Psychology Articles

An example of a belief based on the assumption of truth would be when the Conquistadors first invaded South America. The indigenous people took one look at them and assumed that they were horse-men. In other words, the the Spanish and their horses were a single entity.

The reason was that the people of the region had never seen a horse before, so naturally enough they jumped to the conclusion that they were looking upon a single creature.

Another example would be the AIDS virus. When this first hit in the early ’80s, the belief was that you could catch the disease simply by touching someone who was suffering from it. The British police used to wear surgical gloves during rallies put on by HIV infected people. Their fear was that if they had to arrest anyone, then without the gloves, they lay themselves open to the infection.

When you think about it, beliefs are a pretty good imitation of knowledge. Naturally enough, the stronger the belief, the more likely it is in our minds to be true. Most especially with a strong belief, we’re unlikely, or in some cases unwilling, to wait until we have the full story.

In the first months of the AIDS virus making its appearance, virtually nothing was known about it. What was known was that it was a death warrant and so if I had the virus, then I’d be avoided literally like the plague. The belief that by touching someone has now been proved wrong since all the information is known, and true knowledge has been attained.

But originally, AIDS was considered in the same way as scabies, which can be passed from one person to another by skin contact.

Beliefs, then, are formed by incomplete knowledge, by jumping to conclusions. We’ve seen this all the way down through history. People thinking they could cure themselves by drinking copious amounts of mercury, for instance. Far from curing themselves, they were killing themselves.

The old business of ‘bleeding’ a patient, in the belief that in so doing, all the bad and poisoned blood would be taken from them and they’d recover.

During the terrible plague of the 14th. century, people turned to the church for relief and a cure from the agonies they suffered. This proved an exercise in futility.

The primitive person who’s never seen an aeroplane before, will automatically assume it to be a great bird that makes a fearsome noise. Can they really be expected to jump to any other conclusion?

Even today, when some scientists scoff at the idea of parallel universes, others say that such worlds may be possible. So here we see beliefs, but virtually no knowledge with which to back these ideas.

So we see that beliefs without conclusive proof are just that. Beliefs

Here’s another belief for you. Old Mike Bond thinks he’s a genius. Problem is, there’s absolutely no proof to the rumour! One thing that is absolutely true is that he has a marvellous Website which we invite to to visit by clicking on The Hypnosis Attraction. Oh, and don’t forget your FREE downloads!

There’s no question that it’s difficult not to grant a personal belief to something, especially when it’s new. We saw this with AIDS. But there’s equally no question that it’s far better to wait until you have all the information under your belt before coming to a decision.

We form beliefs about people in exactly the same way. Let’s say we meet someone for the first time, we shake hands, but they don’t seem particularly interested in us at all. They seem distracted. They’ve shaken hands, but our presence really seems to mean nothing to them.

“Funny bloke,” we think. “Why did he even bother?”

What we don’t know is that he’s just come off the phone, having been told that his wife’s just died of cancer. He’s been expecting it, of course, but it still hits him like a jack hammer. We made no attempt to hold off on our judgment of the person until more information was forthcoming. This is human nature.

Emotion and Brainwashing

The successful and intentional formation of a belief is caused by exciting the emotions. It’s true, therefore, that your beliefs have a lot more to do with your emotional state than with your intelligence. To excite, to whip up, the emotions of a number of people is brainwashing, at least in it’s basic form.

This was how the Chinese treated the American POWs during the Korean war. The point was that these poor chaps were lectured day after day on the subject of Communism and when they weren’t being lectured, loud speakers extolled the considered virtues of their captors’ beliefs incessantly.

You can’t possibly brainwash a person through calm and reasoned argument. Why? Because you give him or her a chance to use their intelligence with their own counter-arguments.

You can see this emotional escalation in films of Hitler’s rallies. There’s no doubt that he was a master orator. I heard it said one time that his public relations team and their abilities were fifty years ahead of their time, and who can possibly doubt it?

We saw it, too, after the tragic death of Princess Diana. The emotional pitch rose to a sea of hysteria, and the beliefs thus formed were taken out on the Royal Family. That they were an unfeeling, uncaring coterie of wooden-hearted snobs.

Very few people allowed reason to reign and understand the actions of the Queen regarding her grandchildren, trying to shield them from the horror of what had happened. Now, when you look back on those days, governed by silly, screaming, unthinking people, what in the world was Her Majesty to do? She took care of her immediate family, especially the children, as any grandmother would do.

So it may easily be seen how thoughtless, wrongheaded beliefs can rule the day.

What a tragic thing it is to pillory someone when you only have half the story. We do suggest a trip to Mike Bond’s Website where you’ll find so much to look at and study.. and all of it the truth! Simply click on The Hypnosis Attraction for your FREE downloads.

This isn’t a rhetorical question. ‘What’s the point of worrying about things?’ demands an answer. After all, worry can be a health risk. It can cause stress, high blood pressure and affect your digestion among other things. When all’s said and done, worry is the same as fear.

We worry because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re frightened because we’ve heard a sound around the corner, and we don’t know what it is. But then, in the same way as anxiety and panic attacks, worry has benefited mankind ever since the dawn of his history.

Without the ability to worry, mankind would have died out almost before it started. In those days on the plains and in the forests, we were the slowest and feeblest creatures alive. We had virtually no natural protection, and were food for any passing carnivore.

The one thing that prevented our demise was our brains.

They were better developed than the other living creatures around us, and we learned to use them. We were able to find out where danger lurked, or possibly lurked, and we’d therefore steer well clear.

The problem was, and still is, that if we simply worried about things and didn’t do anything about them, we wouldn’t progress very far.

In the old days, we’d worry about the possibility of a sabre toothed tiger hiding in a bush at the side of a path we wished to travel. If we didn’t investigate, then we’d never travel the path and we’d just stay in one spot.

So worry puts us on alert. But two things may happen. Either worry defeats us, or we defeat worry. In other words, we can worry to such an extent that we make ourselves ill and we can make ourselves ill to such an extent, that we suffer a nervous breakdown.

The alternative is to keep worry under control. It isn’t a bad idea to spend half an hour a day worrying. Take this one step further. Take out our journal and, yes, that’s right, write it down! I’m a great believer in the old saying, ‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’

Now writing things down on a piece of paper isn’t quite the same thing, but you’d be surprised how close it comes. Try doing it this way;

1. “I’m worried about…”

2. “The worst thing that could happen is…”

3. “The best thing that could happen would be…”

4. “Things I can do now…”

5. “Other factors to bear in mind…”

This brings all your concerns to the fore in an organized manner. You can write out what’s troubling you and then leave it alone for a while.

Up to the stage of writing down your worries, they were milling around in your head in no particular order, one piling on top of the next, so there was no chance of solving anything.

Now, at least, you have a plan.

I was always a terrible worrier. I’d worry about there being nothing to worry about! I do hope this article helps you to at least organize your concerns. There’s a wonderful free download on my Website about worry. All you need to do is to click on The Hypnosis Attraction and you’ll find it.

Students in many public and private schools will likely be experiencing the results of teacher training in the area of Quantum Learning this year or in years to come. Schools as well as business leaders are being trained to implement this powerful, research-based system that uses brain studies and physical movement to enhance the core components of education and/or the work environment. It has been proven to increase teacher/leader effectiveness and improve student performance.

One of the key components of Quantum Learning, and there are many, is the idea of “living above or below the line”. This “line” is a level of responsibility or, as the program defines it, respond-ability, and it is very similar to the Covey “habit” of being proactive; taking control of choices, and therefore taking control of outcomes. You may hear your children talking about this, so this article will address the general idea of “the line” and where you and they are living. This is a great lesson for people in general and specifically parents as it lends itself well to positive discipline.

The basic premise of “living above or below the line” is that we are running our own show, and must take ownership of how things turn out based on the choices we make – good or bad. There is a lot of power in that understanding.

Living “below the line” is defined in Quantum Learning as the message we send when we lay blame, justify or deny. For example, laying blame on someone or something else for our own choices sends the message “I have no control over my life – other people control my life”. Is that true? Of course not – we make the ultimate choices in what we say and do in the moment. When we justify, or make an excuse, we are sending the message “I have no control over my life – outside circumstances control my life”. Again, is that really true? No, it isn’t. Although outside circumstances do affect us, they do not have to control us unless we allow them to. When we deny, or are just flat out dishonest, we send the message “I am a liar and cannot be trusted”. Ouch! We have all lied at some point in our lives, but we don’t ever want to send the message that we are chronic liars. The last “below the line” response is that of simply quitting. This is displayed in the negative and/or apathetic “I don’t care and can’t be bothered” attitude. Quitting, dropping out, or giving up all send the message “I don’t have what it takes”; also, not true. Living below the line is simply living the victim mentality – poor me, look what life is doing TO me.

How do we live “above the line”? We decide that we have the ability to respond in ways that give choices, power and freedom. When we recognize that we choose our response, we begin to understand the power we have in creating the life we want to live. When we actively seek more choices instead of laying blame, justifying, denying or quitting, we ultimately end up with freedom. This is ownership or “living above the line”.

So, parents at home, other adults in the workforce, students in school and all of us as we interact daily, the question is… where are you living?

http://www.examiner.com/x-22164-Nashville-Parenting-Examiner?showbio

I remember watching a television programme a year or two ago, about this man who’d been a hit man for the Mob. He was known as the Iceman. Some of you may well have watched it too. It was incredibly chilling.

A psychiatrist was interviewing him and at one stage, the Iceman said;

“You’re beginning to make me angry.” His tone was absolutely calm. His voice wasn’t raised.

“Would you kill me if you could reach me?” asked the interviewer.

“Yes, probably,” the Iceman replied. “Let’s change the subject.”

Then he started to tell the psychiatrist about his childhood. How he loved to torture animals in various ways, which I have no intention of repeating. The psychopath’s mask of sanity. Yet was he insane?

Now, I love animals, and if I found someone being cruel to one, I’d do them serious harm. The awful part about this interview was that when he was recounting the ways he used to hurt animals, I didn’t really feel any hatred towards him. I do now, looking back, but he’s dead, thank God!

But he told of his cruelty in just the same tone of voice as you and I would use if we were chatting about generalities over a couple of whiskies in the club.

He was a physically huge man and had once been handsome. He told of various times how, when he was having dinner with his family, a Mob boss would ring him and say that a certain person they wanted killed was at a particular location, would he kindly do the honours?

He’d ask his wife to keep his dinner warm, go out, kill the individual, come back home and finish his meal.

Psychopaths have this incredible, ineffable charm about them, that they’re capable of making even the most shockingly outrageous deeds seem quite normal and understandable, as he did when he was recounting the ways he used to ill treat animals.

I wouldn’t have missed this interview for the world, because it shed such light into the mind of this type of person. As you may imagine, they also have this ability of feigning empathy.

There’s a mild form of Autism known as Asperger syndrome. Those unfortunate enough to suffer from this condition find great difficulty in empathizing with others, because they’re what the psychologists term ‘emotion blind.’ The emotions of other people are virtually a closed book to them.

They find it very difficult to read the feelings of others and at the same time, what they themselves have said or done is also difficult for them to fathom. Now, it’s only natural that because of this, they seem cruel and to possess a couldn’t care less attitude at times, but they simply can’t help it.

To their minds, other people view the world in just the same way that they do, and they struggle hard to understand that there are different points of view. This makes the Asperger sufferer far less likely to try to deceive someone, because they see no need for it.

Not so the psychopath.

Hello again. Mike Bond with another little adventure into the mind of the psychopath. I do hope you come to visit my Website to see everything I have on hypnosis and psychology. Don’t forget your free downloads, of course, by clicking onto http://www.wealthyoldman.com

Schools’ jobs are to educate, not to promote eating disorders -Rebecca Tishman

High school students have a fascinating perspective- being on the front lines of school culture, they can certainly help us to understand the pressures of being a teenager today. Rebecca Tishman, a high school senior in New Jersey, knows what she thinks. As someone recovering from an eating disorder, she points out some of the major pitfalls that schools may be falling into inadvertently- even when they are trying to help their students live a healthy life.

Well just about everyone who meets me eventually finds out I’m recovering from an eating disorder. It’s been a constant struggle for many years now, and, while I don’t blame my disorder on the school system, I have found many of the subjects discussed in health classes, and other similar classes, to be triggering. Many of the topics covered over the years have fueled my ED and many others’.

Since the fourth grade, teachers have been drilling the food pyramid into my mind and the minds of my peers. I can’t remember going even a day in school without receiving a faulty message like:

“Only eat healthy foods. Fat is bad.”
“‘Junk food’ is the root of all evil.”
“Diet and Exercise are the keys to success.”
“Eat foods in moderation.”

Believe me, I am constantly catching myself thinking in these black and white statements and have to “reframe my thinking,” as we like to call it in therapy. After three years of tense therapy sessions, weekly nutrition appointments, semi-weekly check-ups, and even more I’m finally starting to realize it may be beneficial to resist the messages and even fight back against them. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure my peers, who haven’t had the “benefit” of all of these resources, can decode the messages.

What I wish the schools would tell me and my peers is that:

All food, whether deemed “healthy,” by societal standards are necessary when trying to have a healthy diet. A diet deficient in fat is also unhealthy for you. The key is balance!

It’s important to learn how to eat “junk food” appropriately from a young age so as not to grow up with distorted views of what food does to you.

Diet and exercise are important, but overdoing it is just as bad, if not worse, than not doing enough exercise-just this month I fractured my ankle by over-exercising. People’s bodies can only take so much and I encourage each individual devise a healthy diet and exercise plan with his/her doctors. There is no reason to go it alone.

And one of my biggest annoyances with the food clichés taught in school is that moderation implies eating less than what your body wants/needs. Instead, balance is the way to do it.

And seriously if I see one more eight year-old looking at nutrition facts to see how much fat she is consuming, I really might just scream! Schools’ jobs are to educate, not to promote disorders- except that is exactly what happens when they show films like “Supersize Me” in conjunction with nutrition units in health classes, and encourage books like Wintergirls for some “fun, summer reading.” Um, did I miss the memo that it’s better to be lying in a hospital bed with a feeding tube uncomfortably shoved up your nose and down into your stomach than to allow your body to be its natural shape?

At the end of the school day, I am left wondering are schools doing all they can to empower students, teach them how to fuel their bodies, and to love themselves, or, are they giving students the tools they need to have an eating disorder? I think it’s time the schools start teaching us to love ourselves as we are and reverse the inappropriate thoughts we kids are having. I encourage parents to get involved:

Don’t let the schools take over your responsibilities as parents-teach your kids how to eat and exercise appropriately

Look into your family history of psychological problems-often, but not always, there is a familial component to eating disorders. Previous family members with depression, drug abuse, etc. can often be linked to potential eating disorders in future generations. Find out what’s been happening over the past few generations and educate your children so they are prepared to fight back against their genetic predispositions.

And take your kids out of the classes that you find inappropriate-I rarely sit through every class of the day due to how readily the inappropriate messages are being thrown around.

Schools and families need to work together to put a stop to the devastating universe of eating disorders.

by: Rebecca Tishman

Hello everyone, my name is Rebecca Tishman and I’m an aspiring artist who writes poetry in my free time. I often upload my recent work to http://www.enigmaticartwork.blogspot.com so please take a look and let me know what you think. In addition, I am in recovery from an eating disorder and write about my experiences as a guest blogger for http://www.DrRobynSilverman.com I hope you enjoy reading my articles and viewing my work.

Many people believe that FEAR decreases creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. In fact, there have been many psychological research studies on this, which would seem to indicate that this is indeed factual. However, judging from my own personal experience I disagree, and I’ve actually found that in times of fear my creativity goes up, and my ability to reason and innovate also becomes hypersensitive, and to me the difference is like night and day.

The only thing that I can reason is that those who have been seasoned athletes respond to fear in a different way. Other people explain that when they get frightened, they make mistakes, say the wrong thing, or cannot perform, in sports we call this; choking. Many people who are seasoned speakers, say that a little fear helps them speak better, and many actors say the same thing. Even performers on Broadway believe this to be the case.

Still, the psychological studies show that this isn’t the case for everyone, and for most people and that fear decreases brain activity, inhibits your ability to reason and think on your feet. That may be so, but it certainly isn’t for me, and I can tell you that any really good athlete or superstar likes to have a little bit of fear prior to competition. And you will find that in the heat of battle that fear helps their brain to focus, and get the job done.

In fact, I have noted that when I compete in sports, and feel an adrenaline rush coming, I am more than hyperaware, everything is crystal clear, and I can remember it as if it was yesterday – even events which I competed in over two decades ago. Therefore, I completely disagree with the findings, and I think the academic researchers are finding too many weak individuals in society to study when they do these tests, and I have a theory on this.

The superstars of humanity are busy doing stuff, and the depressed individuals who cannot perform under pressure, generally can’t perform any way, they have low self-esteem, and since they are not doing anything they are available to help with the test and research. The winners and doers in our society are too busy doing and wouldn’t dream of participating in some clueless and senseless psychological study in some pseudo science. Until the academic psychological researchers figure this out, they are completely misreading the human psyche. Of course, from my research and study of these types of researchers, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you’ve enjoyed today’s discussion and topic. http://www.WorldThinkTank.net – Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.

Before beginning to explore the self-awareness, we must first create a distinctive difference between what “I” and “self” are. Starting from the “I”, we find that it cannot be what it is expressed as to be, since the expressions we use from the “I” are representations of it, not the actual “I”. Why? When we consider that we observe a feather, the representation we have of it in our mind cannot be the actual feather. If it were, that would mean that when we perceive the world around us, the world would be as if teleported into our minds rather than that the sub-conscious has generated a visual representation we observe as the environment. It is the same with “I” and the descriptions we use of it. Entity A (“I”) cannot be entity B (representation) however we would want to believe this fact to be otherwise.

Self is our physiological being. And although it is the same in the case of the self, that it cannot be the description of it, the self is founded on neurology, and what the self actively exists as, is defined by what is actively present in the neurological level in combination. We know this for example when we consider how we experience ourselves as and act as is different when we are seducing someone, when we are in a fight-or-flight situation, when we are acting in a leadership position and so forth, as what they need in the physiological level of human neurology to exist are different in active combination. If we for example considered that all the characteristics mentioned above were actively present all the time, they would without a doubt reduce each other from existence as they are distinctively different characteristics, just as we cannot walk, run and sit down at the same time.

We know how experiences shape the self. “I” remains as it is, undefinable, but the timely self as it emerges from the neurological foundations of the sub-conscious becomes natured through repetition and is alterable because of neuroplasticity (since without neuroplasticity, an individual would be unable to learn or adapt to fit the circumstances). Thus, as the self is founded on the neurophysiology of an individual, our self-awareness is founded on the representations of our self, wherein we can consider the authentic self as if being what one is like the night follows the day. Hence as self-awareness is the awareness of one’s own existence in the form of experiences and representations, reflections, self can be thought as problematic, but can also be clarified by thinking it less problematically or by perceiving the reflections of self as less problematic, i.e. as the reflections are. Because of neuroplasticity we also know that our own self is dynamic in both ways, we can begin to think against ourselves or we can think constructively for our own good, thus increasing the self-awareness in the contrast of our own choice. And from parallel perception, that how different brain interpret the phenomena in the environment differently, thus producing different semantic content to phenomena than the other, we know that none observes us the same way as the other, giving you the question of how do you perceive yourself as?

Copyright © 2010 Henry M. Piironen

Henry M. Piironen is a contemporary European author and philosopher of consciousness, cultures, religions and reality. To purchase his latest books, visit amazon.com now.

Last time, among other things, we discussed how the poor people who suffer from Asperger syndrome think. You may remember that while they may seem cruel and insensitive on occasion, they simply can’t help it. It’s all because of the wretched condition beneath which they labour.

Now we’ll have a look at how the psychopath thinks in comparison to the Asperger sufferer. The answer? Very differently! We said last time that the Asperger victim is ‘emotion blind.’ Not so the psychopath.

Not only are they quite capable of reading other people’s emotions. Their minds are always working out how they might use those emotions to better whatever little game they may be playing at the time.

The only times when they may show emotion themselves is when things aren’t going their way. Perhaps more accurately, when they don’t manage to have what they want.

With the real psychopath, you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t have any fear, guilt or remorse. Neither an easy nor pleasant individual to be around. If someone they know suffers a tragedy, they can show sympathy and act out the motions of distress as well as the people who genuinely feel such emotions. All the time, though, their minds are working coldly and dispassionately as to how they might turn this tragedy to their advantage.

They’re such good actors in this respect that their true natures are very difficult to uncover, to find out how the psychopath thinks. If you have any suspicions about someone, you would have to watch him or her over an extended period of time to see how they behave.

Occasionally, we’re all capable of saying one thing and doing another, but does your ‘friend’ tend to do this all the time? Do you personally feel that this person uses you, or have you noticed them using other people? It can be on a professional level, or of course sexually or emotionally.

Then, once they’ve managed to squeeze all they can out of someone, they simply discard them like empty containers. They’ve had their uses. Time to move on.

And what about something utterly unspeakable like 9/11? Personally, the visions that still haunt me today are of those poor innocents being forced to jump out of windows, ninety or more floors from the ground.

While the psychopath is quite capable of eliciting shock and horror at such terrible sights, he or she doesn’t really feel it. They can watch the images on television, or indeed while they’re physically present at the event, and as long as no-one else is around, they’ll simply take in these sights without showing any feelings of the horror we feel

Another little article on psychopaths from Mike Bond. I do hope these are proving interesting and if you suspect you’re ‘friends’ with one, that the articles are useful. I do urge you to visit my Website where you’ll find so much more of use. Simply click on http://www.wealthyoldman.com and grab your free downloads

Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, 23rd. August, 1973. Armed men charged into the Kreditbanken Bank and kidnapped the employees. The employees were in grave danger and they knew it. Outrageous, yes, but people had been kidnapped before and it would no doubt happen again.

But this proved the be one of the examples of the Stockholm Syndrome.

The extraordinary part about this particular incident was that on the 28th. August, when the employees’ captivity ended, several of them stated that they had no wish to be rescued and added fuel to the fire by refusing to testify against their captors.

Nils Bejerot, the renowned psychiatrist and criminologist, who assisted the police throughout the affair, explained the behaviour of these employees on television, and used the term ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ for the first time. The name stuck, and came to mean the peculiar behaviour of kidnap or hostage victims who come to sympathize, even to love, their oppressors.

We saw this again on Monday, 5th. May, 1980, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher invoked the Special Air Service, (S.A.S.), to rescue the hostages from the Iranian Embassy, located at Prince’s Gate, South Kensington, London. Little did we know that we’d see another of the examples of the Stockholm Syndrome.

Up until that date, negotiations had been continuing fairly satisfactorily with police, but there was a noticeable change in the terrorists’ mood. Then they signed their own death warrants by killing a hostage and throwing his body out in the street.

The S.A.S. immediately launched Operation Nimrod and entered the building from two points; a skylight in the roof, and using frame charges on the first floor windows. The whole operation took less that 15 minutes.

There have been many versions told latterly of the raid, but the day following, there was a story by a journalist, himself a hostage, in one of the national newspapers, saying that up to that time, he’d been dead against the S.A.S., looking on them as hired thugs. This changed his view completely. Without them, he said, he wouldn’t be writing that article.

Where the Stockholm Syndrome comes in is that the S.A.S. had the hostages lie on the floor so they could count them. One of the sergeants recognized a terrorist posing as a hostage. He shot him in the head.

A short time later, one of the female hostages, who’d become sympathetic to the terrorists, managed to take the S.A.S. to court for ‘murder.’ The judge fined them a hundred pounds and the whole business melted away.

It was just a year after the Stockholm case when Patty Hearst decided to become an urban guerilla, following her kidnapping by members of a group calling themselves the ‘Symbionese Liberation Army.’

We’ll look at this later and delve into why certain people show such sympathy towards their captors.

Mike Bond again. I thought we’d have a look at the fascinating subject of the Stockholm Syndrome. There’s lots more of interest on my Website and I do hope you’ll pay it a visit, if only for the free downloads. Just click on http://www.wealthyoldman.com