Psychology Articles

Although all of the ‘Schools of Psychological Thought’ grew out of a wish to understand how the human mind and emotions work and, whilst some shared common threads (for example, the Humanistic and Transpersonal schools have a number of common themes related to belief in the concept of a true and authentic self) they mostly focused on helping individuals deal with psychological problems.

When people enter therapy they do not do so because they feel happy with life. People normally seek out a therapist because they are experiencing emotional or psychological issues that are causing some kind of problem in everyday life – for example, not being able to form relationships, lacking confidence or finding that painful past experiences are stopping them achieving their goals or ambitions. In this sense, psychological therapies and the schools of thought they originate from are aimed at fixing a problem.

Much emphasis is now placed on what is called ‘evidence based practice’ which simply means that therapies are called upon to evidence the fact that they work. It is now common, in some countries more than others, to provide a ‘diagnosis’ relating to the type of distress a client presents with. For example, someone involved in a road traffic accident finds that following this they cannot drive their car, experiences panic attacks and become depressed and is then diagnosed as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Alternatively, someone who cannot stop crying feels there is no point to life, cannot face food and feels tired all the time may be diagnosed with Depression.

These ‘labels’ are commonly used to describe many types of emotional suffering. Some of the therapies resist these kinds of diagnosis as they believe that they label an individual in an unhelpful manner whilst others welcome them and model their interventions around them.

Mental Health is a growing area of concern in many countries and specialist Psychiatric Manuals are used to list a range of symptoms associated with a particular condition. The concepts of capturing diagnostic criteria to assist practitioners identify psychological problems date back as far as the early 1700’s. Referrals for therapy from doctors and psychiatrists will usually be made to a therapist containing a diagnosis of one sort or another based on these two well known and globally used manuals. The success of the therapy is measured in terms of whether the individual recovers from whatever condition has been diagnosed.

Many health care systems now use evidence based practice as the criteria for recommending and funding a particular type of therapy for a particular type of psychological problem.

And now I’d like to invite you to claim your free E-Course “How to Develop your Counselling Practice” available at http://www.counsellingpracticematters.com

Gladeana McMahon is listed as one of the UK’s Top Twenty Therapists by the Evening Standard. An innovator, Gladeana is also one of the UK founders of Cognitive Behavioural Coaching and an internationally published author with over 20 books of a popular and academic nature on coaching and counselling to her name.

Our daily newspapers continually carry stories of wars in distant lands: we read of armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Colombia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. We are reminded of ongoing struggles in Israel and the Congo and hear about the effects of the Mexican drug war. At home we hear about murders, abductions, domestic violence, break-ins and muggings. Surely we live a most dangerous age. But Stephen Pinker would beg to differ.

In his recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. (New York: Viking, 2011), Pinker insists that we take a longer view, and in many cases a much longer view. Much as we may deplore the amount of violence in our contemporary world, in ages past the situation was far, far worse.

We think about the number of contemporary wars because they are constantly brought to our attention on radio, television and newspapers. But to measure current violence against that of earlier ages we need to compare actual numbers. When we examine the number of conflicts in Europe over a 600-year period, the duration and frequency of wars in Europe over a 500-year period, as well as the number of deaths brought about by those wars, the number of territorial wars resulting in the redistribution of land: all of these cases show an overall decline.

What about personal violence? Once again, a study of the numbers tells the story. When we look at homicide rates in England over an 800-year period, homicide rates in the northeastern United States (for which records exist over a long period), or rape and homicide rates in the United States over all over a recent 30-year period: all of these numbers show a decline.

Similar trends can be observed in the way society as a whole treats individuals. We see an overall decline in number of executions in the U.S., the number of lynchings, and instances of corporal punishment. The approval of spanking has also gone down. Acceptance of segregation, intolerance of interracial marriage, intolerance of homosexuality all show reductions.

One may inquire why these changes have come about. Historical forces have had major impact on our behavior: we no longer tolerate bear-baiting or public hangings; the process of globalization has enabled us to take the perspective of peoples unlike ourselves and expand our circle of sympathy to embrace them.

Pinker also points out changes in our human psychology over the ages that have extended our sense of empathy from family to tribe to nation and eventually to all humans. Our moral sense has expanded in ways that lead us away from violence and toward cooperation.

No one would portray the current world as utopian, but a long historical view reveals trends away from violence and toward altruism.

Arthur Wenk, a psychotherapist practicing in Oakville, Ontario, combines cognitive-behavioral therapy (discovering techniques for producing immediate changes) with a psychodynamic approach that helps make changes permanent by addressing the root causes of mental health problems. Art is certified by OACCPP (the Ontario organization for psychotherapists) and EMDRIA (the EMDR International Association). Art’s website, http://www.arthurwenk.com, contains one-page summaries of recommended books on personal growth, brief explanations of common mental health issues, and lectures on parenting, the psychology of families, and the functioning of the brain.

The unconscious mind that produces your dreams helps you understand how your brain works and how you can find sound mental health. Through dream translation you will observe that you have to constantly fight your anti-conscience, which is the wild side of your conscience that remains in a primitive condition. Unfortunately, your anti-conscience keeps bothering your evolution all the time.

You have to eliminate your wild conscience through dream therapy and get rid of your worst enemy. This way, you won’t need to fight the absurdity imposed by your anti-conscience all the time.

You will find sound mental health when you will manage to acquire consciousness of the components of your brain and psyche that belong to your anti-conscience. The unconscious mind helps you acquire total consciousness through dream messages, reflecting your psychological condition.

I will give you an example by publishing a few sentences of a dream dreamt by a 20-30-years-old woman and my translations:

‘I am in the house where I was living several years ago. There is a really big machine outside my home which is in the shape of a cone. It is digging the ground.’

Dream Translation:

‘I am in the house where I was living several years ago.’

The house in dreams represents your psyche. Since this was the house where you used to live in the past, this dream is showing you that your psyche is still influenced by your past. This is why you have the same behavior you used to have in the past.

‘There is a really big machine outside my home which is in the shape of a cone.’

This big machine represents your mechanical reactions. Everyone inherits various behavioral programs in their cognitive mechanism. These behavioral programs start working automatically depending on the stimuli of your environment.

Your cognitive mechanism is the mechanism that helps you understand your reality and react before various stimuli.

For example, when you are in danger, you automatically start running away from what is causing fear. This reaction is the result of one of the behavioral programs you have inherited. It automatically starts working whenever you are threatened by a certain danger.

Therefore, this machine represents the collection of automatic reactions you have inherited.

This machine has the shape of a cone because the cone is a triangle. This is a reference to the three psychological functions that are not working in your psyche.

You have four psychological functions: thoughts, feelings, sensations and intuition. However, only one of these psychological functions is working in your conscience and another one, is half-working.

If you are influenced by your anti-conscience, the half-developed psychological function stops working like the two functions that are not working at all in your conscience from birth.

You have to develop all your psychological functions during your life, and complete the psychotherapy of the divine unconscious mind, which transformed one of your primitive psychological functions into human psychological function. This was how it gave you a human conscience, besides transforming another psychological function into human content up to a certain point.

You have to develop your four psychological functions in order to be balanced. The unconscious mind helps you achieve this goal by giving you information and guidance in dreams.

Since this machine (which represents your cognitive mechanism) has the shape of a cone, this means that you have neurotic behavior because there is only one psychological function more developed in your psyche. The one that was half-developed stopped working.

This means that the three psychological functions that are not working in your conscience, are working in your anti-conscience. They have a primitive character.

Let’s suppose that your mail psychological function is based on thoughts. This means that your feelings, your sensations and your intuition are in a primitive condition. They are childish, absurd, violent, and dangerous.

These three psychological functions are controlling your brain and psyche because you are still attached to the past. Your psyche still lives in the past (old house).

These primitive psychological functions are controlling your mind and behavior, even thought they are working outside your house because they don’t belong to your human psyche. They belong to the part of your psyche that doesn’t have human characteristics.

These three psychological functions are working like a machine, what means that they are following behavioral programs formed by the absurd reactions of your anti-conscience. These reactions are animal, violent, immoral, cruel, and indifferent.

‘It is digging the ground.’

The big machine is digging the ground because it is revolving the past.

In other words, the absurd reactions caused by the behavioral programs you have inherited don’t let you forget your sad past.

They keep revolving the past in order to generate anger and abnormal behavior. This is how your anti-conscience will manage to destroy your human conscience.

You have to stop thinking about the past with revolt in order to eliminate the neurotic behavior caused by your anti-conscience and find peace.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

The continuation of this dream gave more explanations to the dreamer, helping her understand what to do, but I cannot publish the entire dream. I only showed you with this example how your brain works while it is influenced by your psychological functions and the automatic behavioral programs you have inherited into your cognitive mechanism.

You will tame your anti-conscience by showing wise behavior. The unconscious mind helps you achieve this goal, even if you are still far from sound mental health.

Thanks to your obedience to the unconscious guidance, you will always do what is positive and safe, even before becoming wise. Later, you will become truly wise because the unconscious mind transforms your personality. You won’t need the unconscious guidance as much as you need it now that you are absurd.

When you’ll attain a higher level of knowledge, you will also have an excellent memory. You’ll be surprised with your own intelligence. You are a genius, but you are not using the biggest part of your brain on your behalf because it belongs to your wild side. When you’ll manage to transform your wild conscience into a positive part of your conscience you will understand how intelligent you really are.

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!).

Most of us are familiar with “capital T” traumas: a soldier returning from combat; a survivor of a natural disaster; a victim of abuse. In the case of a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a back-firing truck may serve to trigger stored memories. The soldier in effect finds himself transported back to the battlefield, seeing the color of rockets in the night sky, hearing the cries of his wounded comrades, feeling as if he is about to die. Without treatment, these memories continue unabated, leading to the familiar symptoms of hypervigilance, nightmares, hallucinations, and estrangement. Similar symptoms may be experienced by the disaster survivor or the abuse victim. We recognize the dramatic nature of the symptoms and the events that precipitated them.

“Small T” trauma, though perhaps less dramatic in its symptoms, can have a pervasive negative effect on a person’s life. And while few of us experience natural disasters, virtually no one gets through life without experiencing “small T” traumas such as physical or emotional neglect, witnessing parental conflict or abuse, bullying or excessive teasing, loss of a loved one, humiliation or failure, or unresolved guilt. We may understand trauma as any experience of threat to the organism that overwhelms it. Another definition would be an unhealed wound in our equilibrium. When stressed, we try to regain our biological and chemical equilibrium. Trauma may result when our coping systems simply become overwhelmed. Our brain, instead of processing the experience, stows it away where it festers and negatively impacts our ability to deal with the world. Unresolved trauma tends to sap our ego strength and diminish our self-esteem. A general belief in our own inability to cope gains strength with every repetition and tends to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Trauma often lies at the root of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addictions, and other psychological problems.

The most efficacious treatment of “capital T” trauma has been repeatedly verified through experimental research. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) has emerged as the treatment of choice for dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Although the exact mechanism remains to be determined in detail, EMDR essentially puts mis-filed memories in touch with the part of the brain that can successfully process them. After treatment with EMDR the memory remains but it has lost its power to distress or disturb. EMDR has also proven to be remarkably successful in dealing rapidly with small T trauma and its manifestations in trauma-based depression, anxiety and other problems. For more information you may wish to consult the website of the EMDR International Association at http://www.emdria.org

Arthur Wenk, a psychotherapist practicing in Oakville, Ontario, combines cognitive-behavioral therapy (discovering techniques for producing immediate changes) with a psychodynamic approach that helps make changes permanent by addressing the root causes of mental health problems. Certified as an EMDR therapist, Arthur Wenk has employed Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing as a powerful and efficient technique for dealing with many trauma-related issues. Learn more at http://www.arthurwenk.com, where you will find one-page summaries of recommended books on personal growth, brief explanations of common mental health issues, and lectures on parenting, the psychology of families, and the functioning of the brain.

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

In ordinary daily conversation when someone observes that a friend, family member or colleague “has a complex” about something, we generally mean that they seem to have a “sore spot” about the subject, or that they seem to have a recognizable pattern of reactions when certain situations or subjects arise.

These are good layman’s observations which capture two of the most central qualities of what psychologists call “complexes”

1. They are developed around psychological wounds.

2. They have a repetitive, stereotypical quality.

Carl Jung describes complexes

The first psychologist to describe and discuss this psychological phenomenon was Carl Jung. Jung wrote about what he called “feeling-toned complexes of ideas”. The phrase was later abbreviated to “complexes”.

His original description however, adds an important further detail to our understanding of the complex.

3. Complexes have a particular emotional tone or value.

Complexes can be personal or impersonal.

There are certain situations which are so common and universal in human experience that in all times and all places, human beings seem to have evolved complexes of ideas and behaviors around them.

Archetypal complexes are not personal. They arise around essential human experiences such as leadership, romantic love, death, birth, the image of the hero, the trickster, the wise man or woman, the child and many others.

Our organized emotional and behavioral responses to these concepts suggests that they are inherent or instinctive patterns of reaction in human beings.

Personal complexes have both a universal and an individual aspect

Sigmund Freud’s famous Oedipus and Electra complexes describe the universal tensions within the parent-child relationship as the child becomes aware the limits and restrictions in regards to their intimate relationship with their opposite sex parent. The intensity and problem producing quality of this universal experience will vary depending on the real life characteristics of the parents and the family situation.

Fears of losing love and support of parents, feeling inferior, feelings of competition with siblings or peers, fears of being rejected or outcast from the group are universally frightening situations that need to be defended against psychologically by all human beings.

Because complexes are organized around a particular emotional tone, they can be positive or negative.

For example:

A positive mother complex expects all older women or “motherly” figures to be loving and helpful, but a negative mother complex treats all the women who trigger it as bad, demanding or dangerous.
A complex about authority can automatically treat authority figures positively as saviors or, negatively as exploiters.

How does a personal psychological complex develop?

A personal complex is a defense system that we develop after an emotional injury. It is a set of ideas, attitudes, expectations, behaviors… and the feelings that accompany them… that we unconsciously hope will avert a similar disaster in the future.

The typical behavioral strategies developed within complexes are common strategies of human relating:

Pleasing, appeasing, avoiding, aggressiveness, competition, withdrawal and many others.The difference between using interpersonal strategies inside and outside of a complex is that once they begin to function within a complex they become automatic and stereotypical. The same response appears in every triggering situation, whether it is appropriate and helpful or not.

Several complexes can be activated at any one time.

You may function perfectly normally with most people around a meeting table at work but if you have a “sister complex” (about being competitive with your historical sister), that complex runs like a computer application under the surface and turns itself on automatically when you have to speak to a particular female colleague.

You may behave competitively with her without realizing it….even while you are being perfectly reasonable with everyone else.
You could at the same time have a father complex operating which affects your responses to your supervisor and an abandonment complex that kicks in when your ideas are rejected.
You could have an inferiority or a superiority complex also running which color your interactions with others in a self-critical or self-aggrandizing way.

It is easy to see how having activated complexes can cause no end of interpersonal strain and misery.

“Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes’. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” – C. G. Jung (1948, para 200)

Complexes are originally well intended and aimed at protecting us from pain and danger.

But as they become automatic and autonomous they can cause no end of trouble because when a complex is activated we do not really control it.

Jung said, “An activated complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting”. (Jung CW 8 pg 96)

A well-developed complex can collect around itself enough memories, experience and feelings that it can begin to function like a partial or “splinter” personality. If the triggering situation is strong enough it can even sometimes temporarily hi-jack the ego. This state is called “identification with the complex” and in this situation the worldview of the complex temporarily takes priority. When we emerge from one of these states we may say:

“I have no idea what got into me”,”That was so unlike me”or “I don’t know what possessed me!”

These reactions capture the sense that we have responded from a part of ourselves that was not actually under our conscious control. There are even times when we cannot fully remember what we said while we were influenced by a complex, or we may have a sense of having been “watching” ourselves say and do outrageous and uncharacteristic things.

When we see another person captured by a complex we may see a noticeable change of expression, of posture or of tone of voice and say, “He was not himself.”

A complex is a distorting lens.

In order to maintain it’s integrity as a splinter personality and to carry out the protective mission which is it’s reason for existing, the filter of a complex will screen out or dismiss as unimportant any new, confusing or contradictory information and will prefer to concentrate on those situations which support it’s world view.

This is why a person who is in the grip of a complex is so maddeningly impossible to reason with and so rejecting of contradictory information offered by others.

A woman who is in the grip of a complex about men’s infidelity will never feel reassured by her husband’s claims of love and assurances that he will not leave her, no matter how many ways he proves himself.

Identify the characteristic components of your particular complexes.

As you start to examine experiences that you notice or that are pointed out to you as strange, you will probably notice that they always seem to occur in particular circumstances, such as….

When your partner is leaving for a trip
When you have been criticized for something
When you experience or suspect rejection

…or with a particular sort of person.

Trying to please or interest a “fatherly” type of man
Being jealous or competitive with a certain kind of woman.
Feeling “weak” whenever faced with an authority figure

As you become able to predict when you may be triggered, you become empowered to choose to take another kind of action or to disregard the impulses from your complex.

Two other signs that someone is captured by a complex:

The emotions expressed seem overly intense for the situation that triggered them
Language is peppered with absolutes and extremes: “always”, “never”, “Nobody ever”,”everyone always”

Recognizing the experience “after the fact” is helpful because it permits you to engage in “damage control.”

The more skilled you become at identifying your complex-driven behavior, the quicker you will be able to say “I did it again” and take action to repair the situation by apologizing, explaining or trying again in a different frame of mind.

Because complexes both fight to survive and arouse fear and resistance when we try to examine them, it is often helpful to work together with an outside person.

It is necessary to uncover and face these automatic responses because a complex can act like a poorly trained attack dog, snarling and snapping at (or inappropriately cuddling up to) friend and foe alike, causing terrible disruptions in your relationships with friends and colleagues which are based on out-dated fears, feelings and reactions.

A psychologist, counselor or trusted friend can help you identify patterns of response that are hard to recognize from inside and will support you in experimenting with alternative ways of dealing with your fears.

NB: If your therapist works in a cognitive-behavioral model (CBT) he or she may be more familiar with the term “schema” which is another way of talking about the same phenomenon.

As you begin to oppose your complexes with conscious understanding and choose effective real-world strategies to deal with the “dangers” that complexes were developed to handle, they will lose their power because they lose their necessity… and you may have the pleasant experience of having your long-standing complex-driven problems collapse like a house of cards.

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

While many are still reeling from the recent painful Penn State scandal, I fervently hope that this will be a tremendous learning lesson for our society. As a treatment professional of sex offenders as well as victims, I would like to address some dynamics of perpetrators and witnesses that the public in general is perhaps unaware of.

What do child molesters look like? Your grandfather, your brother, your aunt, your employee, and yes, brilliant college football coaches. No one is all good or all bad; and sex offenders are no exception. They may be extremely talented, intelligent, successful, good-looking, blessed with beautiful families and “normal” sexual outlets. They cover all walks of life: early 20’s through 70’s, all ethnicities, races, religions, IQ levels, education, sexual orientations, and all socioeconomic strata. They don’t all look like “perverts.” There is no typical profile.

In psychology, there is a basic belief that “What is beautiful is good.” Therefore, if someone who is beautiful (or does beautiful things) does something bad, it creates cognitive dissonance, a confused state of being that can block comprehension and appropriate action. It is fairly easy for us to believe that an unattractive, low-achiever could commit sex crimes against children, and we then vilify the “pervert,” even after he/she admits it and works to control it.

Many child molesters and pedophiles actually hate themselves for what they consider uncontrollable urges and would get help if they knew where to turn. Sadly, the global belief is that they cannot be helped, and most reoffend. Fortunately, this is completely false. With treatment, the recidivism rate is between 5%-13%, much lower than for non-sex crimes (US Dept of Justice; Bureau of Statistics). While there is no cure for an attraction to children, it can be managed much like substance addictions. Again, therapy and support are crucial to success.

Adults fail to intervene and report abuse for a variety of reasons, one of the most salient being denial or minimization of the offense. This is enabling, and enablers are more culpable than offenders, who can be “crippled” by their disorder. Enablers do not want the offense to be a reality, and keenly hope that it will just “go away,” particularly if it involves a celebrity or someone we really admire. The American culture all but deifies sports figures. We want heroes, and athletes and coaches bespeak health, fitness, confidence, winning, and an all- American wholesomeness that blinds some of us to their blemishes or weaknesses. While not excusing their response to the recent accusations at Penn State, Joe Paterno, Mike McQueary, Spanier, et al, I believe, were caught in this immobilizing, enabling position. While it appears that they put football before the wellbeing of children, potentially what was occurring was their inability to comprehend the severity of the crime and respond appropriately. Their actions may have been completely different and appropriate if the perpetrator were a stranger and not part of the success machine of Penn State Football.

Let us all use this tragedy as an opportunity to learn proper protocol for reporting abuse, even when an abuser attempts to exploit his/her position. Sexual abuse affects us all. This is a public health issue that can be resolved when the media and public move beyond sensationalism. Let’s offer help not only to the victims, but also to the abusers, for the best way to help victims is to help abusers. Let’s focus on accountability, responsibility, solutions, and management vs. blame, demonizing, and retribution.

Dr. Nancy B. Irwin is a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist/therapeutic hypnotist, and author of nonfiction YOU-TURN: CHANGING DIRECTION IN MIDLIFE, a collection of over 40 stories of people over 40 who made successful life transitions.

http://www.drnancyirwin.com http://www.makeayou-turn.com

It is commonly thought that what people believe will influence their mood states. This meta-belief is widely accepted in the mental health sector with competing frameworks existing for how that connection between beliefs and mood states can be therapeutically exploited for good. This article describes two well-known systems and suggests an alternative.

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy is a therapy developed by Albert Ellis (1913-2007) which was the earliest cognitive psychotherapy (1955). He developed his ABC model of mental disturbance which featured an Activating event, a Belief, and a Consequence.

Ellis presumed that between the activating event and the emotional consequence, illogical and irrational beliefs of a certain kind caused mental and emotional distress. In a nutshell, these major irrational beliefs were:

‘I absolutely must act in well in all situations and if I don’t I am a bad person and therefore deserving of punishment of some form’
‘Others absolutely must act well towards me and if they don’t then they are bad and therefore deserving of punishment’
‘Circumstances around me absolutely must go according to how I wish and desire and if not then it is terrible, awful, catastrophic and my life is hardly worth living’

It will be noticed that these three beliefs all incorporate ‘musts’ and ‘absolutes’ in their framework. Ellis believed that such extreme prescriptions for self, others and circumstances were irrational because they are god-like edicts and clearly humans are not gods. (Note: Ellis however was not a theist.)

His therapy method was confrontative and educative, helping clients to become their own therapists. For if they could understand that they were creating their own mental pain; if they could accept that they were repeating sentences like those above to themselves and so indoctrinating themselves to produce further upset then they would experience some relief fairly quickly.

However, Ellis emphasised that clients had to accept that they would have to continue to argue against the absolutist nature of these three types of beliefs if continued relief was to be felt.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive Therapy was proposed by A T Beck (b. 1921) in the early 1960s. Like Ellis, Beck also assumed that certain thoughts produced depression but unlike Ellis he developed a more collaborative method for dealing with disturbed thoughts.

Beck used a method of Socratic questioning that attempted to open up a client’s situation so that more options could be considered. For example, suppose someone was suffering depression because of failing an exam. Beck would say that it is not the exam failure that causes the depression but what the examinee is telling him/herself about it.

These thoughts could be statements such as ‘why can’t I do anything right?’, ‘I am a big failure’, ‘I am hopeless at school’, I’ve ruined my life prospects’ and a lot more besides.

Beck would tackle this situation using these three questions as set out in 1985:

What is the supporting evidence for the conclusion(s) held by the client?
What are other optional conclusions that could be reached using the same circumstances?
What will happen if the present conclusion held by the client is correct or true?

It is important to mention that Beck has developed his method extensively over decades and is open to the idea of eclectic, generic models. (Aaron T Beck is still alive and still teaching in 2012!)

Problems With Classical Cognitive Approaches

What troubles me about the advocacy of cognitive approaches for mood disorders is that people with depression are helped by other therapies that bear no relationship to cognitive ones. Doubtless, clients do feel better after cognitive-type therapies but that fact may suggest that non-specific elements of therapeutic relationships are the effective factors.

Moreover, the ‘faulty cognitions’ may not be the cause of depression but a part of the depression itself. Even that notion is questionable with some research showing that non-depressed persons have similar thoughts to depressed persons!

It should be noted that both these methods above make a common-sense distinction between the initial event and the evaluation of the event as if the ‘event’ and its perception by a person can be considered quite separately. (They also further distinguish the emotional response from the first two categories.)

Although that distinction seems valid because we know that different people can have the ’same event’ (say failing an exam) occur in their lives but not evaluate it the same way, but in that case, can we say it is actually the same event?

The abstractions of the above methods do not tally with our real experience of a failure situation. It is we who are in the situation of failure. The situation is not over there but we are in it.

An Alternative Therapeutic Approach

What if instead of trying to track down illogical or irrational beliefs therapists instead helped clients to accept the exam failure feelings as normal. So, to feel down after having failed an exam is normal because most people do.

What does cause problems and aggravates the situation is to think, imagine, act and believe that you’re unusual, stupid, deficient, imbecilic and backward to be thinking, believing and feeling the way you do about the failure. In doing that, a person judges himself to be no longer part of normal society.

Some instant relief is often felt if the counsellor talks empathically to clients and ‘normalises’ what they are experiencing.

Being told that it’s not so unusual to feel this way and to think certain things surrounding the failure could be therapeutic because it’s as if the therapist is inviting the client back into the world of normality.

Dr Ian R Ridgway is a Christian psychologist with 20 years experience in counselling and tertiary teaching. He relates the Christian faith to his vocation to assist others by developing a quality relationship built on trust and unconditional acceptance of the client (though not necessarily of all s/his behaviour). He provides an individual professional service as set out at http://psy-services.yolasite.com

If you do actually want to be sad and stay sad, don’t make any decisions that could impact on your life! It will, of course, classify you as an unhappy “Maximiser” according to research by Professor Joyce Ehrlinger of Florida State University, but at least you won’t risk making the wrong decision? It seems we all have a choice. We can choose to be “Maximisers or Satisficers.” Yet the behavioural difference between them is profound in both its nature and its results.

I have already written on the Five Levels of Happiness as a way of achieving full happiness across one’s life. But of course that involves making a whole gamut of different choices or decisions related to each and every aspect of our life. Professor Ehrlinger has concluded that many of us are capable of falling at the first fence!

Why?

Because if we are inclined to think far too much about making a decision in the first place, we are very likely to risk adopting an unhappy existence, always fretting about whether the decision is the right one or not. For example, what happens if it is wondering “Should I really go to a friend’s party? Should I change my job? Or even, should I really say yes to this marriage proposal?” One can heap deep unhappiness on ourselves by not making a choice if we live in constant fear of making the wrong decision.

And even if apparently in regard to some choice presented to us, we do bring ourselves to make a decision as a Maximiser, we can then lead a life of unending rumination, tormenting ourselves over whether it was the right move! If this describes us, then the research says we never enjoy the psychological benefits of commitment and our life becomes one overladen by grief. It could strike at the root of potential relationships or career opportunities, multiplying the feeling of unhappiness.

The opposite seems true of “Satisficers.” They have patterned a different behavioural approach altogether. They think the issue through as far as they can and then when they arrive at the final element of doubt, they are far more inclined to listen to their instincts, their sixth sense. If it says, “Do it!” Then they do just that. They are happy that if it works out – then fine, and if it doesn’t – then they will not hold it against themselves or give themselves grief over it.

In my experience of observing myself and others, I think there is another clear difference between “Maximisers” and “Saticficers.” Simply stated, “Maximisers” flirt with the danger of striving to be perfectionists and no less. Satisficers” on the other hand, are much more pragmatic about their own fallibility. And they are much more comfortable in their own skin. They also have a higher sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

For Maximisers, happiness can appear a luxury they cannot afford. But for Satisficers they are far more open to happiness. They let it in and enjoy it.

Happiness is so often there for our taking. Clearly we can kill it or accommodate for it in pretty well everything we do!

Sir Gerry Neale is the author of a self-discovery novel called Squaring Circles. It is published in paperback in the UK. It is available from Amazon (co.uk) and other booksellers

He can be reached on http://cognitivementors.blogspot.com and http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com

What is really out there? Why do we think that we think? This article explores some of the classic works on the topic.

Ross and Nisbett argue that our perceptions of ourselves and our casual attributions for our actions are not in fact complete or correct: we are not born tabla rasa, we do not consistently build basic beliefs, and we cannot predict or control the way we will act. Phychologists and sociologists provide support for this through numerous studies that show a basically consistent, unpredicted, and unsystematic patterns of behavior. Some authors begin by breaking down the idea that our opinions or reactions are as independent and systematic as we may believe. Sherif’s “autokinetic” study and the Ash Paradigm study illustrate that we often act differently when in groups (with group norms, pressure, bias, and social factors). We conform to group pressure (Ash), or, even more extremely, shift our perceptions in order to align ourselves with a group (Sherrif). The Bennington studies, which show how our beliefs about the world are deeply and irreversibly influenced by our social surroundings, illustrate that this effect is not trivial or isolated but instead can have far-reaching and self-defining consequences.

Sherif’s later studies on group dynamics similarly show us that our world perceptions (us vs. them, me vs. you, good vs. bad) can be arbitrary. Chapter three expands on this point with a social slant: Our world is constructed in a social setting and so the opinions of others and the judgments of others play a dynamic part in this construction. I.e., our world is not necessarily “warped” by others opinions but others opinions actually play a role in determining what our world looks like. The “attribution theory of emotion” and the Nisbett and Wilson (1977) cognitive process blindness theory take this one step further claiming that we do not really see the world as we think we do at all.

Ross and Nisbett impose their own interpretation on these findings. They repeatedly argue that we interpret and construct the world in a dynamic way, based on the perceptions and influences of our social surroundings, situational factors, and personality characteristics. They then claim that we are overly unaware that we are only seeing one way to interpret the world. “This lack of awareness of our own construal processes blinds us to the possibility that someone else, differently situated, might construe the same objects in a different way… People sometimes construe the same object differently because they view it from different angles rather than because they are fundamentally different people…. The divergence [exhibited in the Asch experiments] may reflect differences not in the “judgment of the object” but in the construal of just what “the object of judgment” is.” (p82). We make the false assumption that we see it as it is rather than as we interpret it. It is not clear here whether the differences in individual interpretations of the worlds are due only to different external factors (social, environmental, etc) or also to different processing factors (i.e. the mental and physical machines with which we process this information).

Ross and Nisbett do not explicitly state what I see as a major consequence, and synthesis, of both their chapters and much of the literature. But perhaps this is because I do not have and have not read their later chapters. With this caveat, Ross and Nisbett (1) begin by attempting to prove that our world is to an extent an arbitrary construction. They continue (2) by showing that it is important to us that out world be in line with others in our group or reference set (social pressure) and they end (3) with the interesting claim that we misunderstand the world in a fundamental way (with mistakes in traits, etc). To me there is a clear logical step that stands between their points (1) and (2). That (1.5) that we are, on some deep unconscious level, insecure and unsure of the ontological nature of the world and thus need to constantly adjust our view of it depending on the situation and context (see they do not take William James’ point on p. 68 seriously enough) or align ourselves with others in order to attempt to interpret it in the best/most useful way.

It helps if we assume for a moment that there is no “correct” way to interpret the world – and Ross and Nisbett I think would agree with this. Perhaps even the idea of a “correct” way to interpret the world is a non-sensical statement. All constructions are heuristics simplifications intrinsically since the world does not have, unlike our constructions of the world, imbedded causality only systematic temporal correlations. An interpretation is meant, therefore, to be useful in our world, which a deeply social and dynamic one. Why is it therefore surprising that we adjust, conform to, and closely monitor others opinions? If our interpretations are wrong, and we know they always are, there is no good reason to stick to them if they are not working. Our perception of length is clearly not functioning correctly if it derives an answer different from everyone else (since deriving an answer that is useful is our goal, not deriving an answer that is true and it is useful to have an agreed upon idea of length).

So the surprising thing is that we ever believe that we are objectively right about things or that we believe our views are “the way things are,” not that we adjust our world-views in the face of social, environmental, or situational pressure (and various evolutionary psychology arguments have attempted to explain this argument on the grounds of efficiency). Bishop Berkeley, Occationalism, and David Hume have all trodden this ground. I do not mean to make the facile claim that we should always give in to social pressure, that we should always tailor our views to match those around us, only that to explain a deviation from this behavior one need to apply to other reasons than one being “correct” or, even, more arguably, perhaps, “truth.” That our views are deeply inadequate and inefficient, as chapter four argues, is a much harsher claim leveled by Ross and Nisbett in this context.

The literature often builds up a model of perception/ internal_world-creation and the later then added a component questioning the element of causality. For example, Straw, Bell, Clausen piece questions the emergent literature on situational attributions to job attitudes in favor of a more dispositional approach. Studies, they claim lay too much emphasis on the social, the interpretational elements of a job, over-stating the role that the work environment that will determine an individual’s happiness in it. Instead, one can correlate the individual’s happiness and job satisfaction in many respects well before he/she enters the work place. Thus, it is the characteristics, attitudes, and nature and the individual who is the prime determinant of whether or not he/she is happy in the job. This research is interestingly interrelated to the previous Ross Nisbett piece, since Ross and Nisbett’s argument that the person interprets the environment lends itself to the conclusion that no matter what environment an individual is put into, he/she will largely affect the way he/she perceives that environment and thus his/her feelings about it.

In contrast to Straw, et al., Davis-Blake and Pfeffer (1989) argue that the dispositionalist argument is deeply flawed. They claim that the individual’s characteristics are dynamic in nature and therefore they change in time and are furthermore deeply affected by their environment. Therefore, one can expect that an employee, especially in the long term, will be very deeply affected by the nature and prevailing attitudes of his/her workplace. They point to the extreme cases of military training facilities, which are able to dramatically affect the psychology of an individual. Sneider (1987) returns fire with a volley that asserts that the “culture” of a firm is simply the people in it. That these people are self-selecting and will tend to attract compatible people, and that the world is a dynamic place of individuals, not forces. The last piece of the puzzle, the piece by Arvey and Bouchard (1994) builds a strong foundation under the dispositionalist camp but also shows the complexity of the problem. It addresses the nature vs. nurture debate by reviewing the literature to show that while it seems that genetics do make some difference (this lends credit to dispositionalists who would like to claim that people have characteristics, genetic or otherwise, that persist over time) environment is also a large factor (situationalists can grab onto this evidence).

This debate, first between situationalists and dispositionalists about the source of ones attitude about the workplace, and then about the source of our personality (nature vs. nurture) have serious consequences which many of the authors discuss. If we are in fact shaped by our environments, then companies might want to invest significant resources into “culture” and creating a productive workplace. But if our attitudes and productivity are a function of our personalities, then companies might want to select those people with attractive qualities for their company. This has troubling moral consequences as some authors point out.

I would like to emphasize how these points are building up a literature that focuses on central questions about why we view the world the way we do, what effects the world has on us, and what the source of our feelings, attitudes and lives are. The battle lines of the difference sides of this debate are, from this perspective, artificially clear.

If, for example, we ask the question of FREE WILL, for example, the sides dramatically shift. The dispositionalist camp splits into two, some taking a deterministic evolutionary view and others taking view that our personalities are developed early by our environment. The situationalists might point out that we CHOOSE our workplaces and thus choose the sorts of influences that will shape our character. So while we are not in total control of what we will feel about our job, our creativity, etc, we can choose what sorts of forces will affect these metrics. Aristotle, who’s view on almost anything is worth looking up, coined the phrase Akrasia, and this phrase can be applied to this bebate with perhaps some fruitful insights. It is Greek for “weakness of will”. He claimed that we are morally responsible for the consequences of a choice in the long term, even if we are not morally free at the time of our choices. The best modern example of this is if one chooses to get drunk one is responsible for one’s actions while drunk even if one does not have the ability to control one’s actions while drunk. So one is responsible for choosing the path that led to an action even if one is not directly responsible for that action. Of course, Aristotle chose the more controversial example of choosing to live a life of moral weakness and moral compromise which weakened the will to the point that one was not a good/moral person. He claimed that one was responsible for immorality not because we choose to become weak enough to do these acts. I think that these different camps might gain some insight into their nature/nurture dispositionalist/situationalist objective/subjective debates if Aristotle’s wisdom were headed more carefully.

Readings:

Ross, L. & Nisbett, R.E. (1991). The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill. Chapters 2, 3, & 4.

Asch, S.E. (1958). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In E.E. Maccoby; T.M. Newcomb & E.L. Hartley (eds.), Reading in Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company (pp. 174-183).

Staw, B.; Bell, N. & Clausen, J. (1986). The dispositional approach to job attitudes: A lifetime longitudinal test. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31: 56-77.

Davis-Blake, Alison & Pfeffer, Jeffrey. (1989). Just a mirage: The search for dispositional effects in organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 14: 385-400.

Schneider, Benjamin. (1987). The people make the place. Personnel Psychology, 40: 437-453.

Arvey, R.D. & Bouchard, T.J. (1994). Genetic twins and organizational behavior. In B.M. Staw & L.L. Cummings (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 16: 47-82.

Phin Upham has a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). Phin is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He can be reached at phin@phinupham.com

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