Psychology Articles

Whenever I hear someone call out another and label them as having a psychological condition of “Delusions of Grandeur” I immediately look at the person making that statement to see if they themselves are achieved. Why you ask? It’s simple really and I’d say it starts with this simple quote; “you must believe to achieve!” Most of us agree that you can’t accomplish something until you believe you can.

Maltz wrote a very famous book back in the 50s titled “Psychocybernetics” and in this book he made the dubious observation that to achieve anything, it helps to envision yourself as having accomplished it before you actually start the process. In other words, one of the main tenants to success is to visualize in your mind in advance. Now then, I have a question to ask; “Can Delusions of Grandeur Transform Mediocrity and Greatness?”

First, I’d say no not always, but in the cases where people do achieve greatness, chances are they did envision themselves having achieved that greatness in advance, and probably many years the prior, perhaps at a time when they were not great, or even living in mediocrity. So, on one hand we charge people with the label of; delusions of grandeur for envisioning themselves in high places. But if they don’t envision themselves in a place, they cannot get there. Don’t you find that rather ironic?

So maybe this so-called psychological disorder is not a disorder at all, but rather an advantage for people who will go on in the future to do great things. No, not everyone who tries will succeed, but some will. Are we to say that this means that everyone who achieves greatness has a psychological disorder prior to achieving that greatness? When kids are young we tell them to dream, that they can become anybody in the United States, even the president.

However, as people get older if they envision themselves doing something great, we charge them with having delusions of grandeur. So is it really a psychological disorder, or is it a learned attribute, something that we teach our children. If we are to believe that this really is a disorder, then why do we teach our kids to shoot for the stars? Interesting isn’t it? Now then, in contemplating this today, it has occurred to me that this isn’t a psychological disorder at all, but rather a positive thing.

And perhaps maybe those folks that are busy labeling others with delusions of grandeur might just be manically depressed losers in society, who don’t have the self-esteem, self-confidence, or strength of character to achieve much at all in their own lives. In that case it makes sense that they would assume no one else can either. I just hope the labeling of others like this helps them feel better about themselves, don’t you? Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on.

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

Our culture is fond of finding scapegoats. This is evident whenever there is a crisis in society. The most recent riots and looting in London and other major cities in the UK have highlighted this. The crowds blame and bay for blood, revenge and punishments. One of the scapegoats at this time is single parents. Until someone is brave enough to step forward and say “wait a minute.”

If there are significant groups within society who feel alienated, who have lost respect and any moral compass then clearly the situation needs to be addressed from a multidimensional perspective.

In the past few years we have had examples of dishonest and amoral behaviour from the Banking Industry, Politicians, Police and some major Newspapers. Add to this a consumerist celebrity driven culture and the breakdown of families then we have a recipe for trouble.

Everyone has a shadow side to deal with. Those who have done major psychological studies will have encountered the term “shadow.” Our shadow side contains both personal and collective denial. Everything we do not wish to look at that causes confusion, pain or anger gets held in an interior rubbish bin. An incident or event may then trigger emotional movement; this in turn disturbs the rubbish, the contents of which are so ugly, messy and smelly that we dare not look at it much less sort it. So we bury it deeper and point the finger of blame at another for triggering us to get a glimpse of our darkness. Thus we create a scapegoat.

The misunderstanding of the shadow side of humanity creates wars, concentration camps, child abuse, paedophilia and a host of other conditions. It is delicate, and in the wrong hands dangerous work. You disturb the shadow at your peril. This is why a good qualified psychotherapist who is aware and deals with their own shadow side is a blessing. It is work that will not be undertaken by many because it demands such commitment and psychological pain. Were it different then we may have created a healthier world than the current spectre of wars, conflict and famine.

We have a responsibility both to ourselves, our families and our society to heal and become the best we can be. The alternative could be Armageddon. Creating an intelligent evolving Universe requires addressing in full awareness the personal and collective shadow which, when understood, works with and for us instead of against us.

“”The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, ideas, and prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy. A thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all it’s own for the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is, is that these things can not be confined to the Twilight Zone.” Rod Serling

Many Articles on Experienced Spirituality, Multidimensional Reality and Personal Growth can be found on http://www.multidimensionalreality.com including free E-Book upon Request.

We are all familiar with the term “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” An expression arising from a tale told of a young boy who in his innocence declared aloud during a parade by the ruling King of the Realm, where everyone had to bow down to the King’s will, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes!” as all around him bowed low and refused to see the obvious, much less name it. The ruled had been indoctrinated into believing the King was dressed in full regalia and no-one dared to challenge his nakedness except this young innocent.

When anything unseen and hidden is causing problems either within a society at large or as is often the case within the immediate family, first you have to name it. Until something is named there is no possibility of resolving it. Whilst people around the “hidden issue or situation” pretend there is nothing wrong, the hidden gets power.

Naming a problem that everyone around is trying to cover up takes courage. Whistle Blowers often do this, as well as the family “scapegoat “once they become aware that they are being scapegoated. Child abusers rely on the hidden, look what has happened within the Catholic Church. How many families suspected their children were being abused by Catholic Priests but remained silent?

How many of those in authority in the Concentration camps knew inherently what was happening was heinous yet never had the courage to speak out?

It takes courage to name something when everyone around you is accepting something as being “normal” or “O.K.” There is tremendous psychic pressure to keep the status quo, to not upset the apple cart. More so when one’s livelihood depends on such silence or in the case of family, one’s sense of belonging is at stake.

But we remain silent at the cost of the Soul’s Integrity. Do we want to spend our retirement years racked with guilt or denial because we did not speak when we needed to speak? We remained silent and watched suffering and did nothing. By our silence we are complicit.

We remain silent often within a bad marriage. We know things are going terribly wrong but the prospect of our whole world shattering and the pain and suffering that ensues causes many to put up with years of unhappiness. This is changing somewhat nowadays as we see more divorces happening to sixty and seventy year olds, who have decided as their life gets shorter they will no longer spend it in silent misery. Of course there is also the opposite extreme whereby marriage is so superficially undertaken and divorce becomes a rite of passage and cause for celebration.

Fear of being alone causes many to remain in stagnating relationships with an apathetic resignation because they do not believe that no relationship is better than a bad one.

Relationships are for learning, for growing, for discovery and adventure. If your relationship does not contain these elements it may simply be because you are not asking the right questions of each other. Life is too short and too precious to waste it floundering in the darkness. So reach deep inside for the light that always shines and bring the hidden to the surface. When whatever is troubling or hurting, naming it is the first step to dealing with it and from there the healing can begin. But if it is not acknowledged and brought out into the light of day it has no hope of being healed.

You owe it yourself, your partner and any children you may have, to create a growing nurturing and loving environment.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Edmund Burke

Many Articles on Experienced Spirituality, Multidimensional Reality and Personal Growth can be found on http://www.multidimensionalreality.com including free E-Book upon Request.

“All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.”

Elias Canetti

My mother has a simple but strong explanation for why we have particular dreams. She says “What ever we think during the day, follows us in the dreams.” I don’t know about others but with me its 60 percent true if not more. The remedy for the bad dreams which she prescribes is- remember God for 5 minutes before you go to bed. In case it fails the second thing would be- take the left shoe, touch it 7 times to the ground and put it upside down by your head side under your bed (along with a glass of water). You might call me a superstitious but it always works for me. I believe that dreams are suppressed fears or thoughts which we afraid or are hesitant to express. Or they are the ambitions we always had.

The national sleep research project reveals that an average human being spends one-third of its life sleeping. Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. On the other hand, some physicians like Robert (1888, Hamburg) reckons that the dreams are to forget and clean the memory (to eliminate overlapping).

In 1952, Eugene Aserinsky identified a particular behavior of the eyes during the dreams, called REM or Rapid Eye Movement. REM occurs when a person is having a dream; it is similar as a person moves his eyes to scan the situation around while one is awake. Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams. Dreams also occur during the non-REM sleep, it might be to a lesser extent, but there is no such thing as sleep without dreams. Elephants, during non REM sleep stand, bur lie down for REM sleep.

The recalling of dreams is extremely unreliable, although psychologists believe that it is a skill that can be trained. Commonly, 95 percent of all dreams are not remembered. Women are believed to be better in recalling a dream than men. Mostly, a dream may be recalled upon viewing or hearing a random trigger or stimulus. A ‘dream journal’ can be used to assist dream recall for psychotherapy or amusement purposes.

There are so many cultures, communities and faiths in the world and so are the interpretations of the dreams. The Chinese people believed that the soul leaves the body to go into the dream world. If a dreamer is suddenly awakened the soul might not return to the body. For this reason some Chinese even today are suspicious of alarm clocks. One of the Hindu Scriptures ‘Upnishads’ (900-500 BC), emphasize two meanings of dreams first says that dreams are just expressions of inner desires and the second believes (like Chinese) that soul leaves the body but is being guided until it is awakened. The Mexican civilization and some Native American tribes (I am an Indian myself but from India) believe that the dreams are a way to visit and contact their ancestors.

Some religions e.g. Christians and ancient Hebrews believe that the dreams are of supernatural element and they might have a divine power to communicate or to warn. Even in Islam, Muslims believe that Prophet Mohammed received much of the writings of Quran from a dream he had.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) believed that the cause of dream is physiological activity and that the dreams are able to analyze illness and predict diseases. Hippocrates, similar to my mother, had a simple theory on dreams which suggests that during the day, the soul receives images; during the night, it produces images.

More recently Sigmund Freud revolutionized the study of dreams. According to Freud wish-fulfillment was the root behind most of dreams and that the dreams are reflection of the dreamers’ deepest desires. Later a student of Freud, named Carl Jung gave his teacher’s ideas a new horizon. Similar to his teacher he believed that dreams are related to the dreamer’s wishes, which enables them to realize the things they unconsciously desire. Jung believed that the dreams were messages to the dreamer and should not be ignored. He described the dreams as capable to present the dreamer with revelations that uncover and help to resolve emotional problems. He said “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks outside, awakes.”

Whatever is hiding behind the mystery of dreams, nobody can help dreaming. There are some people who dream black and white. Color or black and white, life is itself more or less a dream. For some it is more good dream and less nightmare, for others, vice versa. I believe there is a much permanent and happy place out there. A super-conscious state beyond the consciousness. But until we reach there, lets keep dreaming.

“Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or writer, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream.”

Donald G. Mitchell

Harmander S. Maan

Recently, I was reading the summer issue of Psychology Today Magazine and there was a big article about how to spot a narcissist. It made me laugh, because I can go on to Facebook, and spot tens of millions of narcissists almost immediately. It is interesting how many people run around and point fingers, without looking in their mirrors. Let me give you an example here; the other day, I was at Starbucks inside the big box retailer bookstore, and I overheard a conversation between two teenagers. One of the teens said to the other; “You are a narcissist, I don’t even like you.”

Indeed, it made me smile, and I almost choked on my Frappachino, I’m like oh my gosh, that was a heavy statement, where did that come from? After thinking about this for a second I realized that it came from all of this negativity and left-leaning socialist thinking in our society. We seem to be going after the winners, and claiming that anyone who is self-confident is; arrogant, a narcissist, or an egomaniac. Still, the individual did not take the condemnation lightly, he came back and he said; “you may not like narcissists, but that doesn’t mean I’m not better than you.”

Now then, I was really laughing, I almost couldn’t help myself. He really put that gal back in her place, and he was unabashed, and unapologetic for being at the top of his game as he described it. When the girl started badgering him more, he went through a laundry list of reasons why he was out competing the girl. He said he was better in sports, he got better grades, he was better at playing musical instruments, and that he had a higher IQ, higher SAT test scores, and he’d gotten into a better college. The girl was very angry, and she gave him the evil eye.

I have to wonder what her Facebook page looks like, and all the things that she brags about online, and her need for self validation by putting up all those pictures, and seeking to increase the number of people that “friend her” online. It was an interesting conversation to overhear, but it did not appear to me that the guy was a narcissist. Rather, it appeared he had a healthy ego, and he could back up what he was saying by the scoreboard, or the results he’d achieved in various endeavors in his life. The girl did not deny that he had higher SAT test scores, was good at playing a musical instrument, or excelled in sports.

Rather, she was using the label of narcissist to make herself feel better because she wasn’t able to achieve as much during her life. Maybe we all need to take a step back, and reevaluate the true definition of narcissism. It seems to be a very miss used term, and a hateful label. Maybe it’s time for society to grow up, and consider these angry and mean-spirited comments and labels as hate speech.

Actually, I don’t really believe that, but I think it’s funny because calling it hate speech is throwing back the political correctness in the face of the underachievers and low self-esteem individuals who cannot, or will not perform. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it. If this article offends you, please realize my point is to get you to think, so that might take a little bit of offense to do. So please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,500 articles by August 24th or 25th will be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..

The Existential approach to psychotherapy has been a growing in popularity in Britain for almost thirty years. Despite this, very little is known by other therapeutic modalities about what the existential approach actually is and how its practitioners actually work with clients. In this paper, I want to sketch as simply as I can the existential phenomenological approach to interpretation and an approach to interpretation called the hermeneutic circle.

The hermeneutic circle is a method of interpretation conceived by German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamar in his 1960 work, Truth and Method. It is highly significant work in the history of 20th century continental philosophy. Unfortunately, It is not well known outside of philosophical circles, perhaps this is due to its being over-shadowed by Being and Time, the famous and radical work by Gadamar’s teacher, Martin Heidegger. It is of tremendous importance to existential psychotherapy, and in this paper, I aim to demonstrate why.

Gadamar’s interest is in hermeneutics: the study of the theory and practice of interpretation. In Truth and Method, his aim to discover what makes an interpretation successful or unsuccessful. Hermeneutics can be seen as a kind of science, or perhaps more precisely, the soft science of interpretation. The fact I’ve used the expression ’soft science’, is in no sense a put down. It is perhaps an unfortunate turn of phrase, but Gadamar hermeneutic project is about developing a method of finding out about the human world; the world of signs and symbols rather than the natural world.

Not everything in life, can or needs, to be learned from the physical world and science, or from ‘facts’. Now if someone proposes that the only way to learn anything is from facts, your argument ultimately leads to the argument that you can’t learn anything from art, and simply put, that’s a lie. We do learn from constantly from the world of signs and symbols, just as we do learn something from Shakespeare. It is a something that isn’t or can’t be captured by or in the world of ‘facts’. This is where hermeneutics comes in: it asks what and how we learn from the human world, our immediate world, the world that we are actually being in, or to use Heidegger’s term for human being in the world, Dasein.

Since I’m mentioning Heidegger, I should also highlight a key element Gadamar borrows from Heidegger; his conception of temporality. Heidegger’s theory of temporality firstly states that the human experience of time is finite: will end. Additionally and significantly, he argues that time should not be seen as linear. Instead, argues Heidegger, a human being experiences past, present and future all at once.

In this conception, the past is always with us, but moving in time as we do, we find ourselves constantly moving away and becoming alienated from our past from our own culture. Thus, we find ourselves inevitably pulling the past with us, revisiting it and again, inevitably reinterpreting it, and making it relevant to who we are now, in the present day.

To give an example, when I first encountered Shakespeare as a kid, I hated it. By my teens, that had changed, and now I think some of it is fantastic and it means something very different to me. Further, how I interpret Shakespeare in the future is open to change. There is no final interpretation I will come to about the work of Shakespeare.

While on the one hand this may appear incredibly obvious, if we contrast it with the enlightenment of Hegel, we see something very different. For Hegel, and for enlightenment, modernist and Freudian therapy, we are moving towards a point; an end of history moment, when we find the interpretation. With Gadamer, there is no movement towards a final understanding, but a movement away from our own alienation from our personal history, background and culture. There is no final End Of History point: we move back and forth, or rather around in a circle re-appropriating culture through our experience and reinterpretation of it.

This temporality of experience is what offers us the chance to reclaim art and our lives for ourselves. It is the very act of growing and changing, as society grows and changes around us that makes interpretation possible. It’s our revisiting that is the enabler to new interpretation and the process of uncovering truth.

Viewing interpretation as a circle, rather than in a linear fashion distinguishes existential psychotherapy from other kinds of therapy. Existentially, the clients’ past is not seen as fixed, as how the clients remembers the past from his or her own present, is flexible and open to change. An existential psychotherapist would encourage a plurality of interpretation from client around his or her past, where as an analyst would be more likely to seek an interpretation that was the explanation to a clients particular way of being in the world. Of course I am speaking in generalities here, and there are many types of psychoanalyst, and many branches of psychoanalytic theory. However, I do feel that by highlighting the use of the hermeneutic circle as a method of interpretation it becomes clear how much Freudian theory is based upon enlightenment and modernist conceptions ideas, where as an existential approach allows for more contemporary understanding of what it is to be human.

Max Lowe, Psychotherapist http://www.counsellingeastlondon.org I am an experienced existential-phenomenological psychotherapist, my practice is in East London If your interested in psychotherapy and existential psychotherapy, please get in touch at counsellingeastlondon@gmail.com.

Eton School Head, Tony Little, is to be complimented. He has fired the debate on children’s emotional development beautifully. To his great credit, he is urging those involved in education to take on board that boys can be more emotionally aware – and more vulnerable, than girls. Also he is championing the fact that just as youngsters come in different shapes and sizes, they can each carry their own level or intensity of emotional awareness. He urges too that boys need to be taught differently to girls, even if educated in the same schools.

More importantly, he advocates that the level of a boy’s emotional awareness can condition the way he learns. He believes that boys reveal greater emotional reactions under stress. Also, boys perform better when they have one point of focus as a target. Meanwhile girls perform best when they are multi-tasking.

My view is that teaching methods will have to change and change quickly to take heed of John Little’s comments, if more boys are to avoid becoming adults with inadequate emotional patterns in place. These will most often dog them throughout their adult life certainly until they have cause to re-visit and re-frame the patterns.

I believe education at school and university will have to become much more attuned to the emotional needs of the students. Subjective teaching of subjects in one form of intellectual presentation to whole groups will work less and less well. It has long been recognised intellectually that young people learn differently, one to another. Their emotional education and learning processes need to be incorporated into the curriculum in the same way.

More and more, research on human behaviour obliges us to accept the dramatic impact of human emotions on our learning processes, judgements and decision-making powers. Acceptance of the linkage of our emotional intelligence with our intellectual powers as human beings becomes unavoidable.

Reading, writing, and numeracy have long since been acknowledged as critical intellectual components to lay down the basic foundations on which students can build subsequent learning programmes. Now the ways we feel about learning new tasks will need to be incorporated too as a core emotional component.

The current disconnect between intellect and emotion in education has to be cured. To be more contentious still, too few in education are willing to accept that the inability in a student to read is as likely to be down to the way they are being taught rather than to any inherent disability. What has now come over the horizon is the challenging proposition that a students inability to ‘emote’ effectively is equally down to the way they are taught by teachers and parents – or perhaps more to the point, were not taught but in ignorance, copied their peers.

Sir Gerry Neale has lectured and conducted counselling and life coaching programmes with groups and individuals in person and on-line. He is the author of a recently publisher novel called ‘Squaring Circles’ which explores the implications of dealing with intense emotional patterns of the characters in the book.

He can be reached on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com

Time Distortion is when the mind creates the illusion of time speeding up or slowing down. Have you ever had an event in your life (usually traumatic) that made it seem as if time was standing still or went by so fast you couldn’t remember much of what happened? Those events caused your mind to distort your perception of time.

The question is how and why does this happen? Before I can answer those questions I need to give you a basic introduction into how the mind processes information.

We have two minds; a conscious and subconscious mind. Both of these minds process information differently. The subconscious mind uses associations and is reactive. The conscious mind uses the process of questions and is analytical.

Everything we experience comes through our 5 senses. This input is first processed by the subconscious mind. The reason is the subconscious mind is much faster at making decisions and this allows us to react quickly to events. After it finishes processing the information it sends a selective amount of information to the conscious mind. The conscious mind then uses this selective information to make analytical decisions.

So how does this relate to time distortion? The key is that under normal situations this selective information is a constant size. When the size is changed it creates confusion. Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.

Say under normal conditions the subconscious sends 10 bits of information to the conscious mind per minute (this isn’t a true amount. I am only using it as an example). We will use this 10 bits a minute as our base number.

Assume you were in a car accident and your father was unconscious in the passenger seat. You must get him out of the car before it explodes. At this point the subconscious mind decides the only thing that matters is saving your father’s life.

Your subconscious will then begin to block out anything not directly related to getting your father out. This causes less information to be relayed to the conscious mind (instead of 10 bits a minute it becomes 1 bit a minute).

The problem is the conscious mind is set at 10 bits per minute. In this example It will take 10 minutes for it to receive 10 bits. Once the information reaches 10 bits the conscious mind will assume it was 1 minute and will distort reality to make what really took 10 minutes feel like only 1 minute. That is why it feels like time moves so much faster.

Now let’s say you are walking down the street when suddenly someone jumps out of an alley and points a gun at you. In this type of situation the subconscious mind will still block out any background stuff not related to the danger at hand. However every detail relating to this danger will be passed to the conscious mind.

This time there is 100 bits a minute being sent. Using the same 10 bits = 1 minute base, ever 1 minute in reality will be distorted to feel like 10 minutes (100 bits divided by 10 = 10 minutes). Not only will your perception of time slow down, your ability to remember certain details will increase.

This is why people will report knowing every detail of the gun and person involved. Another example is rape victims will remember surprising details of their attacker.

Both of these conditions can be trained. Athletes use the process of slowing time down by training their minds to notice more and more details while blocking out unnecessary information.

When we are enjoying something we tend to have tunnel vision and this causes it to pass quicker. Like the saying goes “Time flies when you’re having fun”.

So the process of time distortion is all based on how much information the subconscious mind choices to relay. it is just an illusion created by our conscious mind.

Jeremy T. Jordan is a dynamic Speaker and Personal Life Coach that specializes in the areas of Success, Happiness, and Fulfillment. He is the founder of Why U Can Life Management; a personal development system designed to empower people with the knowledge and skills of self-mastery. For more information on Jeremy T. Jordan or the Why U Can Life Management System go to his website http://www.whyucanlifemanagement.com.

To learn more about the conscious/subconscious minds visit Jeremy’s new Blog http://www.twomindsblog.com/.

The human species is currently facing a problem no other species has ever faced. We have outpaced evolutions ability to adapt to a changing environment. Normally major changes in the environment took thousands of years and evolution could adapt accordingly. Humans however have created major changes in our environment in a very short 200 years.

One of those changes is the amount of choices we have. This is a major problem because our minds (conscious or subconscious) are not designed to deal with excessive choices and we can’t wait for evolution to fix it.

The subconscious mind makes decisions based on consistent patterns from past events. Touching a hot stove equaled pain so don’t touch it in the future. It can only react to an event if it believes there is a clear-cut choice. Therefore the subconscious mind can only make decisions when there is a consistent answer.

The conscious mind is designed to analyze and deal with inconsistent situation. It does this through the process of asking and answering questions. You might not always be aware of the questions but they are there. When you decide to buy a candy bar your conscious mind asks “do I want a candy bar?” “What kind should I get?” stuff like that. This analytical process is great at dealing with the inconsistent issues we face.

The problem is when we are presented with too many choices to choice from. Let me show you how this works so you can fully understand the problem.

When you are trying to decide between two different choices (say A and B) the conscious mind will go through the following process of questions.

What are the advantages of A?
What are the advantages of B?
What are the disadvantages of A?
What are the disadvantages of B?
How do the advantages of A compare to B?
How do the disadvantages of A compare to B?
How do the advantages of A compare to the disadvantages of B?
How do the disadvantages of B compare to the advantages of A?

As you can see there are 8 questions with only 2 choices. What happens when there are 3 choices? In that case there are 18 questions. The math works out to be ( X squared times 2 = # of questions, where X is the # of choices). So 4 choices = 32, 5 choices = 50, 6 choices = 72, 8 choices = 128, 10 choices = 200. That’s 200 questions your conscious mind goes through in order to decided between 10 different choices. Remember you are not always aware of these questions, but it is how your conscious mind processes information.

Anything beyond 6 or 7 choices can cause the conscious mind to lock up. It is simply not designed to handle that kind of processing. When the conscious mind locks up and is unable to make a decision we call that analysis paralysis; a condition of being mentally paralyzed by over analyzing a situation.

Excessive choice is a major component of the stress we deal with. No only is it an issue before making a choice, it will affect a person after the choice is made.

The weird thing is research has shown two different results in regards to how we feel after making a decision involving multiple choices. In his book ” Paradox of choice ” Barry Schwartz claims that people become more stressed after making a decision involving excessive choice. Yet, research by Dan Gilbert seems to suggest we favor our decisions after we make them and this leads to more happiness.

Why would there be such opposite results involving the same condition? The funny thing is both of these people and their research are correct. Let me explain.

Our subconscious mind is designed to protect us by avoiding pain. This includes the pain of being wrong. When we make a decision our subconscious assumes it was the right choice and will view the choice in a favorable way. Subconsciously we will become happier with our decision.

Our conscious mind is designed to analyze situations and has a tendency of continuing to analyze our choices. It will question if we made the right decision, especially in situations involving excessive choices. This continued analyzing will create additional stress.

It is a strange paradox that making a decision that involves excessive choices will make us both more and less happy at the same time. This is another reason we must find ways to limit our choices.

Jeremy T. Jordan is a dynamic Speaker and Personal Life Coach that specializes in the areas of Success, Happiness, and Fulfillment. He is the founder of Why U Can Life Management; a personal development system designed to empower people with the knowledge and skills of self-mastery. For more information on Jeremy T. Jordan or the Why U Can Life Management System go to his website http://www.whyucanlifemanagement.com.

This article will consider the nature of Self through modern precepts, critiquing Freudian psychology.

Common definition:

A view of Self.

The Self. A belief in the discrete nature of the individual (Ericsson). It is the factor that separates the individual from the rest of the world, which is thereby seen as a reflection of the individual. While Self is separate from reality, reality somehow is not correspondingly separate from Self.

Self is perceived as a reality, evidenced through events. We do not always feel ‘real’, only at times. Those times we feel ‘real’ are understood as a whole. The integration of Self is therefore part of the way we have constructed reality. The Self is contingent, but we must experience it as a whole, not of discrete divisible parts.

Freud’s fragmentation

Freud took the Self as their own and reshaped it into the Ego, ID and Superego, thereby breaking it down into several units. These reflect psychic energies (Ego. ID) and the negotiated relationship with the environment (Superego). Also, the ID feeds the Ego with psychic energy. These arrangements reflect the psychic health of the individual. Self has become a physic barometer, conditioned by medical opinion. The Self operates through the spectrum of Doctors and no longer exists in an ideal form. The Self reflects time, crucial to Freudian psychological ideas, completely determined by a relationship to drives and the environment. Self is negotiated by human authority.

Self is a mechanism created through a process of drives (currents of energy) that according to availability and accessibility creates a unravelled relationship with objects (people/things/ideas).

This is crushingly negative, and represents the lowest point of deductive, psychological reasoning. In many ways, it has proved difficult to retrieve Self from this microscope. Even with Berne or Ericsson concepts of Self are concerned with relationships and evidenced through observation by external operators.

Freud’s concepts, picked up while at university from studying Brentano, can lead to an infinite Self, benchmarked by human physical and psychic development. Try an experiment. Relax and think of your Self, roam around yourself. Space expands exponentially. Your Self appears to exist outside time. In this fashion, it is possible to grasp if not agree with Freud’s placing of Self in spatial dimensions, eliminating every day concepts of time. Freud appears to have perceived the Self as connected to external reality through the expression of drives or neurotic behaviour, and connected to time through early experiences. Achieving wholeness, that is accord with the environment, Freud reconnected the psyche with time through integration with others or ‘another’, a lover or wife.

One description of ego:

The Ego exists differently from Self, representing its surface, what succeeds activity or action. It is inseparable from physicality. In order to effect choice we tell ourselves that everything we decide is based upon independent decisions. All choices we make are events, shaped by corresponding and complementary events. They are not separated from the actions of others. Therefore the Ego flavours or decorates our activity, providing an illusion of separation. Contemplation of the Ego is not evidence of its existence.

But such deliberations leave out an essential factor. Although Self is seen as an integrative whole, this mainly alludes to the mind. The geographical and spatial elements of the body, how we actually interface with the environment, are ignored. It is often through the body that events are experienced and understood.

Experiences of Self:

The separation of Self is an illusion caused by our reflective response to stimuli and events.

It is the outward response to stimuli and involvement in events reflected back to create a sense of integrated reality. In effect, our relationship with physical objects is contingent, incomplete and accidental. By absorbing it into a false sense of wholeness we create meaning.