'The latest research on the effects of environment and genetics on personality...'

'Submissiveness and dominance have their effects on the same reward circuits of the brain as power and cocaine. Baboons low down in the dominance hierarchy have lower levels of dopamine in key brain areas, but if they get ‘promoted’ to a higher position, then dopamine rises accordingly. This makes them more aggressive and sexually active, and in humans similar changes happen when people are given power. What’s more, power also makes people smarter, because dopamine improves the functioning of the brain’s frontal lobes. Conversely, demotion in a hierarchy decreases dopamine levels, increases stress and reduces cognitive function. But too much power – and hence too much dopamine – can disrupt normal cognition and emotion, leading to gross errors of judgment and imperviousness to risk, not to mention huge egocentricity and lack of empathy for others.' -- Political power is the dizziness of loss aversion.

'..."go-getters" who are willing to work hard for rewards had higher release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in areas of the brain known to play an important role in reward and motivation, the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. On the other hand, "slackers" who are less willing to work hard for a reward had high dopamine levels in another brain area that plays a role in emotion and risk perception, the anterior insula. -- The role of dopamine in the anterior insula came as a complete surprise to the researchers. The finding was unexpected because it suggests that more dopamine in the insula is associated with a reduced desire to work, even when it means earning less money. The fact that dopamine can have opposing effects in different parts of the brain complicates the picture regarding the use of psychotropic medications that affect dopamine levels for the treatment of attention-deficit disorder, depression and schizophrenia because it calls into question the general assumption that these dopaminergic drugs have the same effect throughout the brain.'

'Dreams are seen as being projections of parts of oneself. Often these are parts that have been ignored, rejected or even suppressed. One aim of gestalt dream analysis is to accept and reintegrate these. As with all gestalt therapy, dream analysis involves much dialogue and acting out. The dreamer is encouraged to enter into dialogue with the various aspects of the dream. The dreamer will also be encouraged to take the part of the dream elements, to act out the dream from their perspective. This applies as much to inanimate as to animate objects. So, for example, if you dream of being chased across a field you might begin a dialogue where you turn to face the pursuer and start asking him/her/it questions. Then you might take the place of the pursuer and start describing the chase from that point of view. This process could then be repeated from the perspective of a tree in the field overlooking the chase - a new perspective that could bring unexpected realisation.'

'Jung proposed two basic approaches to analyzing dream material: the objective and the subjective.[22] In the objective approach, every person in the dream refers to the person they are: mother is mother, girlfriend is girlfriend, etc. In the subjective approach, every person in the dream represents an aspect of the dreamer. Jung argued that the subjective approach is much more difficult for the dreamer to accept, but that in most good dream-work, the dreamer will come to recognize that the dream characters can represent an unacknowledged aspect of the dreamer. Thus, if the dreamer is being chased by a crazed killer, the dreamer may come eventually to recognize his own homicidal impulses. Gestalt therapists extended the subjective approach, claiming that even the inanimate objects in a dream can represent aspects of the dreamer.'

'...what mattered to the babies was if the environment was consistent before and after birth. That is, the babies who did best were those who either had mothers who were healthy both before and after birth, and those whose mothers were depressed before birth and stayed depressed afterward. What slowed the babies' development was changing conditions -- a mother who went from depressed before birth to healthy after or healthy before birth to depressed after. -- In the long term, having a depressed mother could lead to neurological problems and psychiatric disorders, Sandman says. In another study, his team found that older children whose mothers were anxious during pregnancy, which often is co morbid with depression, have differences in certain brain structures. It will take studies lasting decades to figure out exactly what having a depressed mother means to a child's long-term health. "We believe that the human fetus is an active participant in its own development and is collecting information for life after birth," Sandman says. "It's preparing for life based on messages the mom is providing."'

'The secret fear of marriage is that the kid wins the Oedipal drama.'

'What do religion, psychology and "ancient alien theory" have in common? -- For Jung, the collective unconscious is a vast repository of human knowlege, instinct, memory and experience accumulated since the birth of the species and genetically and psychologically passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, the archaic collective unconscious is an invaluable and wisdom-filled source of information unconsciously linking us all together, much like the World Wide Web, the Internet, links us together and has become an integral part of our interconnected collective consciousness. ...many of the phenomena frequently cited by ancient alien theorists are more convincingly evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious than of early extraterrestrial influences. Whether or not extraterrestrial life exists and has visited this planet in UFO's, past or present, is still an open question. But it seems clear that deep in our collective unconscious resides the archetypal idea and imagery of these alien entities, just as the archetypal idea of God and the Devil live within us.' -- She's baaack. Mommy looms large over you laying in your crib. Nice, nasty, or indifferent? God, Devil, neither or both?

'The circumstances of our lives may matter less than how we see them, says Rory Sutherland. At TEDxAthens, he makes a compelling case for how reframing is the key to happiness.' -- "Our perception is leaky."

'Nothing makes people more neurotic than the expectation that they should be enjoying themselves. -- “To some extent the needs and wants of people have to be continuously stirred up,” [Dichter] argued, so that everyone will work hard to buy what they desire. In the early 1950s he discerned that, when Americans borrowed money, they preferred to do so from loan sharks at high interest rather than from a bank, because they saw bankers as judgmental father figures, whereas loan sharks lacked the authority to moralise. He advised one bank to advertise checking accounts with overdraft facilities, recognising that people wanted more money than they had but didn’t want to take out loans. As for credit cards, Dichter presciently called them “magic” for the way they provided “the American consumer with a symbol of inexhaustible potency.” One can only imagine what he would make of America’s latter-day spendthrift habits. -- “Recent published findings in neuroscience indicate it is emotion, and not reason, that drives our purchasing decisions,” reported Mobile Marketer magazine earlier this year. The quantitative trends that tossed Dichter aside have ultimately led back to his ideas.'

'We try to avoid anxiety by getting rich, by making a hundred thousand dollars when we're twenty-one years of age, by becoming millionaires. Now none of those things lead to the joy, the creativity that I'm talking about. One can own the world and still be without the inner sense of pleasure, of joy, of courage, of creation. I think our society is in the midst of a vast change. The society that began at the Renaissance now is ending, and we are seeing the results of this ending of a social period in the fact that psychotherapy has grown with such great zest. Almost every other person in California is a psychotherapist. And this always happens when an age is dying. You see, the Greeks began their great age in the seventh, sixth centuries B.C., and then they talked of beauty and goodness and truth, all these great things that the philosophers talked about. But by the second century B.C., first century B.C., that had all been forgotten. The philosophers now talked about security, and they tried to help people get along with as little pain as possible, and they made mottoes for human beings. Beauty and truth and goodness had been lost. Our Renaissance began the modern age, and at the beginning of an age there are no psychotherapists. This is taken care of by religion and by art and by beauty, by music. But at the end of an age – every age down through history has been the same – every other person becomes a therapist, because there are no ways of ministering to people in need, and they form long lines to the psychotherapist's office. I think it's a sign of the decadence of the age, rather than a sign of our great intelligence.' -- Release

'The purpose of defense mechanisms is to stop you from changing. So that after the trauma or the break-up or the loss you are still you. More sad/ashamed/impotent/enraged/depressed is fine as long as you're the same guy. This is what makes treating narcissism particularly difficult: the pathology's Number 1 characteristic is identity preservation. "I want to change." Nope. You want to be happier, sure, more successful, feel love, drink less, but you want to remain you. But that won't work. The identity you've chosen blows, ask anyone. Change is only possible when you say, "I want to stop making everyone cry." The first step isn't admitting you have a problem but identifying precisely how you are a problem for other people. But I'll save you the trouble, you'll fail at this, too, because of the Number 2 characteristic of narcissism: inability to see things from the other's perspective. All psychological defenses have a common structure: that two legitimate but contradictory beliefs are held simultaneously, one consciously, one unconsciously, alternating variously. That way all possibilities are covered. Change is neutralized. -- Is the name 'Heart Attack Grill' meant ironically? The waitstaff are dressed like sexy nurses and doctors, which is meant ironically, i.e. what they provide (fatty food) runs counter to the sartorial expectations. But the name is... not ironic, it's literally correct – right? Wrong. The name Heart Attack Grill is ironic, because the expectation is that you won't get a heart attack there, and the reason you know you won't get a heart attack at the Heart Attack Grill is – and this is where you need to judge the strength of your soul – exactly that it is called Heart Attack Grill. That's why it is safe to eat there.' -- I'm OK if you're not OK

'About 40% of everyday speech is devoted to telling others about what we feel or think. Now, through five brain imaging and behavioral experiments, Harvard University neuroscientists have uncovered the reason: It feels so rewarding, at the level of brain cells and synapses, that we can't help sharing our thoughts. -- "Self-disclosure is extra rewarding," said Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir, who conducted the experiments with Harvard colleague Jason Mitchell. Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "People were even willing to forgo money in order to talk about themselves," Ms. Tamir said. ...acts of self disclosure were accompanied by spurts of heightened activity in brain regions belonging to the meso-limbic dopamine system, which is associated with the sense of reward and satisfaction from food, money or sex.'

'Control is one of the big attractions of living in the digital world, we only post the best pictures of ourselves enjoying the best parts of our lives. But does that mean we start to treat our lives more like a brand, to be sold to our friends and protected from anything negative? Aleks Krotoski talks to Sherry Turkle director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and the Self to ask if this could cause us problems.'

'I don’t think in terms of technological determinism. I think in terms of human vulnerabilities: technological affordances and human vulnerabilities. The technologies of mobile connection make us some offers we can’t refuse. Connectivity technology pushes every button. There’s this new research that shows that our iPhones light up our brains in the same places that love lights up our brains. We’re wanted. Somebody wants us, somebody needs us, somebody’s calling to us, somebody remembered us. -- We’ve cornered ourselves into a communications culture, where I think we’re spending less and less time reflecting. The issue for me is reflection and spaces for reflection. Social media satisfy some needs. People feel connected. In some online places, people do feel responsibility and belonging. But in fact, people can just leave when they wish; the friended is not a friend. What I’m finding in my work is that online life can create a sense of disorientation. The speed of online friendship is so fast: you get this sense of intimacy so fast and the sense of close connection; you feel that you’re getting right to the heart of things really quickly. You’re not going through all the hard things that come with a shared life and a shared community; you have the sense of cutting to the chase. That goes on for awhile, and then somehow you don’t know what you have. You don’t know what your responsibilities are. You don’t know what you can ask for. So then people wonder, “Do I have everything; do I have nothing? What do I have?” It’s fine if you have a couple of those ambiguous relationships; everyone does. But when ambiguous relationships become more and more of your life, people become very disoriented. I have tremendous respect for the support and the connection and the fun that people have online. But I think when we decided to call these online connections “communities” and “relationships,” we chose the words we had available to us, and we confused ourselves. -- ...the point is, when we’re with people we feel as though we’re getting some kind of authenticity, and we experience ourselves as authentic. Which is why we go see people in person—we know, no matter how much they’re made up or fluffed up or prepared, we’re going to see the real something. And that’s what these kids are trying to avoid, when they only want to text, when they don’t want to have a conversation, and that’s what they’ve become exhausted by. They’ve put themselves in a world where they are performing all the time. They have organized a world where they’re always at their screen. That’s when they just kind of crack and find some way to drop out for awhile. -- I’ve studied kids and dolls – whenever I do a robot study, I do a parallel study with a doll. And everything is different with a doll. With a doll you have the psychology of projection. A child will act out with a doll what is on her mind: a little girl with a Barbie who feels guilty because she broke her mother’s china will put the Barbie in detention. Because of its passivity, because it’s inert, the doll is a projective screen for the child’s imagination, fantasies, sense of wonder, anxieties. Everything’s projected onto the doll. But a relational artifact, a sociable robot, is in a position to initiate a conversation. The robot is in a position to voice an opinion. With a robot, one is not free to project what is on one’s mind. The psychology of projection gives way to the psychology of engagement. The robot is presented as active, in place to be a new kind of best friend. Why do we need robots to do that? With every technology we need to ask if it’s serving our human purposes. What is the human need? What human purpose does it serve to have imitation people, who really aren’t people, pretending to be people? -- it’s only a collective fantasy that a robot, a machine that does not recognize your existence, can address your loneliness. In my view, this is a fantasy. We need to understand its roots. My research suggests that its roots lie in people having a sense that no one is there to listen to them. We have to acknowledge this. So many of us are lonely. But it does not follow that something that will never experience anything about human life can understand the things we want to talk about, about our lives. -- A common reaction to my book has been: “What are you complaining about? The people in your book, the elderly people who are happy with their robots, can’t tell the difference. My grandmother wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Why not give them this thing? If the machines will be so good we can’t tell the difference, what does it matter?” I think it matters very much. I think our humanity is at stake. -- It’s as though we don’t even have the word “solitude” anymore where solitude is a good thing. I have heard this formulation, how we need to “solve the problem of solitude,” not just on this one occasion. So, for example, people think of always having a device at hand as a way to solve the problem of solitude. We have a very hard time thinking of a life that does not include reaching for a device when one is alone. And I think we have an increasingly hard time even imagining that, imagining anything but loneliness. And of course, our connectivity devices give us the fantasy that we will never have to be alone. The capacity for solitude is crucial to our ability to reach out to people, not in anxiety but with a genuine ability to forge relationships. ...where we expect more from technology and less from each other; we’re treating each other as less human.'

'With more than a century of professional psychotherapy under our belt, we psychologists have done a terrible job of defining what we do, setting standards for what we do and explaining what we do in a way that non-psychologists can understand. Despite this horribly inefficient marketing, about one in four people have sought out mental health services in the past couple years. How many of them encountered one of the problems listed above? I've always felt a duty to demystify psychotherapy. The more the public understands about this process, the quicker they'll leave bad therapy, fight the stigma, challenge the limitations of managed care and become an active, empowered participant in their own healing process. I believe a little education will save money and time, prevent aggravation and eventually help improve lives.'

'“We found that a hyper-reactive dopamine reward system may be the foundation for some of the most problematic behaviors associated with psychopathy, such as violent crime, recidivism and substance abuse.” Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these individuals lack—fear, empathy and interpersonal skills. The new research, however, examines what they have in abundance—impulsivity, heightened attraction to rewards and risk-taking. Importantly, it is these latter traits that are most closely linked with the violent and criminal aspects of psychopathy. “It may be that because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to alter their attention until they get what they’re after,” Buckholtz said. Added Zald, “It’s not just that they don’t appreciate the potential threat, but that the anticipation or motivation for reward overwhelms those concerns.”'

'Selfobjects are external objects that function as part of the "self machinery" - 'i.e., objects which are not experienced as separate and independent from the self.' They are persons, objects or activities that "complete" the self, and which are necessary for normal functioning. 'Kohut describes early interactions between the infant and his caretakers as involving the infant's "self" and the infant's "selfobjects"'. Observing the patient's selfobject connections is a fundamental part of self-psychology. For instance, a person's particular habits, choice of education and work, taste in life partners, may fill a selfobject-function for that particular individual. Selfobjects are addressed throughout Kohut's theory, and include everything from the transference phenomenon in therapy, relatives, and items (for instance Linus van Pelt's security blanket): they 'thus cover the phenomena which were described by Winnicott as transitional objects. Among 'the great variety of selfobject relations that support the cohesion, vigor, and harmony of the adult self...[are] cultural selfobjects (the writers, artists, and political leaders of the group - the nation, for example - to which a person feels he belongs).' -- If psychopathology is explained as an "incomplete" or "defect" self, then the self-objects might be described as a self-prescribed "cure". As described by Kohut, the selfobject-function (i.e. what the selfobject does for the self) is taken for granted and seems to take place in a "blindzone." The function thus usually does not become "visible" until the relation with the selfobject is somehow broken.'

'WE live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. -- A senior partner at a Boston law firm describes a scene in his office. Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. “Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits.” With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that does not ask to be broken. In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right. We expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship. Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone.'

'"It seems that people have a tendency to stomp down on those they have defeated, to really rub it in," said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University. "People were more aggressive when they were better off than when they were worse off than others," Bushman said.' -- Now with something to lose.

'"The shadow," wrote Jung (1963), is "that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole historical aspect of the unconscious" (cited in Diamond, p. 96). The shadow is a primordial part of our human inheritance, which, try as we might, can never be eluded. The pervasive Freudian defense mechanism known as projection is how most people deny their shadow, unconsciously casting it onto others so as to avoid confronting it in oneself. Such projection of the shadow is engaged in not only by individuals but groups, cults, religions, and entire countries, and commonly occurs during wars and other contentious conflicts in which the outsider, enemy or adversary is made a scapegoat, dehumanized, and demonized. Two World Wars and the current escalation of violence testify to the terrible truth of this collective phenomenon. Since the turn of the twenty-first century we are witnessing a menacing resurgence of epidemic demonization or collective psychosis in the seemingly inevitable violent global collision between radical Islam and Judeo-Christian or secular western culture, each side projecting its collective shadow and perceiving the other as evil incarnate.'

'The three-style GNS model aligns closely with three of the Keirsey/Bartle styles. The Gamist design style, which focuses on the mechanics or rules of play of a game, clearly matches the rules-oriented, competitive, hard fun-seeking Guardian/Achiever style. Similarly, Rational/Explorers are most likely to be drawn to the Simulationist design style that delights in the building of and immersion in complex and logically consistent worlds. And the human-centric, "people fun" storytelling impulses of Idealist/Socializers will usually be expressed as a focus on Narrativism as the primary means of making a game fun. -- Caillois explicitly links mimesis to "simulation," or the active construction of secondary realities. This is the hallmark of the creative Rational/Explorer. To a Rational, the fun of discovering or building new worlds is in mapping their unique characteristics through exploration, thereby enabling the comprehension of the internal structure of that new world. The Rational/Explorer interest in mimesis is thus associated with Lazzaro's "easy fun," which describes the distinct gamer preference for immersion in the world of the play experience.'

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

'As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication – and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have.' -- "...people can't get enough of each other, if, and only if, they can have each other at a distance in amounts they can control." -- "Human relationships are rich, and they're messy, and they're demanding – and we clean them up with technology." -- "We use conversation with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves. And our flight from conversation can really matter because it can compromise our capacity for reflection." -- "...people get so used to being short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they become almost willing to dispense with people altogether." -- "Being alone feels like a problem to be solved, and so people try to solve it by 'connecting'." -- "...if we don't have connection, we don't feel like ourselves – so we 'connect' more and more, but in the process we set ourselves up to be isolated." -- "Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious, in order to feel alive. It's as though we're using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self."

'All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self. When two people become a couple, the brain extends its idea of self to include the other; instead of the slender pronoun “I,” a plural self emerges who can borrow some of the other’s assets and strengths. The brain knows who we are. The immune system knows who we’re not, and it stores pieces of invaders as memory aids. Through lovemaking, or when we pass along a flu or a cold sore, we trade bits of identity with loved ones, and in time we become a sort of chimera. We don’t just get under a mate’s skin, we absorb him or her.The brain changes with experience throughout our lives; it’s in loving relationships of all sorts — partners, children, close friends — that brain and body really thrive. During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace. Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open.'

'We have recently proposed that physical pain – the pain experienced upon bodily injury – and social pain – the pain experienced upon social injury when social relationships are threatened, damaged or lost – share neural and computational mechanisms. This shared system is responsible for detecting cues that might be harmful to survival, such as physical danger or social separation, and then for recruiting attention and coping resources to minimize threat. Such an overlap would be evolutionarily adaptive. Because of the prolonged period of immaturity and the critical need for maternal care in mammalian infants, it has been suggested that the pain mechanisms involved in detecting and preventing physical danger were co-opted by the more recently evolved social attachment system to detect and prevent social separation. If the need to maintain close contact with the mother for nurturance and protection is crucial to mammalian survival, experiencing pain upon social separation would be an adaptive way to prevent the harmful consequences of maternal separation. -- When young children experience physical pain, they experience social pain more easily and more frequently in response to separation from their caregiver. Similarly, individuals with chronic pain disorders are more likely than healthy controls to have an anxious attachment style, characterized by a preoccupation with the commitment status of relationship partners and to have heightened fears of social evaluation and rejection... -- ...certain drugs have similar regulatory effects on both physical and social pain. Opiate-based drugs, known for their effectiveness in alleviating physical pain, lessen social pain in animals and humans. Additionally, anti-depressants, often prescribed for anxiety or depression resulting from social stressors, have recently been found to alleviate physical pain as well and are now prescribed regularly to treat chronic pain.'

'Courage is not the absence of fear, but moving ahead despite fear. For if there is no fear, who needs courage? In the final analysis, courage is essentially an existential choice. Courage is the empowering experience of a decision to stand up and withstand the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." And, when wounded or knocked down, to pick oneself up, dust oneself off, and "keep on keepin' on." A choice to stand and fight when appropriate rather than run. To tolerate or attack rather than cower and withdraw. To persevere rather than quit. To act with integrity rather than expedience. To take responsibility rather than slough it off. To embrace reality rather than retreat from it. To move forward in life rather than regress or stagnate. To create rather than destroy. To love rather than hate. To deal with one's demons rather than not. To consciously face the existential facts of suffering, infirmity and death rather than denying them.'

'There are only five basic fears, out of which almost all of our other so-called fears are manufactured. Those five basic fears are: #Extinction #Mutilation #Loss of Autonomy #Separation #Ego-death. Think about the various common labels we put on our fears. Start with the easy ones: fear of heights or falling is basically fear of extinction (possibly accompanied by significant mutilation, but that's sort of secondary). Fear of failure? Read it as fear of ego-death. Fear of rejection? It's fear of separation, and probably also fear of ego-death. The terror many people have at the idea of having to speak in public is basically fear of ego-death. Fear of intimacy, or "fear of commitment" is basically fear of losing one's autonomy. Some other emotions we know by various popular names are also expressions of these primary fears. If you track them down to their most basic levels, the basic fears show through.'

'Religion has no remedy for wounded narcissism. Modern anxieties have nothing to do with the sort of existential threats that prompt people in poorer countries to seek refuge in religion. On the contrary, modern anxieties are largely focused on how other people evaluate us. The younger generation are both more narcissistic and less religious. Religion has no remedy for the anxious narcissist. So what do our troubled young narcissists do to cope with the anxieties they feel about whether others like, or respect them? Apart from anti-anxiety drugs the only answers for frustrated vanity are good friends who support the ego, endless self-promotion, or old-fashioned career striving. That is why in the competition for young hearts and minds Facebook is killing God.'

'The theory of self-affirmation is a psychological theory that was first proposed by Claude Steele (1988) with the premise that people are motivated to maintain the integrity of the self. The ultimate goal of the self is to protect an image of its self-integrity, morality and adequacy. People tend to interpret relatively uncomfortable information in a way consistent with their existing beliefs (see confirmation bias), a phenomenon which is associated with valued aspects of self-identity. The need to protect a valued identity is a major source of biased processing. Fortunately, people identify with multiple values. Researchers discovered that providing people with affirmation opportunities on alternative sources of self-integrity lead to a less biased evaluation to threatening information. Self-affirmation increases the openness of people to ideas that are difficult to accept. Specifically, affirmation leads to attitude change by means of a more careful consideration of the information rather than through heuristic processing. Moreover, self-affirmation studies suggested that discomfort resulting from cognitive dissonance could be overcome if their self-integrity is enhanced through the affirmations of an alternative domain of identity. People who affirm themselves in one aspect when they are facing threats to another aspect are believed to have more psychological support with which to self-affirm. Generally, self-affirmation increases people's open-mindedness and flexibility. However, the domain from which the threat and affirmation emerge is important. In the case that the threat and affirmation come from the same domain, self-affirmation would lead to a decrease in open-mindedness and flexibility.'

'Research has also shown that individuals strategically seek out opportunities to act morally if they know they might need a moral license for an upcoming dubious action. Past good deeds can liberate individuals to engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic, behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for fear of feeling or appearing immoral. How do individuals face the ethical uncertainties of social life? When under the threat that their next action might be (or appear to be) morally dubious, individuals can derive confidence from their past moral behavior, such that an impeccable track record increases their propensity to engage in otherwise suspect actions. Such moral self-licensing (Monin & Miller, 2001) occurs when past moral behavior makes people more likely to do potentially immoral things without worrying about feeling or appearing immoral. We argue that moral self-licensing occurs because good deeds make people feel secure in their moral self-regard. For example, when people are confident that their past behavior demonstrates compassion, generosity, or a lack of prejudice, they are more likely to act in morally dubious ways without fear of feeling heartless, selfish, or bigoted. Do good deeds reframe bad deeds (moral credentials) or merely balance them out (moral credits)? When does past behavior liberate and when does it constrain? Is self-licensing primarily for others’ benefit (self-presentational) or is it also a way for people to reassure themselves that they are moral people?' -- Action Identification: "I am *doing* good" = I am doing the thought: "I am *being* good"

'The Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, in his speech Pro Roscio Amerino, section 84, attributed the expression cui bono to the Roman consul and censor Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla: “The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?'"' -- One may renounce a 'law' introduced for his own 'benefit' (Maxim of Law)

'Cambridge researchers have created a website that combines the Facebook profiles of fans of companies and public figures with personality testing to create what they are describing as a “revolutionary” new marketing tool. Unlike other online marketing tools, LikeAudience combines the information people share about themselves on Facebook with data about their personalities gathered from the same profiling tests used in psychological research. It then tracks what these people have chosen to “like” on the social networking site – the Facebook user’s stamp of general approval. For the first time, it means that companies, politicians, celebrities and anyone else with a Facebook presence can investigate not just how many people “like” them – they can also draw up a detailed profile that includes information about their average follower’s personality, IQ and satisfaction with life.'

'...the four player types abstracted, we get: achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. An easy way to remember these is to consider suits in a conventional pack of cards: achievers are Diamonds (they're always seeking treasure); explorers are Spades (they dig around for information); socialisers are Hearts (they empathise with other players); killers are Clubs (they hit people with them). Naturally, these areas cross over, and players will often drift between all four, depending on their mood or current playing style. However, my experience having observed players in the light of this research suggests that many (if not most) players do have a primary style, and will only switch to other styles as a (deliberate or subconscious) means to advance their main interest. -- ...a sharp reduction in the number of explorers for whatever reason could mean a gradual reduction in achievers, who get bored if they're not occasionally told of different hoops they can jump through for points; this could affect the number of socialisers (the fewer players there are, the less there is to talk about), and it would certainly lower the killer population (due to a general lack of suitable victims).'

'Here’s the gist: #The degree to which a company can utilize habit-forming technologies will increasingly decide which products and services succeed or fail. #Addictive technology creates “internal triggers” which cue users without the need for marketing, messaging or any other external stimuli. It becomes a user’s own intrinsic desire. #Creating internal triggers comes from mastering the “desire engine” and its four components: trigger, action, variable reward, and commitment. #Consumers must understand how addictive technology works to prevent being manipulated while still enjoying the benefits of these innovations. -- Habit-forming technologies start by alerting users with external triggers like an email, a link on a web site, or the app icon on a phone. By cycling continuously through successive desire engines, users begin to form internal triggers, which become attached to existing behaviors and emotions. Soon users are internally triggered every time they feel a certain way.'

'Why do people rationalize? A need to *feel* (not be) consistent/authentic.' -- "Sometimes we bend the truth in our minds, so that from our own perspective, it feels like we've continued to believe something that is consistent all along." -- 'Three options for cognitive dissonance: Change Attitude; Change Behaviour (sometimes can't always do this); Justify/Minimize conflict.'

'When viewed collectively, the four motivations of growth often comprise a player's most basic intrinsic motivations – motivations that the player carries with him into every context... -- Our desire for learning solves problems; our desire for competition challenges stagnation and finds optimizations; our desire for order preserves and protects; and our desire for connections promotes cooperation and bonds us together. -- Growth preferences: #Explorers: Seek questions and learning/Learning comes from deciphering the rules of a system; #Achievers: Seek order, balance and validation/order represents pursuit of following the correct path, however the individual may choose to define it; #Killers: Seek competition and challenges/Challenge-driven players need a regular cycle of challenge and success; #Socializers: Seek interactions and connections/the more connections and the deeper the dependencies, the more rewarding the experience will be to the socially-driven player. -- To investigate how growth might be integrated into a non-game environment, we'll look at each motivator in a general context. #Implementing Learning: In general, you do not need to design to add learning; you need to design to manage the learning you already have. #Implementing Order: Any meaningful experience can be commemorated with symbolic measures and, for additional validation, badges can be linked to rewards or privileges. #Implementing Challenges Overcome: The user wants feel magnitude and relevance – that his accomplishments are rare and special. In social environments, where players can compare progress, the weight of accomplishments may be devalued. #Implementing Social Growth: ...there needs to be a context, a social objective or at least a conversation starter. ...there needs to be persistence. Players need to be able to reconnect with the same people.'

'Conformity is the attaining of societal goals by socially accepted means, while innovation is the attaining of those goals in unaccepted ways. Innovators find and create their own way to go about obtaining what they want, and a majority of the time, these new ways are considered to be socially unaccepted and deviant. Ritualism is the acceptance of the means but the forfeit of the goals. Ritualists continue to subscribe to the means, but they have rejected the overall goal; they are not viewed as deviant. Retreatism is the rejection of both the means and the goals. Retreaters want to find a way to escape from everything and therefore reject the goals and the means and are seen as deviant. Rebellion is a combination of rejection of societal goals and means and a substitution of other goals and means. Innovation and ritualism are the pure cases of anomie as Merton defined it because in both cases there is a discontinuity between goals and means.'

Human Action vs Repetition Compulsion @ 47:47: "The truth is, players change the rules [of a game or society or community] as they go. So there's this reflexive action... And the kinds of problems that players attempt to solve are, frankly, intractable and impossible to solve. The brain loves intractable and impossible-to-solve problems; these then become [*laughs*] high-retention devices." -- Monkey doh!

'Dr Clark found that near misses activated the same brain pathways as wins, even though no reward was given, and that this reaction was stronger in those gamblers who had more symptoms of problem gambling. In particular, the study found strong responses in the midbrain, an area that is packed with dopamine-releasing brain cells. The dopamine system is associated with addiction and targeted by drugs of abuse. The study also found the near misses were linked with increased activity in a brain region called the ventral striatum, an area associated with reward and learning. The results help explain why problem gamblers find it hard to give up. According to Dr Clark: “These findings are exciting because they suggest that near-misses may elicit a dopamine response in the more severe gamblers, despite the fact that no actual reward is delivered. If these bursts of dopamine are driving addictive behaviour, this may help to explain why problem gamblers find it so difficult to quit.” Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, plays an important role in signalling “rewards” such as money and chocolate, and the dopamine system is also targeted by drugs of abuse.'

'Both near-misses and personal choice cause gamblers to play for longer and to place larger bets. Over time, these distorted perceptions of one’s chances of winning may precipitate ‘loss chasing’, where gamblers continue to play in an effort to recoup accumulating debts. Loss chasing is one of the hallmarks of problem gambling, which actually bears much resemblance to drug addiction. Problem gamblers also experience cravings and symptoms of withdrawal when denied the opportunity to gamble. In addition to an array of psychological factors, problem gambling may also have some important biological determinants. The brain chemical dopamine is known to play a key role in drug addiction and may also be abnormally regulated in problem gambling. -- #Near-misses: Problem gamblers often interpret near-misses as evidence that they are mastering the game and that a win is on the way. #Personal choice is a further determinant of illusory control, referring to situations where the gambler has some responsibility in arranging their gamble. Choice appears to encourage a belief that the game involves skill when in fact the outcome is entirely random.'

Comment: Guest: 'Absolutely simplistic and typical of people who don't "think" beyond what other people tell them to think. Imagine yourself as the Minotaur. Born as a creature no one wanted, born from the lust of a goddess to a bull, hated from conception to birth. Instead of given pitty or love when born, was imprisoned in a horrible place with no human contact other than the ones he fed on. What choice did he have, eat something that didn't look like him, or starve to death. He was born without education of morals or philosophy. He was treated as a monster, so he behaved like one to the eyes of other humans. To him, he was just trying to live, fearing his whole existence, surviving on, yes, instinct. And one day a "hero" comes to kill him. For the Minotaur, he probably was scared beyond his imagination. Something stronger than him was trying to kill him and he didn't know why. One has to ask, how long was the Minotaur in the maze, why were only children sent down there. Most likely cause the Minotaur was young himself, and probably lame. The only thing I read from this myth was that of a deformed outcast who was lost, weak and fearful, to be only killed by someone who was "normal" and be called a "strong and powerful hero" for it.' -- When you cut the throat of the abyss...

'Experiments have shown that most cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people or the immediately preceding action. -- The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges. ...once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. Luckily, simply understanding how habits work makes them easier to control. [To update a habit, swap out the old routine for a new one, keeping the original cue and reward.] -- P.& G. had been trying to create a whole new habit with Febreze, but what they really needed to do was piggyback on habit loops that were already in place. The marketers needed to position Febreze as something that came at the end of the cleaning ritual, the reward, rather than as a whole new cleaning routine. Each ad was designed to appeal to the habit loop: when you see a freshly cleaned room (cue), pull out Febreze (routine) and enjoy a smell that says you’ve done a great job (reward). When you finish making a bed (cue), spritz Febreze (routine) and breathe a sweet, contented sigh (reward). Febreze, the ads implied, was a pleasant treat, not a reminder that your home stinks. And so Febreze, a product originally conceived as a revolutionary way to destroy odors, became an air freshener used once things are already clean. Eventually, P.& G. began mentioning to customers that, in addition to smelling sweet, Febreze can actually kill bad odors.'

'The big secret, for both consumers and providers of psychotherapy, is that there really is no such thing as generic "psychotherapy" per se: only wildly disparate theories and divergent techniques adopted by vastly varied clinicians with dissimilar personality styles, life-experience, training, values, goals, neuroses, complexes and world-views practicing what, only in the broadest possible sense, we have collectively come today to call psychotherapy. When someone says they have been in psychotherapy, or practice psychotherapy, the reality is that his or her experience with therapy may differ radically from another person's. Psychotherapy is not – and never will be, despite efforts to scientifically systematize, manualize, objectify and make it more formulaic – something consistently or reliably predictable, prescribed and predetermined. Rather, it is, as Rank and Jung understood, an archetypal healing process that is, of necessity, at its best re-invented with each new patient and by each practitioner. -- Merkin's memoir reveals her own hard-won recognition of how unrealistic, infantile, romantic or magical expectations about what psychotherapy is and is not, can and cannot do, tend to undermine the process when not explicitly addressed during treatment. To begin with, I believe Ms. Merkin may underestimate what she has learned cumulatively from psychotherapy all these many years. First, that the fantasy of finding the "perfect therapeutic match" is, like looking for the perfect mate, just, that, a fantasy. Second, yes, it is entirely possible to "stay in therapy forever without much real progress." Which is why both unsuccessful and successful psychotherapy must inevitably end at some point. Thirdly, that, inescapably, in therapy, "the weight of responsibility is borne almost entirely by the patient. . . . " Fourth, is the recognition that constantly searching for growth, transcendence, "self-transformation" or "character change" may be a means of refusing to accept oneself for who and what one truly is. ... And last but not least, ninth, her profound perception, albeit disillusioning, that behind every all-powerful "Wizard of Oz" she and others so desperately seek and project onto a physician or psychotherapist, there is always "just another little man behind a velvet curtain." Or little woman. Another imperfect, only human, flawed fellow pilgrim plodding through life as productively as they can. There are no perfectly analyzed analysts. No totally enlightened teachers or mentors. Psychotherapists, no matter what their orientation, are not omniscient, omnipotent nor superhuman, much as we might wish them to be. -- "Above all," writes Merkin, " it provided a space for interior examination, an education in disillusioned realism that existed nowhere else on this cacophonous, frantic planet." An education in disillusioned realism indeed! Acceptance of reality, both past and present, as it is and on its own terms, rather than as we desire it to be. Of ourselves as we are. Of finitude, fate and destiny; the tragic existential facts of life. Of harsh (but also beautiful and mysterious) reality without excessive sugar-coating, buffering, sedation or anesthesia. This is a powerful lesson her antidepressants apparently never provided. Painful, expensive, frustrating, imperfect and time-consuming as it may be, any psychotherapeutic treatment that provides a good "education in disillusioned realism" can't be all bad.'

'In situations where a person has had significant trauma, which may include sexual or physical abuse, a feeling of safety and security is essential and it may be important to choose a therapist who evokes the most trust and security – and this may be a therapist of the opposite sex of the abuser. On the other hand, selecting a therapist whose gender is likely to stir up some of the same feelings you are in therapy to deal with can be helpful. And finally, though it may be tempting to choose a therapist of the same sex out of a sense that they can best understand what it’s like for you, it may also be important not to choose a therapist who seems to automatically understand you, since this could get in the way of thoroughly exploring and articulating subtleties of experience that may be important to address.'

'Comment: Anonymous on May 26, 2011 - 2:28pm: I am female and have never enjoyed a helpful relationship with a female counselor. I never tried working with a male therapist, but it interests me for one reason. Though it is a generalization, men tend to want to help solve problems and find answers when they hear about a problem. For this reason, sometimes I turn to a male friend when I want a new perspective or idea on things. If I just want to "talk" or "vent", then my female friends tend to be better listeners without offering solutions. As one girlfriend puts it, in her experience men hate to see women cry over something they can help her fix.'

'A male psychotherapist may be more effective for some patients than others; just as a female psychotherapist may have more success with certain patients than others. Part of this difference does have to do with gender and often unconscious gender psychology. Some male psychotherapists, for example, are fearful or out of touch with their "masculine" aggression, while others are estranged from their "feminine" side and feelings. Some female therapists either overidentify with the "masculine,"or devalue and dissociate it in their own personalities. This can all come into play during treatment, and commonly does so unconsciously in the form of what we call "countertransference" and other blindspots and biases on the psychotherapist's part. For example, when women stepped into the void left by men in the field of clinical psychology and other mental health professions, many adopted men's "masculine" perspective and rational orientation to treatment. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a good example of such a highly "masculinized" approach today, one which imputes primacy to rationality and thinking over affect, the unconscious, and the so-called "irrational" (i.e., "feminine") aspects of experience. The choice of this one-sidedly logical, mechanistic orientation to treatment represents an overvaluation of the "masculine" and devaluation of the "feminine" in psychotherapy itself. Paradoxically, given the vast popularity of CBT with today's female and few remaining male psychotherapists as opposed to more analytical, humanistic or existential approaches, it is clear that, unfortunately, the "feminization" of the psychotherapy field in terms of gender does not necessarily translate into a more truly "feminine" orientation to psychotherapy. Or, in some instances, it has led to an overly "feminine," soft, passive approach to treatment in which firm limits, boundaries, structure and confrontation of what I call the daimonic are lacking. -- ...the fact remains that men and women clinicians have very divergent perspectives, psychologies and life experiences, and each bring something different to the therapeutic table. Not better or worse, superior or inferior. Just different, but equally valuable. This is why it is wisely recommended, and in some clinical training programs required, that trainees undergo two courses of therapy or analysis – one with each sex. -- Because of our complementary polar differences, women will always need male psychotherapists, and men female psychotherapists. Despite of, or really, due to our gender differences, we still have much to learn from each other. But men will always need to be mentored and initiated into manhood mainly by men, not women. Now that there is a serious shortage of men remaining in or entering the psychotherapy profession, unlucky consumers have even fewer choices – not only regarding the type of treatment they receive, but which gender will provide it.'

'Males generally define themselves in terms of individual achievement and work and females more often in relational terms (Gilligan, 1987). In psychotherapy, therapists communicate values by their selection of material to question or to comment on, by the timing of their interpretations, and by their affective reaction to the content of what is said by the patient. Male and female therapists can view a patient’s life experiences differently, particularly if these experiences are gender specific (Shapiro, 1993). Many support the view that women should be treated by women in order to avoid being misunderstood or treated from a male-oriented perspective. This male perspective may oversimplify the effects of gender and minimize the necessary working through of ambivalence and conflict in the therapeutic relationship. Stereotypes and expectations about women affect male patients as well. A man may seek treatment from a woman in order to avoid a competitive or an authoritarian relationship with a man, to avoid homosexual feelings, or because he has had poor relationships with women in the past and wants to work these out with a woman. His expectations may be that a woman will provide the cure for his problems with intimacy. Many women feel that it is more difficult for a man to empathize with some issues that are gender specific; this may also be true for women who must empathize with male issues (Horner, 1992). Therapists often do not attend sufficiently to the transference issues that encourage or inhibit discussion of particular material. This insufficient attention may be based on a number of factors, including gender.'

'Therapeutic love cannot be sexualized or romanticized, though such feelings frequently find their way into the consulting room. When they do so, the key, for both patient and therapist, is never to act on them. But, at the same time, not deny them. To acknowledge, honor and reflect upon these passionate feelings, but not to impulsively act them out. Talking openly about such transferential feelings is essential for the patient and to the process. Transference (which can also sometimes turn negative and nasty) is the royal road right into the very core "love wound" complex. But becoming more receptive to love means being willing to gradually and painfully tear open the old love wound. This core love wound typically contains a repressed reservoir of rage, grief, hurt and sadness from the past, all of which must be slowly allowed to surface, flow and be consciously felt. But it also holds immense libidinal energy in the positive sense. This libidinal energy is daimonic, which is to say that it is uncannily powerful, and can be both destructive and creative. If the erotic transference can be handled properly, without dismissing, denigrating or rejecting it, while at the same time firmly maintaining clear and consistent boundaries, this newly liberated libidinal energy or love from the patient can be redirected out into his or her life beyond the therapist's office. For now, the patient has once again experienced love, at least to some degree, albeit in the relative safety and security of the sacred container or temenos of psychotherapy. Once the patient regains or reawakens to this vital, child-like capacity to love, to care, to open oneself to another, or, in a more spiritual sense, to the existential reality, tragedy, suffering and beauty of life and death, he or she is prepared to try doing so in that great big world beyond the secure yet constricted womb of therapy. He or she is ready for love. And for life.'

'At its best, therapeutic love on the psychotherapist's part may be most closely compared to amor platonicus (platonic love), agape, philia or storge, the nurturing love parents feel for their offspring. But eros, which Plato spoke of as a "great daimon," is perennially potentiated in both parties. How to provide such therapeutic love without overstepping the physical or romantic boundaries is part of the art of psychotherapy. How psychotherapists deal with the unexpected and unbidden appearance of eros, in themselves or their patients, in the transference or counter-transference, can make or break the treatment outcome. So what do psychotherapy patients really need? Is love enough? No. But there is little doubt as to the potent healing power of love, both in treatment and in life. American psychologist Carl Rogers, drawing on the discoveries of psychoanalysis, identified in his "person-centered" approach the importance of what he called "unconditional positive regard" and "reflective listening" in the therapy process, both of which are loving ways of relating empathetically to another human being. And Dr. Rogers, naively in my view, believed that if this loving approach could consistently be provided to the patient or "client" as he preferred to call them, it was all that's really needed for successful therapy. Perhaps for some. But, at least in my experience, patients need more from their psychotherapist than love in this sense. They also need structure, limits, firmness, guidance, encouragement, confrontation, honesty, integrity and resolute commitment on the psychotherapist's part to accompany them on their personal journey through hell (and the unconscious) and back. ...it is only love – the right love at the right time – that can cure or heal [a] festering "love wound." No amount of technical tricks, to paraphrase the mature Jung, cognitive restructuring or pharmacotherapy will do. Love in psychotherapy, as in any healthy, mature relationship, is a two-way street: Love flows from the psychotherapist and back from the patient. So it is not just the love provided by the therapist that matters, but the love returned by the patient that is ultimately the healing factor in treatment.'

'Psychotherapy, in my view, is more soundly focused on what C.G. Jung termed individuation: the unpredictable, lengthy, labyrinthine process of becoming more whole. Psychotherapy is about finding and fulfilling our destiny: While for most this may include romantic love, marriage, parenthood, career, etc., there are others for whom fate or destiny has something quite different in store. Psychotherapy is about creativity: courageously claiming the personal freedom to express ourselves constructively in the world to our fullest potential. Finally, psychotherapy is fundamentally about acceptance: learning to accept ourselves and others, our fate, our responsibility, our existential aloneness, the unconscious, evil, the daimonic, and life on its own terms. Surely, this is a sort of love. Love of reality. Love of the world as it is. Love of all humanity. Love even of the dark and tragic, seemingly sometimes senseless side of life. And this is, for want of a better term, a spiritual love. Psychotherapy is, for these reasons, an essentially spiritual process. But it is precisely this reawakening, rekindling or stirring of spiritual love, this gradual opening up, this growing willingness to tolerate ambiguity and loneliness, this deepening receptivity to life, oneself and others during the psychotherapy process that can ready us for interpersonal love and intimacy, and which – when lacking, undeveloped or resisted - resides at the root of most mental disorders. And what exactly is the mysterious, potent, transformative power that serves to awaken this newfound or renewed capacity to love in the psychotherapy patient? Freud, Jung and others since observed that the alchemical catalyst occurs in the dynamic and uniquely intimate relationship between patient and therapist, and very much resembles--yes, you guessed it – love.'

'One is practicing latent inhibition when one tries to ignore an ongoing sound (like an air conditioner) or tune out the conversation of others. This tendency to disregard or even inhibit formation of memory, by preventing associative learning of observed stimuli, is an unconscious response and is assumed to prevent sensory overload and cognitive overload. -- Most people are able to ignore the constant stream of incoming stimuli, but this capability is reduced in those with low latent inhibition. Low latent inhibition seems to often correlate with distracted behaviors. This distractedness can manifest itself as general inattentiveness, a tendency to switch subjects without warning in conversation, and other absentminded habits. This is not to say that all distractedness can be explained by low latent inhibition, nor does it necessarily follow that people with low LI will have a hard time paying attention. It does mean, however, that the higher quantity of incoming information requires a mind capable of handling it. High levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine (or its agonists) in the ventral tegmental area of the brain have been shown to decrease latent inhibition. Certain dysfunctions of the neurotransmitters glutamate, serotonin and acetylcholine have also been implicated. Low latent inhibition is not a mental disorder but an observed personality trait, and a description of how an individual absorbs and assimilates data or stimuli.'

'The mistake many with that problem make is thinking that the problem is "themselves" and they need more introspection, or more insight, or more "brain hacks." You need less of those things. What you need are goals with concrete steps that you force yourself to boringly take. I'm not against introspection, I am against masturbation. I'm against edging. The critic wants to be able to contemplate, to go to therapy and discuss and introspect and what he will do there is talk about himself, think about himself, identify patterns in his life, things that have held him back – and nothing will change. So then he will tell me that he has "a really good therapist, she really pushes me!" The therapy becomes an elaborate narcissistic defense, the promise and appearance of progress while protecting an at best artificial and at worst non-existent identity. "I want to learn why I am this way." Then what? Will learning why you made those choices be what changes your choices? You're still eating junk food, aren't you? You're eating it while you're learning how bad it is. "But... why am I this way?" That question is a narcissistic defense. It doesn't want an answer, it wants you to keep asking the question. "I'm a good person, I just am making bad choices." Wrong. You're not a good person until you make good choices. Until then you are chaos. And you know it.'

'What is the Minotaur? First, the Minotaur represents our primal fear of the unconscious. The unconscious is that which is unknown to us. For this reason, we humans are born not only with an instinctive fear of the unknown and of death, but also an archetypal fear of the unconscious. This is one of the factors that make the psychotherapy process so threatening: a profound fear of encountering our own unconscious, of entering the dark, lonely labyrinth and meeting the Minotaur. Fundamentally, the Minotaur represents the primal fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is deeply-seated in the human psyche. Indeed, the Minotaur may be seen as a metaphor for death and death anxiety. Existentially, death is a symbol of non-being or non-existence, and, therefore, death anxiety can be understood, in Kierkegaard's words, as the "fear of nothingness." As existential psychologist Rollo May (1977) points out, "the threat of non-being lies in the psychological and spiritual realm as well – namely, in the threat of meaninglessness in one's existence." The Minotaur also embodies both fate (our biological nature) and destiny (our freedom) and the integral interrelationship between the two. But why do we find it such a dreadful image? Because to confront the Minotaur in the dark labyrinth is to confront ourselves: our fears of the unknown, our ferocious, beastly nature, our rage, aggression, sexuality, mortality, the daimonic. This self-confrontation is successfully accomplished by proceeding carefully yet courageously along one's own Ariadnean thread. The secret is that, metaphorically, we each have been given this thread to follow and lead us to our destiny – but only if we are brave enough to do so. Psychotherapy sometimes entails helping the patient who has lost touch with this precious thread to find it, take hold of it, and follow it wherever it may lead, inching along blindly on hands and knees in the darkness through the unknown. ...once grasped, proceeding slowly but steadily along one's Ariadnean thread provides a profound sense of purpose and meaning in life. As though one is being pulled or guided by some power greater than oneself.'

'What is the psychospiritual significance of the mythical labyrinth? The labyrinth can be seen as an archetypal symbol of the psyche and of what C.G. Jung called the individuation process: that twisty, unpredictable, tortuous, serpentine path toward wholeness and authenticity. The goal is to reach the center, the Self, the core of our being. But this is only half the journey. For having discovered the inner center with it's treasure, the "pearl of great price," is not sufficient: One must then find a way out of the labyrinth and back to the outer world – forever transformed by this experience. And this inward and outward expedition is repeated over and over, each time yielding new riches. Psychotherapy itself can be such a labyrinthine process. Patients often seek psychotherapy because they feel alone and hopeless, confused and abandoned, much like the unlucky lost souls caught in the mythic labyrinth. Indeed, as for those suffering victims, suicide sometimes seems the only way out of the labyrinth. The impenetrable darkness, disorientation, discouragement and deep dread of the unknown may be intolerable at times. What is it about the inescapable labyrinth that makes it so tragically intolerable? Perhaps it is precisely the immense nothingness and darkness of the labyrinth that we humans find most frightening: Such places echo or reflect back to us that which dwells in the deepest, darkest recesses of our own psyche. Whatever it is we fear most – and therefore flee from – is called forth and amplified by the lightless labyrinth. The psychotherapy patient too is heroic, sacrificing his or her narcissistic arrogance by seeking help, facing fear of the unknown, willingly walking into the labyrinth and confronting his or her own personal Minotaur. When the psychotherapist invites and encourages the patient to explore the labyrinth – the unknown, the unconscious, the shadow, the daimonic – we bestow the gifts of Ariadne: the empowering sword of strength, courage, and rational, logical, analytical insight, and the means to remain tangibly tethered, rooted, related and connected to us, to reality, to the light, to humanity, to the outer, material world – and to one's self. These are essential tools for the task. Venturing into the labyrinth improperly equipped and prepared is a perilous and foolhardy undertaking for both therapist and patient, courting catastrophe. In psychotherapy, the Ariadnean thread symbolizes both the therapeutic relationship – the strong, supportive, vital, empathetic tie between patient and therapist – as well as the struggling and disoriented hero-patient's still undiscovered destiny.'

'Psychotherapy can often entail confronting a lifetime of accumulated shit. Psychotherapy patients sometimes experience the daunting task of delving into their past and dealing with their emotional demons in much the same way Hercules must have felt as he faced his disgusting, demeaning and ego-deflating fifth labor. For some, even taking the decision to seek psychotherapy is perceived as a failure or defeat. Such a seemingly impossible, tedious, menial task is tough on the ego and can be a severe blow to one's narcissism. But it can take just such a turn in life to teach us some healthy humility and diminish our neurotic narcissistic grandiosity. Carl Jung once commented that "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." I prefer to think of this infuriating and humiliating "defeat for the ego" as a traumatic yet potentially transformational process. We are insulted, humbled and, at first feel defeated by such untoward events, which can take the form of outer travails or hardships, involuntary psychiatric symptoms, and/or inner crises painfully demonstrating that we are not in complete command of ourselves but rather subject to the superior or relatively autonomous powers of the unconscious and of life itself. Naturally, the ego furiously resists such displacement and dethronement, seeking to maintain its illusion of control and mastery over reality. This resistance on the part of the ego to surrendering to the Self is so strong, persistent and pervasive – and we are so overidentified with it – that sometimes a seemingly insurmountable crisis or trauma is required to forcefully topple it from its narcissistic ivory tower. Life inevitably provides precisely that which is called for.'

'When is therapy over? Who decides? And on what basis? What happens when psychotherapy goes on either too briefly or too long? In most cases, today's psychotherapy tends to be too brief, too superficial, and does far too little to psychologically prepare the patient for life after therapy. When the patient requires a more "open-ended" therapy, the question becomes one of duration: How long is long? Therapy addiction is not necessarily the patient or client's fault, but rather the responsibility of the psychotherapist. Psychotherapy, like everything else in life, has limitations. Paradoxically, recognizing and accepting this existential fact of limitation can intensify and deepen the patient's growth and development in therapy. For it is during the "termination phase" of therapy that some of the most important working through is accomplished. This termination phase is the final stage of psychotherapy. But many patients – and therapists – avoid it for as long as possible and thus are never forced to confront it. Termination is a sort of death or loss of a deeply valued, supportive, nurturing and intimate human relationship. But so long as patients remain in this somewhat womb-like, often parent-to-child protective bubble, they, at least at some level, are refusing to grow up and venture out alone into the difficult, cold, cruel world. And by permitting the patient to avoid the anxiety, trepidation and sadness of termination, therapists perpetuate a dependency on therapy every bit as addictive as any drug. The question sooner or later arises: Have I attained my goals for therapy? Can I continue to feel good and remain confident without therapy? What if I stop and begin to backslide? Am I strong enough to handle whatever challenges life brings? These are some of the most crucial questions posed in psychotherapy. And the answers can only be found by accepting and anticipating the inevitability of termination and working through whatever anxieties, abandonment issues, sadness and other feelings this evokes during what is sometimes a prolonged, painful, tumultuous but ultimately liberating and empowering termination process.'

'The public is disenchanted with psychotherapy. This negative attitude has been exacerbated by the predominance of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is spuriously touted by its frequently fiscally motivated supporters as superior to other kinds of psychotherapy in both efficacy and brevity. Psychotherapists in training – psychiatric residents, clinical psychology, counseling and social work interns too are taught the same misleading party line. The sad result has been a gradual mechanization, dehumanization and reductionistic de-souling of psychotherapy. An estimated ninety percent of psychiatrists no longer practice psychotherapy much at all, relying heavily instead on pharmacotherapy. Ironically, the aforementioned mounting crisis within the psychotherapy world parallels a growing crisis in public mental health. The truth is, most psychotherapy patients need far more than what pharmaceutical intervention and/or cognitive restructuring – the two most popular "evidence-based" modalities today – can provide. As does every person seeking meaning and peace of mind. They need and deserve support and accompaniment through their painful, frightening, perilous spiritual or existential crises, their "dark night of the soul." They need a psychologically meaningful method to confront their metaphorical devils and demons, their repressed anger or rage, and the existential reality of evil. The fundamental task of a secular spiritual psychotherapy is to redeem (rather than cast out or exorcise) our emotional devils. It is inevitably both a psychological and spiritual venture. Bravely voicing our inner "demons" – symbolizing those unconscious tendencies we most fear, flee from, and hence, are obsessed or haunted by – transmutes them into helpful spiritual allies. During this alchemical process, the esoteric secret that many artists and spiritual savants share is revealed: That same demon so righteously run from and rejected paradoxically becomes the redemptive source of vitality, creativity, and authentic spirituality.'

'Exorcism can be said to be the prototype of modern psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, like exorcism, commonly consists of a prolonged, pitched, demanding, soul-wrenching, sometimes tedious bitter battle royale with the patient's diabolically obdurate emotional "demons," at times waged over the course of years or even decades rather than weeks or months, and not necessarily always with consummate success. And there is now growing recognition--not only by psychoanalytic practitioners--of the very real risks and dangers of psychic infection inherent also in the practice of psychotherapy. (This psychic susceptibility is almost universally depicted in these films, starting with The Exorcist and most recently by The Devil Inside.) Counter-transference is what we clinicians technically call this treacherous psychological phenomenon, which can cause the psychotherapist (or exorcist) to suffer disturbing, subjective symptoms during the treatment process – sometimes even as the patient progresses! Hence the ever-present importance for psychotherapists, like exorcists, to perform their sacred work within a formally ritualized structure, making full use of collegial support, cooperation and consultation, and to maintain inviolable personal boundaries. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, no one wrestles with the emotional demons of others all day without themselves being affected. This is an unavoidable occupational hazard of both exorcism and psychotherapy.'

'The narcissist ultimately starves for love because he or she can never get enough in the present to compensate for the past. -- Pathological narcissism is related to narcissistic rage: a furious, reflexive, unrelenting need to repay any perceived slight or insult. Neurotic narcissism starts out as normal narcissism, a healthy, natural childhood need for attention and appreciation which, when continually frustrated, becomes fixated and pathological. Neurotic narcissism stems from inadequate, insufficient or traumatic parenting and resulting narcissistic injury, especially prior to five years of age, during what Freud called the pre-Oedipal period. Children at this tender age find any serious lack of attunement and attention – or certainly, any outright abuse, neglect or emotional, if not physical, abandonment – an insult, a psychological injury, a traumatic psychic wound which distorts perceptions of both themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. When children experience parents or caretakers as unloving, rejecting or hostile, they respond to this narcissistic wounding by creating a shell-like false self – which replaces, protects and conceals the unaccepted, unloved and damaged true self – presenting instead a persona (Jung) based on what they perceive the parents and world want them to be. A great deal of what pathological narcissism in adults disguises is unresolved infantile anger, resentment and rage about not being recognized, accepted, and loved for who we are. This anger – along with feelings of being unlovable and unworthy of love – is buried beneath the false self. It is repressed, but not forgotten, nor forgiven. Narcissistic rage from the past tends to be re-stimulated by intimate relationships in the present. In romantic relationships, feelings are inevitably re-injured, and the childhood anger suddenly resurfaces – with a vengeance.'

'Porn intensely focuses our mental and physical attention, uncovering specific emotions eroticized much earlier in life. Through our sexual fantasies, we attempt to master feelings of powerlessness, shame, guilt, fear and loneliness that have followed us into adulthood. Suppose our parents, teachers, or clergy used excessive shame or guilt to teach or control us. To deal with our resultant anger, we encode the shame in our fantasies, becoming aroused when thinking of ourselves as naughty or engaging in secret or forbidden sexual acts. We feel excited, for example, when punished or disciplined for supposed misbehavior, by being tied up and forced to have sex. Forced to surrender sexually to a dominant aggressor, we allow ourselves to enjoy the sex while escaping from the guilt that has haunted us through life. On the other hand, some of us respond to underlying guilt and shame by sexualizing the idea of becoming the aggressor, perhaps delving into themes of incest or other extreme sexual behaviors to attach pleasure to unthinkable acts. Eroticizing feelings of inadequacy lead to fantasies with themes involving submission, humiliation, verbal abuse or extreme adoration of a partner. We are aroused by being treated as if we are useless, unworthy or weak. Yet, by inviting our own humiliation, we become in charge of it and through the sexual pleasure we receive weaken the impact of childhood pain. Some of us on the the other hand, counteract feelings of inadequacy with ideas of grandiosity in which we imagine ourselves as important, powerful or irresistibly sexy. We invent fantasies in which we are admired, adored, paid for sex, recreating ourselves as competent, powerful and attainable.'

'Ernest Becker, in The Denial of Death (1973), counsels wisely that one must "consent daily to die, to give oneself up to the risks and dangers of the world, allow oneself to be engulfed and used up. Otherwise one ends up as though dead in trying to avoid life and death." ...there really is no such thing as security in life. Except for that sense of security that originates within. Relinquishing our illusions of control, accepting our relative powerlessness over life and death, and accepting ourselves as we are – including our anxiety and life's utter unpredictability – can be extremely liberating. It can allow us to stop worrying so much, and get on with living. The mysterious future will unfold soon enough. Make necessary plans and decisions. But don't dwell on them or be overly attached to their desired outcomes. Focus instead on what's happening right now, this very moment, however anxiety-provoking, painful, tedious or infuriating rather than anxiously anticipating what may or may not happen next. The future is never guaranteed, one way or another. It may or may not ever arrive. Something bad could happen. But, then, so could something good. Rather than hopeless pessimism or grandiose expectation, consider adopting an attitude of "benign optimism" (or at least neutrality) toward the potential but never promised future.'

'As the old Zen proverb tells us: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Even spiritual enlightenment can't eliminate life's tedious tasks. The tasks always remain the same. What changes is the attitude taken toward these tasks. And the mindful presence with which they are quite deliberately performed. In our efforts to avoid anger, pain, boredom or anxiety, we avoid being fully present in the moment. But this avoidance of what we feel in the present actually exacerbates symptoms and diminishes our quality of life. When we ignore, reject or remain unconscious of our inner child, he or she is unhappy, resentful and influences our lives in negative and significant ways. But becoming conscious of and better relating to this same sad, neglected inner child can turn this all around. Once they can conceptualize the problem in terms of a conflict between the little one within and the often underdeveloped or absentee adult self, some reconciliation, negotiation and cooperation between the two can be established. Then the adult self can deal with adult things, and the valuable and lovable inner child, no longer needing to be in control of the personality or trying to do adult things it cannot, can happily contribute to our playfulness, creativity and innate capacity for wonder, awe and joy. The secret is to spend some quality time each day together, much like a good parent does with their outer child.'

'Mental health is not defined by the absence of anxiety. The experience of anxiety is universal. No one is immune to it. Anxiety is an inevitable part of the human condition. Chronically avoiding or repressing existential anxiety gives rise to neurotic or pathological anxiety, such as phobias and panic attacks. The secret to dealing positively with anxiety is to accept it, tolerate it, listen to its message, and learn to channel it's immense energy constructively. Anxiety can, when correctly utilized, motivate, energize, invigorate and vitalize. And it is closely connected with creativity of all kinds. As philosopher Soren Kierkegaard recognized, "Anxiety is our greatest teacher." He also called anxiety "the dizziness of freedom." The trick is first to transform your negative attitude toward anxiety. To normalize rather than pathologize it. To welcome rather than run from it. To, whenever practically possible, tolerate rather than medicate it. To embrace rather than escape from it. To try to understand rather than dismiss out of hand its psychobiological, spiritual and existential significance. -- When the daimonic is habitually denied, it becomes more negative and dangerous. But when we acknowledge its presence and reality, it can be the life-giving source of energy, strength, power, spirituality and creativity. This can be said of the unconscious in general. So it is vitally important to learn to listen to one's unconscious carefully, and to what it has to say about what's happening in the psyche now and what needs to happen if the future, both inwardly and outwardly.'

'School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress. ...researchers conducted brain scans on 92 of the children who had had symptoms of depression or were mentally healthy when they were studied as preschoolers. The imaging revealed that children without depression who had been nurtured had a hippocampus almost 10 percent larger than children whose mothers were not as nurturing. "For years studies have underscored the importance of an early, nurturing environment for good, healthy outcomes for children," Luby says. "But most of those studies have looked at psychosocial factors or school performance. This study, to my knowledge, is the first that actually shows an anatomical change in the brain, which really provides validation for the very large body of early childhood development literature that had been highlighting the importance of early parenting and nurturing. Having a hippocampus that's almost 10 percent larger just provides concrete evidence of nurturing's powerful effect."'

'Almost every study of fear finds that the amygdala is active. But that doesn't mean every spark of activity in the amygdala means the person is afraid. Instead, the amygdala seems to be doing something more subtle: processing events that are related to what a person cares about at the moment. So if you're in a scary situation or have an anxious personality, the amygdala might be activated by a frightening image. But hungry people have increased amygdala activity in response to pictures of food and people who are very empathetic have an amygdala response to seeing other people. "When we're studying emotion, people want to find specific brain parts that are associated with different emotions," Cunningham says. Especially in the early days of neuroscience, scientists hoped that soon it would be possible to use MRI and other brain-imaging techniques "to get under the hood and find out what people are really thinking." A lot of the time, people really don't know, or won't say, what they're thinking, and it would be nice to be able to look at a picture of their brain and know the answer. But the brain is too complicated for that. "Emotion is going to be distributed across the brain," Cunningham says.'

'Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them. In "Alone Together", MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It's a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools...' -- "...Alone Together is about human vulnerability and technological affordances. People are actually willing and wanting to substitute robots – that seem to care – for people... Nurturance is the killer app for sociable robotics. Human beings are programmed to love what we nurture." -- "'I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text.' When we use other people in this way, you can get used to seeing them as spare parts; as ways to support our too fragile selves."

'Certain facial features evoke feelings of warmth, trust and cooperation while minimizing feelings of threat and competition. People with babyish facial characteristics like large eyes, round chin and pudgy lips are perceived as kinder, more honest and more trustworthy than mature-faced people with small eyes, square jaws, and thin lips. Baby-faced people also produce more agreement with their positions. Prof. Maoz adds that there are situations in which a baby-face is not advantageous: "Although features of this type can lend politicians an aura of sincerity, openness and receptiveness, at the same time they can communicate a lack of assertiveness. So people tend to prefer baby-faced politicians as long they represent the opposing side, while on their own side they prefer representatives who look like they know how to stand their ground."'

'Meaningful actions exist because we find or impose patterns on the specific behaviours we observe or otherwise learn about. The patterns are constructions, but once generated, they are maintained because they disambiguate reality and thereby provide coherent understanding and a stable platform for subsequent thought and behaviour. Because they are constructions, however, they can admit to tremendous variability across people and contexts. Hence, the certainty of action that exists for each individual embedded in a particular context coexists with the uncertainty of action across individuals and contexts. That said, there is one metric for disambiguating action that seems solid and reflects a shared reality. The multiple act identities for an action tend to be organized in a hierarchical manner. A simple criterion is useful for sorting an action's multiple identities into a hierarchy: One act identity is higher-level than another identity if it makes sense to say that one does the former by doing the latter. -- ...when two or more plausible identities are available, people are inclined to choose the identity that provides the most comprehensive understanding of what they are doing, plan to do, or have done. -- #Social Influence: The influence agent first induces the target to consider the relevant action in concrete, low-level terms. Simply describing the action in terms of its details can induce low-level identification, as can presenting the target with a surplus of concrete information regarding the action. From this low-level state, the target experiences a heightened press for coherence. On his or her own, the target might emerge with a higher-level identity that reflects past perspectives or perhaps one that reflects a new integration. But if the influence agent offers a message that provides the missing integration before the target has demonstrated emergence on his or her own, the target may embrace this message as an avenue of emergent understanding, even if it conflicts with his or her prior conception.'

'Compared with low-level agents, high-level agents express a more internal locus of control, report more stability and consistency in their actions across contexts, and have clearer and more stable self-concepts. By contrast, low-level agents report acting more impulsively and describe their actions with less reference to mental states. The tendency to identify one’s actions at higher levels then may be indicative of an awareness of one’s own mind as a cause of behavior. -- Mentalizing incorporates subprocesses whereby the perceiver infers the existence of mental states, internal events, and other features of agents from external cues or from a personal simulation of the other’s experience... The tendency to mentalize in adults has been examined in studies of empathy, perspective-taking, emotion recognition and attribution, and knowledge estimation....mentalization is a continuum. At the lowest end of the continuum is the failure to attribute mental states to an agent, which might be called dementalizing. Thought, emotion, and intention are not inferred or are ignored. A perceiver can dementalize a person by explaining the person’s actions in terms of physical events, preexisting dispositions, or causal chains that do not require a mind.'

'Mentalization is the process by which an observer views a target as possessing higher cognitive faculties such as goals, intentions and desires. Mentalization can be assessed using action identification paradigms, in which observers choose mentalistic (goals-focused) or mechanistic (action-focused) descriptions of targets’ actions. Typically, healthy adults mentalize liked others more than disliked others... This discrepancy is reflected in discrepancies in action identification across targets. Liked
targets’ actions are consistently identified at higher levels than disliked targets’... This suggests that mentalization as assessed by action identification tasks varies as a function of the observer’s impression of the actor. Activation in several regions increased when participants considered the actions of disliked targets. These regions included the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral anterior insula and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These are regions consistently associated with negative emotions such as disgust, anger and pain...'

'People change their conceptions of what they are doing either by moving from a higher level to a lower one, or by moving from a lower level to a higher one. This means that in moving from one high-level conception of an action to another, the person must necessarily pass through a transitional state in which the specifics of the action come to mind. This formulation indicates that when people hold a fairly comprehensive and general conception of what they are doing, that conception will serve as an intention to act and will remain unperturbed by suggestions that the act has some alternative general identity. Thus, the theory explains why people are not always willing to believe it when someone suggests to them a new high-level conception of their action. It is only when people come to identify an action in terms of its details that they lose sight of their initial high-level understanding of the act and become susceptible to information indicating that the act can be identified in another high-level way.'

'If successfully enacted, an action tends to be identified at a relatively high level; if unsuccessfully enacted, it tends to be identified in lower-level terms. ...in the face of failure, the actor is likely to think about the action in more mechanistic terms. -- ...the extension of action identification principles to the communication of action allows for a certain "coyness" in self-presentation. Rather than boasting of one's personal competence, a person might nonetheless communicate this image of himself or herself through high-level identities. And rather than admitting failure or explaining it away, one can simply (and honestly) describe what one has done in mechanistic terms, thereby circumventing the presentation of oneself as incompetent. Finally, one can cultivate an image of modesty in the eyes of others by describing action-even successful action-in relatively low-level terms.'

'...people identify the actions they perform at the highest level they can.' -- Links to PDF papers

Action Identification: High/Why vs Low/How: "We have meaning and significance at the high levels of identification... When you focus at low levels there's less self-relevance to what you're doing." -- Being vs Doing

'"As culture changes, it affects our brains, and as our brains change, that affects our culture. You can't separate the two," Berns says.'

'...heart rates increased when they witnessed someone behaving badly, but this increase was tempered when they were able to pass on the information to alert others. "Spreading information about the person whom they had seen behave badly tended to make people feel better, quieting the frustration that drove their gossip," Willer said. So strong is the urge to warn others about unsavory characters that participants in the UC Berkeley study sacrificed money to send a "gossip note" to warn those about to play against cheaters in economic trust games. Overall, the findings indicate that people need not feel bad about revealing the vices of others, especially if it helps save someone from exploitation, the researchers said. -- "People paid money to gossip even when they couldn't affect the selfish person's outcome," Feinberg said.'

'She wants to be (thought of as) a progressive, to (appear to) challenge society's rules, but being a coward she instead forces her kid to bear all of the negative consequences of this challenge. Is she wearing a man's suit to work? Has she stopped shaving her legs "to hide her femininity"? Is she willing to risk that someone will punch her in the face at the bus stop? Is she willing to sacrifice her own carefully managed identity "to make people think a bit"? -- It's not the gender neutrality that's going to mess this kid up, though it might; but being raised by parents who are using their kid as something other than an end in himself.'

'Journey Into Self is a documentary concerning a group-therapy session of eight well-adjusted people who have never met before. Doctors Richard Farson and Carl Rogers lead the group discussion which include a cashier, a theology student, a teacher, a principal, three businessmen and a housewife. The 16-hour session is edited to a revealing 47 minutes in which the participants reveal their innermost feelings, wants and needs in this engaging psychological study.' -- Part 2: http://youtu.be/uZXrM5GMEyg

The "depletion effect" from Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow: 'Kahneman's book revolves around his distinction between knee-jerk "System 1" thinking and logical "System 2" thinking. When the costs of cognition rise, we use System 2 less, giving impulsive System 1 freer reign.' -- 'I propose a simple account of how we generate intuitive opinions on complex matters. If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I call the operation of answering one question in place of another, substitution... Faced with a genuinely difficult question, [people] answer a different, easier question, then conflate the answer to their question with the answer to your question. ...substitution is a plausible explanation of not only the absurdity of many popular views about how the economy works, but people's certainty about these absurdities.'