Cheescake Factory Medicine

8/27/12. Americans who are pro-choice when it comes to abortion somehow have not figured out that Obamacare is not pro-choice when it comes to consumer choice and medical care.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577605233123916096.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

8/26/12

Imagining Ted Bundy

A psychologist ponders what Ted might have said

Published on August 24, 2012 by Katherine Ramsland in Shadow Boxing

Ted Bundy once aspired to become the governor of Washington State. People who thought they knew him believed he could do it. However, his secret life as a serial killer knocked him off course. He called his fatal urge his “entity.”
Bundy was one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Just before his execution in 1989, he confessed to killing at least 30 young women. Educated and charming, he used every trick he could think of to persuade law enforcement to save him from Florida’s electric chair. None worked.
Dr. Al Carlisle evaluated Bundy after his first arrest in 1975, before anyone realized the enormity of his criminal career. A psychologist at the Utah State Prison, Carlisle was asked to do an evaluation for the court. “I spent about twenty hours with Bundy on the psychological assessment,” he told me for a chapter in my book The Mind of a Murderer. He came away with valuable material..."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201208/imagining-ted-bundy

How That Yawn Gets Passed Along

8/25/12.

Carol Tavris:

"I confess that I started reading Robert Provine's book about the "curious behavior" of its title—yawning, laughing, hiccupping, tearing up, sneezing, vomiting, tickling, itching, farting and belching—with a sigh: "It's come to this? All the big topics of love, war, sex, and money are taken, and we're reduced to a book about belching?" But within eight pages I was smitten. In this charmingly written and profoundly informative book, Mr. Provine gives us what he calls "sidewalk" neuroscience, a "scientific approach to everyday behavior based on simple observations and demonstrations that readers, even advanced grade-schoolers, can use to confirm, challenge, or extend the reported findings..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444320704577563070740600722.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

That Someone in Your Head

8/24/12.

David Eagleman:

"Take a close look at yourself in the mirror. Beneath your dashing good looks churns a hidden universe of networked machinery. The machinery includes a sophisticated scaffolding of interlocking bones, a netting of sinewy muscles, a good deal of specialized fluid, and a collaboration of internal organs chugging away in darkness to keep you alive. A sheet of high-tech self-healing sensory material that we call skin seamlessly covers your machinery in a pleasing package.

And then there’s your brain. Three pounds of the most complex material we’ve discovered in the universe. This is the mission control center that drives the whole operation, gathering dispatches through small portals in the armored bunker of the skull.

Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia—hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city. And each one contains the entire human genome and traffics billions of molecules in intricate economies. Each cell sends electrical pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon of light, the combined output would be blinding..."

http://sciencefriday.com/blogs/08/23/2012/there-s-someone-in-my-head-but-it-s-not-me.html?interest=8&audience=4

Delayed Development - 20 Somethings Blame the Brain

8/21/12

Melinda Beck:

"...Recent research into how the brain develops suggests that people are better equipped to make major life decisions in their late 20s than earlier in the decade. The brain, once thought to be fully grown after puberty, is still evolving into its adult shape well into a person's third decade, pruning away unused connections and strengthening those that remain, scientists say..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443713704577601532208760746.html?KEYWORDS=melinda+beck

Joseph Epstein: The Comic Stylings of Joe Biden

8/21/12. Hope and chains.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443855804577601783227030386.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Backing the NYPD - By Accident

8/21/12.

Heather Mac Donald:

"A recent column by New York Times reporter Ginia Bellafante inadvertently tells the truth about the public-safety desires of the poor—and thereby undermines the Times’s relentless crusade against the New York Police Department. The main thrust of Bellafante’s article is an attack on New York City for “inadequately . . . rank[ing] the needs of the poor” in its budget priorities. Her evidence is the allegedly slow pace with which the New York City Housing Authority has installed security cameras in its housing projects and the “mere” $51 million that it has allocated for doing so. That sum, Bellafante contends, compares poorly with the cameras now “commonplace to see . . . affixed to office buildings and expensive co-ops” (those cameras are privately funded, but who’s counting), with the “hundreds of millions of dollars for the development of lush tourist-luring green spaces like Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island” which the city is planning, and with a proposed $20 million to assist with Carnegie Hall’s renovation..."

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0821hm.html

The Paul Ryan Choice

8/14/12. Thomas Sowell

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/14/the_paul_ryan_choice_115088.html

Undisciplined

8/8/12.

Heather McDonald:

"...And so the Departments of Education and Justice have launched a campaign against disproportionate minority discipline rates, which show up in virtually every school district with significant numbers of black and Hispanic students. The possibility that students’ behavior, not educators’ racism, drives those rates lies outside the Obama administration’s conceptual universe. But the country will pay a high price for the feds’ blindness, as the cascade of red tape and lawsuits emanating from Washington will depress student achievement and enrich advocates and attorneys for years to come.

This past March, Duncan released some newly gathered national discipline data. The “undeniable truth,” he said, was that the “everyday educational experience for many students of color violates the principle of equity.” The massive media coverage of Duncan’s report trumpeted the discipline disparity—blacks were three and a half times more likely to get suspended or expelled than their white peers—as convincing evidence of widespread discrimination. (The fact that white boys were over two times as likely to be suspended as Asian and Pacific Islander boys was discreetly ignored, though it would seem to imply antiwhite bias as well.)

The Department of Education has launched investigations of at least five school systems because of their disparate black-white discipline rates. The Department of Justice has already put the Barnwell, South Carolina, school district under a costly consent decree, complete with a pricey outside consultant, and is seeking similar control of other districts. The theory behind this school discipline push is what Obama officials and civil rights advocates call the “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to this conceit, harsh discipline practices—above all, suspensions—strip minority students of classroom time, causing them to learn less, drop out of school, and eventually land in prison..."
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_3_school-discipline.html

Can You Fake a Mental Illness?

8/8/12.

"...Today, less than 1 percent of felony defendants raise an insanity defense, and a tiny fraction of those succeed. Yet in a state like Colorado, where proving insanity can avert a death sentence, the temptation to appear mentally ill must be strong. And so modern forensic psychologists, just like their forebears, watch for malingering with a sharp clinical eye. They determine whether the symptoms match those of well-studied pathologies and whether the signs remain consistent over time. They also can apply a battery of tests that essentially fake-out the faker..."

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/faking_insanity_forensic_psychologists_detect_signs_of_malingering_.single.html

Harlem Then and Now

8/7/12. Thomas Sowell.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell080812.php3

Why David Brooks can look forward to old age

8/6/12. According to Charles Murray.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/08/why-david-brooks-can-look-forward-to-old-age/

Can Hospitals Be More Like Restaurant Chains?

8/6/12. Atul Gawande, M.D. in the New Yorker:

"...I’d come from the hospital that day. In medicine, too, we are trying to deliver a range of services to millions of people at a reasonable cost and with a consistent level of quality. Unlike the Cheesecake Factory, we haven’t figured out how. Our costs are soaring, the service is typically mediocre, and the quality is unreliable. Every clinician has his or her own way of doing things, and the rates of failure and complication (not to mention the costs) for a given service routinely vary by a factor of two or three, even within the same hospital..."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/13/120813fa_fact_gawande

Living With Voices

8/4/12.

T. M. Luhrmann:

"Modern American psychiatry treats auditory hallucinations as the leading symptom of serious psychotic disorder, of which the most severe form is schizophrenia. When the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin first distinguished dementia praecox, as he called it, from manic-depressive disorder in 1893, back when Freud was drafting the Interpretation of Dreams, he argued that schizophrenia could be recognized by its persistent, deteriorating course. These days, schizophrenia is often imagined as the quintessential brain disease, an expression of underlying organic vulnerability perhaps exacerbated by environmental stress, but as real and as obdurate as kidney failure. The new post-psychoanalytic psychiatric science that emerged in this country in the 1980s argued that mental illnesses were physical illnesses. Many Americans and most psychiatrists took away from this science a sense that serious mental illnesses were brain dysfunctions and that the best hope for their treatment lay in the aggressive new drugs that patients often hated but that sometimes held symptoms at bay.

The book that defined the era was called The Broken Brain (1984) by Nancy Andreasen, later editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, member of the National Academy, and recipient of the National Medal of Science. Her leading example was schizophrenia, recognized by its characteristic combination of hallucinations (usually auditory), delusions, and deterioration in work or social life.
The commonsense understanding that accompanied this wisdom was that nonpharmacological treatments for schizophrenia were useless.

But recently a new grassroots movement has emerged. It argues that if patients learn to address their voices directly and appropriately, as if each voice had intention and agency, the voices will become less hostile and eventually go away. From the perspective of modern psychiatry, this assertion is radical, even dangerous. But it is being taken seriously by an increasing number of patients and psychiatrists..."

http://theamericanscholar.org/living-with-voices/

Decoding the Science of Sleep

8/4/12.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443866404577565781327694346.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6

My World With Louis Armstrong

8/4/12.

Charles L. Black, Jr.IN the middle of May 1955, at the Savoy Ballroom on Lenox Avenue

in Harlem, a philanthropic organization in the black community gave

a reception in honor of the thirty or so lawyers who had worked on

the case of

Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision

that declared school segregation unlawful and thus began the end of the

old Southern racist regime. I, by the grace of somebody or something, was

there. Thurgood lined us all up in front of the orchestra to receive the applause

of the whole crowd, Margaret Truman, Averell Harriman, everybody.

I turned and looked, a little wistfully, at the trumpet-player in the orchestra,

a young black; “I wonder,” I thought, “whether I wouldn’t rather

have been honored in the Savoy Ballroom for trumpet-playing?” Then I

heard Thurgood, moving down the line, “... Charlie Duncan. And next

over there is Charlie Black, a white man from Texas, who’s been with us all

the way.”

http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/black-armstrong.pdf

You Are Not the Boss of Your Brain

8/2/12. Neuropsychologist Michael Gazzaniga on the interpreter in your head that spins stories.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/brain/22-interpreter-in-your-head-spins-stories

The Hate that Dare Not Speak Its Name

8/1/12. On Gore Vidal.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-hate-that-dare-not-speak-its-name/

Remembering Milton Friedman on his 100th Birthday

7/31/12. Capitalism between consenting adults to create free-markets and open-minds.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444226904577558882802335216.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0731df.html

http://dailymail.com/Opinion/tsowell/201207300140

If Obama Loses the Election Here's Why

7/28/12. Dr. Drew Westen, Professor of Psychology consults with Democratic politicians. Professor Westen outlines why Obama may lose --- and what he should do to win.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-obama-loses-the-election-heres-why/2012/07/27/gJQAkjMREX_story.html

Aurora Beyond Us

7/28/12. Retired British prison psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple says the killings at the Colorado movie theater defy explanation.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0725td.html

Why Capitalism has an Image Problem

7/27/12.

Charles Murray:

"Mitt Romney's résumé at Bain should be a slam dunk. He has been a successful capitalist, and capitalism is the best thing that has ever happened to the material condition of the human race. From the dawn of history until the 18th century, every society in the world was impoverished, with only the thinnest film of wealth on top. Then came capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Everywhere that capitalism subsequently took hold, national wealth began to increase and poverty began to fall. Everywhere that capitalism didn't take hold, people remained impoverished. Everywhere that capitalism has been rejected since then, poverty has increased...

...But in today's political climate, updating the case for capitalism requires a restatement of old truths in ways that Americans from across the political spectrum can accept. Here is my best effort:
The U.S. was created to foster human flourishing. The means to that end was the exercise of liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Capitalism is the economic expression of liberty. The pursuit of happiness, with happiness defined in the classic sense of justified and lasting satisfaction with life as a whole, depends on economic liberty every bit as much as it depends on other kinds of freedom.

Lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole" is produced by a relatively small set of important achievements that we can rightly attribute to our own actions. Arthur Brooks, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, has usefully labeled such achievements "earned success." Earned success can arise from a successful marriage, children raised well, a valued place as a member of a community, or devotion to a faith. Earned success also arises from achievement in the economic realm, which is where capitalism comes in.

Earning a living for yourself and your family through your own efforts is the most elemental form of earned success. Successfully starting a business, no matter how small, is an act of creating something out of nothing that carries satisfactions far beyond those of the money it brings in. Finding work that not only pays the bills but that you enjoy is a crucially important resource for earned success.

Making a living, starting a business and finding work that you enjoy all depend on freedom to act in the economic realm. What government can do to help is establish the rule of law so that informed and voluntary trades can take place. More formally, government can vigorously enforce laws against the use of force, fraud and criminal collusion, and use tort law to hold people liable for harm they cause others..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443931404577549223178294822.html?KEYWORDS=charles+murray#printMode

Missing the Point of the Aurora Killings

7/25/12.  Mona Charen:

"...For years, mental health authorities assured us that the mentally ill were no more dangerous than the average person. That's true of most, but not all. As Dr. E. Fuller Torrey documents in his essential book, "The Insanity Offense," rates of violence among the untreated mentally ill are significantly higher than among the general population and are also much higher than among those receiving medication. Between 5 and 10 percent of the untreated seriously mentally ill will commit violent crimes in any given year, accounting for at least 5 percent of homicides in the United States (a huge percentage in a nation of more than 300 million). For rampage crimes, such as the Aurora attack, the percentage of mentally ill perpetrators is much greater, as high as 50 percent.

Since the 1960s, when deinstitutionalization became intellectually fashionable and fiscally alluring to states looking to save money, the mentally ill have been dumped onto the streets. Today 95 percent of the in-patient beds that were available for psychiatric patients in 1955 are gone. The Treatment Advocacy Center explains that, "The consequences of the severe shortage of public psychiatric beds include increased homelessness; the incarceration of mentally ill individuals in jails and prisons; emergency rooms being overrun with patients waiting for a psychiatric bed; and an increase in violent behavior, including homicides, in communities across the nation." Imagine if we treated the mentally retarded this way.

In many cases of mental illness, a belief that one is not in need of treatment is part of the sickness. Yet most studies show that the majority of those who are medicated against their wishes retroactively approve and believe it should be done again if necessary. In New York, 62 percent reported that being ordered by a court into treatment was a good thing for them..."

http://townhall.com/columnists/monacharen/2012/07/24/missing_the_point_about_aurora/page/full/

Should We Make Tougher Gun Control Laws?

7/25/12. No easy answers.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/123236

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

7/24/12. This is a classic article written by Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick.

Open-minded politicians could learn something from Professor Nozick.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html

A Killer Without Regret

7/23/12. Science writer Deborah Blum.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/mass-murder-panzram-holmes/

Book Review: Why Does the World Exist?

7/21/12. Jeremy Bernstein reviews Jim Holt's book.

Jeremy Bernstein:

"...Mr. Holt cheerily refuses to heed interlocutors in his book who tell him his quest for a final answer is misdirected. But here is a story: A hedge fund manager, who has made all the money that he will ever need, reads Mr. Holt's book and decides to search for the meaning of the universe. He discovers a Buddhist monk who lives in a cave in the Himalayas and almost never speaks but, when he does, speaks only the highest wisdom. Our man undertakes a dangerous trek to ask the monk his question: "What is the secret of the cosmos?" The monk goes into a trance and comes out with a single sentence. "He says," the translator reports, "that the cosmos is like a bowl of cherries." Our man is outraged, so angry he even shakes the monk. "How can he possibly say that the cosmos is like a bowl of cherries?" The translator asks, and after a few minutes translates the monk's reply. "He says maybe the cosmos is not like a bowl of cherries."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303919504577522613996005518.html?KEYWORDS=why+is+there+something+rather+than+nothing

Interview with Jim Holt in the NYT:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/no-small-talk-jim-holt-on-why-the-world-exists/?ref=books

When Bad Theories Happen to Good Scientists

7/21/12. Matt Ridley discusses confirmation bias.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304388004577531270272951132.html?KEYWORDS=matt+ridley

How To Teach Children The Benefits Of Developing Healthy Relationships

7/18/12. Eric Herman, psychologist at Children's Hospital of Michigan, offers wise advice about developing healthy relationships.

http://www.howtolearn.com/2012/07/how-to-teach-children-the-benefits-of-developing-healthy-relationships

Two Cheers for Ritalin

7/17/12. My article on perspectives on ADHD appears in the current Michigan Psychological Association Newsletter, second quarter, 2012. Please scroll down to the article.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=q9qitddab&v=0015Yzr3j_MKFnnsKt6qPkipe50fl-PH6TYa_IcZaQ0A-3IJCzx9JsIuRCXxT7iK0hvwV-nTbsHNiVVK5NVTe0ArxGABiMsxxSlz13pRtltlPMyeM4I-519RnHgXc164Sg_EYAtRY1rjUMEhwks3201Sg%3D%3D

Is Autism an Epidemic?

7/17/12.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/07/11/is-autism-an-epidemic-or-are-we-just-noticing-more-people-who-have-it/

The "God Particle" and God

7/13/12. Dennis Prager's perspective on the discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/306580/god-particle-and-god-dennis-prager

How Important Are Fathers in Child Development?

7/11/12. Kyle Pruett, M.D., child psychiatrist:

"How central are fathers to childhood development?

It depends on whom you ask. If you ask the child they would say, absolutely essential. You ask a mother, she'll say, if he does it the right way he's really important. If you ask the father he's likely to say, I'm not sure but I think probably pretty important. If you ask the experts, the answer will depend on how much they know about families and child development. I don't mean to be elusive in my answer.

It is a pretty well-accepted fact that we have not supported paternal engagement to the extent that would be helpful to our children. We're getting better at it now. We've come to understand that fathers don’t mother and mothers don’t father. Fathers can't really be replaced, in full, especially by somebody who doesn't feel like a father. We're beginning to understand that to the extent that dads are positively involved, the children's and the mothers’ lives are better..."

http://thebrowser.com/interviews/kyle-pruett-on-fatherhood?page=1

Book Review: "Why Does the World Exist?"

7/10/12. Kathryn Schulz reviews Jim Holt's book on why there is something rather than nothing. I enjoyed Jim Holt's book on humor:  "Stop Me If You've Heard This:  A History and Philosophy of Jokes."

Schulz:

"...Mind, matter, abstract ideas: Where does all this stuff come from? Why is the universe characterized by such abundance and complexity? Why does it exist at all? How did it come into being? Could there have been something else instead? Could there have been nothing else—that is, nothingness—instead? Is the human mind capable of resolving these matters? Can anyone do justice to all this in a 279-page book?..."
http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/kathryn-schulz-on-jim-holt-why-does-the-world-exist.html

Making the Choice for Obamacare

7/3/12. The unintended consequences of an unaffordable act.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/opinion/brooks-a-choice-not-a-whine.html?_r=1&hp

Monday Quotation

7/2/12.

"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in the sociology department."

Thomas Sowell (1930 -    )

Some Consequences of Obamacare

7/2/12. If you think health care is expensive now ---- wait until it is affordable.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/economy-courts-and-bad-laws_647999.html

Medication Generation

7/2/12. Psychiatric medications save lives and stabilize minds. Do psychiatric medications solve all problems?  No.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303649504577493112618709108.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Jonathan Haidt: Liberals and Conservatives - A Conflict of Visions

7/2/12. Interview with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, on a mission to get liberals to understand conservatives.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577446512522582648.html?KEYWORDS=jonathan+haidt

People Matter

6/23/12.

Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin (Encounter, 328 pp., $25.95)

"A ruling idea of the last two centuries has been materialism: the notion, as arch-materialist Daniel Dennett asserts, that “there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon.” One consequence of this belief has been the rise of antihumanism—the stripping from people of their transcendent value and a reduction of them to mere things in the world to be studied, understood, reshaped—and ultimately controlled..."
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0622bt.html

Book Review: "Wait: The Art and Science of Delay"

6/22/12. Psychologist Christopher F. Chabris reviews Frank Partnoy's book.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304765304577478583807992886.html

Judith S. Wallerstein, Ph.D. RIP

6/21/12. I had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Wallerstein about 25 years ago when she spoke about her longitudinal research on the effects of divorce on children at an all-day conference for the Michigan Psychological Association.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/health/research/judith-s-wallerstein-psychologist-who-analyzed-divorce-dies-at-90.html?_r=1

Atul Gawande: Failure and Rescue

6/21/12.

The following was delivered as the commencement address at Williams College on Sunday, June 3rd.

Dr. Gawande:

"We had a patient at my hospital this winter whose story has stuck with me. Mrs. C. was eighty-seven years old, a Holocaust survivor from Germany, and she’d come to the emergency room because she’d suddenly lost the vision in her left eye. It tells you something about her that she was at work when it happened—in the finance department at Sears..."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/06/atul-gawande-failure-and-rescue.html

Book Review: Born Together - Reared Apart

6/21/12. Nancy Segal's book on the history of the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303552104577436333754014866.html

Matt Ridley reviews "Born Together - Reared Apart," and focuses on IQ and twins --- when the environment matters:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304898704577478482432277706.html?KEYWORDS=matt+ridley

Theory and Psychotherapy

6/20/12.

T. Byram Karasu, M.D.:

"...Interestingly enough, these theories of mind do not always address the complex problems of daily practice. Many renowned thinkers have elegant, complex, and highly elaborate theories that ostensibly attempt to explain the human mind and its operating principles as well as strive for relevance in the clinical setting. Yet, as R. Michels says, the information, knowledge, and wisdom that a practitioner needs largely exist underground, transmitted through supervision, case conferences, and collegial agreement as a kind of professional folklore. Such folklore of practice is not completely unrelated to the theories of mind; in fact, it often uses the same terms and theories. But it has no cohesive conceptual base of its own, and when cornered, quickly falls back to the already reified theories of mind. Since these are often overrated and inherently limited in actual application to the patient, the gap between theory and practice remains..."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mystery-happiness/201206/theory-just-say-no

Psychology vs. Public Policy

6/19/12.

Richard Epstein:

"I first met Jonathan Haidt at an academic conference on psychology held in Berlin in 2004, and was impressed with his findings about how ordinary people make moral decisions in their everyday lives. His recent book, The Righteous Mind, carries with it the subtitle, “Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.” This work follows his earlier book, The Happiness Hypothesis. His arresting hypothesis about human nature is captured in the title of his important article in Psychology Review, 'The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail.'

Received wisdom often has it that ordinary people engage in deep philosophical deliberation before they reach judgments about what’s right and wrong in individual cases. Haidt rightly rejects the claim that these deliberative processes precede our judgments. Our everyday behavior reveals exactly the opposite pattern. Any modern defender of what used to be called “faculty psychology,” opposed to the Lockean theories of the tabula rasa (blank slate), needs a model of the mind that treats it as something more sophisticated than a set of unorganized neurons that organizes itself solely through experience..."

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/120381

Book Review. Ignorance: How It Drives Science

6/19/12. Sandra Blakeslee reviews Stuart Firestein book on how ignorance drives science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/science/ignorance-book-review-scientists-dont-care-for-facts.html?_r=1

Robert Samuelson: The Folly of Obamacare

6/18/12. The plan will save money and cost more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-the-folly-of-obamacare/2012/06/17/gJQAf5o1jV_story.html

Interview with Woody Allen

6/18/12. The older, and more mellow Woody Allen.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303822204577466490672066730.html?KEYWORDS=woody+allen

Homosexual Males, Genetics, and Evolution

6/14/12.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/why-are-there-gay-men_n_1590501.html?ncid=wsc-huffpost-cards-image

Blogs by Evolutionary Psychologists

6/14/12. I like the blog about Humor Sapiens and Chris Rock.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/search/query?keys=evolutionary+psychologists&x=0&y=0

The Risky Rise of the Good Grade Pill

6/11/12. Stimulant medication helps youngsters and adults with ADHD do better in school, work, family and social life.

There is no doubt that some people without ADHD take ADHD medication to stay awake, study for longer periods of time, and so on. How many people abuse stimulants is not known.

To guard against misuse of these medications, people suspected of having ADHD must undergo a comprehensive psychological and medical evaluation. This evaluation should consist of interviews with parents (where appropriate), interviews with the child or adolescent, and teachers' observations. Psychological assessments such as intellectual, academic, and personality testing are often helpful in making a differential diagnosis, ruling out learning disabilities, emotional disturbance, and family conflicts, among other concerns.

Symptoms of ADHD must be chronic --- some symptoms appear before age 7 years; and pervasive --- symptoms appear across setting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/education/seeking-academic-edge-teenagers-abuse-stimulants.html?_r=1&hpw&pagewanted=all

Did He Feel Good?

6/8/12. The life of James Brown.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0608ip.html

ADHD and Marriage

6/7/12. Husband with ADHD to his wife after she told him about her day:  "Can you say that again - I didn't get that middle part."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201206/adhd-and-marriage-interview-melissa-orlov

In Praise of Misfits

6/7/12. Matching your temperament with your business.

http://www.economist.com/node/21556230?scode=3d26b0b17065c2cf29c06c010184c684

Joseph Epstein: Anyone for Tennis?

6/7/12.

http://www.american.com/archive/2012/june/anyone-for-tennis

No Joke

6/6/12. On human perversity and oranges for heads.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_snd-human-perversity.html

American Caste

6/4/12. Breakdown in the American family.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_family-breakdown.html

Q & A with Sam Harris

6/4/12. Harris is an articulate advocate for atheism.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/100757/qa-sam-harris?all=1

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple: QUOTES

6/2/12. Pithy observations from retired English prison psychiatrist, Dr. Theodore Dalrymple.

http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/Quotes.html

Psychology and the Paranormal

6/1/12. The famous psychologist from the early part of the last century, William James, Harvard Professor, spent much time looking into occult phenomena.

Now, Professor of Psychology, Daryl Bem, is on a mission to prove that ESP exists.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/mar/09-paranormal-circumstances-scientist-mission-esp

The war over the class war

6/1/12. Capitalism and the USA.

http://www.economist.com/node/21556243

Paul Simon Takes Us Back

5/30/12. Singer, songwriter Paul Simon takes us back to Africa where he went to make music 25 years ago with some of South Africia's most gifted musicians. Gourmet food for the musical mind..

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/opinion/friedman-paul-simon-takes-us-back.html

Stand-Up 101

5/29/12. Teaching a college course on stand-up comedy.

http://theamericanscholar.org/stand-up-101/

Meaningful Work

5/29/12. Nonsense masquerading as idealism.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell052912.php3

Kin and Kindness

5/28/12. The origins of the Golden Rule.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577367920639482882.html

Daniel Kahneman

5/26/12. On the science of the science of communication.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/daniel-kahneman-on-the-trap-of-thinking-that-we-know/?src=recg

Why We Lie

5/25/12. The truth about lying.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304840904577422090013997320.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6

Pop Art's Pop

5/25/12. Stefan Kanfer on the life of illustrator Winsor McCay, a neglected American master.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_urb-winsor-mccay.html

Five Best: Elliot Perlman

5/25/12. Five best memoirs on bearing witness to the Holocaust.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304432704577348090094511510.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Desert Island Cartoons

5/25/12. Interview with New Yorker cartoonist Robert Mankoff.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/05/history-of-the-desert-island-cartoon#slide=1

Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage?

5/25/12. Good question.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/127121

Mental Health in the USA: hopes and fears

5/25/12. In "The Lancet."

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60838-1/fulltext

Man Arrested, Drinking with Zebra and Parrot

5/23/12. Not another one of these stories.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120523/NEWS/305220087/-1/SPORTS12/Man-zebra-parrot-truck-charged-OWI

Book Review: "Inside the Session"

5/20/12. Robert Cohen reviews psychologist Dr. Paul Wachtel's "Inside the Session."

Wachtel has written many books, my favorite is "Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy."

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6484&cn=397

Book Review: "The Longshoreman Philosopher"

5/20/12. Michael Dirda reviews Tom Bethell's book on Eric Hoffer, author of "The True Believer." Hoffer was a wise teacher.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-world-eric-hoffer-the-longshoreman-philosopher-by-tom-bethell/2012/05/09/gIQAasr0DU_story.html

Wikipedia: List of Best Selling Books

5/20/12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

The Joys of Parenting: Father's Day

5/20/12. Becoming a father has deep, enduring pleasures.

http://www.economist.com/node/21555543

Charles Murry: "Coming Apart" -- Some reactions

5/19/12,

The view from ground level in working-class America

By Charles Murray

May 8, 2012, 9:35 am

So far, the chief criticism of Coming Apart is that I don’t acknowledge globalization and the disappearance of high-paying, unionized manufacturing jobs in creating the problems that afflict white working-class America. I have responded to that criticism elsewhere, but my technical arguments can’t respond to the larger myopia: The people making such arguments are incredibly out of touch with life as it is lived in working-class America (which relates to another theme of Coming Apart: the isolation of the elite). No one who is around those neighborhoods at ground level is under any illusion about the problems I describe.
Readers who don’t live in such neighborhoods can get a sense of what’s going on by engaging in conversation with the guys (or gals) who next come to your house to fix the wiring or clean the gutters or repair the deck. Ask about their friends and neighbors—who’s getting jobs in this economy, who’s not, and why. If you hire someone who has a small business, ask him what it’s like to try to find workers who will show up on time and do a good job. Start by saying that surely they have no problem in an economy with eight percent unemployment, and listen to them laugh. Or talk to teachers in schools that serve white working-class America. Here’s an email, edited to preserve anonymity, that I got yesterday.

I have never been so moved to write to an author, but after I finished your book, I had to share my response. I am a teacher who has lived in many parts of the country. In college, I spent one summer as a nanny for a family in Rye, NY. I have taught at a 50/50 black/white private high school in St. Louis. I have taught in a private school outside of Georgetown, Texas, where a couple of my students were the grandchildren of one of the former presidents of Yale. Then we decided to move back to my grandparents’ farm in Oklahoma. I taught in more of a Fishtown in Kansas, and am currently teaching in a school in a small town (shall I say Lower Fishtown?) in Oklahoma. Here you’d have to look hard to find a true nuclear family, no one on the school board has a full-time job, and last we calculated, we weren’t sure any of them had high school diplomas.
I have marveled at the contrasts in the people in some of these places: Rye & Georgetown vs. small town Kansas & Oklahoma. Your book really hit home. Definitely these kids where I now teach come from broken families. Religion does not seem to play an important part in their lives, although most of them would claim to be Christian. They are extremely dishonest. Many have blatantly lied to me, and there are few that I feel I can trust. Work ethic is a huge struggle. These kids have no concept of the upper end of society where kids are competing for the top colleges, where parents go over their graded assignments and argue for every point. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a parent examine an assignment where I am now. Some students have observed how their parents and grandparents have managed to survive with no one working, so why should they bother to work? They have nicer cell phones than I do. How much of this attitude can we as a society sustain? If this little town is one of many—and I suspect it is—the future is bleak.
As I was looking over some online comments regarding Coming Apart, I was very disappointed at how few people get it. They keep falling back on the economic disadvantages and don’t want to face the fact that morality could matter. Their world (along with Rye & Georgetown) is so far removed from Fishtown. They have no idea. No idea about these kids that despite their opportunity at an education, don’t take it, even if it is at a Fishtown School. In my current school in Oklahoma, virtually any of these kids could go to college for free, but none of them have the model of work ethic to do the work that it takes.

I’m not cherry-picking. I have gotten other emails like that—but few that so graphically express the cultural divide that has opened up between classes that not so long ago shared the same values.


Jonathan Rauch reviews Charles Murray's "Coming Apart:"

http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/10/two-americas-growing-apart

Psychiatrty Giant Sorry for Backing Gay "Cure"

5/19/12. Robert Spitzer, M.D.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer-noted-psychiatrist-apologizes-for-study-on-gay-cure.html?hpw

The Good News about Race in America

5/18/12. Interview with Abigail Thernstrom.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577369913528826798.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Are You Dead Yet?

5/17/12. Dr. Sally Satel reviews Dick Teresi's book: "The Undead: Organ Harvesting; The Ice-Water Test, Beating-Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death."

http://www.tnr.com/print/book/review/undead-dick-teresi

Snapshots of Some Peer Reviewed Research in Psychology

5/17/12. A recent sample of research in psychology.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/05/inbrief.aspx

The Essence of Science Explained in 63 Seconds

5/17/12. Richard Feynman.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/17/152913171/the-essence-of-science-explained-in-63-seconds

Mental Illness-Comprehensive Evaluation or Checklist?

5/17/12. In the New England Journal of Medicine (May 17, 2012), psychiatrists Paul McHugh and Phillip Slavney trace the history of the DSM --- a revolution in psychiatric understanding gone wrong. We have a psychiatric classification system that consists of lists of symptoms for each of the many maladies of the mind --- a list of symptoms akin to a cookbook of ingredients with no recipes.

McHugh and Slavney describe causal families or perspectives of DSM diagnoses ---- diseases, personality dimensions, motivated behaviors, and life encounters ---  "distinctive ways of affecting mental life, to name them 'perspectives' and by that metaphor to emphasize how understanding a case from one causal viewpoint might blind the diagnostician to contributions from others."

In his new book "Psychology's Ghosts," distinguised Harvard child psychologist Jerome Kagan develops McHugh's and Slavney's "Perspectives" in his critique of the DSM-5 and suggestions for improving our treatment of the mentally ill.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1202555

For more background on "Perspectives," I recommend the following article by Paul McHugh:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2001/august/McHugh.htm

On Bernard Lewis

5/14/12. Historian of the Islamic world.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577380390207004120.html

Why Athletes Choke

5/14/12.

"...A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense. A study of shopping behaviour found that the less information people were given about a brand of jam, the better the choice they made. When offered details of ingredients, they got befuddled by their options and ended up choosing a jam they didn’t like..."
http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/4463

Six Developmental Trajectories Characterize Children With Autism

5/14/12. In "Pediatrics," May 1, 2012.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/5/e1112.full

Can You Call a 9 Year Old a Psychopath?

5/13/12. Yes.

Can you change the behavior patterns and psychology of this 9 year old:  ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?hpw

Diagnosing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in Psychiatry

5/13/12.

In the 1980 DSM and four revisions, we have lots of ingredients and no recipes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/opinion/break-up-the-psychiatric-monopoly.html?_r=1

11 Ways You Can Use Humor to Help Your Career

5/11/12.

http://www.onlinecollege.org/2012/05/09/11-ways-you-can-use-humor-to-help-your-career/

Psychiatry's "Bible" Gets an Overhaul

5/10/12. A cookbook with symptoms --- and no biological etiologies.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=redefining-mental-illness

Earned Success and Learned Helplessness

5/9/12. Too many fall into the well of learned helplessness.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304749904577385650652966894.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Advice to 2012 Graduates: Tone Down Egos and Shape Up Minds

5/8/12. From Bret Stephens.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577389750993890854.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The other war on poverty: Finding meaning in America

5/6/12. Leon Kass, M.D.

http://www.aei.org/speech/society-and-culture/free-enterprise/the-other-war-on-poverty-finding-meaning-in-america/

Monday Quotation

5/7/12.

"Play your role with passion, even if you suspect that it is expendable, and allow the compassion you had as a child to balance the urge to always maximize the self."

Last line in "Psychology's Ghosts: The Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back," by Jerome Kagan. 

My Way on the Highway

5/6/12. Joseph Epstein reviews Paul Ingrassia's "Engines of Change."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577367902695345414.html?KEYWORDS=joseph+Epstein+on+cars

What Accounts for the Artistic Fertility of Cultures?

5/6/12. Charles Murray unleashes his mighty mind and historical studies of human accomplishment on this complex question.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Future-tense--IX--Out-of-the-wilderness-7357

An Interview with Biologist E.O. Wilson

5/3/12. On altruism and the new enlightenment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2012/04/e_o_wilson_on_altruism_and_the_new_enlightenment.single.html

The Brain. It Makes You Think. Doesn't It?

5/2/12. David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis, neuroscientists both, offer their views.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/29/neuroscience-david-eagleman-raymond-tallis