Faulty thinking

Our thoughts are constantly helping us to interpret the world around us, describing what’s happening, and trying to make sense of it by helping us interpret events, sights, sounds, smells, feelings. Because of our experiences, life story, culture, religious beliefs and family values, we often make very different interpretations of situations than others.

Cognitive therapy was developed with the belief that a person's experiences result in thoughts. These are connected with schemas or core beliefs developed from early life to create our view of the world and determine our emotional states and behaviours. Disorders are sometimes maintained by negative attitudes and distorted thinking. We must of all, at one point or another held views, or patterns of thoughts that might be seen as thinking errors, fantasies, fallacies and faulty thinking. And faulty ways of thinking are often more likely to occur when we are stressed.

Cognitive therapy focuses on altering faulty thinking patterns. The father of Cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck proposed six types of faulty thinking

1. Drawing conclusions about oneself or the world without sufficient and relevant information. For example a man not hired by a potential employer perceives himself as totally worthless and believes he probably will never find employment of any sort.
2. Drawing conclusion from very isolated details and events without considering the larger context or picture. For example a student who receives a C on an exam becomes depressed and stops attending classes even though he has A's and B's in his other courses. The student measures his worth by failures, errors, and weaknesses rather than by successes or strengths.
3. Holding extreme beliefs on the basis of a single incident and applying it to a different or dissimilar and inappropriate situation. For example a depressed woman who has relationship problems with her boss may believe she is a failure in all other types of relationships.
4. The process of overestimating the significance of negative events. For example a runner experiences shortness of breath and interprets it as a major health problem, possibly even an indication of imminent death.
5. Relating external events to one another when no objective basis for such a connection is apparent. For example a student who raises his hand in class and is not called on by the teacher believes that the instructor dislikes or is biased against him.
6. An "all-or-nothing," "good or bad," and "either-or" approach to viewing the world. For example at one extreme, a woman who perceives herself as "perfect" and immune from making mistakes; at the other extreme, a woman who believes she is totally incompetent.

Workplace mobbing is complex and real

Workplace mobbing is a complex phenomenon with negative outcomes for individual, group and organizational effectiveness.

In Australia, a government inquiry revealed that calls about workplace bullying had increased by 70 percent in three years. Statistics show that bullying affects one in three employees; what is really worrying is that one in two have witnessed bullying but have done nothing about it. Moreover, the actual incidence of bullying is likely to be much higher: for every case reported, eight to 20 cases are going unreported.

For targets of workplace bullying who suffer severe psychological and social pressure, there are many resources and trained professionals to help them. But for targets of workplace mobbing, which is a form of group bullying that can have even greater impacts on one’s psychological well-being and career, there are far fewer resources. Moreover, few mental health professionals are trained to recognize mobbing, much less address its impacts. Our response to this parallel (understandably) those emotions of grief and loss; the five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Recently Current Psychiatry, part of the US Frontline Medical Communications Inc. published a letter describing Mobbing as more prevalent and the consequences more dire for a victim who is feeling pressured to leave his or her job when there is little hope of getting another one or is taking on responsibilities previously held by others who have been laid off.

Gathering collateral information is critical for diagnostic accuracy and well-articulated interventions that may be recommended. Evaluators who do such assessments at the behest of corporate clients should insist that they have access to employee files investigative reports, and if appropriate permission to interview supervisors, employee assistance program representatives, and human resources personnel familiar with the case.

Mobbing is real and deserves much greater attention by researchers and clinicians in the United States (and one suspects elsewhere too.)

The era of positive computing

Computers have ever since their inception been largely used as a productivity tool. But recently there has been an increasing interest in the use of computers foster wellbeing – this is being referred to as positive computing.

Digital technologies have made their way into all aspects of our lives that influence our wellbeing - affecting everything from social relationships and curiosity to engagement and learning.

Psychologists have generally focused on the negative impacts of using Internet technologies or on the potential of these technologies to be used to help those suffering from mental health problems. However, recent advances in the development of tools go beyond prevention of disorders to actually promote wellbeing.

In fact, we may be entering an era of positive computing, in which technology will be designed specifically to promote wellbeing and human potential.

Future technology designed to foster wellbeing has the potential to affect population-wide positive change on an unprecedented scale. Thanks to new research, health professionals are now increasingly turning to technology-based interventions to promote physical and psychological wellbeing.

Sydney University’s Positive Computing in Health Systems project node draws on expertise across the disciplines of medicine, psychology and technology to explore how design strategies and technology use affect user behavior and health. This will enable the development of new knowledge and strategies that support wellbeing and more sophisticated technologies to promote better health outcomes.

Using the Charles Perkins Centre themes of Nutrition and Physical Activity, Exercise and Energy Expenditure as a knowledge base, the collaboration between psychology experts and technology designers allows for investigation of how psychological factors such as motivation, autonomy and self-efficacy support wellbeing in relation to nutrition and physical activity.

In the first instance, the project node aims to develop technological models that can inform existing Charles Perkins Centre related projects. Technological models developed from this study will also have wide potential for application to other health and wellbeing research.

The colour of our office space - the impact of colour on our psychology and productivity

I have written extensively on the subject of light and colour elsewhere.  However I wanted to share some thoughts here on colour and its impact on our psychology and productivity.

Light signals from the retina is analysed by retinal ganglion cells, which compare the stimulation of neighbouring cones, and calculate whether the light reaching a patch of cones is more blue, yellow, red or green. These signals travel to the brain where they are divided into several pathways - throughout the cortex. For example, visual signals from the photo-receptors pass to retinal ganglion cells, which code colour information, and then to the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus (hypothalamus, which governs our endocrine system and hormones, and much of our activity) and onwards to the primary visual cortex. The primary visual cortex preserves the spatial relationships of images on the retina. Colour processing, perception building and interpretation is a complex mind function.

It’s also been shown that what defines whether a colour is stimulating or soothing is not the colour but rather its intensity. A strong bright colour will stimulate while a colour with low saturation may help soothe. Research has also shown that each colour affects a different part of us. The four psychological primaries are: red, blue, yellow and green. And they affect the body (red), the mind (blue), the emotions, the ego, and self-confidence (yellow) with balance between the mind, the body, and emotions (green).

And so back to your office….

• If you and your colleague are doing mind-work all day consider painting your office blue; however introduce some yellow or orange where possible.

• For and office of designers wanting to promote creativity, use yellow to stimulate ego and spirit; This may also help increase the level of optimism.

• Productivity of physical work might be improved by red.  It’s said that red might contribute to physical strength and stimulus.

• If you’re in an environment where having a strong sense of balance is most important, green might just be the colour. As well it’s balanced, calming and reassuring.

Colour, like a musical note doesn't actually evoke much of an emotional response until it’s combined with other colours.

The hardships and desperations of the marginalized

As we know the global financial crisis began in July 2007 with the credit crunch, when a loss of confidence by US investors in the value of sub-prime mortgages caused a liquidity crisis. Before the financial crisis, one in eight Americans were poor, a very high level for an otherwise affluent society. The financial crises pushed an additional 7.5 to 10 million people into poverty.

So the 2009 film Broke. had no issue with timing. This beautiful, gritty film Set in a pawnshop, the cinema verite masterpiece tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a cynic pawnbroker and his sweet but psychopathic assistant. Broke. won the prestigious Donald Brittain Award  and was the best social-political documentary of 2010.

Broke. is a complex, powerful account of the day to day life in a pawnshop. The documentary gives us an intimate glimpse into a world most of us luckily do not have to know. Although often as funny and surprising as a sitcom, it bluntly points to the hardships and desperations of the marginalized. As the pawnbroker states: “You don’t see it in your rarefied living conditions, you don’t see how the poor people live, unless you come here. 

The Mask Of Sanity: An Attempt to Reinterpret the So-Called Psychopathic Personality

The Mask Of Sanity: An Attempt to Reinterpret the So-Called Psychopathic Personality

During a case discussion involving patients in custody recently a colleague made reference to Milton Cleckley’s  “The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Reinterpret the So-called Psychopathic Personality.” I’d heard of the book given that it’s considered to be a seminal work and the most influential clinical description of psychopathy in the twentieth century. I had to read it…

Right off, the book starts with a poem – not a poem by an antisocial but perhaps one for an antisocial. The poem is reproduced in many forums including an internet-based Psychology and Mental Health forum. Here it is:

“From chaos shaped, the Bios grows. In bone and viscus broods the Id. And who can say Whence Eros comes? Or chart his troubled way? Nor bearded sage, nor science, yet has shown. How truth or love, when met, is straightly known; Some phrases singing in our dust today. Have taunted logic through man's Odyssey: Yet, strangely, man sometimes will find his own. And even man has felt the arcane flow. Whence brims unchanged the very Attic wine, Where lives that mute and death-eclipsing glow. That held the Lacedaemonian battle line: And this, I think, may make what man is choose. The doom of joy he knows he can but lose.” Cleckley

This book is now in its fifth edition – first published in 1941. Cleckley recalls how the first edition was based primarily on experience with adult male psychopaths hospitalized in a closed institution. During the ensuring decades a much more diverse group of people became available. Female patients, adolescents, people who had never been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, all in large numbers, became available for study and afforded an opportunity to observe the disorder in a very wide range of variety and of degree.

Since the first edition of this book, revisions of the nomenclature have been made by the American Psychiatric Association. The classification of psychopathic personality was changed to that of sociopathic personality in 1958. In 1968 it was changed again to antisocial personality. Like most psychiatrists I continue to think of the people who are the subject of this book as psychopaths and will most often refer to them by this familiar term.

One of the most striking things about this book is born in its seemingly incorruptible America – an era where deals are considered legal contracts by handshakes and man’s word is gold. The government seems to care about its citizens. Here,  lawyers and judges and police officers have a certain amount of sympathy for the patients he’s worked with; they know these people aren’t quite right because they keep committing idiotic crimes that really have no pay-off, but they aren’t legally insane.

What I found most interesting about this book, perhaps it’s just me, the overwhelming sense of paternalism and male chauvinism. While women are mentioned as having jobs, it’s understood that of course they do that until they follow the natural course of life and get married and have children. A case study of one woman was particularly curious. The woman was considered to be a “deviant” and show signs of psychopathology merely because she was a lesbian and had the audacity to say that she did not want to be married. No worries—she was soon “cured” of those two unnatural conditions. Deviant behaviour abounds in this book. There is even a  chapter titled: “Homosexuality and other consistent sexual deviations.” Sure this is written in the early twentieth century but the incredible stereotypes are noteworthy to say the least. Sections deal with The psychopath as businessman, The psychopath as man of the world, The psychopath as gentleman, etc where are fascinating.

The Fleshy Part of the Thigh - the God Particle

I’ve always thought the sixty-ninth episode of the HBO series, The Sopranos - The Fleshy Part of the Thigh to be one of the deepest and most confronting of the many excellent episodes in the series. I had the chance to watch it again last night.

Tony, in hospital faces his own mortality after being shot by his demented uncle. In the next room, Da Lux, a rapper who was shot while leaving a club is being comforted by his manager and family. We over hear his manager telling his client that getting shot will boost record sales. Da Lux is clearly distressed and in pain.

This episode also has one of my favorite quotes scribbled on a card.   While having his wound dressed the day before surgery, Tony speculates that Janice is responsible for the card - the Ojibwe saying "Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky,"

After learning that Pastor Bob and his followers oppose female contraception, Tony asks them if their God disapproves of Viagra too. Da Lux invites Tony to watch a boxing fight at his hospital room on satellite TV. While watching the prize fight, Paulie moans about how alone everyone is, Schwinn discusses the interconnectivity of all life, telling them how no event or entity can be understood independent from the rest of the world referencing the work of Erwin Schrödinger, Quantum mysticism, and Da Lux agrees with Schwinn: "everything is everything, I'm down with that." 

Schwinn has ideas that are at odds with the beliefs of Pastor Bob, who again visits Tony later and tries to encourage him to find his spirituality. Tony confides to Schwinn he is starting to believe they are all part of something bigger.

Schwinn’s interconnectivity remark - What sounds like a casual remark is of course anything but. It’s the genius of the writers that set up and make room for reflection. Here, mortality, psychology, religion, quantum physics, art and moralism collide.

Interconnectivity, or as Tony puts it “we are all part of something bigger” isn’t, of course, a new idea. Our perception of things, the world is not just an esoteric topic confined to philosophy, but one of neuropsychology, brain structure and function, physics and more. Consciousness, as imperceptible and inexplicable as it may be, could well be at the root of everything we experience. Not just what we think, but what we see, what we feel.

The temporal lobe assigns meaning to whatever stimuli hit our senses. In short, it is the temporal lobe that gives us meaning to what we see, what we hear, etc. Temporal lobe damage can affect our ability to assign meaning to normally familiar objects. And interestingly, in some cases of temporal lobe damage that cause temporal lobe seizures, such patients can be overwhelmed with spiritual and emotional feelings beyond the norms of human experience.

So where, or how does the discovery of an elementary particle such as the Higgs boson sit? The Higgs boson, or the “God particle” explains how elementary particles gain mass by interacting with other particles within an invisible field of energy. Sure, the 2013 Nobel prize went to Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom for the theory of how particles acquire mass. This was borne out when researchers confirmed the existence in 2012 of the God particle.

But, Where did the thought of the Higgs boson come from? Does this particle exist only in our mind? Can it be manipulated by our thoughts? Is it possible that matter isn’t so much a thing as it is a perspective? If so, could it be that by changing this perspective we might discover that our essential nature isn’t matter-based after all?