a way to dump the data, to get the bad information out. In fact, some artificial intelligent robotics have shown to exhibit schizophrenic type tendencies whereby they will be doing a certain task a certain way, and then all of a sudden revert back to a previous version of the way they learned it the prior.

Thus, perhaps the brain has to work this way, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to work at all. Do you see that point as well? Maybe what the psychology researchers have discovered here we should have reasoned without their research, shouldn’t we have seen this already? Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Mind and Memory. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net

It’s funny how we can know deep-down that we have fundamental emotional issues, yet we do not want to admit them to relatives or friends. So we don’t tell them. And not telling them can also rule out in our mind us seeking any form of professional help either. Why? Because to do that could be tantamount to admitting to the world publicly that we did have issues, that we had lost the plot, and we do need help. But might we be fooling ourselves? Yes! I am afraid I believe we could be!

Aren’t we are operating in disguise? Couldn’t we think we are hiding our issues completely, when others have detected them? Isn’t the truth that despite the fact we have emotional issues, we still haven’t admitted it intellectually to the most important person involved – ourself! No admittance: so we don’t do anything about it to help ourselves either!

That means our emotional masquerade has been born and nurtured and unless and until corrected, it will begin to flourish and be patterned.

We can go on trying to refute to ourselves the reality that actually we do have issues. These maybe about ourselves – our fears and phobias, or maybe about our family or relationships. Ironically, because we know we aren’t handling things well, we can then contrive to make it worse!

We can succumb to the need first to pretend we are happy with our lot anyway. We put on a jolly front. Yet we know we are not. And as it fails to convince us, sub-consciously we know something else has to be done.

This can trigger the need to bring our intellect more into play to demonstrate our effectiveness at the expense of our unresolved emotions. To do this requires us to develop an added zeal and commitment about our work. Especially this can involve changing our approach to perceived tasks at work or at home. Often we can upgrade these to an urgent status, when it can be questionable whether in some cases they are even necessary.

And we can find it a seemingly very effective strategy too. Our work rate appears to have multiplied while the emotional issues seem to have been banished. In fact we can deem it so successful that if our hidden emotional issues should happen to be suddenly inflamed further by some unanticipated event, we have ready-made solutions!

We can intensify the pretence that nothing is wrong and also put our foot down a bit more on the ‘zeal’ button and, hey presto, the problem seems solved.

Or is it?

Don’t we ourselves begin to sense that others close to us have detected how we are beginning to run circles round ourselves? Doesn’t their tone and their body language alone put us on notice? So don’t we then try a yet additional ploy?

That’s when our attempt at open self-justification can start to set in. ‘Oh! How busy we are!’ ‘No time to think!’ ‘Yes, I must get down to that next week.’ We employ every excuse in the book! Taking care of the children and all their activities, can be another one – and often very easy to justify.

But what are doing to ourselves with all this? Getting by? Maybe, but such a compromise is rarely healthy or sustainable.

In truth we are progressively and systematically ‘de-selfing’ ourselves. In so doing, we are not allowing our emotional self to be heard or accounted for. Yet this is a vital element of human make-up enabling us to interact more effectively and at one with our fellow humans.

One might, of course, challenge this as unrealistic and impracticable. Isn’t some of this deferring of emotional issues necessary, merely as a result of the pressures on us of time and privacy?

Yes it is true any expert would confirm that reality of today’s hectic lifestyle. But they would also advocate only truly postponing an issue coupled with the clear intent to deal with it. They would caution against converting it into a habitual way of shelving things.

To a greater or lesser extent, pretty well all of us are emotionally sensitive and reactive. Acknowledging unresolved feelings betrays only common sense. It most definitely does not admit to failure just because one discusses upsets that have begun to dog one’s life.

This can be with the person much behind the issue, or if that is not possible, then with a relative or friend one can trust with the confidence. Almost inevitably they will welcome the chance to share their own, rather than avoid the discussion.

Often merely understanding better the dynamics behind issues is more than half the battle won. Yet we seem to deny that just as we are capable of feeling untoward emotions, that somehow we are not equally equipped with the ability to learn how to manage them better.

There are some excellent counsellors around, many who already have the Tshirt for coping with just the dilemma one believes is unique to oneself. From such people can come not just a sense of release but greater ability to help oneself – and others, in the future.

But meanwhile the sheer scale of wisdom residing in one’s family, friends and colleagues never ceases to amaze me. Why ever do we spurn it!

To stop the masquerade and address it, surely, must make for a truer form of happiness?

Gerry Neale is the author of self-discovery novels and articles. His intriguing novel, Squaring Circles is available in paperback (ISBN 9780956868824) from http://www.amazon.co.uk 0r from the website http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk

As a very prolific online article writer, I’ve probably pounded out 2-3 million words in the last 6-years, and I don’t know for sure exactly how many, because I am not certain how many articles I’ve done now via speech recognition software – however what I do know is my abilities to do things with my other hand have improved drastically, including writing or even silly things such as crumpling up a piece of paper and shooting it across the room into the trash can with amazing accuracy.

Why is that? This is not something I’ve been able to readily do until recently. So, to my question which is also the title of this article, I dare to ask; “Does Typing 2 Million Words Make Someone Ambidextrous and Change Their Brain Format?” and to that question, I believe so. They say that kids to learn a new musical instrument when they are young do better at math. Why is that? Is it because of the dexterity and the use of their hands in learning and playing the musical instrument along with the sounds and melody from their sense of hearing?

Is it because of how all those little muscles in their fingers find corresponding areas of the brain to connect the dots? Because of the Internet, text messaging, and all the personal tech toys are we inadvertently causing the changes in the formatting of the human brain in such a way that allows the human brain to do other things? I believe so.

Of course, spending over 10,000 hours typing on a keyboard producing online articles is not something that people have typically done in the past 10,000 years. Neither is text messaging, or the act of carefully pressing very small buttons or touch screen keys with incredible accuracy, using either hand, but hopefully not while operating an automobile – do you see what I’m driving at? It is known that folks who are ambidextrous, are also capable of other things, and their brains perhaps have a different ratio of white to gray matter.

If someone’s brain is formatted to think a certain way, and then they learn a different way to think, they are most likely capable of thinking both ways in the future, this could create interesting combinations, and better brains. But we don’t know that for sure, and the research is rather vague, but other people have asked similar questions so it appears that my theory here might actually hold some water, therefore it commands more review. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Mind Development. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net

In my mid-teens I read a book by David Holbrook called “Sex and De-humanisation.” It was a good time in my life to read it, it spoke of the high suicide rate amongst prostitutes and how losing moral orientation led to a lack of self-worth; it drew the distinction between love and lust, as the ancient Greeks would have put it between Agape and Eros, and the necessity of honouring the former.

On the radio recently I heard an article about ‘Pa’ Jackson’s Corinthian Casuals, who beat the Football Association’s cup winners Blackburn Rovers (8 – 1) and Manchester United (11- 3, still that clubs biggest defeat). Their record would have been even greater had they not had a rooted objection to competition. The Corinthian’s philosophy was that gentlemanly conduct was always superior to the will to win at any cost; they would not take advantage, withdrawing players if they were winning by too great a margin, the did not take penalties and disapproved of the concept. They were the greatest football team of their day, and they proved beyond question that the true amateur is always superior to the professional. You see, the amateur acts from love while the professional prostitutes his skills for money and that base motive taints and conditions performance.

The Corinthian team of 1896-7

You may have been stirred by Lord Tennyson’s immortal words on the Charge of the Light Brigade,

“Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

“Charge for the guns!” he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.”

It is worth remembering that the officers in Tennyson’s ‘Cherry Pickers’ were expected to spend more on their mess bills than they received in pay.

If Holbrook was right, and if we extend the principle to life as a whole, the horrific and rising tide of mental illness in Western Civilisation finds its explanation in the grasping, selfish, target led values by which ‘winning’ is everything and honour is a word which has fallen out of use.

A few days ago I was asked to teach in a college, the topic was Stress Management, I was appalled to find several textbooks stated there are two approaches to stress management, Problem Solving Approach and Emotional Approach, and that problem solving is better (when the problem is solved stress goes away) while the emotional approach boils down to no more than Denial.

I will spare the blushes of the (well- known and highly regarded) writers of those books by not naming them!

As a solicitor my approach was problem solving, I wanted to know the facts so the Law could be applied to the clients’ problems, in order that they be resolved. Unfortunately, it is in the nature of problems that some can be solved and some cannot, at least in the way the client wanted; but, even if a problem is resolved, it is also in the nature of the phenomenal World that as soon as one problem is solved others arise to take its place. If this is the approach you take to problems, no matter how hard you try, you will never be free of them.

In Counselling I learned the facts of the client’s story are not what matters; the question is, “How does that make you feel?” The Emotional Approach to problems is not denial, far from it. If a client succeeds in driving a problem from his conscious mind it merely hides in the sub-conscious and the problem is not solved at all. The Emotional Approach to problems it to bring them into conscious understanding so that it can be seen what they mean to a client. If the client can see the positive aspects of the ‘problem’, and there always are positive aspects, then the problem is no longer a stressor to the client and he or she will be better able to deal with such events in future.

The real stressor in problems is the conflict between how the client wanted the World to be and how it is. If the client can realise that it is actually alright for the World to be as it is, there is no more stress. Yet the World, in the form of managers, government ministers, and now it seems, teachers is in Denial of this, demanding we must all achieve so and such. The real cause of stress, then, is the pressure we put on individuals with “must” and “ought” and “need to” in setting targets as the only goals, suggesting that what people do is all that matters and what they are is of no importance.

Some years ago, in another college, also teaching Psychology, I asked of a group of students, “Are you human beings or human doings?” After only a little thought most replied, “We are human doings.” This is what they had been taught!

It would be enough for this article to rail against well-known and highly regarded writers of Psychology textbooks for their spiritual and practical ignorance of Human nature and their factual ignorance of Counselling. Grave though the accusation is, it is not the point. When people are made ill by being caused to believe that what they do, not what they are is all that matters, when they are abused and exploited by micro-managers, self-esteem declines and so, performance declines.

It is seventy one years since Winston Churchill famously said,

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

The young spitfire and hurricane pilots, of whom he spoke, in challenging the awesome might of the Luftwaffe, a challenge which gave Churchill the chance to keep the flame of Western Civilisation alight, were not professionals, fighting for money. What they fought for was love of country, love of humanity, even love of Love itself. These were true amateurs in the spirit of Tennyson’s Cherry Pickers and the Corinthians, it made them invincible.

Of course we should all do the best we can with the world of problems, that may be a duty but it is not our true purpose, and if we fail so be it. It is not until we learn to love ourselves and to do what we love, because we love it, that we will achieve freedom from stress or success in the World.

About this Author
Mike is the author of EDWARD Learn more at: http://www.edwardstafford.co.uk See the book at Amazon, Smashwords, Booklocker or Google Mike is also host of a Blogtalkradio show which is archived at http://www.MikeVoyce.com

According to Wikipedia, cyberpsychology “encompasses all psychological phenomena that are associated with or affected by emerging technology “. The Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology define cyberpsychology as “the study of the human mind and behaviour in the context of human-technology interaction”. Increasing interest in cyberpsychology has meant that institutions like Dun Laoghaire are now offering cyberpsychology-related qualifications. For example, a unique BSc in Psychology with Interactive Entertainment and a continuing professional development course in cyberpsychology are available from Glasgow Caledonian University, and a small number of PhD programmes also sometimes crop up, which can be found advertised on websites like findaphd There are also courses for counsellors, reflecting the need for suitably qualified individuals in the field of cyberpsychology.

Cyberpsychology is still in its infancy, although there are a number of researchers and clinicians out there who could be called cyberpsychologists. Professor Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent has been called an expert in cyberpsychology and has interests in online game addiction, in addition to being a professor of gambling studies. Dr. Monica Whitty of Leicester University has published books on online relationships, while others like Kimberley Young were exploring problematic Internet use before the turn of the century. In the UK anyone can call themselves a cyberpsychologist, as there are appear to be no legal restrictions on individuals who wish to do so. The British Psychological Society (BPS) and Health Professions Council do, however, protect a number of titles such as “Clinical Psychologist”, “Health Psychologist”, and “Practioner Psychologist”. Perhaps in the coming years “Cyberpsychologist” will too become a protected title, but it could be quite a long time before this happens, if at all.

So how do you become a cyberpsychologist? There are many people, like myself, who train for many years in order fulfil their ambitions of becoming a psychologist specialising in cyberpsychology. However, it is important to do some research and planning to reach this goal. Firstly, it is of paramount importance that you check your degree and/or masters degree is accredited by the BPS if you want to train as a psychologist. If you are planning advanced study after your masters degree, so that you can offer psychological services to the public as a practitioner psychologist, you must also check whether completing the course will allow you to register with the Health Professions Council (HPC). If you don’t want to be a Psychologist, but you are interested in cyberpsychology, then you could simply take a cyberpsychology course offered by a university.

When you start out at degree level you will probably be undertaking a straight psychology degree, or a degree in something like clinical psychology or applied psychology. Once you buckle down and start studying you are likely to have one of two experiences. Either you will have fixed essay titles and assignments with no freedom to write about cyberpsychology until your final year project, or you will be given a little freedom in your second and/or third years to write about something of your choosing as well as having your final year project to look forward to. Some essay titles that are heavily aligned to cyberpsychology may even come up for one or two of your modules, so don’t think that there will be limited opportunities to write about cyberpsychology in your first two years. Before you apply you could even e-mail a member of staff who has research interests in cyberpsychology-related areas to ask if they plan on basing any essays around cyberpsychology.

Your final year project will offer the greatest opportunities to write about cyberpsychology, provided that your proposed project is aligned to the research interests of your supervisor. This means that you should do some research and think about how your project is aligned to your supervisors interests. For example, my supervisor was interested in perfectionism and I was interested in video games, so my final year project looked at whether perfectionism was involved in video game use. I later went on to write about health and well-being in video game play for the final year project of my masters degree, again dovetailing with the research interests of my supervisor and the general course content for health psychology. Be aware that a percentage of the final mark for your project may lie in the research proposal, for me it was 20% proposal, 80% project. A good proposal will help guide your project, so make sure you work hard at both. You are looking at around 1500-2500 words for the proposal and around 8000-11000 words for the project

When planning your final year project you will find some areas of cyberpsychology are still developing, meaning that there is a lot of room for original contributions. Though be warned, you should conduct a thorough literature review before beginning significant pieces of work like the final year project, as you may well find there is a lack of research in certain areas that could make it very difficult to provide rationale for your study. On the other hand you may have been reading around various Cyberpsychology topics before you arrived at university or while you were studying, so you may be aware of well researched areas that you could look at from a different angle. Play to your strengths if possible and stick to what you know. If you get too ambitious you risk being overwhelmed by a large data set and the statistical analyses you have to run on your data. This could make the write-up incredibly difficult and time consuming (I made this mistake and paid for it later).

When writing you should also do your best to avoid abandoning the formal, scientific writing style you have spent so much time developing. One of the biggest mistakes I made while writing in my first year was to put in unsubstantiated personal opinions, which is a big no-no. You should avoid getting carried away while writing about cyberpsychology in your second and third year, by remembering that any arguments you make should be evidence-based. If you get carried away you could end up presenting statements or arguments without providing references. It is also easy to be lazy and fall into the trap of not bothering to find the reference for something you read about months ago. Doing either of these things will affect the quality of your arguments, so keep a level head, follow a logical progression in your writing, and hunt for those references. Not only will this help to improve your work which can result in higher marks, but you will be honing your research skills by learning the types of search terms you need to use to find what you are looking for. In cyberpsychology this is important, as there may only be few articles exploring the area you are writing about. Hopefully you will find the experience of writing about cyberpsychology a satisfying process, and one that gives you insights into the type of research you might be conducting in the future.

When you have completed your undergraduate degree you can then move on to your masters degree. If you want to offer psychological services to the public as a practioner psychologist with a specialty in cyberpsychology you must first complete a BPS accredited stage 1 masters degree in a broad area you are interest in. There are seven types of HPC-regulated practioner psychologist roles, each one requiring a corresponding masters degree (e.g. MSc health psychology to be a health psychologist, MSc clinical psychology to be a clinical psychologist). Completion of these stage 1 masters degrees allows you to gain access to the various stage 2 professional doctorates, as well as the BPS’ own stage 2 training course. Entry requirements for professional doctorates differ between universities, so be sure to check before you apply. Most, if not all, will require you to be doing a relevent job, voluntary work, or a combination of both. Some will require you to have achieved at least a merit at stage 1 in order to gain entry to the course. If you choose a professional doctorate you must ensure that the course is accredited by the BPS and will allow you to register with the HPC; you can check the accreditation status of courses on the HPC and BPS websites. Stage 1 courses are generally 1 year of full-time study or 2 years of part-time study. Stage 2 courses tend to take 2 years full-time or 4 years part-time.

The other option is to complete a PhD, which will require you to submit a research proposal to a university that employs staff with research interests in cyberpsychology. To ensure you apply to an appropriate university you will need to engage in some independent research before applying. Some universities have specialist cyberpsychology research groups, such as the University of Bolton and Nottingham Trent University, so look out for research groups while applying in order to better tailor your proposal to departmental strengths. For a PhD you will produce an original contribution to the field of cyberpsychology, which will require you to produce a substantial piece of research of around 80,000 words. This might seem daunting, but a PhD takes 3 years of full-time study to complete, so you should have adequate time to submit your work if you manage your time properly. That is as far as this guide goes, I can’t give further advice as I have not yet completed doctoral level study. Hopefully I will be able to add to this article in a couple of years and give better feedback about the doctoral level training.

I otherwise firmly believe that there will be many opportunities in cyberpsychology in the future. Although it is likely to take you an average of 7 years to become a fully-qualified psychologist you should not be discouraged, as the potential rewards are great. With dedication and hard work you could become one of a handful of experts worldwide with a speciality in your field, producing groundbreaking work over the course of your career. Stay positive, you will get there in the end if you work hard enough.

If you need to find any of the resources discussed here you can find them at http://www.cyberpsych.co.uk, one of the few portals for cyberpsychology-related resources. Bookmark the site and show your support for cyberpsychology by joining the Facebook community group and Twitter. Thanks for reading, and good luck in your training.

Matt Harvey