"How Smart Are We?"

7/27/10. Economist Thomas Sowell examines how smart people often believe dumb ideas.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/27/how_smart_are_we_106479.html

"A Journey Through the Jungle"

7/26/10. Jane Goodall reflects on her 50 years of primate research.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383043749291302.html

"The Struggle for the (Possible) Soul of David Eagleman"

7/24/10. A neuroscientist imagines life beyond the brain.

http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/witness/the-struggle-for-the-possible-soul-of-david-eagleman/

"Attention Disorders Can Take a Toll on Marriage"

7/20/10.

"Adults with attention disorders often learn coping skills to help them stay organized and focused at work, but experts say many of them struggle at home, where their tendency to become distracted is a constant source of conflict. Some research suggests that these adults are twice as likely to be divorced; another study found high levels of distress in 60 percent of marriages where one spouse had the disorder."
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/attention-disorders-can-take-a-toll-on-marriage/?hpw

"The Battle Over Battle Fatigue"

7/17/10. Dr. Sally Satel's article achieves the delicate balance of expressing compassion, support, and respect for our soldiers, while charting and challenging the history of the political contamination that broadened the definition of PTSD and seeped into our present use of the DSM.

Dr. Satel writes,

"Soldiers can now claim trauma from events they didn't actually experience. Is the diagnosis losing meaning?"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704913304575371130876271708.html?KEYWORDS=satel

"An Unacceptable Health Care Vision"

7/15/10. Obama, health care, and government as decider.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703792704575367020548324914.html

"Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds"

7/15/10. When I was in graduate school, psychologists were taught that how kids turned out depended almost entirely on how their parents treated them --- nurture mattered more than nature. Mother-blaming was in fashion and reached destructive heights --- such as the belief that "cold" parents produced autistic kids.

Research at the University of Minnesota on identical twins reared apart along with many strands of well-designed studies shows that nature and nurture are both strong contributors to how people turn out.  Children are born with biological predispositions --- parents, of course, influence the personality of their children --- but parents do not "create" their children's personality. So much happens as a result of the genetic roll of the dice, and what happens to children outside of their family's influence is important. The more we learn about the genetics of development, the more we learn about the complexity of nurture on the course of development.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/13mind.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

"Are There More Girl Geniuses?"

7/12/10. Christina Hoff Sommers writes about the endangered species --- males.

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/june-2010/are-there-more-girl-geniuses

Onion: "Recently Married Man Ready to Start Dating Again"

7/10/10. Has millions of years of evolution brought us this thoroughly modern male?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/recently-married-man-ready-to-start-dating-again,1736/

"Reduce Stress by Changing How You Think"

7/10/10. Some say thinking makes it so.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/07/stress-brain-relaxation-forbes-woman-well-being-health.html

Robert Butler. R.I.P.

7/8/10. Dr. Butler made many contributions to the field of aging.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/health/research/07butler.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

Why the Economy is Not Recovering

7/5/10. Economist Allan Meltzer makes a good case about why Obama's economic policies are not working.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575325233508651458.html

"What Does It Do?"

7/5/10. Asking the question, "What Does It Do?," says William Zinsser "has saved me a lot of grief, not only at the (piano) keyboard but in negotiating the sharps and flats of life."

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/what-does-it-do/#more-7432

"Worried About a Moody Teen?"

6/29/10. Wall Street Journal writer Elizabeth Bernstein offers sound advice about treating mental illness in adolescence in her column "On Relationships."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703964104575334740269660342.html?KEYWORDS=moody+teen

Violence Expert Visits Her Dark Past

6/25/10. A review of Jessica's Stern's "DENIAL. A Memoir of Terror." Stern is one of the world's experts on violence and evil. Her book attempts to explain why she is driven to study terrorism and put herself in danger travelling around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/books/25book.html?hpw

The Openness Elixir

6/25/10. A review of two books that urge us to open markets and minds.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704009804575309610811148630.html?KEYWORDS=rational+optimist

"The Temperamental Thread. How genes, culture, time and luck make us who we are"

6/21/10.

Anybody who could tell us how genes, culture, time and luck make us who we are gets my attention ---- especially when the author is one of the world’s most distinguished psychologists with a resilient nature and more than fifty years of experience.

Jerome Kagan outlines in clear, concise prose the causes and consequences of the varieties of temperaments across the life-span, drawing on many disciplines. He takes us on an intellectual ride exploring contributions from neuroscience and what we know about brain circuits and temperament, how experience alters the genetic expressions of temperament across the life-span, and the importance of neuroplasticity.

Kagan describes his book:

"This book summarizes what many scientists have learned about a small number of human temperaments, especially the forms they assume during infancy, their derivatives in later childhood, their possible biological origins, the experiences that shape each set of biases into various personality types or symptoms of mental illness, and their contribution to the psychological differences between males and females and ethnic groups."

The book has the following seven chapters:

1. What Are Human Temperaments?

2. Reacting to the Unexpected

3. Experience and Inference

4. Temperament and Gender

5. Temperament and Ethnicity

6. Temperament and Mental Illness

7. What Have We Learned?

Kagan compares personality to “a gray tapestry woven from very thin black and white threads --- the former representing temperaments and the latter life experiences.” He weaves this tapestry together with subtle, often surprising research findings about the joint shaping of biology and experience to shed light on human nature, culture and experience.

As an example of how temperamental threads shape our understanding of mental illness (see Chapter 6), Kagan draws from the seminal work of psychiatrist Paul McHugh. In his influential “Perspectives of Psychiatry” (1), McHugh states that mental disorders are life under altered circumstances. These circumstances are grouped in families of disorders, stemming from breakdowns in the mind’s design that indicate brain disease, or expressions of the mind’s design that lead to behavioral misdirections (e.g. alcoholism) or emotional responses to distressful life encounters (e.g. adjustment disorders) (2).
Kagan infuses his knowledge of temperament to elaborate on McHugh’s four families of psychological disorders which have their origins in (1) brain disease (e.g. autism, dementia, schizophrenia, delirium); (2) temperamental biases for anxiety and depression (e.g. phobias, PTSD, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression); (3) temperamental biases that make it difficult to regulate impulsive behavior (e.g. ADHD, conduct disorder); or (4) distressful life encounters (e.g. grief, adjustment disorders, trauma).

These four families of disorders are a modest suggestion to improve psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This approach to classification takes small steps to classify psychiatric disorders by what underlies them --- families of disorders that share a causal, generative nature which may lead to research developing etiological principals.

Whenever I think about temperament and human nature, I am reminded of W. Somerset Maugham’s, “The Summing Up,” a thoroughly satisfying memoir of a lived life. Maugham spent five years in medical school steeped in the human condition before becoming a successful author. In “The Summing Up,” written at age sixty-four years, Maugham sets down his ideas about art, literature, living the famous life, and what he learned from years of reading philosophers. He concludes “The Summing Up”:

"The beauty of life…is nothing but this, that each should act in conformity with his nature and his business."

Whatever your nature, I urge you to make it your business to read Professor Kagan’s, "The Temperamental Thread."

References:

(1) McHugh, Paul R., and Slavney, Phillip R. The Perspectives of Psychiatry.Second Edition. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

(2) McHugh, Paul R. “Psychiatry at Stalemate.” In Dan Gordon (Editor). Cerebrum 2010. New York: Dana Press, 2010.

(3) Maugham. W. Somerset. The Summing Up. New York: Penguin Books, 1938. This quote is from Fray Luis de Leon.

Where Are American's Moving?

6/18/10. Take a look, county by county.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/04/migration-moving-wealthy-interactive-counties-map.html

Man is the Only Animal that Likes Tobasco Sauce

6/18/10. Psychiatrist Peter Kramer ("Listening to Prozac) reviews psychologist Paul Bloom's book, "How Pleasure Works. The New Science of Why We Like what We Like."

Who says you can't get no satisfaction?

http://www.slate.com/id/2256711/entry/2256710/

"Father's Softer Side"

6/16/10. On the relationship between father and daughter.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704324304575306540192107682.html?KEYWORDS=father+daughter+relationships

The Rational Optimist

6/15/10. Matt Ridley, author of "The Rational Optimist," answers questions about his book.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/matt-ridley-the-rational-optimist-answers-your-questions/?pagemode=print

"Exile in Dogpatch"

6/13/10. The curious neglect of the cartoonist Al Capp.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_urb-al-capp.html

Sleep Smarter

6/9/10. Advice on sleeping well.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/dont-sleep-longer-ndash-sleep-smarter-1994018.html

"The Memory Doctor"

6/8/10. The work of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus.

http://www.slate.com/id/2256089/pagenum/all/

Creativity and Mental Illness

6/5/10. British psychologists find links between creativity and mental illness.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/10154775.stm

"Storming the School Barricades"

6/5/10. Twenty-seven year old film maker Madeleine Sackler's  "explosive new documentary about the battle over the future of public education (is) opening nationwide Tuesday."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575242123324855474.html

"Permission Givers"

6/5/10. William Zinsser on Richard Feynman.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/permission-givers/#more-7347

"Families with a Missing Piece"

6/2/10. Jeffrey Zaslow, writer for the Wall Street Journal, writes about the new look about how a parent's early death can reverberate decades later.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704875604575280400596257236.html?KEYWORDS=how+losing+a+parent

Sympathy Deformed

6/2/10. Prison psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple examines how some forms of compassion hurt the poor.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_otbie-sympathy.html

Seeking an Objective Test for Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder

6/2/10. Until there is a biological marker for ADHD --- , there will be no convincing some skeptics that ADHD exists and that medication helps many people cope with the chronic and pervasive symptoms of distractibility, restlessness, and self-control. Those with ADHD have significant problems filtering out external distractions and "putting the brakes" on their behaviors.

ADHD is not the only psychiatric disorder without a biological marker. In fact, etiology unknown with no biological marker is true for all psychiatric disorders.

Tests for ADHD often claim to take the subjectivity out of the diagnostic process.

These so-called objective tests are no substitute for clinical experience and sound judgment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/health/01attention.html?hpw

He Keeps Discovering Who He Is

5/27/10. Nat Hentoff on saxophonist Myron Walden.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703339304575240643554918862.html?mod=WSJ_Leisure+%26+Arts_LEFTFeatures

The Brothers Grim

5/27/10/ Retired prison psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple reviews two books:

"Hitch-22", by Christopher Hitchens.

"How Atheism Led Me to Faith," by Peter Hitchens.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/05/the-brothers-grim

"Rescued by Humor"

5/26/10. Writer William Zinsser offer more thoughts on less seriousness...

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/rescued-by-humor/#more-7010

"Humans: Why They Triumphed"

5/26/10. Matt Ridley on "The Rational Optimist."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html

"The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff. And Other Stories"

5/25/10.  There is no better story writer than Joseph Epstein. In his new collection of stories, "Joseph Epstein delivers all the pleasures his readers have come to expect:  stories of ordinary men confronting the moments that define a life, told with bittersweet humor and loving irony...--- in rich, revealing detail they brim with universal longings: complex love affairs, and unspoken rivalries, family triumphs and private disappointment."

Kirkus Reviews:


Achingly beautiful stories of growing old, searching for meaning and facing death. Epstein (In a Cardboard Belt!, 2007, etc.) creates his characters with deft strokes. The story that gives the collection its title is one of the author's most typical, as well as one of his best. Three years earlier the somewhat Prufrockian Dr. A. Jerome Minkoff had lost his wife to Lou Gehrig's disease, and at a fundraiser for ALS he meets Larissa Friedman, a rich and glamorous widow in similar circumstances. They fall into an energetic affair, and for the first time since his wife's death Minkoff finds himself contemplating marriage. Larissa has much to offer, especially a gorgeous home in Los Angeles and megabucks-"All the happiness that money could buy." But at a deep, intuitive level, Minkoff senses this relationship is not going to work. The good doctor is typical of Epstein's anti-heroes: elderly, lonely, sensitive and looking to make decisions with a modicum of moral integrity. In "The Philosopher and the Checkout Girl," for instance, a retired professor of analytical philosophy finds a connection with a checkout girl (albeit one pushing 50) that he never experienced with his former academic colleagues. In a neo-Jamesian epiphany the professor belatedly discovers that "he had never known the pleasure of guileless behavior, of saying precisely what he felt and acting on those feelings. He had lived his life at a second, perhaps a third, remove."Epstein writes with intelligence, wit and flair-highly recommended.

"War is No Joke"

 5/24/10. Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University gives "A West Point Baccalaureate Address."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/war-no-joke

Jerome Groopman, M.D. "The Plastic Panic"

5/24/10. How worried should we be about chemicals in the environment?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/31/100531fa_fact_groopman?currentPage=all

Martin Gardner R.I.P.

5/24/10.

"Martin Gardner, who teased brains with math puzzles in Scientific American for a quarter-century and who indulged his own restless curiosity by writing more than 70 books on topics as diverse as magic, philosophy and the nuances of Alice in Wonderland, died Saturday in Norman, Okla. He was 95.


Martin Gardner was a prolific and wide-ranging writer. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24gardner.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print

Stefan Kanfer on "The Mathemagician," Martin Gardner.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0527sk.html

"It's Not About How Smart You Are"

5/20/10.

"Carol S. Dweck says that her graduate students here at Stanford University are hard-working, creative, and resilient in the face of failure. But she wouldn't call them smart.

Over the last two decades, Dweck has become one of the country's best-known research psychologists by documenting the follies associated with thinking and talking about intelligence as a fixed trait.

Most famously, Dweck and her collaborators have demonstrated that praising children for their intelligence can backfire. When young people's sense of self-worth is bound up in the idea that they are smart—a quality they come to understand as a genetic blessing from the sky—at least three bad things can happen. Some students become lazy, figuring that their smarts will bail them out in a pinch. Others conclude that the people who praise their intelligence are simply wrong, and decide that it isn't worth investing effort in homework. Still others might care intensely about school but withdraw from difficult tasks or tie themselves in knots of perfectionism. (To understand this third group, think of the Puritans: They did not believe they had any control over whether they were among God's elect, but they nonetheless searched endlessly for ways to display that they had been chosen, and they were terrified of any evidence that they were not.)"

http://chronicle.com/article/Carol-Dwecks-Attitude/65405/

"A Joyful Noise"

5/20/10. William Zinsser author of "On Writing Well," and so much more, brings us his world of the well-lived life.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/a-joyful-noise/#more-6960

"The Rational Optimist"

5/18/10. These are times that try optimists' souls. So I had to start reading Matt Ridley's new book. 

Matt Ridley writes:

"Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.”

The following  is an excerpt from NYT writer John Tierney's review of the "The Rational Optimist:"

"It’s an audacious task, but he has the intellectual breadth for it. A trained zoologist and former editor at The Economist, Dr. Ridley has established himself in previous books, like “The Origins of Virtue” and “Genome,” as the supreme synthesist of lessons from anthropology, psychology, molecular genetics, economics and game theory. This time he takes on all of human history, starting with our mysteriously successful debut. What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity.

“At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes, “after millions of years of indulging in reciprocal back-scratching of gradually increasing intensity, one species, and one alone, stumbled upon an entirely different trick. Adam gave Oz an object in exchange for a different object.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/science/18tier.html

Psychologist Michael Shermer, editor of "Skeptics Magazine," reviews "The Rational Optimist:"

http://incharacter.org/character-sketches/when-ideas-have-sex/

"The New War Between Science and Religion"

5/18/10.

Mano Singham:


"There is a new war between science and religion, rising from the ashes of the old one, which ended with the defeat of the anti-evolution forces in the 2005 "intelligent design" trial. The new war concerns questions that are more profound than whether or not to teach evolution. Unlike the old science-religion war, this battle is going to be fought not in the courts but in the arena of public opinion. The new war pits those who argue that science and "moderate" forms of religion are compatible worldviews against those who think they are not."
http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-War-Between-Science/65400

"A Hidden History of Evil"

5/18/10. A look inside the archives of the Soviet Union.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_soviet-archives.html

"When Everything Was Jumpin'"

5/14/10. Daniel Akst reviews "Three Chords for Beauty's Sake," by Tom Nolan, tracing the many-sided life of the great clarinet player Abraham Ben-Yitzhak Arshawsky (a.k.a. Artie Shaw).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575242251200954636.html?mod=WSJ_Leisure+%26+Arts_RIGHTTopBelowCarousel

"How Childhood Has Evolved"

5/14/10. Professor Melvin Konner, an anthropologist and a physician, urges an open mind about what we are learning about evolution, childhood, relationships, emotions, and minds.

http://chronicle.com/article/How-Childhood-Has-Evolved/65401/

"The Hoard Mentality"

5/13/10. WSJ writer Philip Terzian reviews "Stuff," by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee, "scholars who have studied hoarding closely and pondered its curious causes and disturbing effects."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212162222813280.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_5

"Believe It or Not"

5/12/10. How credible is the new atheism expressed in recent books by philosophers, scientists, historians, and others? Perhaps God only knows.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/04/believe-it-or-not

"Short"

5/12/10. When I meet with kids who feel bad about being short, I tell them my definition of short:

"You are short if when you walk your feet do not touch the ground."

 Jane Brody, a short, talented NYT science writer reports on short facts.

Short comments welcome.

An excerpt from this excellent book:

"I didn’t find any studies that really supported the idea that being short was a disadvantage—even those much-publicized studies that seem to say small people earn less than taller folks. Beyond that, I knew that science can be manipulated and misused, but even I was surprised to see how far people stretched it. I spoke with David Sandberg, a researcher whose groundbreaking work showed that the overwhelming majority of short kids actually cope pretty well with being small. His studies showed that their height doesn’t cause them deep psychological stress, and in fact he found that other kids did not see them in a demeaning way. … Sandberg was startled to find that his work was being cited to the FDA to support the notion that small kids do have big problems!"

So much for the short excuse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/health/11brod.html?src=me&ref=homepage

"For Crime, Is Anatomy Destiny?"

5/12/10. There is a developing science on the relationships between physical traits --- such as height, weight, or attractiveness --- and income, and crime, and more. Is it all in the genes?..or is evolution playing tricks on us?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/books/11crime.html?ref=books&src=me&pagewanted=all

"Is Courage a Masculine Virtue?"

5/12/10. Professor Harvey Mansfield says, "sort of..." I say "no." What do you say? Please comment.

http://incharacter.org/pro-con/is-courage-a-masculine-virtue/

"Silence, PLEASE"

5/5/10. A former prison psychiatrist muses about silence.

Dr. Darlrymple notes, for example:

"...Many young people behave as if silence disturbs them in a way in which noise disturbs me. They tell me, for example, that they cannot concentrate unless there is electronic stimulus of one kind or another in their background. The bright, idle, mindless vulgar chatter of pop radio stations, or equivalent, not only does not destroy their concentration (they say), but is essential to its exercise. They do not mind, or notice, that there is more than one kind of such stimulus: cacophony is not a category to them..."



http://incharacter.org/features/silence-please/

How Do Birds Fly South?

5/4/10. Scientists in Austria say birds may use quantum mechanics to guide the flight south.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-05/quantum-mechanics-may-help-birds-migrate-south

"Honey, Do You Have To?"

5/2/10. Elizabeth Bernstein offers some ideas about what makes a marriage work.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703757504575194040423167792.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel#

"Hurry Up and Wait"

4/30/10. Clive Thompson reviews Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's "Bursts."

"It turns out that this pattern—explosions of activity, followed by quiet—are not just a personal quirk of mine. Odds are, you deal with your email in much the same way. According to Albert-László Barabási's "Bursts," this "bursty" pattern governs almost everything we do and even much of what happens in the natural world."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704302304575214081160026018.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

"Humor in Hopelessness"

4/30/10. Joseph Epstein reviews "Zeno's Conscience," by Ettore Schmitz a.k.a. Italo Svevo.

Epstein writes, "Svevo's subject is the weakness of the will, or abulia, and how a dreamy nature has little chance up against the temptations set out by the amazing and obdurate reality of life. In "Zeno's Conscience," Zeno Cosini, an unexceptional Trieste businessman, pits his will against the enslaving habit of smoking, the complexities of courtship, the delights of philandery, the discipline required by business, and loses every time, yet cannot quite be said to go down in defeat."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101902834652726.html?mod=WSJ_Leisure+%26+Arts_MIDDLEFeatures

THE ASH CLOUD

4/26/10. What do the scientists --- especially the experts on the psychology of decision-making --- have to say about the ash cloud?

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ash_cloud10/ash_cloud10_index.html

"The Equal Pay Day Reality Check"

4/21/10. Philosopher and feminist Christina Hoff Sommers challenges the belief of wage discrimination between American men and women.

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/april/the-equal-pay-day-reality-check?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+American+(AMERICAN.COM+--+A+Magazine+of+Ideas%2C+Online)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Michigan Psychological Association, Distinguished Psychologist Award, 2010

4/18/10. Recognition from my peers - How sweet it is.

I am grateful to MPA for this honor and the opportunities I’ve had to serve Michigan psychologists. To teach is to learn twice. And, to serve MPA is to never stop learning. And I have learned so much meeting psychologists from around the state and across the country. I have made some good friends.

I thank the MPA President, Dr. Bill Bloom, the MPA Board, and our Executive Director, Dr. Judith Kovach, and the President of MPF, Richard Lobenthal. Congratulations to Dr. Carol Ellstein on receiving the Beth Clark Award, and Dr. Jeff Andert for receiving the Past President award. Without these people --- and you, my work could not have been carried out.

I especially want to thank my friend and colleague, Dr. Jack Haynes. We have worked together on behalf of MPA for many years. And now it is time to reveal a secret: Jack and I are identical twins, separated at birth and reared apart, and were reunited through the Minnesota twin studies.

Whenever I think about awards, I remember what the comedian Jack Benny said when he received an award. Jack Benny said, “I don’t deserve this award --- but I have arthritis, and I don’t deserve that either.”

I have been a lucky guy. I had two parents who stayed together and raised 5 kids. I had a wise, child amusing father and have a resilient, caring mother who turns 90 next January. My brothers and sister and I have spent many good times together.

And I am grateful for every hour I spent fishing with my brothers and dad, seriously pursuing so much silliness. There are many life lessons that fishing teaches.

Unless you go into a field such as psychology you may forget to count your blessings. You don’t know how many people are secretly unhappy; you don’t know how few adults there are in the world; you don’t know how many people come from ruptured, troubled families; and you don’t know how many people have so little to draw on from their memory banks of good times; and you don’t know how to explain so much resilience to life’s struggles from many seemingly ordinary people.

And I have been lucky in love. I have been addicted to one woman for 37 years and I have no plans to attend rehab. I could not have gotten distinguished without here. And we are both proud of our two daughters Barb and Sharon and son-in-law Dan who is a newly minted psychologist. Patty is in New York this weekend with her high school theater group performing plays on violence prevention.

My brother and his wife, Mike and Paula Ceresnie are here and I’m glad they could come. They have always been by my side during many terrific times and some rough patches.

I have also been lucky in teachers. I have been meeting with Dr. Joseph Fischhoff for many years, a now retired child psychiatrist from Children’s Hospital in Detroit. I first met Joe when he was a consultant to a Federally Funded Grant on Child Abuse that was part of my dissertation. I once asked Joe when I should raise my prices, his reply captures the definition of a distinguished psychologist: “When you get gray hair and hemorrhoids. Gray hair is for wisdom. Hemorrhoids are for the look of concern.”

I cannot overestimate the influence of my Uncle George Horwich, a Professor of Economics at Purdue for 50 years. We talked at least once a week for many years. His recent death leaves a huge hole in my life and the life of my siblings and mother. In one tribute to George a colleague said, ”He was an intellectual in the truest and most fundamental sense of that word. He never stopped trying to solve economic problems and make the world a better place”.

As you know, this is an exciting time to be a psychologist. Dr. Erdberg and this conference on “Personality Disorders” is a fine example of that excitement and knowledge.

Our romance with ingenious grand theories of how the mind works are giving way to an empirical approach to mental health assessments and treatments. We are turning to the new findings generated by such developing fields as neuroscience, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, neuroimaging and behavioral genetics, to name but a few.

Despite our growing knowledge base, we still don’t understand the mystery of how the brain creates the mind and generates self-consciousness, the basic experience of humans on which our social and personal relationships rest. We do not understand how consciousness is produced, nor do we understand its full potential.

We still have such little science to guide us in understanding, and helping patients --- not to mention offering scientific explanations for their vulnerabilities, sufferings and resilience.

We all have so many questions, and our answers often take the form of myths, beliefs, religions and stories to tell us the “truth.”

One truth is that we can’t control the length of our life…but we can control the width. My experiences over many years with MPA have certainly contributed to widening my life. For this I am grateful. Thank you for this award.

Steven J. Ceresnie, Ph.D.
Distinguished Psychologist 2010
Michigan Psychological Association
Lansing, MI
April 16, 2010

My 9 minutes and 12 seconds of fame on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxb5l3p3BkM

"Is Marriage Good for Your Health?

4/17/10. Married, single, neither is a solution...Or is it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18marriage-t.html?ref=homepage&src=me&pagewanted=print

"The Symphony of a Lifetime"

4/1610. Joseph Epstein on living a life.

http://magazine.nd.edu/news/14935/

Memoirs of People with Schizophrenia

4/15/10. This is a review of some memoirs describing living with schizophrenia.

http://www.bookforum.com/booklist/3925

"The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World"

4/15/10. Jonah Lehrer reviews a new book by Iain McGilchrist, who studied literature before becoming a medical doctor.

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_01/5384

"Why Women Don't Want Macho Men"

4/10/10. A mix of evolutionary psychology and cross-cultural study leads to some surprising findings.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704100604575145810050665030.html

"The Pain of Losing a Spouse is Singular"

4/6/10. NYT science writer Jane E. Brody writes about the pain of losing her husband Richard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06cases.html

"Mind Games"

4/6/10. ADHD is well-known disorder that is not known well. This article on ADHD in adults presents some important information on this often misunderstood psychiatric disorder.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304620304575165902933059076.html?KEYWORDS=adhd

"Depressed Pilots Can Fly On Medication"

4/3/10. The FAA has agreed to allow pilots who take antidepressant medication to fly. A regulatory agency with such expertise in aviation finally takes its head out of the sand.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304871704575159740692643072.html?KEYWORDS=pilots+and+antidepressants

Remembering Rodney Dangerfield

4/1/10. Rodney Dangerfield died on October 5, 2004, in Los Angeles. He was eighty-two years old.

"I was an ugly kid. I worked in a pet store.
People kept asking how big I get."

"With my wife, I got no sex life. She cut me
down to once a month. Hey, I'm lucky ---
two guys I know she cut out completely."

"When I was a kid I worked tough places --- places like
Fonzo's Knuckle Room,Aldo's formerly Vito's, formerly Nunzio's.
That was a tough one, Nunzio's. I sat down to eat. On the
Menu, they had broken leg of lamb."

"I live in a tough neighborhood. When I plan my
budget, I allow for holdup money."

"With girls, I don't get no respect. I went out with a
belly dancer. She told me I turned her stomach."

"When I was a kid, I got no respect. I was
kidnapped. They sent my parents a piece of my
finger. My old man said he wanted more proof."

"The other night, I had a date with a manicurist. We went to a nightclub.
We started to hold hands. And while she was holding my hand,
she took my other hand and put it in my drink."

"I told my doctor I broke my arm in two places.
He told me to keep out of those places."

"We were poor. We were so poor, in my neighborhood, the rainbow was in
black-and white."

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Respect

3/30/10. You can have too much self-esteem but not too much self-respect.

http://incharacter.org/features/theodore-dalrymple-on-self-esteem-vs-self-respect/

"Basically an Optimist' - Still

3/27/10. Nobel economist Gary Becker predicts that the American people can be trusted to vote for limited government in November.

Professor Becker says:

"Here in the United States, we spend about 17% of our GDP on health care, but out-of-pocket expenses make up only about 12% of total health-care spending. In Switzerland, where they spend only 11% of GDP on health care, their out-of-pocket expenses equal about 31% of total spending. The difference between 12% and 31% is huge. Once people begin spending substantial sums from their own pockets, they become willing to shop around. Ordinary market incentives begin to operate. A good bill would have encouraged that."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094104575144011906222520.html

Eminent particle physicist finds the unseen realities of religion

3/27/10. This is a interview with John Polkinghorne, one of the founders of the quark who went on to become an Anglican priest. He is the founder of the International Society for Science and Religion and of the Society of Ordained Science.

http://incharacter.org/features/john-polkinghornes-unseen-realities/

"We Have Crossed the Rubicon"

3/24/10. Victor Davis Hanson says America has crossed the threshold into the belly of government control of health care and more.

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson032210.html

Friends

3/24/10. Why and how do friendships end? Some answers and questions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704841304575137593670999872.html?KEYWORDS=friends

"The Fix is In"

3/23/10. Why the British Health System spends so much and gets so little.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0322td.html

Fess Parker, R.I.P.

3/19/20. Thank to Fess Parker, a.k.a. Davy Crockett, my brothers and I were the only kids we knew with real coonskin caps --- compliments of our furrier father.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/arts/television/19parker.html?hpw

Obama's Health Reform Illusions

3/16/10. Journalist Robert Samuelson dissects Obama's health care reform and finds smoke and mirrors.

Samuelson writes:

"One job of presidents is to educate Americans about crucial national problems. On health care, Barack Obama has failed. Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage." The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax..."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/15/obamas_health_proposal_is_the_illusion_of_reform.html

"Addiction: A Disorder of Choice"

1/16/10.Psychiatrist Sally Satel reviews "Addiction: A Disorder of Choice," by Gene M. Hyman

Dr. Satel writes:

"Now comes an important and provocative book called Addiction: A Disorder of Choice by the psychologist Gene Heyman, a research psychologist at McLean Hospital and a lecturer at Harvard. Heyman mounts a devastating assault on the brain-based model of addiction. Not that he views addiction as independent of the brain—no serious person could even entertain such a claim. What he rejects, however, is the notion that excessive drug or alcohol consumption is an irresistible act wholly beyond the user’s control, as the term “addiction,” commonly understood, implies. If anything, Heyman writes, “[a]ddiction … helps us understand voluntary behavior.” How so? “[B]ecause,” he explains, “it is not possible to understand addiction without understanding how we make choices.”

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/addiction-and-freedom

"Everybody Have Fun"

3/15/10. Can research on happiness inform social policy?

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/03/22/100322crbo_books_kolbert

"The Changing American Family"

3/15/10. Professor Herbert S. Klein on the unprecedented changes in the American family during the past 20 years.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3020821.html

"Keats was Wrong"

3/14/10. New Yorker cartoonist Robert Mankoff on Keats, wit and humor.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2010/03/beauty.html

Health Care and the Market

3/15/10. Should we use the forces of the free-market to improve health care?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704784904575111663868068550.html?KEYWORDS=book+review+healthcare

Michigan Psychological Association Newsletter

3/10/10. First Quarter: 2010.

http://www.michiganpsychologicalassociation.org/associations/8731/MPA_News_1st_qtr_2-10.pdf

"The Battle of the Brain"

3/10/10.

Iain McGilchrist:

"Why is the brain divided? If it is about making connections, why has evolution so carefully preserved the segregation of its hemispheres? Almost every function once thought to be the province of one or other hemisphere—language, imagery, reason, emotion—is served by both hemispheres, not one."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574609992107994238.html

"On the Origins of Comics"

3/10/10.

Brian Boyd:

"Comics can have almost no mass and yet be the most mass of mass arts: Garfield has had up to 263 million readers a day. Comics constitute a new art, just over a century old, and usually an unusually accessible one. So what can evolution add to our understanding of comics?"


http://aliceandrews.tumblr.com/

"When Anger Is An Illness"

3/9/10.

"Scream at the boss? Snap at a colleague? Throw your cell phone into your @#$%%&* computer monitor? If so, you may find yourself headed to anger-management classes, which have become an all-purpose antidote for fit-throwing celebrities, chair-throwing coaches, vandals, road ragers, delinquent teens, disruptive airline passengers, and obstreperous employees."

Demand for treatment of the anger-prone cannot keep up with the supply.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575109671604585094.html?KEYWORDS=when+anger+is+an+illness

"Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself"

3/6/10. "Not every devotee of reason is himself reasonable: that is a lesson that the convinced, indeed militant, atheist, Richard Dawkins, has recently learned...He ran a website for people of like mind, but noticed that many of the comments that appeared on it were beside the point, either mere gossip or insult..."

So writes Theodore Dalrymple (a.k.a Anthony Daniels) retired psychiatrist from London, England who worked in a prison.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/58706/sec_id/58706

Novels of Ideas

3/5/10. Author Rebecca Goldstein ("36 Arguments for the Existence of God. A Work of Fiction") names her pick for the 5 best novels of ideas:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704299804575095531114336268.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_TOPRightCarousel

"Romance Novels and Evolutionary Psychology"

3/5/10. Evolutionary psychology explains females' attraction to romance novels.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/04/evolutionary-psychologists-romantic-fiction

"Alice in Health Care"

3/2/10. Economist Thomas Sowell discusses what happens when health care meets Alice in Wonderland.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/02/alice_in_health_care_104606.html

Surviving Death

3/2/10. Surrounded by true believers in life after death, Skeptic's magazine editor Michael Schermer argues for death as the end, on - of all places - "The Larry King Show."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=surviving-death-on-larry-king-live&print=true

What Motivates Us?

3/2/10. Five questions for Daniel Pink, author of new book on motivation among other insightful books.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/2010/02/five-questions-for-daniel-h-pink.html

"It's Not Too Late to Save 'Normal'"

3/1/10 Psychiatrist Allen Francis writes about the pitfalls of changing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, last revised in 1994.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-frances1-2010mar01,0,2030641.story

Jonah Lehrer: "Depression's Upside"

3/1/10. Why has depression survived millions of years of evolution?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=print

"HEAD CASE: Can Psychiatry Be A Science"

2/24/10. Louis Menand reviews two books on the treatment of depression and examines psychiatry's claim to be a science.

My view is psychiatry can be a science, and has made significant progress --- but the field is still way behind the scientific accomplishments in all other medical specialties --- about 200 years behind.

A core reason for the elementary knowledge base in psychiatry is that we have no idea how the brain produces the mind and generates consciousness.

To compound matters, we have no reliable biological markers such as blood tests or brain scans for any mental disorder. And, we do not know the etiology of psychiatric disorders. We have a diagnostic manual of mental disorders crammed with too many lists of recipes, too many cooks, and too little science.

Yet depression is real and effective treatments are available. Read "Darkness Visible" by William Styron, or "The Unquiet Mind," by Kay Jamison.

Some depressions fit the etiology of the disease model and respond well to medicine.

Some people get life-saving benefits from antidepressants; some people develop self-knowledge, confidence, and coping skills from psychological therapy; and people who take antidepressant medication and go for psychological therapy often have the best outcome.

Both antidepressant therapies and psychology therapies are both underused. The stigma of mental illness still touches the lives of many people and their families. Many depressed patients never seek help, or when they do, they do not get the help they need.

It is not just politicians who labor under rigid ideologies. With so little and often contrary scientific findings, many mental health professionals still subscribe to either biological or psychological treatment ideologies.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/01/100301crat_atlarge_menand?currentPage=all

Blame ________ for Diseases

2/24/10. No --- not your parents, not your doctor, not the pharmaceutical companies, and not the environment.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704454304575081613327728110.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

"Evidence that Little Touches Do Mean So Much"

2/23/10. NYT science writer Benedict Carey:

"...in recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a different, often more subtle kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, they say - whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm - can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html?ref=science

"Matters of Life and Death"

2/22/10. "Two fathers' memories shows that grief has no political affiliation.

http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=5973

Monday Quotations

2/22/10.

(referring to jazz:) "The Sound of Surprise."

--- Whitney Balliett (1926 - 2007 )


"Analogies decide nothing, that is true, but they can make one feel more at home."

--- Sigmund Freud (1856 - 193)


"No one can answer for his courage when he has never been in danger."

--- la Rochefoucauld (1747 - 1827)


"'Hope' is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul ---
And sings the tune without
And never stops - at all."

---Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

"Life Among the 'Yakkity Yaks'"

2/19/10. Interview with Temple Grandin "doctor of animal science, ground-breaking cattle expert, easily the most famous autistic woman in the world."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061123564007514.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

"Modern Love: Scientific Insights from 21st Century Dating"

2/19/10/ Association for Psychological Science Staff Writer Ann Conkle opens her article with the following:

"The modern world provides two new ways to find love --- online matchmaking and speed dating. In the last few years, these methods have moved from a last resort for the loveless to a more accepted way for millions to try to meet their mates. While this has led to dates, relationships and marriage around the globe, it has also been a boon for enterprising researchers - providing huge datasets chronicling real world behavior. Psychological scientists have been studying attraction, love, and romantic relationships for decades..."

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/

"Prescriptions for Psychiatric Trouble"

2/18/10. Psychiatrist Sally Satel offers her views on the troubles with the 5th edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. This revision of psychiatric diagnoses has too many recipes for psychiatric troubles, too many cooks preparing the categories, and too little science.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061851569968656.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion