Richard G. Petty, MD

The Price of a Placebo

Placebos can be powerful things, whether they come wrapped in a nicely colored box, or take the form of an enthusiastic clinician.

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, and author of the excellent new book Predictably Irrational has written a letter in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association in which he suggests that pill costing ten cents is not as effective at preventing pain as a $2.50 pill, even when they are identical placebos.

Ariely and a team of collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recruited 82 people to participate in a study in which light electric shocks were administered to participants' wrists to measure their subjective rating of pain. The 82 study subjects were tested before getting the placebo and after. Half the participants were given a brochure describing the pill as a newly approved painkiller that cost $2.50 per dose. The other half was given a brochure describing it as marked down to 10 cents, without saying why.

• In the full-price group, 85 percent of subjects experienced a reduction in pain after taking the placebo.
• In the low-price group, 61 percent said the pain was less.

Although simple and small, the experiment raises some large questions.

As Dr. Ariely says,

"Physicians want to think it's the medicine and not their enthusiasm about a particular drug that makes a drug more therapeutically effective, but now we really have to worry about the nuances of interaction between patients and physicians.”

The results are consistent with previous data about how people perceive quality and how they anticipate therapeutic effects. What is interesting here is the combination of the price-sensitive consumer expectation with the placebo effect of being told that a pill works.

Would it help if prescription medications offer cues from packaging, rather than coming in indistinguishable brown bottles?

Is there a way of giving people cheaper or generic medications without them thinking they will not work?

As Dr Ariely says,

“At the very least, doctors should be able to use their enthusiasm for a medication as part of the therapy. They have a huge potential to use these quality cues to be more effective."

Wise words!

“It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.”
--John L. McClenahan (American Physician and Writer, 1935-)

“Your thoughts are like the seeds you plant in your garden. Your beliefs are like the soil in which you plant these seeds.”
--Louise Hay (American Spiritual Teacher, 1927-)

“Change your beliefs and you change your destiny.”
--Sterling Welling Sill (Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1903-1994)

Career Contentment

I am very happy to report that my friend Jeff Garton's new book - Career Contentment: Don't Settle for Anything Less - has just come out.

As you will see from my review, I just love the book, and it is amazing how Jeff's work and mine fit together.

We are going to be having a panel discussion about the book on www.Business.VoiceAmerica.com on Thursday March 6th at 3PM Eastern, which is noon Pacific time. The discussion is also going to be archived for people in other time zones. I plan to put up a link as soon as it is available.

There is a nice press release here.

I hope that you can listen in: I think that you will get a lot of food for thought!



“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
-Socrates (Greek Philosopher, 469-388 B.C.E.)

Fatalism and Ethics

We are constantly inundated by reports of the consequences of bad decision-making, and that leads us to consider two issues: genetic determinism - the notion that our behavior is totally the result of our genes - and whether or not we have free will. This is a hugely important issue, not only for each of us personally, but also for our views about morality and the justice system. And what happens when everyone becomes convinced that they have no free will and that “they’re genes made them do it?”

We know from our own experience as well as empirical studies that changing a person’s sense of responsibility can change his or her behavior.

Interestingly, the link between fatalistic beliefs and unethical behavior seems never to been examined scientifically.

In two recent experiments published in the journal Psychological Science psychologists Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia decided to see if otherwise honest people would cheat and lie if their beliefs in free will were manipulated.

They gave college students a mathematics exam. The math problems appeared on a computer screen, and the subjects were told that a computer glitch would cause the answers to appear on the screen as well. They were told that to prevent the answers from appearing, the students had to hit the space bar as soon as the problems appeared.

This was a ruse: the researchers were observing to see if the participants surreptitiously used the answers instead of solving the problems honestly on their own. Before the test they used a well-established method to prime the subjects' beliefs regarding free will. Some of the students were told that science has disproven the notion of free will and that the illusion of free will was an artifact of brain activity. The other group where told nothing about free will.

The results were clear: those with weaker convictions about their power to control their own destiny were more likely to cheat when given the opportunity compared with those whose beliefs about controlling their own lives were left untouched.

The researchers then went a step further to see if they could get people to cheat with unmistakable intention and effort. The experimenters set up a different deception. This time they had the subjects take a very difficult cognitive test. Then they were asked to solve a series of problems without supervision and to score themselves. They also "rewarded" themselves $1 for each correct answer. To collect the cash they had to walk across the room and help themselves to money in a manila envelope.

The psychologists had previously primed the participants to have their beliefs in free will bolstered or reduced by having them read statements supporting a deterministic view of human behavior.

This study shows that those with a stronger belief in their own free will were less likely to steal money than were those with a weakened belief.

The results of this study indicate a significant value in believing that free will exists. The work also raises some significant questions about personal beliefs and personal behavior.

“The flame of Christian ethics is still our highest guide.”
--Sir Winston Churchill (English Statesman, British Prime Minister, 1940-1945 and 1951-1955, and, in 1953, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1874-1965)

"You’re born with intelligence, but not with ethics.”
--Masad Ayoob (American Firearms and Self-defense Instructor and the Director of the Lethal Force Institute in Concord, New Hampshire, 1948-)

“Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is "All striving is vain," will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.”
--William James (American Psychologist and Philosopher, 1842-1910)

“To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism -this is the art of living.”
Jean de La Fontaine

“Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.”
--Joseph Wood Krutch (American Naturalist, Writer and Critic, 1893-1970)

Talking with Your Hands

In recent years there has been a small but growing literature that seems to support an idea going back to Roman times: certain specific movements may facilitate learning and a number of positive mental states.

Now, according to research from the University of Chicago that is reported in this month’s issue of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General gesturing can help children to learn new and correct mathematical problem-solving strategies. And the learning sticks: if they are taught new material later, children taught to gesture are more likely to succeed on math problems.

The investigators conducted two studies of 176 children in late third and early fourth grade, all of whom had been making mistakes in solving math problems. The children were randomly assigned the students to three groups:

1. Told to gesture
2. Told not to gesture
3. Not told to do either

In the studies' baseline phase, students had to solve six age appropriate math problems on a chalkboard and explain to an experimenter how they solved each one. The researchers coded the children's videotaped efforts, analyzing gestures and utterances that conveyed problem-solving strategies.

Compared with the children who were not told to do anything, those who were told to move their hands when explaining how they had solved a problem were four times as likely to manually express correct new ways to solve problems. They still did not give the right answer, but their gestures revealed an implicit knowledge of mathematical ideas. As one example, if the problem needed for the sides to be equal, children might sweep their palm first under a problem's left side and then under its right side. So they had implicit knowledge. Their problem was in turning explicit knowledge into correct answers. The second study showed that gesturing prepared them to benefit from subsequent instruction. Children told to gesture solved 1.5 times more problems correctly compared with the children who had been told not to gesture.

The authors conclude,

"Telling children to gesture encourages them to convey previously unexpressed, implicit ideas, which in turn makes them receptive to instruction that leads to learning."

Gesturing appears to help children to produce new problem-solving strategies, which in turn gets them ready to learn. The authors speculate that gesturing may help kids notice aspects of the math problems that may be more easily grasped through gestural representation

The findings extend previous research that body movement not only helps people to express things they may not be able to verbally articulate, but actually to think better. At the same time, gesturing offers a potentially powerful new way to augment the teaching of math. Strategies for math problems have focused on externalizing working memory, such as writing things down in certain ways. However, children often find it hard to recall and use those strategies. Gesturing may be more accessible, and help break through the roadblock.

This makes sense: we are hardwired to learn motor actions. That was an important skill long before the first person learned the basics of arithmetic. It is quite well known in educational circles that when it comes to learning, “doing” is 2-3 times more efficient than “listening.” But even “doing” is nowhere near as good as questioning, being questioned and then teaching.

(The entire article is available for free download here.)

“He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new.”
--José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish Philosopher, 1883-1956)

Height and Quality of Life

It’s difficult to guess it from that mug shot over on the left, but your humble reporter is six foot four, or, for our more metrically inclined friends, 193 centimeters. Believe it or not, on my mother’s side of the family, that would have made me one of the shortest. Over the years I have heard all the arguments about boys getting their height form their mothers, height being correlated with various maladies, and the old chestnut about tall people being more successful. Something that clearly escaped Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolph Hitler.

Nonetheless, some interesting correlations between height and psychological measures have begun to emerge in recent years.

Regular readers may recall the work from the West of England that has found some association between growth hormone and intelligence.

A new study in the journal Clinical Endocrinology indicates that your height in adult life significantly affects your quality of life, with shorter people reporting worse physical and mental health than people of “average” height. Shorter people judge their state of health to be significantly lower than their “normal” height peers do. I put quotes around words like “average” and “normal, since they have particular scientific rather than personal connotations.

The data for this study came from 14,416 people enrolled in the 2003 Health Survey for England, carried out by the UK Department of Health. In this survey, participants filled out a health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire and a nurse measured their height. A person's health-related quality of life refers to their perceived physical and mental health over time rather than a measure of his or her actual health.

People in the shortest height category (men shorter than 162 cm {5 foot four inches} and women shorter than 151 cm {4foot eleven inches}) reported they experience significantly lower HRQoL than people of “normal” height. The effect size is more pronounced the shorter a person is. This means that a small increase in height has a much larger positive effect on a short person than it does on a person of “normal” height.

One of the reasons for doing this study, which was supported by Novo Nordisk, is that there are some uncommon problems such as growth hormone deficiency or Turner syndrome in which people have short stature. The argument is that if their height causes psychological distress, there is a greater justification for treatment with growth hormone, which can increase their final adult height by approximately 4-10 cm (1.5 to 4 inches) depending on the underlying cause.

There is also another point. Some people already have a shorter stature, and most are perfectly well adapted. But it is important to be aware that some may be suffering in silence, and it is so important to ensure that they get the help that they need.

We cannot cure everything problem in the world, but we should be able to treat anything.

New Treatment Options: Knowing What to Use

One of the main reasons that I created this blog is that I want to empower you: I want to give to give you the information that you need to care for yourself and the people around you.

One of the problems with many new treatments is that they promise the earth, sometimes drag people away from things that may help them and then fail to deliver.

This is something that I struggled with in the field of holistic medicine for thirty years. I constantly hear and see fantastic claims that cannot be right and are often based on a complete misunderstanding of how the body functions. On the other hand there are some highly unorthodox methods and techniques that can be amazingly helpful. My job has been to find out which is which!

But it is not only in the field of unorthodox medicine. I have recently heard about something very questionable in the field of psychotherapy. Somebody has invented a new form of therapy that cuts across and ignores decades of research. He is now offering certifications in his method. So long as you have a very basic healthcare qualification, you pay him a few hundred dollars, do an online training and then you can set up shop as a therapist. Many members of the public do not know how little regulation there is for some of these therapies.

Here are some guidelines for checking out a new therapy or remedy:

1. Efficacy
Be suspicious of any treatment or therapist if they:

• Claim that a treatment works for everyone: I have yet to find ANY treatment that works for everyone
• Only use case histories or testimonials as proof. The plural of anecdote id not evidence. If we see or hear about something that looks promising, it is essential to confirm the reports with systematic, independent controlled research. Be aware that if that has not been done, the person selling you the treatment or the therapist claiming to help is essentially experimenting on you. And if they want to experiment they need your consent and the approval of an Institutional Review Board. And don’t buy into the “my work is so brilliant and cutting edge that nobody will publish it in a journal.” It is hard to publish really new work, but we cannot believe what people are saying until it has been subjected to peer review: other experts go through the work with a fine toothcomb to see if it is right.
• Cite only one study as proof. Hundreds of promising studies have turned out to be dead ends when someone else tried to repeat it. You can be a lot more confident if several studies have shown the same thing.
• Cites a study that did not have a control (comparison) group. That is always a first step in evaluating a new treatment.
• Cite a study that you cannot see yourself. We spend a lot of time checking some of the claims made on infomercials and websites. They often talk about some obscure study in a hard-to-find journal written in a foreign language. We go and find the papers and if necessary translate them. We constantly find that the studies quoted contain results that are 180 degrees away from what they claim.
• Only reference themselves. This recently came to light with a form of therapy that comes with a short book. There was not one scientific citation, but loads of self-references, so it looked as if there was something credible behind it.
• Testing a treatment without a control group is a necessary first step in investigating a new treatment, but subsequent studies with appropriate control groups are needed to clearly establish the effectiveness of the intervention.

2.  Safety?
Be wary if:

• A therapist or someone promoting a remedy cannot tell you the exact consequences of not following up with some other treatment. Safety is not only about the safety of a product or a therapy: it is also about the risks of declining a proven treatment
• A therapist tells you stop any other treatment that you are on without discussing the risks of stopping it, and without discussing the situation with any previous therapist. It does not matter whether you were on a medication or having acupuncture. Different treatments interact, and stopping and starting can be risky. If a therapist who does not prescribe medications tells you stop them, be very, very careful. There are precise ways to discontinue most treatments
• A remedy comes without precise directions about how to use it
• Something does not list its contents or ingredients
• A product has no information or warnings about side effects
• If a product or therapeutic approach is described as natural, with the implication that natural means safe. Hurricanes, arsenic and deadly nightshade are all natural!

3.  Promotion
Be very cautious if a therapy or treatment:

• Claims to be based on a secret formula or a secret that has been deliberately hidden from you
• Claims that the particular treatment or therapy is being suppressed or unfairly attacked by the medical or therapeutic communities
• Claims to work immediately and permanently for everyone
• Is described as an “Amazing breakthrough” or a “Miracle.”
• Claims to be a cure for something that other experts believe is incurable. They could be right, but then we have to go back to the first point about efficacy
• Is only promoted through infomercials, self-promoting books, online or by mail order

4. Evaluating Media Reports

• When evaluating reports of health care options, consider the following questions:
• What is the source of the information? Good sources of information include medical schools, government agencies (such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health), professional medical associations, and national disorder/disease-specific organizations. Information from studies in reputable, peer-reviewed medical journals is more credible than popular media reports.
• Who is the authority? The affiliations and relevant credentials of "experts" should be provided, though initials behind a name do not always mean that the person is an authority. Reputable medical journals now require researchers to reveal possible conflicts of interest, such as when a researcher conducting a study also owns a company marketing the treatment being studied or has any other potential conflict of interest.
• Who funded the research? It may be important to also know who funded a particular research project.
• Is the finding preliminary or confirmed? Unfortunately, a preliminary finding is often reported in the media as a "breakthrough" result. An "interesting preliminary finding" is a more realistic appraisal of what often appears in headlines as an "exciting new breakthrough." You should track results over time and seek out the original source, such as a professional scientific publication, to get a fuller understanding of the research findings

5. What Are the Financial Implications of This New Therapy or Remedy?

• Is the treatment covered by health insurance?
• What out-of-pocket financial obligation will you or your family have?
• How long will this out-of-pocket financial obligation be?
• Is there any kind of guarantee?
  

Tips for Finding Reliable Information Online
The good news is that the Internet is becoming an excellent source of medical information. The bad news is that with its low cost and global entry, the Web is also home to a great deal of unreliable health information.
In addition to the tips cited earlier, Web surfing really needs some special considerations:
Know the source. The domain name tells you the source of information on the Web site, and the last part of the domain name tells you about the source. For example:
.edu = university/educational
.biz/.com = company/commercial
.org = non-profit organization
.gov = government agency

The same rules do not always apply if you are looking at websites in other countries.
Obtain a "second opinion" regarding information on the Web. Pick a key phrase or name and run it through a search engine to find other discussions of the topic or talk to your health care professional.

Experts who spend time and trouble evaluating reports and then publish their findings online will often answer questions. RichardGPettyMD.blogs.com is one that does, and there are many others.

Counterfactual Thinking

Most of us have experienced the “I should have,” “I could have,” “If only I” and “I would have” moments. Times when we lament our missteps. We say to ourselves that we should have invested in a certain stock, should have married Agnes or become a doctor instead of a cab driver. Though it can be positive, for some people this kind of thinking becomes so pervasive that they simply cannot take any action in the present. So anything that we can learn about this process will likely help a great many people.

We refer to this process in which we evaluate how we would do things differently, as “counterfactual thinking.” Though it can be positive, and help us learn from our mistakes, it is a common psychological mechanism that causes us to harbor feelings of disappointment and regret. For some people this kind of thinking becomes so pervasive that they simply cannot take any action in the present. So anything that we can learn about this process will likely help a great many people.

A common research strategy in the study counterfactual thinking, is to have people read stories in which the main character makes decisions that will ultimately doom him or her to failure. Researchers then ask them how they would have done things differently.

But this method may not provide a complete picture of this mental process. New research published in the June issue of Psychological Science, which is a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that our counterfactual thinking may be markedly different when we are actually experiencing failure rather than reading about someone else's.

In a series of experiments, Vittorio Girotto of the University luav di Venezia in Venice, Italy and his colleagues attempted to demonstrate and explain the differences in counterfactual thinking between actors who actually experienced the problem and readers who just read about it.

The experimental subjects were divided into two groups:

• Actors who were asked to participate in a game in which they could win a reward by solving a math problem. They were then asked to choose one of two sealed envelopes: One was said to contain a difficult problem, and one supposedly contained an easy problem. In reality, both envelopes contained a problem that was nearly impossible to solve in the allotted time. Once the actors failed, they were asked to write at least one way in which things would have been better for them.
• In the second group, “Readers” read a story with a protagonist who faced the same choice and ended with the same negative outcome as the subjects did in the actor condition. Like the actors, readers were required to write at least one way in which things would have been better for the protagonist.

The readers and actors were very different in their counterfactual thinking. Readers tended to undo the protagonist's choice to tackle the problem, while actors changed the way in which they tried to solve the problem. So a reader would say, “I should have picked another envelop,” while the actor would ask if he could use a calculator.

These results run counter to previous theories of counterfactual thinking. It was assumed that people who read a story construct the same counterfactuals as people who experienced the events described in the story. It was also believed that actors tend to avoid self-blame at all costs when thinking of alternatives. Instead, the actor-reader differences emerged even in conditions in which actors' decisions made the best decisions that they could. The researchers said,

“Actors and readers produce different counterfactuals because they rely on different information, not because they have different motivations.”

In both cases, “what might have been” thinking can be stressful.

This research confirms something that we have been teaching for years:
Learn to detach from your aims and desires: you need passion and purpose. But you do not need the third “P:” Pain

Liberate yourself from the past: Healing, Meaning and Purpose has a whole section on novel ways to get rid of some of the “stuff” that most of us carry around in our bodies, our minds and our subtle systems.

Albert Ellis, R.I.P.

I just heard that Albert Ellis has passed away at the age of 93.

I think that most people who have ever done a psychology course will have heard of him. He was always controversial and upset a lot of people, particularly in regard to some of his early comments about religion and human sexuality, but he also made some important contributions to psychologyadn , was not afraid of changing is position if he thought tht he was wrong.

In 1955 he developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, and he was considered by many to be the grandfather of cognitive-behavioral therapies.

In 1982 a professional survey of U.S. and Canadian psychologists, declared that he was one of the most influential psychotherapists in history (Carl Rogers placed first in the survey; Sigmund Freud placed third). Ellis founded and was the president and president emeritus of the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute. His 90th birthday party was attended by Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama.

Here are a few of his quotations that I found in my library and database.

“Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.”

“As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.”

“By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.”

“Cognitive behavior therapy and rational emotive behavior therapy are much more popular with the public than they ever were.”

“For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.”

“Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.”

“From the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.”

“I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up.”

“I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.”

“I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression. “

“I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.”

“I hope to die in the saddle seat.”

“I just had a client this week who came to me after 10 years of Freudian therapy. He's in love with his analyst, and she is sort of in love with him.”

“I regret that I've been so busy with clinical work that I haven't been able to spend much time on experiments and outcome studies.”

“I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.”

“I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.”

“I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.”

“I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.”

“I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame.”

“I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.”

“I'll be 87 tomorrow. When I'm in New York, I see as many 70 or more clients per week.”

“I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it-going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.”

“I've lived in sin with the executive director of our institute for 35 years. I was married twice briefly before that.”

“If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.”

“If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.”

“In the old days we used to get more referrals, because people had insurance that paid for therapy. Now they belong to HMOs, and we can only be affiliated with a few HMOs.”

“Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.”

“Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.”

“Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.”

“People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.”

“People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.”

“People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.”

“People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.”

“Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.”

“Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.”

“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

“The psychotics, naturally, don't think straight. Severe personality disorders take much longer to treat than people who are neurotic.”

“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”

“There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.”

“We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.”

“We teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.”

“We're a nonprofit organization, and it usually costs $100 an hour for individual therapy. Participating in a group costs $120 a month.”

“You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.”

“I just got fed up. I was ready to blow up. This country is about enforcing our laws and if we don't, we'll have chaos worse than we already do.”

“The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.”

“Tolerance is anathema to devout divinity-centered religionists."

“Anyway, devout religionists are frequently attracted to and bound to their piety largely because it presumably offers them holier-than-thouness and one-up-man-ship over non-religionists."

Pride

Over the centuries, oceans of ink have been spilled on the topic of pride and it has puzzled and perplexed philosophers, theologians and psychologists for centuries. It has been of particular interest to me since I moved to the United States: the English and American attitudes toward pride are very different animals. In England if someone congratulates you on a job well done, the expected response is to say, “Oh, it was nothing.” In the United States the person being congratulated will usually explain how much work went into the task and how pleased he or she is to be recognized. England expects modesty; America has since its founding encouraged and applauded self-reliance and personal excellence. On the other hand too much pride can breed narcissism and vanity, and nobody likes that.

Pride is clearly a complex emotion, unlike primary emotions like anger or fear.

Two psychologists – Jessica Tracy from the University of British Columbia and Richard Robins from the University of California at Davis, have been exploring the origins and purpose of pride.

They reviewed several recent studies on the nature and function of pride in the June issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Pride appears to be universal: in research using photographs of models with different facial expressions and body language, children as young as four, and people in many different cultures, including members of an isolated, preliterate tribe in Burkina Faso, West Africa, were all able to identify pride. What we do not know is how people at different ages and in different cultures respond to pride. It is clearly less acceptable in England than it is in the United States.

If it is universal, then what is its purpose? Tracy and Robins have tried a number of strategies to try and answer that question. They first asked people to come up with words that they associated with pride. People either link pride to such achievement-oriented ideas as accomplishment and confidence, which they term “authentic pride” or alternatively people connect pride to self-aggrandizement, arrogance and conceit, which they call “hubristic pride.”

People who tend to feel authentic pride were more likely to score high on extraversion, agreeableness, genuine self-esteem and conscientiousness. On the other hand, people who tend to feel hubristic pride were more likely to be narcissistic and, perhaps surprisingly, prone to shame. They also found that people who felt positive, achievement-oriented feelings of pride viewed hard work as the key to success in life, whereas hubristic people tended to view success as predetermined, due in part to their superior abilities.

Tracy and Robins argue that the primitive precursors of pride probably motivated our ancestors to act in altruistically for the good of the tribe. The physical display of pride would have both reinforced such behavior and signaled to the group that this person was worthy of respect. So individual authentic pride contributed in important ways to the survival of the community.

They speculate that hubris might have been a social "short cut:" a way of tricking others into paying respect when it was not warranted. Those who could not earn respect the old-fashioned way found tricks and techniques on how to look and act accomplished in order to gain status. Social cheaters developed a persona to compensate for their lack of abilities to achieve material success.

Chances are that any respect that they got would have been fleeting.

There is one other important point: in the United States with its healthy attitude toward pride, it does not have to be negative: pride can be a powerful motivator. Pride in performance, pride in working with gifted professionals and the pride of a heartfelt genuine acknowledgment can be worth more than rubies.

I do not mean the kind of Monday morning messages from the head of sales who tells everyone that they are “awesome.” That just pushes the cynicism button. But if the same sales manager send out occasional personal notes of congratulation that get copied in to everyone, the effects can be amazing.

Have you considered whether pride might be the missing motivator for you and your co-workers?



“Pride is as loud a beggar as want and a great deal more saucy.”
--Benjamin Franklin (American Author, Inventor and Diplomat, 1706-1790)

“Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.”
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Russian Writer and, in 1970, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1918-)

“I hope there is no pride in me. I feel I recognize fully my weakness. But my faith in God and His strength and love is unshakable. I am like clay in the Potter's hands. I shall continue to confess blunders each time the people commit them. The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority. I believe in the supreme power of God. I believe in Truth and, therefore, I have no doubt in the future of this country or the future of humanity.”
--Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Nationalist and World Teacher, 1869-1948)

“The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself.”
--Bishop Joseph Hall (English Theologian, Philosopher and Poet, 1574-1656)

“What good is social class and status? Truthfulness is measured within. Pride in one's status is like poison - holding it in your hand and eating it, you shall die.”
--Sri Guru Granth Sahib (a.k.a. Adi Granth, Sacred Text of Sikhism, completed in 1604)

“Pride is ignorance. A little possession of wealth, beauty, strength or intelligence intoxicates a man.”
-- Sri Swami Sivananda (Indian Physician and Spiritual Teacher, 1887-1963)

Evaluating Sense of Coherence

Yesterday we began to look at Aaron Antonovsky's concept of Sense of Coherence.

Here is one of the most widely used sets of questions to determine an individual’s Sense of Coherence, derived from Antonovsky's The Sense of Coherence Quest.

The questions concern a number of aspects of our lives.

Each question has seven possible answers. The person doing the evaluation marks one number from 1 to 7 for whichever one most closely corresponds to their beliefs or  feelings.

1. When you talk to people, do you have the feeling that they don’t understand you?
    Never     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Always have this feeling

2 In the past, when you had to do something that depended upon cooperation with others, did you have the feeling that it:
    Surely wouldn't get done     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Surely would get done

3. Think of the people with whom you come into contact daily, aside from the ones to whom you feel closest. How well do you know most of them?
    You feel that they're strangers     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     You know them very well

4. Do have the feeling that you don't really care about what goes on around you?
    Very seldom or never     1 2 3 4 5 6 7    Very often

5. Have you in the past ever been surprised by the behavior of people whom you thought you knew well?
    Never happened     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Always happened

6. Have you ever had people that you counted on, ended up disappointing you?
    Never happened     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Always happened

7. Life is:
    Full of interest     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Completely routine

8. Until now your life has had:
    No clear goals or purpose at all     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very clear goals and purpose

9. Do you have the feeling that you're being treated unfairly?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very seldom or never

10. In the past ten years your life has been:
    Full of changes without your knowing what will happen next     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Completely consistent and clear

11. Most of the things you do in the future will probably be:
    Completely fascinating     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Deadly boring

12. Do you have the feeling that you are in an unfamiliar situation and don't know what to do?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very seldom or never

13. What best describes how you see life:
    One can always find a solution to painful things in life     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     There is no solution to painful things in life

14. When you think about your life, you very often:
    Feel how good it is to be alive     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Ask yourself why you exist at all

15. When you face a difficult problem, the choice of a solution is:
    Always confusing and hard to find     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Always completely clear

16. Doing the things you do every day is:
    A source of deep pleasure and satisfaction     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     A source of pain and boredom

17. Your life in the future will probably be:
    Full of changes without your knowing what will happen next     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Completely consistent and clear

18. When something unpleasant happened in the past your tendency was:
    "To beat yourself up" about it     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 to say,     "Ok that’s that, I have to live with it " and go on

19. Do you have very mixed-up feelings and ideas?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very seldom or never

20. When you do something that gives you a good feeling:
    It’s certain that you'll go on feeling good     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     It's certain that something will happen to spoil the feeling

21. Does you have feelings inside you would rather not feel?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very seldom or never

22. You anticipate that your personal life in the future will be:
    Totally without meaning or purpose     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Full of meaning and purpose

23. Do you think that there will always be people whom you'll be able to count on in the future?
    You're certain there will be     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     You doubt there will be

24. Does it happen that you have the feeling that you don't know exactly what's about to happen?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very seldom or never

25. Many people - even those with a strong character - sometimes feel like sad sacks (losers) in certain situations. How often have you felt this way in the past?
    Never     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very often

26. When something happened, have you generally found that:
    You overestimated or underestimated its importance     1 2 3 4 5 6 7             You saw things in the right proportion

27. When you think of the difficulties you are likely to face in important aspects of your life, do you have the feeling that:
    You will always succeed in overcoming the difficulties     1 2 3 4 5 6 7             You won't succeed in overcoming the difficulties

28. How often do you have the feeling that there's little meaning in the things you do in your daily life?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7    Very seldom or never

29. How often do you have feelings that you're not sure you can keep under control?
    Very often     1 2 3 4 5 6 7     Very seldom or never

There are no right or wrong answers, but the overall pattern of your scores will give you some useful insights. There is a large research literature in which scores on this scale have been related to everything from career choices to the risk of getting PTSD.

A Sense of Coherence

One of the central concepts of Integrated Health and Integrated Medicine is the idea of coherence. This is not a new idea, but was developed in new ways and formalized by the American/Israeli sociologist Aaron Antonovsky. It is such an important concept that I have mentioned something about it before

Antonovsky developed his theory of health and illness, which he termed Salutogenesis. This model was described in his 1979 book "Health, Stress and Coping", followed by "Unraveling the Mystery of Health" in 1987. I remember its publication, and the strong feeling amongst many of us interested in Integrated Health that it was a most important contribution to understanding the relationship between health and illness. A key concept in Antonovsky's salutogenic theory concerns the way in which specific personal dispositions serve to make us more resilient to the stressors that we encounter in daily life.

Antonovsky identified these characteristics, which he said helped a person better cope and remain healthy by providing "a sense of coherence" (SOC) about life and the challenges we all face. Measures of Sense of Coherence have been developed and tested in more than 30 countries.

The SOC is defined as: “The extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic, feeling of confidence that one’s environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected.”

So it tries to capture our sense of optimism and control.

SOC has three components:

• Comprehensibility
• Manageability
• Meaningfulness

Comprehensibility is the extent to which events are perceived as making logical sense, that they are ordered, consistent, and structured. Manageability is the extent to which a person feels they can cope. Meaningfulness is how much one feels that life makes sense, and challenges are worthy of commitment.

Professor Antonovsky believed that a person with a strong SOC is more likely to feel less stress and tension, and to have confidence that he or she can meet the demand placed upon them. The SOC was developed to apply across cultures, and versions of the questionnaire have been used in over 30 countries.

The SOC is not the only factor in a predicting outcomes in a person’s life: it interacts with a person’s natural coping style, upbringing, financial assets, mood and social support. The strength and availability of each is a major determinant in the development of a strong or weak SOC.

Research in the growing field of psychoneuroimmunology has supported many of the basic assertions of the relationship between emotions and health contained in Antonovsky's theory of Salutogenesis.

I saw some research (NR691) at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Diego, California last month that was based on a sample of 976 working people in Denmark, found that people with a high sense of coherence perceive less stress and experience less psychological disturbance in the work place.

This all makes very good sense, and it also gives us yet another line of approach for helping people deal with the stresses of life and gain personal mastery.

I shall talk about using this information in the future.

Solar Cycles and Human Disease

We have all heard about the supposed association between full moon and mental illness, though most of the research has failed to find an association between phases of the moon and mood disorders or psychosis.

But something that we have not heard so much about is the possible association between solar activity and human problems.

Investigators from Chile presented some interesting data (NR308) at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Diego last month.

They used a measure of solar activity called the Wolf number that is based on the number of sunspots. The sunspot cycles are usually between 9.5 and 11 years. They examined the clinical records of 1862 individuals who had been seen at a psychiatric clinic in Santiago over a sixteen-year period, which corresponded to one and a half solar cycles. They found that there was a big rise in admission for severe depression during years with low solar activity and a slight increase in the number of admission for mania during years of high solar activity.

This is not the first time that a connection has been found between the sun and human affairs.

The same authors published a paper in Spanish two years ago in which they also found that depression is more common when there is less solar activity and mania increases when there is more activity. They cannot say whether it is just light that is causing this or some other form of radiation.

Two researchers used the Maine Medicaid database to look at the relationship between solar cycles and human disease, and found that that radiation peaks in solar cycles and particularly in chaotic solar cycles (CSCs) are associated with a higher incidence of mental disorders. The same researchers had previously used the same database to suggest that CSCs produce more ultraviolet radiation and it is this that limits human longevity by causing chromosomal damage.

Interestingly, in 1993 two researchers also suggested a relationship between solar activity and longevity. They looked at the mean longevity of birth cohorts from 1740 to 1900 for United States of America (U.S.) Congressional Representatives exhibited oscillations that coincided with the 9- to 12-year sunspot cycle. They found that the mean longevities of these cohorts were 2-3 years longer during times of low sunspot activity than at peak activity. This phenomenon was confirmed in data from members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom Parliament and from University of Cambridge alumni.

Researchers in Slovakia have suggested that there may be an association between solar radiation and cerebral strokes, though their data is a little difficult to interpret.

It is clear that the Heavens have more of an impact upon us than many scientists realized, and need to be factored into studies of human mood and behavior.

Successful Aging

One of the most promising changes in psychology is the ever-greater emphasis on what makes us healthy, rather than constantly looking at the things that make us sick. There is an important approach called Behavioral Activation (BA) Theory, which emphasizes environmental and behavioral factors as determinants of our overall well-being. According to the theory, reduced engagement in pleasurable activities may be an important precursor of reduced well-being. This makes good sense: it is estimated that as much as 90% of our higher cortical functions are designed for social interactions.

This is something that I wrote in Healing, Meaning and Purpose:

"Nothing in the Universe exists in isolation: We live in a Universe of relationships. It is inconceivable that anything can exist except in relationship to something else. The entire Universe is made up of integrated systems that function, develop and evolve together. A failure to construct and maintain healthy relationships can be a cause of much distress.

Several years ago I reported some interesting observations. At the time, I was doing a lot of research on diseases of blood vessels. I had developed a laboratory method for taking some of the cells that line blood vessels from volunteers and then growing them in a cell culture dish. We discovered that if we did not have enough cells in the dish, they would all die of “loneliness.” The exception is cancer cells, which in culture will grow on their own, like weeds."

As an example in a paper published in February in the Archives of General Psychiatry it was shown that lonely individuals may be twice as likely to develop the type of dementia linked to Alzheimer's disease in late life as those who are not lonely. The theory has been shown to predict psychiatric well-being in a number of populations, including the caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease, people with chronic pain, cancer patients and community-dwelling older people.

It is also known that psychiatric well-being, particularly emotional well-being, may play an important role in cardiovascular health. This may be due to an increase in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system that increases not only blood pressure, but also the levels of inflammatory mediators and coagulant factors in the blood.

In research from the University of California at La Jolla that was presented on Monday at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Diego, California, twenty two people with a mean age of 70 were studied, to see if there was a link between their behavioral activation, i.e. how satisfied they were with their leisure activities, their affective well-being and their blood pressure.

The findings were as expected: the less satisfied and engaged people were, the higher was their blood pressure.

This is only preliminary data, but it confirms something that we have said before: as we get older it is as important to stay socially engaged as it is to do mental exercise.

And if you known someone who is older and isolated, you might want to go and see them.

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.”
--Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Albanian-born Indian Nun, Humanitarian and, in 1979, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1910-1997)

“What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.”
--Dag Hammarskjöld (Swedish Statesman, Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953-1961, and, in 1961, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1905-1961)

Genius Genes

I have talked before about the fascinating topic of child prodigies, and the continuing debate about the contributions and interactions of nature and nurture.

There is an important new study published in the journal Behavioral Genetics that should be of interest to anyone interested in thinking, intelligence and optimizing the potential of children.

A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has gathered the most extensive evidence to date that a gene that activates signaling pathways in the brain influences at least one kind of intelligence. They have confirmed a link between the gene, CHRM2 and performance IQ, that involves a person's ability to organize thoughts or events logically.

The team found that several variations within the CHRM2 gene could be correlated with slight differences in performance IQ scores, which measure a person's visual-motor coordination, logical and sequential reasoning, spatial perception and abstract problem solving skills. When people had more than one positive variation in the gene, the improvements in performance IQ were cumulative.

Typical IQ tests also measure verbal skills and typically include many subtests. For this study, subjects took five verbal subtests and four performance subtests, but the genetic variations influenced only performance IQ scores.

The researchers studied DNA gathered as part of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA). In this multi-center study, people who have been treated for alcohol dependence and members of their families provide DNA samples and investigators have isolated DNA regions related to alcohol abuse and dependence as well as a variety of other outcomes.

Some of the participants in the study also took the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, a traditional IQ test. Members of 200 families, including more than 2,150 individuals, took the Wechsler test, and those results were matched to differences in individuals' DNA.

By comparing individual differences embedded in DNA, the team focused on CHRM2, a muscarinic receptor gene on chromosome 7. The CHRM2 gene activates a multitude of signaling pathways in the brain involved in learning, memory and other higher brain functions. The research team does not yet understand how the gene exerts its effects on intelligence.

Intelligence was one of the first pscyhological factors that attracted the attention of people interested in the interplay of genes and environmental influences. Early studies of adopted children showed that when children grow up away from their biological parents, their IQs are more closely correlated to biological parents, with whom they share genes, than adoptive parents, with whom they share an environment.

But in spite of the association between genes and intelligence, it has been difficult to find specific variations that influence intelligence. The genes identified in the past were those that had profoundly negative effects on intelligence - genes that cause mental retardation, for example. Those that contribute to less dramatic differences have been much harder to isolate.

The St. Louis team is not the first to notice a link between intelligence and the CHRM2 gene. In 2003, a group in Minnesota looked at a single marker in the gene and noted that the variation was related to an increase in IQ. A more recent Dutch study looked at three regions of DNA along the gene and also noticed influences on intelligence. In this new study, however, researchers tested multiple genetic markers.

The lead investigator in St. Louis, Danielle Dick, had this to say,

"This is not a gene FOR intelligence, it's a gene that's involved in some kinds of brain processing, and specific alterations in the gene appear to influence IQ. But this single gene isn't going to be the difference between whether a person is a genius or has below-average intelligence."

"One way to measure performance IQ may be to ask people to order pictures correctly to tell a story. A simple example might be pictures of a child holding a vase, the vase broken to bits on the floor and the child crying. The person taking the test would have to put those pictures into an order that tells the story of how the child dropped the vase and broke it and then cried."

"If we look at a single marker, a DNA variation might influence IQ scores between two and four points, depending on which variant a person carries. We did that all up and down the gene and found that the variations had cumulative effects, so that if one person had all of the 'good' variations and another all of the 'bad' variations, the difference in IQ might be 15 to 20 points. Unfortunately, the numbers of people at those extremes were so small that the finding isn't statistically significant, but the point is we saw fairly substantial differences in our sample when we combined information across multiple regions of the gene."

Most experts believe that there are at least 100 genes that could influence intelligence, but it is unlikely that any one gene is going to be the ONE determinant of how smart someone is. After all, IQ itself has very poor predictive value for anything much in life apart from achievement in high school. The many genes involved probably have small, cumulative effects on increasing or decreasing IQ, and the key will be to understand the interaction between environmental influences and these genes. We already know that childhood nutrition, socio-economic status and emotional and cognitive environments have a profound influence on intelligence and achievement. Altogether too many children have all the mental machinery but do not even realize the possibilities open to them.

It is also clear that early influences will have a lot to do with the repertoire of intelligences that a person has. In the book and CD series Healing, Meaning and Purpose I spend some time discussing Howard Gardner’s important concept of multiple intelligences. Many of us have skills in certain domains and it is a terrible mistake to assume that because a child is not very good at logical or verbal tasks, that they are not smart. After all, how many brilliant musicians, computer scientists and entrepreneurs never finished high school or college?

There is clearly more than a gene deciding our intelligence and success at certain activities. The genes may give us the machinery and the fuel, but there are clearly many other factors. I’ve always been a very keen chess player and I once had a friend who was a nationally ranked contract bridge Master. He would destroy most normal mortals at any card game: including me! Even when we played scratch games of contract bridge he would always try to avoid partnering me: he told me that I sucked too badly! 8-(

He also had a hobby: he built and designed all kinds of board games. He used to get upset that whatever the game, if it was played on a board, I almost always won. But here’s the interesting thing: our IQs were virtually identical. But he was murderously good at card games but not at anything involving a board: another refinement of intelligence. I probably did well with board games because I could plan and visualize in three dimensions. My friend had a phenomenal memory for cards that I simply don’t possess.

As the owners of some establishments in Las Vegas once discovered to their glee....

“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
--Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician and Philosopher, 1861-1947)

“Intelligence is the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one's own culture.”
--Howard Gardner (American Psychologist and Professor at Harvard, 1943-)

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Writer, 1896-1940)

“To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the enlightened mind the whole world sparkles and burns.”
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, 1803-1882)

“It is the sign of a dull mind to dwell upon the cares of the body, to prolong exercise, eating and drinking and other bodily functions. These things are best done by the way; all your attention must be given to the mind.”
--Epictetus (Phrygian-born Greek Stoic Philosopher, c.A.D.55- c.A.D.135)

Psychological Problems, Stigma and Success

I do a lot of work to try and de-stigmatize mental illness, and to emphasize that all of my experience and all the scientific evidence makes it very clear that most psychological and psychiatric problems lie on a spectrum. We define something as an "illness" only if it is causing suffering or distress.

Because of my work I know about the physical and psychological problems of a great many people in the public eye, but I will obviously not talk about people unless they decide to say something themselves.

When I am speaking to politicians or the media I often show them a list of some of the people with psychological problems who have gone public.

I just found this long list of Deborah Serani's blog. There were a number of names of people whom I did not know had revealed that they had suffered from problems. I am pleased that Deborah offered some references. I have also added a few names from my own research.

If there are any mistakes, please let me know and I shall correct them.

I would like to make three points:

1. Psychological problems and psychiatric illnesses are common and usually treatable
2. Having been diagnosed with one of these problems does not preclude you from outstanding success
3. This list does not include people with substance abuse problems, though these problems are usually as physical as any other

I do hope that you will find it helpful to see just how many terrific people have had their downs as well as their ups!

John Quincy Adams (US President)
Alvin Ailey (Choreographer)
Lionel Aldridge (Football Star)
Buzz Aldrin (Astronaut)
Adam Ant  A.K.A. Stuart Goddard (Singer)
Ann-Margaret (Actor)
Louie Anderson (Comedian Actor)
Gillian Anderson (Actress)
Fiona Apple (Musician)
Diane Arbus (Photographer)
Isaac Asimov (Author)
Drew Barrymore (Actor/Producer)
Daniel Boorstin (Former Us Presidential Adviser)
Zach Braff (Actor)
Art Buchwald (Columnist)
Oksana Baiul (Skating Star)
Kim Basinger (Actress)
Ned Beatty (Actor)
Syd Barrett (Musician)
Ludwig Van Beethoven (Composer)
Maurice Bernard (Actor)
Irving Berlin (Composer)
Danny Bonaduce (Actor/Radio DJ)
Halle Berry (Actor)
Kjell Magne Bondevik (Prime Minister of Norway)
Steve Blass (Baseball Star)
Charles “Buddy” Bolden (Musician)
Robert Borrstin (Political Advisor)
David Bowie (Singer)
Marlon Brando (Actor)
Jeremy Brett (Actor)
Charlotte Bronte (Author)
Robert Burns (Poet)
Willie Burton (Athlete)
Barbara Bush (Former First Lady - U.S.)
Delta Burke (Actor)
Carol Burnett (Actress/Comedian)
Lord Byron (Poet)
Cher (Singer/Actress)
Dick Clark (Producer/Music Magnate)
John Candy (Comedian)
Ray Charles (Musician)
Deanna Carter (Singer)
Helen Caldicott (Activist/Writer)
Dean Cain (Actor)
Drew Carey (Actor/ Comedian)
Earl Campbell (Football Star)
Eric Clapton (Musician)
Jim Carrey (Actor/Comedian)
Melanie Chisholm (Singer)
Naomi Campbell (Model)
Rosemary Clooney(Singer)
Jose Canseco (Baseball Star)
Shawn Colvin (Musician)
Mary Jo Codey (First Lady Of New Jersey)
Judy Collins (Musician)
Dick Cavett (TV Host/Writer)
Courtney Cox (Actor)
Margaret Cho (Actor/Comedian)
Natalie Cole (Singer)
Michael Crichton (Writer)
Francis Ford Coppola (Director)
Sheryl Crow (Musician)
Winston Churchill (English Prime Minister)
Nicolas Cage (Actor)
Sandra Cisneros (Writer)
Patricia Cornwell (Writer)
John Cleese (Comedian/Actor)
Leonard Cohen (Musician)
Paula Cole (Actor)
Shayne Corson (Hockey Star)
Judy Collins (Musician)
Shawn Colvin (Musician)
Jeff Conaway (Actor)
Ty Cobb (Baseball Star)
Pat Conroy (Writer)
Billy Corgan (Musician)
Calvin Coolidge (US President)
Bill Dana (Comedian)
John Daly (Golf Star)
Rodney Dangerfield (Comedian/ Actor)
Charles Darwin (Scientist)
Jefferson Davis (President Of The Confederate States Of America)
Jonathan Davis (Musician)
Sandra Dee (Actor)
Gaetano Donizetti (Opera Singer)
Mike Douglas (TV Host)
Walt Disney (Entrepreneur)
John Denver (Musician)
Dame Edna Everage a.k.a. Barry Humphries (Comedian)
Ellen Degeneres (Comedian/Actor)
Richard Dreyfuss (Actor)
Johnny Depp (Actor)
Paolo Dicanio (Soccer Star)
Eric Douglas (Actor)
Charles Dickens (Author)
Patty Duke (Actress)
Scott Donie (Olympic Star)
Kitty Dukakis (Former First Lady Of Massachusetts)
Michael English (Singer)
Jim Eisenreich (Baseball Star)
Thomas Edison (Inventor)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Writer)
Robert Evans (Film Producer)
Jules Feiffer (Cartoonist)
James Farmer (Civil Rights Leader)
Edie Falco (Actress)
Betty Ford (Former US First Lady)
Carrie Fisher (Actress)
James Forrestal (Undersecretary Of US)
Eddie Fisher (Singer)
Aretha Franklin (Singer)
Harrison Ford (Actor)
Albert French (Writer)
Sally Field (Actress)
Connie Francis (Singer)
Sarah Ferguson (Duchess Of York)
Sigmund Freud (Psychoanalyst)
Stephen Fry (Actor)
Shecky Greene (Comedian)
Barbara Gordon (Filmmaker)
Phil Graham (Washington Post)
James Gandolfini (Actor)
James Garner (Actor)
Peter Gabriel (Musician)
Kendall Gill (Basketball Star)
Ruth Graham (Writer)
John Gibson (Pianist)
Danny Glover (Actor)
Dwight Gooden (Baseball Star)
Tipper Gore (Former US First Lady)
Galileo (Scientist)
Carey Grant (Actor)
Mariette Hartley (Actor/Activist)
Tim Howard (Soccer Star)
Juliana Hatfield (Musician)
Ernest Hemingway (Writer/ Nobel Laureate)
Margaux Hemingway (Actor)
Audrey Hepburn (Actor/Activist)
Olivia Hussey (Actress)
Pete Harnisch (Baseball Star)
Linda Hamilton (Actor)
Stephen Hawking (Physicist)
Sir Anthony Hopkins (Actor)
Marty Ingels (Comedian)
Janet Jackson (Musician)
Kay Redfield Jamison (Psychologist/Author)
Richard Jeni (Comedian)
Jim Jenson (Newscaster)
Billy Joel (Musician)
Beverly Johnson (Supermodel)
Elton John (Musician)
Angelina Jolie (Actor/Activist)
Daniel Johns (Musician)
Ashley Judd (Actor)
Naomi Judd (Singer)
Al Kasha (Songwriter)
Danny Kaye (Actor)
Leila Kenzle (Actress)
John Keats (Poet)
Franz Kafka (Writer)
Gelsey Kirkland (Dancer)
Margot Kidder (Actress)
Nicole Kidman (Actress)
Joey Kramer (Musician)
Julie Krone (Star Athlete)
Pat Lafontaine (Hockey Star)
Jessica Lange (Actor)
Robert E. Lee (US General)
Jacob Lawrence (Artist)
Vivien Leigh (Actress)
Peter Nolan Lawrence (Writer)
Primo Levi (Writer)
John Lennon (Musician)
Meriwether Lewis (Explorer)
Courtney Love (Singer)
Allie Light (Director)
Abraham Lincoln (American President)
Rick London (Cartoonist)
Mary Todd Lincoln (Former US First Lady)
Salvador Luria (Scientist/Nobel Laureate)
John Madden (Football Star)
Meat Loaf (Musician/Actor)
Camryn Manheim (Actor)
Martha Manning (Psychologist)
Gustav Mahler (Composer)
Alanis Morisette (Singer)
Howie Mandel (Comic)
Bette Midler (Singer/Actress)
Dave Matthews (Musician)
Gary Mcdonald (Actor)
A.J. Mclean (Musician)
Burgess Meredith (Actor)
Sir Paul Mccartney (Musician)
Robert Mcfarlane (Security Advisor)
Sarah Mclachlan (Musician)
Rod Mckuen (Writer)
Gary Mcdonald (Actor)
Les Murray (Poet)
John Stuart Mill (Philosopher)
J.P. Morgan (Industrialist)
Edvard Munch (Artist)
John Mellencamp (Musician)
Paul Merton (Comedian)
Kate Millet (Writer/Feminist)
Carmen Miranda (Dancer)
Claude Monet (Artist)
Many Moore (Singer)
Michelangelo (Artist)
V.S. Naipaul (Writer/Nobel Laureate)
John Nash (Mathematician /Nobel Prize)
Ralph Nader (Consumer Rights Advocate)
Stevie Nicks (Musician)
Vaclav Nijinsky (Dancer)
Sir Isaac Newton (Scientist)
Deborah Norville (Journalist)
Marie Osmond (Entertainer)
Sir Laurence Olivier (Actor)
Rosie O’Donnell (Comedian/Actress)
Georgia O’Keefe (Artist)
Donny Osmond (Entertainer)
Lani O'Grady (Actress)
Eugene O'Neill (Playwright)
Dolly Parton (Musician)
Meera Popkin (Broadway Star)
Charley Pell (Football Coach)
George Patton (US General)
Jane Pauley (Journalist)
Teddy Pendergrass (Musician)
Edgar Allan Poe (Writer)
Elvis Presley (Entertainer)
Ezra Pound (Poet)
Jason Pollock (Artist)
Cole Porter (Composer)
Jimmy Piersall (Baseball Star)
Alma Powell (Wife Of General Colin Powell)
Susan Powter (Motivational Speaker)
Freddie Prinze Jr. (Actor)
Roseanne (Comedian/Actress)
Bonnie Raitt (Musician)
Burt Reynolds (Actor)
Lou Reed (Musician)
Norman Rockwell (Artist)
Theodore Roosevelt ( President Of The United States)
Joan Rivers (Comedian Actress)
Mac Rebennack A.K.A. Dr. John (Musician)
Alex Rodriguez (Baseball Star)
Alys Robi (Vocalist)
Axel Rose (Singer)
Winona Ryder (Actress)
Yves Saint Laurent (Fashion Designer)
Sam Shepard (Playwright)
Tom Snyder (TV Host)
Monica Seles (Tennis Star)
Linda Sexton (Writer)
Neil Simon (Playwright)
William T. Sherman (US General)
Marc Summers (TV Host)
Diana Spencer (Princess Of Wales)
John Steinbeck (Author)
Paul Simon (Musician)
Lauren Slater (Writer)
Willard Scott (Star Weatherman)
William Shakespeare (Writer)
Carly Simon (Singer)
Jose Solano (Actor)
Rick Springfield (Musician/Actor)
Brooke Shields (Model/Actress)
Rod Steiger (Actor)
George Stephanopoulos (Political Advisor)
Barbra Streisand (Singer/Actress)
William Styron (Writer)
Charles Schulz (Cartoonist)
Teresa Stratas (Opera Singer)
Sissy Spacek (Actress),
Dave Stewart (Singer)
Darryl Strawberry (Baseball Star)
Lori Schiller (Writer)
Francis Sherwood (Writer)
Scott Simmie (Journalist)
Earl Simmons A.K.A. DMX (Musician/Actor)
Alonzo Spellman (Football Star)
Nikola Tesla (Inventor)
Spencer Tracy (Actor)
Hunter Tylo (Actor)
Leo Tolstoy (Author)
Ted Turner (Entrepreneur)
Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec (Artist)
Mark Twain (Author)
Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky (Composer)
Anne Tyler (Author)
Tracy Ullman (Actor)
Dimitrius Underwood (Football Star)
Vivian Vance (Actor)
Kurt Vonnegut (Writer)
Tom Waits (Musician)
Mike Wallace (Journalist)
Michael Warren (Editor Canada Post)
George Washington (US President)
Evelyn Waugh (Novelist)
Damon Wayans (Comedian/Actor)
Tennessee Williams (Writer)
Dar Williams (Musician)
Robin Williams (Comedian/Actor)

Ann Wilson (Singer)
Bill Wilson (Founder Of Alcoholics Anonymous)
Brian Wilson (Musician)
Oprah Winfrey (TV Host)
Jonathan Winters (Comedian)
Ed Wood (Director)
Tom Wolfe (Writer)
Lewis Wolpert (Scientist)
Hugo Wolf (Composer)
Virginia Woolf (Novelist)
Luther Wright (Basketball Star)
W.B. Yeats (Poet)
Robert Young (Actor)
Bert Yancey (Golf Star)
William Zeckendorf (Industrialist)
Renee Zellweger (Actor)


References
Buchwald, A. (1999). Famous, important people who have suffered depression. Psychology Today.

Fonda, J. (2005). My life, so far. New York: Random House.

Jamison, K.R. (1993). Touched with fire. Manic depressive illness and artistic temperment. New York: Free Press.

Shepard, S. (1999). Mrs. gore breaks the ice on mental illness. Wahsington Bureau: The Palm Beach Post.

Shields, B. (2005). Down came the rain: My journey through post partum depression.
New York: Hyperion Books.

______(2005). Health: Celebrities who have admitted suffering from depression. England: Burmingham Post.

People with Mental Illness Enrich Our Lives
http://www.nami.org/helpline/peoplew.htm

Celebrity with Anxiety Disorders
http://www.anxietysecrets.com/celebrities.htm

Famous People Who Have Battled Depression
http://www.funkstop.com/ed/depression

Women and the “Over-Attractive” Male

Here’s another one of those pieces of research that leave you thinking, “Didn’t I already know that?”

Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire in England have found that men who are good-looking, single and earn a large income are not as attractive as good-looking men with an average job and income. It may be important that the research was done in England: social status is still far more heavily engrained in society than it is in the United States or Australia.

The research was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and examined how 186 heterosexual female students weighed up the male physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status when considering a long-term relationship. The average age of the test subjects was 23, and they were asked to look at personal ads of a number of men and to rank them in terms of attractiveness as a long-term partner. Each advertisement showed a photograph and provided basic information about the man’s age, occupation and what he was seeking in a partner.

The images of the men had previously been measured on a subjective scale of attractiveness. The men were randomly allocated to eighteen different occupations that varied from an architect and company director to a waiter, postman and gardener.

The researchers found that men who were rated as physically highly attractive but had medium social status, scored better than highly attractive men of high status. The authors speculated that the highly attractive high status men might have been thought to be more likely to be unfaithful in relationships or to be “too good to be true.” I was reminded here of a piece that I wrote in November: many people probably make mistakes in evaluating the potential of relationships simple because they under-estimate themselves.

Not only would it be good to repeat this research outside England, but it would also be a good idea to do similar experiments with women and people with different sexual orientations. There is some research that men at that age tend to make more superficial evaluations about potential partners.

The take home message: don’t try to make yourself look better than you are, it may backfire; don’t under-estimate yourself and look below the surface when making any important decision.

And Fabio, eat your heart out!

“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see, but only a few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are, and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.”
--Niccoló Machiavelli (Italian Writer and Philosopher, 1469-1527)

“Judgment and love are opposites. From one comes all the sorrows of the world. From the other comes the peace of God. Judgment will bind my eyes and make me blind.”
--A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)

Procrastination and Perfectionism

Regular readers will know that I am convinced that we are now in a fourth phase of the personal development movement, in which it is now incumbent on writers and speakers to support their propositions and suggestions with empirical data. And if there is no data, then they need to collect some.

There is an idea that has launched a thousand self-help books, websites and seminars: that perfectionism is the primary cause of procrastination. There was a time when I was the Prince of Procastinators. After my “recovery” I became an expert on helping others overcome the problem. So I’ve done a lot of research on procrastination. As I was preparing this posting I looked at over a dozen books and two dozen websites, and almost every one of them had “perfectionism” as a or the cause of procrastination.

But is it true?

The answer is “No.”

Professor Piers Steel from the University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business has published an important paper in the current issue of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

The paper confirms some things that we have always suspected, for instance that most people’s New Year’s resolutions are doomed to failure, but demolishes the idea perfectionism is the root of procrastination.

The evidence from this work – which is the fruit of ten years of research – is that procrastinators have less confidence in themselves and a lower expectancy that they can actually complete a task. By contrast, perfectionists procrastinate less, but they worry about it more.

These are the main predictors of procrastination:

1. Low levels of self-confidence
2. Low expectancy of being able to complete a task
3. Being task averse
4. Impulsivity
5. Distractibility
6. Motivation to complete the task

The paper also makes the point that not all delays are procrastination: the key factor is that a person must believe that it would be better to start working on given tasks immediately, but still not start work on it.

It is said that 95% of people procrastinate at some time in their lives and 15-20% are chronic procrastinators.

Amazingly, there is a mathematical formula that predicts procrastination. Steel calls this Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account the key factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (Ã) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).

This is the magic formula: Utility = E x V/ (Ã) D

I am impressed by this work, but it is also supremely practical, because it helps point us at appropriate targets to treat our own tendency to procrastinate.

There is also something else that is very important. Many of us believe from our own experience that perfectionism is indeed the root of our own procrastination. For a long time I thought so myself. But research like his helps us to re-analyze our understanding of ourselves. We all begin by using folk psychology to explain our behavior and the behaviors of other people. The trouble is that those explanations are often wrong. Research like this can be enormously helpful as we grow and develop as individuals.

It remains unclear why some people may be more prone to procrastination, but some evidence suggests it may be genetic. It may also be more common in people with anxiety disorders or attention deficit disorder.

You may also be interested to evaluate your own tendency to procrastinate. There is a terrific resource here.

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
--Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Russian Writer, 1818-1883)

“The wise does at once what the fool does at last.”
--Baltasar Gracián (Spanish Jesuit Philosopher and Writer, 1601-1658)

“Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.”
--Victor Kiam (American Businessman and Former CEO of Remington, 1926-2001)

“I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”
-- Rabindranath Tagore


(Indian Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Painter and, in 1913, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1861-1941)

The Irreducible Mind

I get a great many requests for recommendations for books and papers that either debate or provide support for the topics that I discuss on this blog and in my books and articles. That is why I've been constructing some reading lists at Amazon.com and linking them to this website.

A friend recently commented that she was surprised that the book and CD series, Healing, Meaning and Purpose that was created for a general audience, contains over 800 books and websites. My response to that was that I think that my readers and listeners are all grown ups who should be able to check everything that any author says!

The days of authors or speakers waving their hands about and making airy statements are finally coming to an end. If an author tells you that "science" proves what they are saying, they must show that they understand the topic themselves. I just saw yet another paper in which the writer said, "Quantum mechanics proves what I'm saying, but let's not get into that." Well, that's just the point: let us indeed get into that to see if what you are saying holds water!

Which brings me to a book that I've just read and reviewed. It is entitled Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century and it is an extraordinary achievement. For the last century, the vast majority psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have believed that thoughts, emotions and consciousness are the product of physical processes in the brain. And , of course, the brain is heavily involved in many  mental phenomena. The question has always been if neurological activity is sufficient to explain the whole of human experience.

This new book presents the most comprehensive and critical analysis of phenomena normally ignored by psychology, including mystical experiences, the placebo response, stigmata and hypnotic suggestion, memories that survive physical death, near death experiences, automatic writing, out-of-body experiences, apparitions, deathbed visions and many more.

It comes to the inescapable conclusion that the mind is not generated by the brain but is instead limited and constrained by it. There is no hand waving, and no "science has shown that..." Instead everything is laid out in front of you. There are a hundred pages of citations and references. Despite that, it is an easy and enjoyable read.

I have no personal connection with the book, but the next time that someone says that there's no proof for any of these phenomena, and that emotions, cognitions and consciousness are just byproducts of biochemical processes in the brain, refer them to this book.

And if Santa brought you any gift cards that you haven't used yet, you might want to have a look at the book for yourself.

The History of Human Intelligence

There is a wonderful interactive map at Indiana University showing the history of influences in the development of intelligence theory and testing.

This is static picture of what it looks like.

If you click on the name of an individual in this map, you get a potted biography of each person.

If you interested in psychology it's a great resource.

Enjoy!

 

Don’t Underestimate Your Attractiveness!

I wonder how many readers have ever been in a social setting and been a bit depressed by how good-looking everybody else seems to be? I’ve seen quite a number of people who by anyone’s standards were attractive individuals, but who were quite convinced that they were not.

At this point most proponents of pop psychology would jump in and say, “Well he’s got low self-esteem and we need to fix that.” They would probably recommend some exercise involving a mirror and telling him or herself how beautiful, attractive, valuable or special they are.

And they would be dead wrong.

This misperception about the attractiveness of other people is an evolutionary trick that will not be much helped by any number of affirmations.

A very interesting and well-executed study from the University of Texas will be published in next month’s issue of Evolution and Human Behavior. Sarah Hill, a psychologist in David Buss’ evolutionary psychology laboratory. Her research has shown that people of both sexes believe that the sexual competition that they face is stronger than it really is. She beieves that this is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate.

What Sarah did was to show heterosexual men and women photographs of people. She asked them to rate both how attractive those of their own sex would be to members of the opposite sex, and also how attractive the members of the opposite sex were. She then compared the scores for the former with the scores for the latter, seen from the other side. Men thought that the men they were shown were more attractive to women than they really were, and women thought the same of the women.

She had predicted the outcome of the study based on a theory developed in the same laboratory by Martie Haselton and David Buss. It is called error-management theory:  the idea that when people make errors of judgment hey always tend to make the error that is going to be least costly. Research has shown something to which many women can attest: men often tend to misinterpret innocent friendliness as a sign that women are sexually interested in them. Haselton and Buss reasoned that men who are trying to decide if a woman is interested sexually could err in one of two ways. They can mistakenly believe that she is not interested, in which case they will not bother trying to have sex with her; or they can mistakenly believe she is interested, try, and be rejected. Trying and being rejected comes at relatively little cost. However, form an evolutionary perspective, not trying at all could lead the major cost of not being able to spread their DNA around.

The theory is that there is an opposite bias in women’s errors: They tend to undervalue signs that a man is interested in a committed relationship. The evolutionary argument would be that if she guesses wrongly about a man’s intentions, she might have to raise a child on her own.

However, when it comes to assessing physical attractiveness, man and women make the same errors.

We always need to be a bit wary about pushing the perspectives of evolutionary psychology too far. I think that they are valuable, but that we can get into trouble if we apply their insights too liberally: humans are complex creatures who are continuing to evolve rapidly. We are different in every way from the people of a thousand years ago.

But this is a very useful insight into why some many people feel to see themselves as they are.

The moral of the story: have courage in initiating new relationships, and look at the whole person: physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual.

And don’t forget to use your intuition: the surest guarantor of making the right steps in relationships.

“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may,  light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”
--John Constable (English Landscape Painter, 1776-1837)

Treating Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

There is an important article in this month's issue of the journal Psychological Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Heidelberg in Germany carried out a systematic literature review concerning two treatments that are widely used in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

They identified eight publications between 1989 and 2005 describing treatment outcomes of EMDR and CBT in active–active comparisons. Seven of these studies were investigated in a meta-analysis.

What they found was this. Both trauma-focused CBT and EMDR seemed to be equally efficacious and any differences between the two forms of treatment are probably not of clinical significance. Our main focus now should be to attempt to establish which trauma patients are more likely to benefit from one method or the other. The authors comment that it remains unclear is the contribution of the eye movement component in EMDR to treatment outcome.

This paper is interesting in light of our recent discussions concerning brain laterality and PTSD. It seems likely that part of the mechanism of both forms of therapy is to re-wire the brain. I tend to think that the eye movements probably are of importance, since they are also used in thought field therapy which appears also to be helpful to many people with PTSD.

The Omnipresent Ohrwurm: Ten Secrets for Having an Idea Remembered

Last month I wrote something about a phenomenon that I’m sure that you’ve experienced: having a tune get stuck in your head. James Kellaris has used the term “Ohrwurm” to describe this phenomenon.

I made brief mention of the way in which research into the ohrwurm may inform other fields, such as addictions.

The other big topic that may be illuminated by the ohrwurm phenomenon is the way that ideas, trends and fashions gain traction.

Some successes are created: you may or may not like Madonna or Britney Spears, but both of them are talented. The question is this: why did they first make it? In some senses both had the right set of talents be molded into a highly successful products. People in the music business saw their potential and that both were just right for the market of the time. Thousands of similarly gifted people just never had the opportunity to be made into stars.

Some successes are the results of memes. I’m speaking here about memes with a little “M,” to differentiate them from the Memes of spiral dynamics. Ideas, fashions and trends spread through society like the measles.

But are there any characteristics of psychological or social ohrwurms? What is it about some ideas, concepts or products that just have a great big hook that makes them not just memorable but irresistible?

People have been asking that question for years, but now it begins to look as if we might be getting close to generating some sensible answers based not on market research or focus groups, but on neuroscience.

A book called Made to Stick will be coming out in the New Year and identifies some of the characteristics of ideas that become popular and stick in people’s minds. The authors’ have come up with:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional Story

I’m sure that they are on to something.

But I think that there is more.

In the original piece about the ohrwurm I mentioned three characteristics of a tune that gets stuck in our heads:

• Simple
• Incongruous
• Repetitive

The same principles and a few more are crucial in getting a message to resonate:

1. Simplicity: It’s much easier to believe that the motivators of human behavior are pain and pleasure, or that Men are from Mars and Women from Venus, than getting into the messy realities of human motivations and interpersonal relationships
2. Clarity: The simple idea must be expressed in a cogent and incisive way
3. Incongruity: This is essential: we know that the brain is hardwired to respond to novelty. Yet despite being incongruous, the odd, strange, unexpected idea must afterwards fit into the rest of our knowledge and beliefs about the world. We can only take so much incongruity!
4. Repetition: Few ideas - whether true or false - are embraced and adopted if they are only heard once
5. Emotional resonance: You are unlikely to be interested in or remember something that has no emotional meaning for you
6. Integrity: The idea or concept must have internal consistency
7. Believability: The idea needs to come from a trustworthy source
8. Consonant: The idea or concept needs to resonate with your own core beliefs or core values
9. Practical: Most people need to be able to see simple, concrete actions that they can take
10. Beneficial: There is a sliver of self-interest within all of us: something else that is hardwired. Unless we can see that we will derive some benefit from an idea, it is unlikely to have much traction

Now I am going to let you in on a secret. I do a lot of public speaking and I could not work out why my talks, lectures and speeches seemed to be so popular.

One day a friend from Canada told me that he had also been mystified by my popularity as a speaker. Then he told me that he had discovered my secret: I am a storyteller. It took me a while to grasp what he was saying, but then I realized that it was true. Whether presenting research data, ways to improve your life or an inspirational speech I constantly tell stories. And so does every other good speaker that I know. And the keys to telling good stories?

They are these ten points.

Try them out for yourself and see what you think.

“A man's success in business today turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want.”
--Gerald Stanley Lee (American Professor, Writer and Lecturer, 1862-1944)

Hypnagogia: The Waking Dream

Most of us have experienced the brief transition between wakefulness and sleep as we fall asleep. This is the hypnagogic state, though it has been known by many names: “the borderland state," the “half-dream state,” the “pre-dream condition.” The name for these strange hallucinations is “hypnagogia.”

Although there are innumerable books about dreams, there is to my knowledge only one book in English that is dedicated to hypnagogia, by the psychologist Andreas Mavromatis. There are also not that many good websites dealing with the phenomenon, though I’ve found one or two really good ones. This is a little surprising, for the hypnagogic state is one of the most fascinating altered states of consciousness that we can experience without the use of drugs, and there are dozens of spiritual schools that encourage their students to work with these hypnagogic hallucinations. They are different form the hallucinations that may occur in neurological problems: those tend to occupy only one sense at a time, while the hypnagogic hallucinations, though sometimes no more that flashes of light or odd shapes, can be highly complex and involve multiple sensory modalities: what we call multi-modal hallucinations. Some people may feel as if they are floating, and it is not uncommon for people to kick out or grasp as they feel as if they are falling from a great height.

The term “hypnagogic” was coined by the 19th-century French psychologist Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury, and is derived from two Greek words, Hypnos (Sleep) and agogeus (A guide, or leader). Some years later, the English poet, essayist and psychical researcher Frederic William Henry Myers coined the term, “hypnapompic,” to describe similar phenomena that may occur as we wake from sleep.

Long before Maury, many writers commented on these odd experiences. Here are just a few that I’ve heard about:

1. Aristotle spoke of the “affections we experience when sinking into slumber, and the images which present themselves to us in sleep.”
2. Iamblichus of Chalcis, the third century Neo-Platonic philosopher, wrote of the “voices” and “bright and tranquil lights” that came to him in the condition between sleeping and waking, that he believed were a form experience sent by God.
3. There is some evidence that the alchemists of the Middle Ages made use of a form of hypnagogia during their meditations, preparations and distillations. I’ve seen it suggested that the weird characters and eerie landscapes that seem to fill alchemical illustrations might have been the fruits of focusing on hypnagogic hallucinations, though they could just as easily have come from dreams or drugs.
4. In 1600, the Elizabethan astrologer and occultist Simon Forman wrote of his apocalyptic visions. He saw mountains and hills that came rolling against him on the point of sleep and beyond which he could see vast boiling waters.
5. Thomas Hobbes spoke of images of lines and angles seen on the edge of sleep accompanied by an “odd kind of fancy” to which he could give no particular name.
6. Emmanuel Swedenborg the 18th century philosopher, scientist and visionary developed a method of inducing and exploring hypnagogic states, during which he claimed to have traveled to Heaven, Hell and other planets. He recorded several other techniques that he used to gain his insights, including a particular type of hyperventilation.
7. The theosophical writer Oliver Fox used the hypnagogic hallucinations as a “doorway” through which he was able to go astral traveling.
8. Rudolf Steiner, advised that the best time for communicating with the dead was in the period between waking and sleep. He claimed that if you asked the dead a question as you fell asleep, they would answer you the next morning His records look very much like hypnagogic hallucinations.
9. The Russian writer and philosopher P.D. Ouspensky is someone else who made a detailed study of hypnagogia. Like many of the others that I’ve mentioned, he made a number of interesting discoveries about the Universe while in this state. It is these insights, and their similarities across cultures that suggest that there’s more to hypnagogia than random neuronal firing.

It is interesting that although hypnagogia can produce millions of different experiences. When people start using them for exploration, they seem to generate many similar insights. This is rather different from the mystical experience. In which peoples’ experiences have similar form, but different content.

The most widely used criteria of the mystical experience were assembled by the English philosopher W.T. Stace, who taught at Princeton for many years:

1. Deeply positive mood
2. Experience of Union
3. Ineffable sense
4. Enhanced sense of meaning, authenticity and reality
5. Altered space and time perception/transcendence
6. Acceptance of normally contradictory propositions

I shall have more to say about mystical experiences in another posting.

For now, if you are interested in doing some self-exploration, and you are not using either medications or alcohol, the hypnagogic state is a great place to start. Occasionally people find the exploration scary, so only do this if you are up to it, and don’t if you are given to nervous or psychological problems. When I’m working with people I always ensure that they are in tip top condition before trying ANY kind of psychological exploration.

Try becoming aware of the transition between wakefulness and sleep. At first you will fall asleep, but with a small amount of practice, most people can quickly begin to keep themselves in the state, and then start exploring. Many people find that they get some profound intuitions while in the hypnagogic state, and unlike the kinds of “insights” that people get while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they make sense in the morning. Relax, keep a diary, take it in easy stages, and see what you can discover for yourself. If you come across anything unpleasant, stop, and we can try some different exercises.

Ohrwurm

I often think that I’m a lucky fellow to be bilingual in English and German. There are some priceless words in German that just don’t translate. It’s one of the reasons that so many books and papers translated from German become nonsensical when back translated. That is, translated from German into English and then back into German again.

There are some wonderful examples in the medical and psychiatric literature. English speaking psychiatrists are taught about “Schneider’s First Rank Features.” Which is a massive misquotation. And some of the collected works of Carl Jung are “interesting” in English.

There is a lovely German word – Ohrwurm - that can best be translated as “ear worm,” though in German it has a rather richer sense. The term was popularized by James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati, to describe a song stuck in one's head. Particularly an annoying one. I’m sure that we’ve all had them: some song or tune that you just can’t get out of your head.

Mark Twain wrote in a short story about an annoying ''jingling rhyme'' that became indelibly lodged in the author's mind until he passed the curse along to another hapless victim!

I first saw this research being talked about three years ago, in an article on the BBC website. At the time Professor Kellaris described the ohrwurm as "A cognitive itch is a kind of metaphor that explains how these songs get stuck in our head."

Kellaris has identified three major influences on whether or not a song stays stuck in your brain:

1. Repetition:
2. Musical simplicity:
3. Incongruity: This one is very interesting and gives us another clue about why ohrwurms form. When a song does something unexpected, it can also spark a cognitive “itch.” Kellaris cites examples like the irregular time signatures of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" or the song "America" from West Side Story. Unpredictable melodic patterns or an unexpectedly articulated individual note can have the same impact.

Marketers and writers of pop songs are very interested in understanding how and why some tunes just get stuck in our heads. There have been some songwriters and producers who have created a load of ohrwurms. You may remember the string of hits produced by Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman  in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is even some brain imaging work going on to try and unlock the mechanisms responsible.

The best cures for a nagging ohrwurm appear to be to listen to the whole tune or song. And at the same time to think of something annoying. It can also go away with the simple technique of gently tapping the side of your hand: it is sometimes a manifestation of psychological reversal.

One of the reasons for being interested in ohrwurms, is that it is interesting to find out why things get stuck in our heads. Understanding the lowly ohrwurm may have some important implications for understanding PTSD and some kinds of addiction.

So what’s you best or most irritating ohrwurm?

“I was in yoga the other day.  I was in full lotus position.  My chakras were all aligned.  My mind is cleared of all clatter and I'm looking out of my third eye and everything that I'm supposed to be doing.  It's amazing what comes up, when you sit in that silence.  "Mama keeps whites bright like the sunlight, Mama's got the magic of Clorox 2.”
Ellen DeGeneres (American Actor and Comedian, 1958-)

Walter Mitty Syndrome

Walter Mitty was a a fictional character in James Thurber's short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, published in 1941. Mitty was a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs he imagined himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. He has become such a standard for the role that his name appears in several dictionaries.

Regular readers might remember that in a post in April, I examined pathological lying from physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual perspectives.

The Walter Mitty syndrome is clearly related: people use fantasy to escape from their normal lives. They believe that their lives are humdrum and boring, never realizing what an enormous gift it is to be alive at all.

I’ve known countless people who have claimed to have noble blood from some obscure part of the former Eastern Europe. They would normally tell everyone that they would be rich and titled once the “communists” returned his or her lands. Most had, of course, never had either title or lands. One extraordinary example: someone whom I liked very much, told of the lands, money and titles that she would soon receive from the new government in Hungary. Except that Jewish people had not been allowed to own land in that part of Hungary for many centuries.

Another man -a homeopathic physician - told everyone that he met that he was engaged in secret experiments for the CIA. Which always seemed odd for an Englishman with no research background. And it never seemed all that secret if he was busily telling everyone about this work.

Nobody has yet added the syndrome to the canon of psychological lore, yet every clinician has seen cases, and the syndrome is sometimes used as a pejorative term, particualrly in the political arena.

I’ve recently seen an extraordinary case that was suspected for decades, but was only really confirmed after the person’s death. One tale built on another until we had an extraordinary life story that would have done credit to one of those blockbusters by Jeffrey Archer. Not a single piece of it was true. People, dates and places were all made up. This wasn’t a little fib; this was fantasy on the grand scale.

In the end, the fabulous tales usually hurt no one. But nobody will ever know what bits were true, and which not.

If you ever meet one of these great fabulists, ask them to write down their stories: they are often generated by the most wonderfully creative people. And more than one has gone on to collect high honors.

Challenging people like this is rarely helpful. They are spinning these yarns to protect and bolster themselves. Destroying their defences can be disastrous. There are a few who tell these tales because of grandiosity or narcissism, but most are just unfortunate people who feel the need to project a new image of themselves.

Listen politely; don’t commit yourself, and let them carry on. Unless they are using their tales to “con” people, it is often best to leave them alone.

The Barnum Effect

Whoever would have thought that the quintessential nineteenth century showman Phineas Taylor Barnum, best known for his claim that, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” would one day lend his name to a psychological principle known colloquially as the Barnum Effect or more accurately as the Forer effect.

Barnum was a marketing genius long before Madison Avenue had been built. Born in Bethel, Connecticut in 1810, by 1835 he purchased an 80-year-old slave and displayed her as the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. He went on to create “The Greatest Show on Earth,” in which he displayed everything from performing elephants to people with an array of medical maladies displayed for the masses.

The Barnum Effect is a term said to have been coined by the psychologist Paul Meehl, to describe a very real psychological phenomenon in which people tend to accept as accurate a general statement about themselves, especially a flattering one. Even though the statement could describe just about anyone. Add a few numbers, letters or aspects to the statement, and it is accepted even more quickly, because then it appears to be in some way scientific.

The original experiment was done by Bertram Forer in 1948. He gave his students a personality test, and then gave them an analysis supposedly based on the test's results. He invited each of the students to rate the analysis on a scale of 0 (very poor) to 5 (excellent) as it applied to themselves: the average was 4.26. He then revealed that each student had been given the same analysis.

What he wrote for the students is worth duplicating, because you may have seen similar things written about you, and it is very easy to be taken in. This is what Forer said:

• “You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.”

I recently saw this in action when I was persuaded by a friend and life coach to pay almost $50 to do an online evaluation, which turned out to be valueless. Though P.T. Barnum would have been proud of it! Let me explain.

Questionnaires and rating scales can be fun and interesting. After all, books and magazines are full of them. But it is essential not to take most of them too seriously. Designing a rating scale is a huge job. We first begin with an aim for the scale, so that we can later test its face validity: the degree to which it has succeeded in meeting that aim.

After we create it we have to test it and see whether different people can agree on the results. The next step is to see if the findings can be generalized to men and women and different ethnic groups. And finally we have to see whether the results actually tell us anything meaningful from which we can adopt a course of action.

When someone tells me that, “I did a Gnobbly-Komonsky rating scale and it made me see my relationship in a completely new way!” the chances are that the rating scale has nothing to do with it. The only things that can make you see something in a new way is you. Unless validated, tests and scales are rarely more than catalysts. It does not matter if the test has been administered to a million people. If it has not gone through all of the steps to see if its okay, it will never be anything more than a piece of fun that may or may not help catalyze change.

So how do you protect yourself against the Barnum Effect?

1. First, be skeptical, second be very skeptical, and third be very very skeptical
2. Whenever you are given a personal interpretation, whether it comes from a psychologist or astrologer, have a look to see how specific are the interpretations?
3. Next see whether any parts of the interpretation would apply to someone else. (You can test this by taking a horoscope in a newspaper, cutting out the twelve interpretations, without the title, “Virgo, “Scorpio” and so on. Then shuffle them and see which apply to you. Pop astrology is very different from a detailed and personalized evaluation by an intuitive who happens to be using astrology.)
4. Ask how the test was created, and in whom it was tested? Not how many people have taken it, but what independent measures have been used to validate it?
5. Don’t take any action on what you are told until you have objective, external validation.
6. Research has shown that people with higher indices of neuroticism are more likely to fall for the Barnum Effect. If you have fallen for it, see if some of the balancing techniques that I describe on the website might help protect you from making the same msitake again.

If you are interested in going into this in a bit more detail, there is quite a nice article on how to read a medical journal article, that looks at some of the better known fallacies.

Finally here are some more Barnum-isms:
“More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.”

“Every crowd has a silver lining.”

Hearing Voices

In 1973, there occurred a notorious episode in the history of psychiatry. A psychologist named David Rosenhan did an infamous experiment in which he had a group of eight people present themselves to twelve hospital emergency rooms claiming that they were hearing the words, “Empty, “Dull” or “Thud.”

Most were admitted and given psychiatric diagnoses. The second part of the experiment consisted of asking staff at a psychiatric hospital to detect non-existent 'fake' patients. They did rather badly. A paper about this was published in the journal Science, with the title, “On Being Sane in Insane Places.”

 
In its day, this paper was considered a damning critique of psychiatry and a plank in the ant-psychiatry movement that was in full swing at the time. In truth, it tells us only that if you lie to doctors and nurses you may deceive them. And second it is only a criticism of bad psychiatry. The idea of diagnosing schizophrenia or any other mental illness on the basis of hearing a single word is absurd. At least 40% of the population will at some time hear their name being called, particularly in times of stress or after bereavement. And very many people in the general population will occasionally hear a word being spoken. It is diagnostic of nothing.

I sincerely hope that none of the people that I’ve taught in 45 countries around the globe would EVER diagnose schizophrenia or any other mental illness simply on the basis of hearing voices, a.k.a. auditory hallucinations. As I’ve stressed time and again, the only purpose in making a diagnosis is to guide treatment and prognosis. Simply hearing voices can guide neither.

This topic came up during one of the things that I was doing to advocate for patients, because September 14th 2006 was World Hearing Voices Day, and I received some very interesting information from a UK based organization, the Hearing Voices Network. (There's also a nice article here as well.)

There is some excellent research on people who hear voices yet are not mentally ill. Many of these people do not feel the need for any treatment and not only peacefully coexist with them, but regard them as a blessing. Most of the research has been done by Professor Marius Romme and Sondra Escher from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Richard Bentall from the University of Manchester, and Gordon Claridge at Oxford.

About 4% of the general population hears voices, and most of them are not mentally ill. It is essential for us to understand the notion of dimensional rather than categorical diagnoses. I’m mentioning it again, because it prevents us falling into the error of labeling people for no readily apparent reason. For some people their voices are supportive and comforting.

One of several studies has shown that the form and content of auditory hallucinations is much the same whether someone has been labeled with a mental illness or not. Trauma and abuse can reactivate voices, or make them threatening.

The key to the hearing voices is whether or not they are causing distress to the individual or to those around them. There are four major coping strategies typically used by people who hear voices: distraction, ignoring the voices, selective listening to them, and setting limits on their influence.

The biggest danger for people who are hearing voices and are suffering from cognitive impairment or a mental illness, is that the voices may form the basis for delusions. As people are trying to make sense of their experiences, they may develop highly creative explanations.

I once worked with someone who was not hearing voices, but feeling odd sensations coursing along her limbs. She got a textbook of Chinese medicine, and became convinced that she was feeling the flow of Qi in her body. But because she also felt the sensations in places that were nowhere near the channels and meridians, she became convinced that it was her mission to redefine not just the courses of the channels, but to re-write the whole of Chinese medicine according to the sensations in her body.

Her attempt to make sense of her experiences made her grandiose and delusional. She became unable to care for herself, eventually became very distressed and was grateful to have some treatment which eradicated the sensations, which in turn caused the delusions to evaporate.

So treat each person as an individual and forget the unhelpful and stigmatizing labels.

Cutting and Self-injury

There’s an extremely disturbing trend: ever-increasing numbers of young people who are cutting themselves. Once rare, and something usually seen only in people with serious psychiatric illness, many school children encourage and goad each other into doing it, and there are websites dedicated to cutting, on which young people compare notes and even give each other advice on how to conceal what they are doing, by cutting themselves in places like the lower back.

We have been offered a great many explanations for this worrying development, but not much in the way of evidence. We know that most people who cut themselves are female adolescents or young adults, and apart from the obvious physical dangers, there is evidence that this behavior may lead to a more serious psychological condition called Borderline Personality Disorder. This can be a serious problem that carries a high risk of suicide. It is also of some theoretical interest, because there seem to be genuine cultural differences in borderline personality disorder. An estimated 5.8 million to 8.7 million Americans, mostly women, suffer from it, but it is far less common in most of Western Europe and Australia. Research over the last decade has indicated that the condition is becoming more common in these regions. People with the borderline personality disorder have a wide spectrum of difficulties that are marked by emotional instability, difficulty in maintaining close relationships, eating disorders, impulsivity, chronic uncertainty about life goals and addictive behaviors such as using drugs and alcohol. They also have major impact on the medical system by being among the highest users of emergency and in-patient medical services. Glen Close’s character Alex Forrest in the movie Fatal Attraction, had some of the features that we might expect in some with borderline personality disorder.

Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle have reported that adolescent girls who engage in cutting behavior have lower levels of the chemical transmitter serotonin in their blood. They also have reduced levels of activity in the parasympathetic nervous system as measured by what is called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a measure of the ebb and flow of heart rate as we breath. Low levels of this measure are typically found in people who are anxious or depressed. The study included 23 girls aged 14 to 18, who engaged in what psychologists call “parasuicidal” behavior. Participants were included if they had engaged in three or more self-harming behaviors in the previous six months or five or more such behaviors in their lifetime. The comparison group consisted of an equal number of girls of the same ages who did not engage in this behavior.

In line with previous research, the adolescents in the parasuicide group reported far more incidents of self-harming behavior than did their parents.

The findings of low serotonin and low parasympathetic activity support the idea that the inability to regulate emotions and impulsivity can trigger self-harming behavior. The primary problem is an inability to manage their emotions: the people who cut themselves have excessively strong emotional reactions and they have extreme difficulty in controlling those emotions. Their self-harming behavior may serve to distract them from these emotions.

A characteristic feature of borderline personality disorder is not just self-injurious behavior but also stress-induced reduction of pain perception. Reduced pain sensitivity has been experimentally confirmed in patients with the condition. The increasing incidence of the condition in Europe is attracting many European investigators and colleagues from Mannheim in Germany have recently traced the neurological circuits involved in this stress-induced reduced pain perception.

There is good evidence that people who cut themselves are more likely to have been victims of sexual abuse or violence as children, though that obviously does not mean that every person who harms themselves has had something bad happen to them in childhood. Sadly the research has become more complex because of the numbers of people who have been given false memories of abuse by well-meaning psychologists.

Treating people who cut themselves, whether or not they have borderline personality disorder can be very challenging. The first thing is to treat any underlying mood or anxiety disorder. A combination of medications and psychotherapy is normally used, with people making claims for the value of different types of therapy. Many therapists also say that they have helped people who cut themselves with tapping therapies, acupuncture, homeopathy and qigong. I’ve not been able to find any credible research evidence to support the use of those therapies, though I’ve also seen some success stories.

We also have the puzzle about why cutting and borderline personality disorder seems to have been less common in other parts of the world and are now increasing. There is research to show that it’s not just a matter of recognition or of calling the illness something else in Europe. I have a friend who is a senior academic at an Ivy League University, and an expert on borderline personality disorder. During a sabbatical in Scotland some 15 years ago, he could not find a single case. This matters, because if we can identify what’s changed, we may have some clues about treatment. There are hundreds of candidates, including environmental stress, diet and toxins.

There’s an important new study in which 13 children with autism showed marked improvement in some of their challenging behaviors when they were given 1.5gms of omega-3 fatty acids each day. This was only a six week study, but it needs to be replicated using larger numbers. It is also important to be alert to the possibility that some makes of omega-3 fatty acids on the market contain mercury. The one that we have found best so far has been OmegaBrite. http://www.omegabrite.com/ It will also be useful to see if dietary supplementation will help self-injurious behavior in other types of people.

Here is a list of some of the better information sites about self-harm.

The key to success with helping complex problems, as I point out in great detail in Healing, Meaning and Purpose, is a comprehensive approach:

Combinations are Key

Our Unique Brains

One of the fundamental tenets of the old self-help movement is that we all have the same brains and so we all have the potential to become a Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein or Michelangelo.

But is this really true?

I’ve talked a lot about the way in which genes in the brain do not so much determine your behavior, but instead predispose you to respond to the environment in certain ways. If asked the question, “Why has she got depression? Was it because of the abuse as a child, or because her grandmother had depression?” The answer is “Yes.” All of the above.

I’ve examined many hundreds of brain scans, and one of the most striking features of them is their variability. It’s a strange paradox: when we look at the nerves running to your fingers or your toes, they are pretty much in the same place in everyone. The veins and arteries are often in different places, but those peripheral nerves tend to stay put.

Yet when we get to the brain, things are very different. I’ve never seen two brain that look the same. This has been a big problem in research: how do you compare the brain of someone with depression with a healthy volunteer? We usually end up doing all sorts of sophisticated computer modeling to be able to compare two very different brains. This is also why we are a bit skeptical about people who claim to be able to diagnose illnesses based on brain scans. There is just so much variability.

This came up last week, when Grigory Perelman turned down a prestigious honor for his extraordinary work in mathematics. Here we have someone who’s brain works quite differently from other people. He has a very remarkable gift, but I doubt that anyone else could simulate what he has achieved.

I knew a woman who was employed as an air traffic controller by the Royal Air Force. Like all air traffic controllers, she had to have an amazing ability: to be able to tell – without instruments - where every plane was in the sky. With planes flying in different directions at 300-500 knots, the variables are staggering. Yet Veronica and her co-controllers could do it easily.

One of the reasons that I landed in the United States was that I was given a problem to solve. It had to do with measuring an inaccessible region of the brain that is mind-bogglingly important. World class investigators had been trying to solve the problem for four years. After years of playing chess, I have a reasonable ability to visualize things in three dimensions. That was all that it took to solve the problem. Within three weeks we started cranking out data that changed the way in which we think about major mental illness.

Could anyone model Grigory Perelman, or Veronica the air traffic controller or my modest efforts in brain imaging? Is that something that everyone can do?

The answer is almost certainly not.

Although we are forever being told that we can each be whatever we want to, that is not what the evidence says.

I am in no doubt that most people have the potential to perform far above their accustomed level.

But I’m just as sure that not everyone can do everything.

There is often a subtle subtext here: if you have not achieved everything that you want, it is because you have failed. And that’s wrong. Human potential is magnificent, but there are almost certainly some neurological constraints on what each of us can achieve. The key to much of our work is to see how we can expand beyond those neurological limitations.

There’s a terrific discussion of some of these issues by Steven Pinker from Harvard.

Cultural Competence

One of the problems about so many self-help articles is not only that their authors have often not done their homework, neglecting research and sometimes ignoring the dictates of common sense, but they also tend to be culturally myopic.

I’ve spent a great deal of time in different cultures and some of the advice proffered by a few American business experts would quickly get you shown the door in Japan or Germany!

I’ve just learned that Wal-Mart is pulling out of Germany, writing off a loss of around $1 billion. Part of the problem was that this super successful American company failed to understand German culture. It attempted to introduce the “greeters,” that are a familiar sight in the United States. Germans found it offensive to be confronted by someone ordered to smile at every customer. To a German, a broad toothy grin may be seen as intrusive and an invasion of privacy.

My personal background, extensive travels and work with people from every corner of the world, have made me very sensitive to these differences, and I’m often asked for advice before people head off to do teach, speak or to do business overseas. I was very pleased to find out about a company that specializes in training executives to be culturally competent, and one of the tools that they use is cultural profiling.

I just read an excellent article in the Telegraph by Michael Gates, in which he describes a moment in Finland, when he asked someone how they were, to get the response, “You asked me that last week.” Ask a German how they are, and they will probably spend the next ten minutes telling you.

Different cultures have very different ideas and attitudes toward time, space, truth, privacy, authority, individuality, and, of course, gender. The glass ceiling is still alive and well in many cultures. Children are raised quite differently in different cultures: I knew a British doctor working in the pharmaceutical industry. Her company sent her to the United States for three years, but in less than two she and her family were back in England: she did not like the effects of American education on her children.

The Expat Telegraph website has also launched a series of “National Cultural Profiles.” This is a terrific resource to help us understand the thinking patterns of the world’s major cultures. The resource has been taken from the CultureActive cultural web program that is used throughout the world by governments, non-governmental organizations and corporations. It is also the core of a project (InterCulturalEdge) based at Duke University's Fuqua Business School in North Carolina.

CultureActive is based on the work of Richard D. Lewis, the author of When Cultures Collide, a book that I recommend highly. He is the chairman of Richard Lewis Communications. Lewis has developed a theory, known as the Lewis Model of Culture. He classifies cultures into three main types:

1. Linear-active
2. Multi-active
3. Reactive

These National Cultural Profiles are different from typical country profiles that you find in the Encyclopedia Britannica or the CIA website that detail economic or political data. These profiles concentrate on key cultural questions such as values, beliefs and communication.

There are free mini-introductions available at the Expat Telegraph website, and there are much more detailed profiles available for subscribers.

CultureActive also allows you to complete your own Personal Cultural Profile by filling in an online questionnaire.

Learning how to communicate with people from different cultures is essential if you hope to expand your own personal horizons, as well as developing your business.

“Civilization is the order and freedom promoting cultural activity.”
--Will Durant (American Historian, 1885-1981)

Optimism and Pessimism

It is sometimes very disheartening to read articles that are probably well intentioned, but in which the writer hasn’t done the most basic research.

I was just sent an article on optimism and pessimism, in which the writer extols the benefits of developing an optimistic outlook on life. And yes, it’s nice to be optimistic, but he – at least I think that it’s a he - makes several significant errors.

He gives examples of several well-known people who were supposed to have attained great things by being optimistic rather than realistic. He has clearly not studied the lives Thomas Edison or Henry Ford in any detail. Or Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa or Ted Turner.

He then says that optimism cannot be measured. Yes it can, there are many validated rating instruments. There is also a lot of research on the relationship between optimism, pessimism, temperament and cognitive and personality styles.

He goes on to say that you can learn to have an optimistic outlook on life. That is only half true. There are well-known genetic predispositions to optimism and pessimism. I’ve also written about recent work from Finland that makes it clear that it is very difficult to develop an optimistic mind set if you spent your childhood in a low socioeconomic status family. Special techniques may be needed to help people who were disadvantaged in childhood.

The idea that you can achieve anything by just “thinking it,” is not just wrong but it leads to some people feeling inadequate because they cannot generate enthusiasm and optimism. I have seen countless people feel guilty because they could not feel happy and optimistic the way that the motivational speaker told them to!

An un-researched and unbalanced article does more harm than good. It's no good saying that it wasn't meant to be scientific: you, as a reader, deserve better than some generalized nostrums based on wishful thinking. If someone recommends something, you need to know whether you can rely on what you are being told, or if it is just an unsubstantiated opinion. If it's just an opinion, that's fine, but you need to be told that, and why you can rely on that opinion, or why the writer has chosen to disregard research and previous experience.

So are you stuck with you genes and your upbringing? No you are not. But it is important to know if you are one of the people who do better with negative cognitions. It is well known in psychology that some people do much better with a constant negative outlook on life. In fact a psychologist – Julie Norem – wrote a first rate book on the subject entitled The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak.

There are techniques from cognitive therapy that can help change a person’s outlook and the newer technique – Attachment and Commitment Therapy – teaches ways of detaching from negative and pessimistic cognitions, rather than trying to stick a smiley face on them.

Best of all are the techniques of Integrated Medicine, that help attitudinal problems with a combination of highly individualized physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual techniques.

“If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”--Unknown Author

Psychological Reslience and Adult Support

Most of us would agree that it is very difficult to try to reduce human behavior to genes alone: one of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding of many genes is the way in which they interact constantly with the environment. This has been known for years with the genes involved in metabolism, but we now also know that the main function of genes in the brain is not to determine behavior, but to predispose us to the way in which we handle the environment.

There is a good discussion of this distinction in a paper posted by someone whom I am sorry to say that I do not know, called R.J. O'Hara, that endorses our point: even if you have genes that could predispose you to a bad long-term outcome, if you had strong, positive support from an adult, it could significantly reduce the impact of "bad" genes.

It leaves us with an important question: how late in life can strong social supports and a positive mental attitude cancel out some of our genetic predispositions?

My answer? "Biology is not destiny, and we can help people make a new start at any age or at any time in life."

Technorati tags: Psychological resilience Genetic predisposition Biology is not destiny

Mel's Madness

In the midst of all the furor about Mel Gibson and his self-admittedly foul behavior while under the influence of alcohol, an important point has been missed: when someone is drunk or brain damaged, is their behavior just disinhibition? Are they behaving this way because they’ve lost the cerebral censor that normally maintains our social demeanor? The Romans certainly thought so: in banqueting halls they would have roses carved into columns and the ceiling. The rose - the symbol of secrets - was a reminder to be discrete when alcohol might begin to lossen the tongue.

When the frontal lobes are on strike, does our “true” personality emerge? Or can alcohol, drugs and brain injury produce brand new behaviors that are not just totally out of character, but predictable by the drug or type of injury?

The answer is a mixture of the two. I know a man who is in the running for the Nobel Prize in medicine. But a couple of years ago it was all over the press when he shattered the arm of an innocent man in the middle of an alcohol-fueled frenzy. Was it the alcohol? Yes, I’m sure that it was. But the scientist has had a very long history of anger problems and of bullying younger colleagues. The alcohol was the catalyst to behavior that he normally keeps in check, but which was just waiting to come out of its cage. I’ve treated hundreds of alcohol abusing people, and the amiable ones far outnumber the violent ones. And the majority of the violent ones had also been violent when not drinking.

Some drugs and chronic alcohol abuse can produce stereotyped hallucinations and behaviors. Some alcoholic people really do see bugs and pink elephants, and there are many other examples of predictable perceptual and behavioral disturbances with drugs and with brain injuries.

Students of the healing arts learn that damage to certain regions of the brain is associated with specific behavioral and emotional consequences. This teaching goes back more than a century, and generations of students have been told that, “Damage here causes depression, and damage here causes mania, and over there a lesions will damage one type of language.” Yet for three decades we have known that much of this teaching is fictitious. I was taught brain localization by some of the finest neurologists in the world, and yet each would admit the inaccuracy of their methods. A new study from Brisbane, Australia supports that nihilism. The investigators examined 61 consecutive people admitted to a stroke unit. “Strokes” are either vascular blockage or bleeds affecting the brain.

They could find no significant relationship between the side or location of a lesion and the development of post-stroke depression. But the kinds of people that they were before the stroke had a big impact:  pre-morbid neuroticism and a past history of mental disorder were important predictors of depression following stroke.

So why all the fuss about Mel? Because people are asking if deep down inside he really has been harboring some of the dark, mean spirited thoughts that he expressed to the police, and that the alcohol was the catalyst and not the creator of his diatribe.

“The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. We injure our own cause in the opinion of the world when we too passionately defend it.”
-- Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman and Author, c.1780-1832)

Technorati tags: Mel Gibson Alcohol abuse Pre-morbid personality Brain

Video Games and Violence

For years now, there has been a vigorous debate on both sides of the Atlantic about the impact of violence in the media and the behavior of young people. I’ve seen various statistics indicating that the average teenager, by the time he or she graduates from high school, will have seen thousands of people killed on television. Most professionals have seen young people who no longer have any concept of death: they assume that if someone is killed they will simply get up and play another scene. As bizarre as this sounds, there have been multiple reports of this happening with young people involved in some of the most notorious acts of violence seen in schools.

This month see the publication of an important report from Iowa State University, where a research team has been examining the effects of violence in the media for several years now.

This latest report, "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence," was published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Previous research has come to the intuitively sensible conclusion that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors and at the same time decreases helpful behaviors. This is very worrying when we discover that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions.

The latest research involved 257 college students (124 men and 133 women). First, the investigators made some baseline physiological measurements of heart rate and galvanic skin response, which reflects sweating and blood flow in the skin. They then asked questions to control for the students’ preference for violent video games and general aggression. The participants then played one of eight randomly assigned violent or non-violent video games for 20 minutes.

When viewing real violence, participants who had played a violent video game experienced skin response measurements significantly lower than those who had played a non-violent video game. The participants in the violent video game group also had lower heart rates while viewing the real-life violence compared with the nonviolent video game group.

This research shows that people who play these violent video games get so used to violence that they become desensitized to it: it no longer affects them. Given the numbers of games and the enormous numbers of people playing them, the results are shocking: it could be said that modern entertainment media are systematically desensitizing millions of young people to violence.

Are you happy about that?

Shouldn’t we - both individually and collectively – be doing something about this?

Technorati tags: Violence Video games Desensitization

Gender, Culture and Communication

Regular readers will know that I’m very interested in gender differences. More and more evidence is confirming what most of us have always known: men and women tend to think and behave differently. Some of the differences are clearly neurological and some social. It is sometimes difficult to sort out which is more important: some research findings on gender differences have produced mixed results because of some of the assumptions of male investigators!

But notice that I emphasize the word “tend” to think differently. We are always dealing with statistical differences. My Y-chromosome should enable me to navigate from A to B without difficulty. In fact, I am seriously directionally challenged: I should probably have a GPS system with me when I go down to the shops!

I have spoken about my admiration for the work of Deborah Tannen, and I have also written about Christina Robb’s marvelous book, in which she charts the development of new insights into gender differences in psychology.

This weekend I was at the annual meeting of the National Speakers Association in Orlando, and I learned something very interesting that fits in with all of our previous discussions. I learned it from one of the speakers, named Julia Hubbel. I already knew that women tend to be more relational in their interactions and men are more transactional. Most women tend to spend a lot more time on the maintenance and development of relationships and most men are more interested in the bottom line: What is the solution? What’s the deal going to be? What I did not know is that there is some data to indicate that non-White males tend also to emphasize relationships over transaction. As soon as I heard that, I was sure that it was right: I have had a lot of dealings with people from the Indian subcontinent, and most would consider it very rude to get straight down to business before we had taken tea or eaten something while discussing family and other personal matters. Julia teaches networking skills that integrate gender and ethnic considerations.

As she was explaining her insights and methods, I was reminded of the work of the anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher Edward T. Hall, who wrote a series of excellent books on cultural factors and thought.

Gender and cultural differences in communication are of such importance that I plan to return to the topic in the near future. In the meantime, you might be interested in a book by Richard Nisbett, entitled The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why. After multiple trips to Japan, during which I learned a lot about cultural differences, I gave a copy to a friend who is a Canadian in a senior management position in the Japanese affiliate of a US-based company. He told me that he was astonished by the accuracy of the insights.

Some of the political misunderstandings that you see on the news every morning are often a consequence of different thinking styles. Learning how men and women and people in different cultures think and operate is not just interesting.

It is essential.

“Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader's success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively.”
-- Norman Allen (American Playwright, Recipient of a Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play)

Technorati tags: Communication Gender differences Deborah Tannen Cross-cultural communication

Growing Your Brain

Several years ago we learned that London taxi drivers grew a small part of their hippocampus while learning “The Knowledge,” a detailed map of the streets of the city. Unlike most American cities, London is like a rabbit warren that has been growing organically for two thousand years. Despite the Great Fire of 1666, and the best efforts of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, the basic illogical structure has just become more complex over the centuries. The hippocampus is intimately involved in memory, navigation and in constructing a map of your surroundings. It has also been established that professional musicians and people who use Braille, all have increases in the size and complexity of a specific region of the brain.

We now learn from researchers in Germany that medical students show an increase in the amount of grey matter in the posterior part of the hippocampus and also in regions of the parietal lobes while studying for their exams. It is calculated that a medical student learns around 6,000 new words during his or her training, so it is no surprise that the brain changes to accommodate all this new information.

This new finding just adds to our knowledge about the plasticity of the brain. Even if you do not have to learn 6,000 new words and innumerable new concepts and practical techniques, it is worth knowing that learning any new knowledge or skills will likely grow specific regions of your brain.

So make a resolution to learn at least one new thing each day, and to work on developing a new skill. It doesn’t matter whether it is learning to knit or how to play chess. Each will likely help you.

Later this year we will be bringing out a book that teaches brain stretching skills based on the latest advances in brain science.

Watch this space!

Technorati tags: Hippocampus Parietal lobe Learning Medical students Neurogenesis

Motivation

“Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people."

--Lee Iacocca (American Businessman and Former CEO of Chrysler, 1924-)

I am always on the look out for tips or techniques that might help my clients and students. But sometimes I come away scratching my head, after reading about some “new” technique or hearing someone discussing a life principle or healing method. So often I wonder why the author or he speaker hasn’t checked his or her facts.

I’ve recently seen an entire self-help system based upon a discredited psychological model of a disease. There’s a book and a website and loads of glowing testimonials. Maybe the methods work, and maybe they don’t. But if the basic principle is wrong, it’s impossible to apply the methods in a new situation. One of the fruits of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was the creation of the “barefoot doctors” – peasants who provided basic medical care throughout much of rural China. They had little training but had a set of manuals that told them exactly what to do with most common ailments. And when they came up against something that was in the book, they were fine. But because the practitioners had not been trained on the basic principles of anatomy, physiology or subtle systems, the system had no flexibility. If you had a chest infection, and the same signs and symptoms that they had in the book, then everything was fine. But if you had symptoms or an illness not in the book, you were out of luck.

In recent years a lot of people have gone back to talking about pleasure and pain as the principle motivators of human behavior. Of course, these two factors play some part in our behavior. And the idea that they are the key drivers is simple, easy to understand and easy to explain.

And dead wrong.

Eighty-six years ago Sigmund Freud published a short essay entitled Jenseits des Lustprinzips, which was eventually translated into English as Beyond the Pleasure Principle. All those years ago he had already come to the conclusion that there were other equally important drives, and that to try and reduce human motivation and behavior to pleasure and pain is very misleading.

We have a very large scientific literature on some of the factors involved in human motivation, how to achieve change and improvement in our lives and how to motivate others. Let me give just a few of the more important ones that cannot be reduced to pain and pleasure, and for which we have good empirical data:
1.    Clarity of vision
2.    Encouragement
3.    Personal engagement
4.    Recognition
5.    Pride
6.    Free flow of energy and information
7.    Appropriate reward systems (money is often not the best one!)
8.    Personal and group expectations
9.    Creating shared goals
10.    Transpersonal motivation: Inspiration and leaving a legacy

There are others, like emotional congruence, that can, perhaps, be reduced to the pleasure/pain axis. But it is the last of these that I am going to spend more time on in the near future: the differences between motivation and inspiration, and how combining the two together may have an important impact upon your life.

Technorati tags: Motivation Inspiration Reward Personal engagement

Money Doesn’t Make You Happy!

“Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.”
--Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor and Philosopher, A.D.121-180)

I recently wrote about a common myth: thinking that there is a connection between income level, health and longevity. Once you have passed a certain low threshold, this connection between income and health does not hold. Quite obviously living in abject poverty in the Horn of Africa or on the streets of New York is associated with all manner of physical and psychological challenges, but once people have reached a certain economic level there are other far more important determinants of health. We cannot use longevity as a justification for capitalism!

We now have a new piece of research that is also intuitively obvious: there is no link between wealth and happiness. You have only to look at the unhappy lives of so many people in the public eye to see that for yourself, and you have probably seen it in people around you. Many wealthy people are profoundly unhappy and some get into substance abuse or other high-risk activities.

Why should this be? People often tend to exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others.

Like success, happiness is subjective.

When taking stock of your life, it is a really good idea to try and score your levels of happiness, balance and satisfaction along five dimensions: physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual. In the book and CD program Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I give some very precise ways of doing that. There’s not much point in living in a big house on a hill, if you are rattling around in it on your own. What contribution are you making? And what will be your legacy?

“Happiness is the very nature of the Self; happiness and the Self are not different. There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it experiences misery. In truth, when its desires are fulfilled, it returns to its own place and enjoys the happiness that is the Self.”
--Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)

Technorati tags: Happiness Wealth Ramana Maharshi

Dissing Descartes

Every clinician has been asked the question, “Is the pain in my body, or is it all in my mind. Am I imagining it?” I have seen countless students and young doctors get themselves into a hopeless tangle over that question. And the answer to “is it the body or the mind?” should be “Yes.” If a person is suffering, they are suffering, and pain coming form the mind is every bit as real to them as pain coming from any other part of their anatomy.

But hidden within this question is a mistake that can be traced back to the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes who, in 1641, proposed that there was a neat split between the soul and the body. He actually envisioned an independent soul that inhabited and interacted with the body by opening little trap doors in the brain. This later became interpreted as a neat split between the mind and the body. He was by no means the first person to propose this. Twelve hundred years earlier Numidian-born Theologian, Saint Augustine of Hippo proposed something very similar. This idea of a clear split has informed our thinking for over three hundred years, yet it is probably wrong. And as with the opening question about “is my problem in my body or in my mind,” it has great practical implications: falsely locating the nature, origin and priority of symptoms.

Another practical implication of this artificial split is that by imagining a mechanical clockwork universe divorced from mind or spirit, we have removed value and meaning from the world. Indeed, some scientists take an extreme view, and say that there is no place for value, purpose or meaning in the universe, and that they are simply artificial creations of the mind. I have had some interesting discussion with people who have gone to far as to say that consciousness itself is no more than a set of reflexes in the brain. It will not surprise you to hear that I believe that they are wrong. when scientists say that they have found that the temporal cortex of the brain lights up when someone is having a religious experience, that does not mean that you can reduce a person’s faith and belief to a lit-up piece of brain. It is merely that the area of the brain corresponds to the experience.

I am a firm believer in the notion of nonduality, that essentially there is no fundamental distinction between mind and matter. Consciousness is the primary underlying force in the Universe. There is a very good resource here. So why do I take this position?
1. Personal experience of nonduality
2. The insights of modern theoretical physics
3. Independent, empirical research from a number of reputable scientists around the world. I have just constructed a list of recommended books at Amazon.com. You can access it here. If you take just a little time to examine the research reported in these books, I think that you will begin to be convinced as well.

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
--Aristotle (Greek Scientist and Philosopher, 384-322 B.C.E.)

Technorati tags: Descartes Mind and Brain Duality Nonduality

Understanding Attention Deficit Disorder as a Long-term Challenge

Regular readers will know that I am a huge advocate of natural and non-invasive methods of treatment whenever possible. But sometimes we reach an impasse, and the only option is to use pharmacological or other types of conventional intervention. But even then, it is a mistake to assume that physical treatment alone will be sufficient to help the individual and their family: it is only sensible also to address the psychological, social, subtle and spiritual dimensions of the person. And we must never lose sight of the positives: some people who have health challenges are transformed for the better, and some “illnesses” may carry gifts with them. I’ve talked about the creativity of people with bipolar disorder and schizotypy and the empathy and innovation that may accompany attention deficit disorder.

There is often a fine balance between the positives and negatives of an illness and the types of help that may be of greatest value.

I have just been involved in a common discussion at this time of year: a young person has quite bad attention deficit disorder (ADD). Since she started pharmacological treatment not only has she risen from being a failing student to getting all As and Bs, but the quality of her life has improved dramatically. Unfortunately, she has been told that she only needs to take her treatment when she feels that it is necessary to complete her schoolwork. Many healthcare providers continue to believe that ADD and ADHD are just academic problems. There is a very good new review article that discusses this misperception in some detail. Prescription patterns show that the majority of school-age children are only being treated from Monday to Friday, and from 7AM to 3PM. Why does this matter?

There is excellent and extensive research about the consequences of non-treatment, and most of it has nothing at all to do with school. If people with ADD and particularly with ADHD are left untreated, they are more likely to:
1. Develop substance abuse
2. Be involved in a serious accident
3. Engage in illegal activities
4. Contract a sexually transmitted disease
5. Have an unplanned pregnancy
6. Become separated or divorced

The article makes a point that we have often discussed with families: these consequences of non-treatment are events that primarily occur outside the school environment. So withholding medicine just when it is needed the most may be a risky business.

We are now seeing increasing evidence that successful pharmacological treatment reduces these consequences of untreated ADD/ADHD to the rates found in the general population. Simply using appropriate medications can protect people from adverse consequences of these problems both now and in the future.

I think that we should look at ADD in the same way that we look at an illness like diabetes. In diabetes, the high blood glucose and elevated lipids are not themselves the problem. They may cause symptoms, but the real danger lies in the long-term physical consequences of high glucose and lipids. It is these that can be so devastating to the person with the illness, causing the so-called complications of diabetes, such as retinopathy, kidney and heart disease.

Similarly ADD/ADHD may cause symptoms – such as problems in school – but it is the long-term consequences that can cause such problems. Children and adolescents, and for that matter some adults with both illnesses don’t realize that these are the main reasons for treatment.

There is a common myth that adults know that they need to take their medication, and so they do. Hands up anyone who has only taken half of a course of antibiotics!!

There is very striking study of adults with ADHD who were asked to do a simulated driving test while on and off their medicines. The people in the study rated their driving performance just the same whether they were on or off their medicines. Despite the fact that when they were off their treatment they were an astounding five “standard deviations” worse in terms of driving safety and responsibility! For people not used to looking at statistics this may not seem like much, but the difference is astonishing. You would not want to share the road with an untreated person with ADD.

We know that within the first three months of treatment 50% of children and adults will have stopped their ADD/ADHD treatment and most studies agree that by 18 months, the figure is around 80%.

We need to get the message out that:

1. ADD and ADHD can create some nasty long-term problems if not adequately treated.
2. For a host of reasons, most people will stop their treatment, so plan for it, and don’t just wait for it to happen.
3. Adequate treatment consists of a lot more than giving medication and hoping for the best.
4. People need psychoeducation.
5. They need to learn coping strategies.
6. The family needs to know how to help and how to deal with the problems that someone with ADD/ADHD may be causing them.
7. And people need to know how and when to use medications and how to integrate them with non-pharmacological strategies.

Technorati tags: Attention deficit disorder Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder Substance abuse Treatment 

The New Creative Mind

As you will have seen by now, I'm intrigued by creativity for it's own sake and because it is a fundamental property of sentient systems. Therefore creativity is an innate skill that we all share, but it can be developed to an extraordinary degree.

I've come across a very interesting article about what is being called the New Creative Mind. The suggestion is that it is a blend of Analytical, Expressive, Curious and Sensual dimensions that need to be integrated into a thinking process. There's a pretty accompanying graphic that is not, I think, meant to point to specific regions of the brain. At least I hope not!

Expanding the usual framework of creativity, provides this model with some real merits. Though I think that it needs a little more: creativity is usually spurred by a question, fired by a passion to know the answer, and delivered by the creation of a new dynamic structure that needs both knowledge and skills to manifest it. This applies whether we are trying to construct a scientific model, be more creative in how we develop and maintain a relationship, or create a work of art.

"Creativity is an activity, not a gift.” 
--Peter F. Drucker (Austrian-born American Economist and Management Consultant, 1909-2005)

Technorati tags: Creativity

Your Mind and Your Brain Know the Difference Between the Real and the Imagined

I have just seen a psychologist do a spot on television where, in the middle of some otherwise great advice, she repeated a well-known piece of nonsense: “Your brain can’t tell the difference between organizing your closets and organizing to prepare for a disaster.” This notion that the brain and the mind react the same way to real and imagined events has launched hundreds of self-help programs, but is dead wrong.

We have loads of evidence that the brain is extremely good at telling the difference between an image in external space and something that you are visualizing in your mind’s eye. Your brain wouldn’t be much good to you if it couldn’t tell the difference between an imagined event and the real thing!

Here’s just one example from many. I’ve written about empathy before: a crucial attribute for healthy functioning. There has been a debate going on for many years now: how can you put yourself into some one else’s shoes? Does it somehow involve merging our own view of the world with someone else’s? A new study sheds important light on this topic.

When you are empathizing with someone you can imagine how they perceive a situation and the feelings that they experience as a result. When you imagine someone else’s pain, is it the same as imagining pain on oneself? Many of us become quite emotional when we hear about something sad, but is the genesis of the emotion the same as it would be if something sad is happening to us? These experiments used functional magnetic resonance and participants were shown pictures of people with their hands or feet in painful or non-painful situations and instructed to imagine and rate the level of pain perceived from different perspectives. These results show that imagining someone else’s discomfort or one’s own, activated different regions in the brain. People did not somehow merge themselves with their image of the other person.

That makes good sense: we need to be able to keep ourselves separate from other people, until we have gained a high degree of internal control. I have known dozens of empaths and psychics who have been damaged by being unable to separate another person’s experiences form their own. Many have come to see me as patients, because they were experiencing the distress of others around them. They were helped not by medication, but by energetic work and training in how to control their gifts.

“All persons are a puzzle until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightaway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, Known as America's Teacher, 1803-1882)

Technorati tags: Imagination Empathy Brain Psychic

Creativity and the Brain

In 1826, the great German physicist and physician Hermann von Helmholtz proposed that there are four stages to creativity: incubation, illumination, preparation and verification. There have been many attempts to modify this four-stage model, and we now think that the ability to make new connections is a key factor in creative innovation - a composite of incubation and illumination that can be best defined as an ability to understand and express new order and inter-relationships. As the South African Poet, Novelist and Editor, William Plomer put it, “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.” Professor Kenneth Heilman from the University of Florida has presented some very interesting ideas about the mechanisms of creativity. He points out that creative innovation requires intelligence, specific knowledge and special skills and an ability to develop alternative solutions: what we call “divergent thinking,” the ability to break away from received wisdom. Each of these four factors will not be enough on their own. I have known many people who have announced that they have developed a new theory of the universe, but who did not have the knowledge or skills to be able to do anything with the idea, and to test whether it was sound.

There has recently been further analysis of a region of the brain of Albert Einstein. This region is of particular interest because Einstein is known to have had a form of dyslexia and this area is involved in language. In Chapter One of my most recent book, I pointed out that there is a great deal of interest in “glial cells” that were long thought to be no more than supporting cells, but have now been discovered to have key roles in some neuronal activity. Einstein had a significantly higher number of glial cells than controls, and it may be these cells that were responsible for his ability to make connections and to excel in spatial rather than linguistic reasoning.

The other point that I would like to make is this: there is a stereotype that creative people are undisciplined rebels. In fact nothing could be further form the truth: what they are actually doing is creating more order in the universe, by making new connections and creating new structures.

Technorati tags: Creativity Albert Einstein Brain Glial cells

Attention Deficit Disorder, Allergies and Membranes

There has been a long-running debate about the relationship – if any – between allergies and attention deficit disorder (ADD).

As long ago as 1991 a paper seemed to indicate that there were higher rates of hyperactivity in the parents of children with allergies as well as increased rates of allergies in children with ADD. Recently a study from New York seemed to show higher rates of allergic rhinitis in children with ADD. The problem with all this is that we are looking at two common problems and trying to sort out a genuine connection can be tricky.

I started thinking about this problem again, after a recent report that some children had symptoms of hyperactivity, inattention, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and excessive daytime sleepiness as a result of sleep-disordered breathing. But what was remarkable was the number who improved after they had their tonsils taken out. The tonsils are one of the first lines of defense in the immune system, which is why they so often become enlarged with infections, or for that matter in any kind of immunological reaction. Now I’m not much of one to take out tonsils unless there’s a really good reason, but it is certainly an important observation for anyone who has a child with behavioral or cognitive difficulties: he or she may not be sleeping properly.

I have seen quite a number of people who had physical and psychological problems, including headaches, depression and attentional problems, who turned out to have either allergies or environmental sensitivities, and when those were addressed, the symptoms resolved. I have also seen some people who followed the notoriously difficult Feingold diet with some success, even though the research doesn’t seem to be very supportive of elimination diets. And I've seen just as many people who got no relief at all from elimination diets.

I have just done a detailed literature review on the topics of allergy and attention, and I don’t think that we have enough evidence to suggest that everybody with attention deficit needs to see an allergist. But what this highlights is that not all people with attentional problems or hyperactivity have ADD. They may have attentional problems because of sleep disturbance, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and a range of other problems.

There is some exciting research indicating that one of the problems in many cases of ADD is a disturbance in the normal functioning of cell membranes. If that is correct, it may be that there are disturbances in the membranes of both neurons in the brain and membranes of cells in the immune system. That link is not entirely proven. But it has received further credence by the finding that some children and adults with ADD seem to show improvements of both attention and immune function when they take omega-3 fatty acids. I have recently been hearing some encouraging reports from people who have used the Omega-3 Formula made by Omegabrite (And no, I have no link with the company!)

Technorati tags: Attention deficit disorder Allergy Atopy Hyperactivity Tonsils Cell membrane Omega-3 fatty acid 

The End of Life As We Know It?

Your humble reporter was discombobulated to read a recent report from E3: the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

It appears that hordes of young men – yes they were virtually all young and male – were far more interested in the electronic games on display than they were in a number of quite attractive young dancers and models who graced the event. Though we have not one iota of interest in the orientation of the assembled company, on statistical grounds alone we would expect that at least some of these young men should be wired to take an interest in presumably intelligent members of the opposite sex. Yet they seemed to prefer playing with their silicon monsters and joysticks.

Perhaps the gamers are all too cerebral to be interested in young models who may be unable to tell a bit from a byte. But in the midst of all the sage commentary about the expanding gaming market and the ready accessibility of computer games to people who have access to not much else in the way of entertainment, our thoughts meandered off in a different direction: we have been wondering if we are here witnessing some form of natural selection at work….

Technorati tags: Evolution Relationships Sexual attraction

Happiness and Resilience

For more than two decades, my main focus has been on ways to help people become more resilient to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To enable people to withstand anything that's thrown at them: physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. And not just to withstand them but to use adversity as the impetus for growth.

Adversity is a fact of life: it cannot be controlled. But we can control how we react to it.

This is such an important concept.

So many people try and make themselves stronger and stronger, yet there will always be something that can overwhelm the most powerful defenses. I knew of two martial artists in Hong Kong who claimed that they could defeat anyone. They were incredibly strong and had exquisite technique.

Which did not help them one bit when some villains shot them from behind by.

I have come across others who have spent their lives eating and exercising and still dying prematurely. What was the problem? They had not learned the arts of resilience, which include adaptability, flow and seemless integration with the Universe.

Over the next few days I am going to introduce you to some of the techniques that we have developed for enhancing psychological and physical resilience, before going on to reveal some of the secrets for strengthening the subtle fields of your body, and how to maintain dynamic relationships, not just with another person, but with your Higher Self.

One of the manifestations of resilience is happiness, so before we start, I would suggest that you try this small test that was published by the BBC by arrangement with Professor Ed Diener, from the University of Illinois who designed it.

Technorati tags: Resilience Happiness Flow Relationships

Intuition, Coincidence and Synchronicity

The other day I was enjoying a pleasant dinner with some Indian friends, and we got onto the subject of the history of Kashmir. With us were some American friends who knew little about the subject, so we gave them a quick update on the history of the region. A few minutes later we had moved onto something else, and I mentioned that I had just met an Indian-born English businessman with whom I may collaborate on a project. And that I had just recalled that he and his parents were originally from Kashmir. Later, as the valet brought my car round, the song playing on the radio was Led Zeppelin’s classic song Kashmir.

Some might say, "Ah ha! A Synchronicity!" But they would be incorrect, and this leads us to consider the role of intuition in synchronicity. For an event to be a synchronicity, it must be meaningful. Let me give you an example. I received a flier from Sounds True, a wonderful company in Boulder, Colorado, that specializes in materials to aid personal and spiritual development. I’m a good customer, so they send me a lot of invitations to examine new products. This one was a program by Stephen Wolinsky called Quantum Psychology, and it was based upon the teachings of a Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, who lived from 1897-1981. As far as I know, I had never come across this sage’s teachings before. The material looked interesting, but I had a lot to read and listen to, so I wasn’t convinced that I’d have the time to dedicate to the program. Then, no more than an hour later, I was looking for an unrelated item on the Internet, and up popped Sri Nisargadatta’s name. Shortly after that, I picked up a book on chess, and the author – Jeremy Silman – had dedicated his book to Sri Nisargadatta. A chess book: not some arcane treatise on Indian philosophy. This was enough for me. I always let my intuition do the walking, so I ordered, and Stephen’s material was indeed excellent and provided me with some tools that I could use in my service to other people.

So always keep an eye out to see if the Universe is trying to tell you something, but don’t fall into the rut of assuming that everything is always meaningful. As Sigmund Freud once commented, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Coincidences are just that, and it is only when they become meaningful that they can be classified as a synchronicity.

I recommend to students that they should get a small journal or diary and spend just one week watching for coincidences, and then seeing if any of them become meaningful. This is a great exercise for your intuition, and it helps with your powers of discrimination: by making notes ahead of time, it helps you to avoid the trap of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Technorati tags: coincidence intuition synchronicity Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Stephen Wolinsky Quantum Psychology self-fulfilling prophecy

Tapping Therapies

Hearing that my friends in the United Kingdom at www.thoughtfieldtherapy.co.uk were about to have a conference on Thought Field Therapy (TFT) was all the encouragement that I needed to write a few more words about TFT and some of the other tapping therapies. I made mention of two of them in a blog entry for February 28th 2006, and I have dedicated several sections to it in my book and CD series Healing Meaning and Purpose.

TFT was the creation of the psychologist Roger Callahan, who discovered that stimulating a number of acupuncture points while connecting with an negative emotion, thought, impulse or memory, could initiate a cascade of healthy neurological, chemical, emotional, cognitive and even physical effects. There is an interesting sidebar here. When I first came across his work, it seemed absurd. It looked like a collection of unproven techniques cobbled together into some sort of system. I worry about sick people being treated by ineffective therapies, so I was determined to debunk TFT. I was a little taken aback when I sent for some of the Callahan materials and saw a smoker permanently cured in about five minutes. Undeterred, I flew to California to expose what I thought might be another scam. Within two days, I discovered that it was no scam. Roger has indeed made an extraordinarily important discovery that supports the notion that the laws of healing are changing. As a simple example, I used one of Roger’s simplest treatments on inveterate smokers. The first 11 whom I treated all stopped smoking, and when I followed up almost one year later they still were not smoking. This could have been beginner’s luck or a placebo effect, but both are unlikely. We know a great deal about the duration of the effectiveness of placebos.

TFT is based on the concept that thought is a form of energy, structured by a field and that psychological problems are manifestations of distortions within “thought fields,” which Roger defines as “a complex of forces that serve as causative agents in human behavior.” He conceptualizes psychological problems as the consequence of “perturbations” in the thought field. These perturbations contain the information that triggers negative emotions, and they also have relationships with specific major acupuncture points on the body. Fixing these perturbations involves tapping specific points in a specific order, while doing a series of other small tasks.

An important aspect of TFT is the concept of psychological reversal. Roger calls this the energetic blockade of natural healing, caused by reversals in the flow of Qi through the acupuncture channels. It now seems that much of what has been described as therapeutic resistance, self-sabotage or lack of willpower is a result of psychological reversal. He has devised some deceptively simple treatments that have shown us that people’s difficulties were often not a matter of a lack of willpower at all, but were the result of reversed energy. Deal with that, and many problems can melt away.

Like Roger Callahan, I emphasize the importance of toxins, of extending our concept of them, so that we conceptualize them as units of rogue information. In recent years Roger has done pioneering work into how to track down and deal with them.

Not everyone will be helped with any single form of treatment, and even with the best therapists, TFT is not for everyone. However, when someone says that he or she has not been helped with TFT, it most often for one of these seven reasons: 1. The treatment has not been done quite correctly. 2. The problem has been only partially treated. 3. Psychological reversal has not been dealt with. 4. There are still some toxins lurking around. 5. There is more than one problem, and they haven’t both been treated. (Somebody who said that he felt silly doing TFT needed to treat that fear of appearing foolish and then getting on with the primary problem.) 6. The problem may need the help of someone trained in TFT. 7. The person may have needed a combination of therapies.

TFT is the original tapping therapy, but others have now sprung up, including Emotional Freedom Techniques, and I have just read a new book called the Tapping Cure that claims that tapping an array of points on the surface of the body, while at the same time doing a specific affirmation, can be just as effective.

I have tried all these techniques, with varying degrees of success. Not just for clinical problems, but also for sports and other types of performance. While I was recording the CD series Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I several times found places where I fluffed my lines. On each occasion, the problem was resolved by tapping the border of my hand, because I was developing psychological reversal.

Unfortunately, proponents of each of these – and there are others – tend to be competitive with proponents of other techniques. And some enthusiasts have made some pretty incredible claims about what they claim to be able to cure. The competing claims really need to be resolved through empirical research.

Until we have that, I strongly suggest exploring the tapping techniques as adjuncts to other forms of therapy.

Technorat tags: Alternative medicine Complementary medicine Integrated medicine Thought Field Therapy Emotional Freedom Techniques Qi Subtle Energy Biofield

A New Atlas Promises a Breakthrough in some Brain Disorders

The very first attempts to take pictures of the living brain go back to the 1930s, but it is only in the last 20 years that MRI, SPECT and PET studies of the brain have really moved the field forward. After thousands upon thousands of imaging studies, we are beginning to approach the time when we can start harvesting the data collected over these years.

We are on the cusp of an extraordinary advance in our understanding of the brain and how it can go wrong in a large number of neurological and psychiatric illnesses. But that is only a side show: being able to identify the neurological correspondences of, say a psychiatric illness, does not mean that we reduce the illness to the firing of a group of neurons. But it does mean that we are gong to be much closer to providing suitable treatment for the neurological component aspect of the illness.

There has been a dramatic demonstration of this with the publication of a new brain map of people living with a rare but important illness called William’s syndrome.

One of the biggest puzzles for those of us who look at brain scans, is why there is so much variability in the structure of the brain. In the rest of the body, veins and arteries can turn up all over the place, but nerves tend to be in pretty much the same position in everybody. This is not the case in the brain. I’ve looked at many thousands of MRI scans of the brain, and I’ve never found any two alike. It’s one of the reasons that I’m a little doubtful about some of the claims of imagers who say that they can diagnose someone by looking at a brain scan. Most of the time there’s just too much normal variation.

All over the world, there have practitioners who have claimed to derive all sorts of information from brain images. Most experts remain a bit skeptical: hundreds of experts and hundreds of millions of dollars have only enabled us to speak in generalities. Some private practitioners even perform scans for diagnosis.

Some time ago I met a psychiatrist who had an unusual theory about the causes of mental illness. He wanted us to do two MRI scans on a patient to prove his theory. When I told him that we were not yet able to do that in individuals, he was indignant, “But you’ve published all those studies showing abnormal brain structure in schizophrenia.” I explained that all the brain imaging studies have told us quite a lot about groups of people with mental illness, but little about individuals. I do not know of any academic psychiatrists anywhere in the world who think that we can yet use PET, SPECT, fMRI or MRI scans for diagnosis of mental illness. Maybe we’re just being a bit slow. Or perhaps the brain scan diagnosers haven’t got all the pieces of the puzzle just yet. Research is expensive and takes a great deal of time. Busy clinicians are eager to exploit new investigative tools for the benefit of their patients, and usually do not publish their results in peer reviewed journals. With this new research we are going to be able to see if these individual practitioners are correct.

Not only are there many inter-individual differences, but also the current state of the person can have a big impact on some types of imaging. I was recently asked to review a paper for a scientific journal in which the authors had enthusiastically explained the way in which they could now diagnose a certain illness by doing a brain scan. Sad to say, they had not asked a couple of basic questions, like the person’s mood when they were scanned. Depression reduces the flow of blood in regions of the brain, the patients turned out to be depressed, and the results were invalidated. It was a real shame, but it is so important that patients don’t get misled by investigations that cannot help them.

So the moral of the story is this. If someone wants to do any kind of investigation for diagnostic purposes, ask them first whether there is any published evidence that the test actually works: what are the sensitivity and specificity of the findings generated by the test? And who else is doing it?

“If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.” --Lyall Watson (South African Biologist and Writer, 1939-)

Technorati tags: brain structure williams syndrome bipolar disorder PET scan

Dolphins Have Names

It seems that not a day goes by without new research breaking down the barriers between humans and many of the other species that share our planet. I have reported on the burgeoning research into emotional expression in animals. No surprise to anyone who spends much time interacting with them, but a shock to some of my more conservative colleagues. Within the last ten years I have spoken to countless psychologists clinging to the notion that animals are just bundles of reflexes designed to protect them and allow them to reproduce.

The evidence for complex communication patterns in dolphin has long fascinated me. This was triggered in part by the work of the late John Lilly. One of my mentors in neurology was firmly of the opinion that it was impossible because they did not have the right neurological machinery. It seems that he was wrong. There is an extraordinary new report picked up by the BBC and the National Geographic  from a team of scientists based at St Andrews University in Scotland: the same place that Prince William attended for four years. In a three-year-study  of wild dolphins, conducted in Sarasota Bay off Florida's west coast and funded by the Royal Society of London, they found that dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by "name.” Using whistles, these mammals are able to recognize themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. They have labels for each other just as we do.

This is important not just because of the implication that they have evolved some of the same abilities that we have, but because it likely means that they have a sense of self and of identity and that they able to differentiate each other as individuals.

I was talking about these findings with She Who Must Be Obeyed, and she pointed out that our horses appear to be able to do the same thing: if you watch them closely they have different calls for attracting each other’s attention, and these calls are different when they are at home or when they are in competition. Two of the horses are constantly going to competitions together, and after they have done well, they have a new repertoire of sounds with which they communicate with each other, and yet others with which they communicate with other horses. For people not used to being around these animals, they always assume that we are simply anthropomorphizing. But I don’t think so: it really seems that they call to each other in a precise and predictable way after they have done their jobs well. We have often said that they are bragging: perhaps we’re not so far from the truth.

Technorati tags: dolphins communication horse communication self