Monday, April 28, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
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Friday, March 28, 2014
Its hard to escape our own orbit. Its hard to see the world objectively apart from our wishes, desires, and personalities. We tend to assume that others think and feel similarly as we ourselves do. This is not a new idea--the concept of projection is an old one.
Projection can be thought of in other ways too, not necessarily psychodynamic. It may be, too, that as observers, we have only so many constructs for interpreting the world. We use the same ideas to interpret others as we do to understand ourselves. Ask a person to describe another person, and the description will tell more about the describer than the describee.
One impediment in understanding the inner life of others, is that we have different brains than others do--our organ of experience is different. Our hardware is never quite the same as the next person Our brain may have a different arousal level, different proneness to emotionality, different propensities to experience certain types of emotion, and different ability to process different types of information. So it is difficult to get into their shoes, mentally.
But we can improve in our understanding. Like anything else, it is a matter of practice, listening intently without judging, exposing yourself to many different situations, and reading books by people who themselves learned how to do it.
It takes great discipline for a therapist to "decenter", and attempt to register different configurations of personality. Familiarizing oneself with psychological taxonomists helps--- It helps to read Kraepelin, Sheldon, David Shapiro, Millon (particularly) other personality theorists as well as some literature. Chaucer is said to be a good, or really one of the first, taxonomers in literature, and Shakespeare's characters seem differentiated, with a full scope. But for the most part, authors suffer the same problem. Their characters tend to be extensions of the authors themselves.
Actually, computers are probably best at sorting human types. Along this lines, a famous (and for some very upsetting) paper by Meehl indicating the superiority of statistical over expert diagnosis, is germane.
The ability to recognize human types gets better over time. When we are children, we are particularly bad at interpretation, and getting beyond our own perspectives. This is the Piagetian notion of egocentricity. Adolescents are a little better by virtue of their increasing maturity and experience. However, the self-encapsulated thinking style of adolescents, often a source of despair or humor to parents or teachers, tends to be self-referential, and therefore not flexible.
The more complete or enclosed or recognizably self sufficient a person's system of thought or beliefs, the more they are to be dense to the inner world of others. The more religiously or politically or morally doctrinaire an individual, the worse they tend to be. The best attitude is one of non-judgmental observation.
Another interesting phenomena is that we tend to absorb the perceptual style of those around us.We tend to pick up others way of seeing the social world. Say, if you spend time with someone who sees the world through money, and you begin to see people in terms of economic ideas. If you spend time around a person who is paranoid, you begin to see the world as full of deceit. These thoughts are similar to that of Freuds notion of introjection. We sort of absorb those people we are bonded with.
Even great writers seem to recreate worlds of multiple selves. They have as hard time escaping themselves as any others. The characters in most any authors books seem to be varied extensions of their authors. A character in an Aldous Huxley book is different from a character in a Philip Roth book, and all the characters of each author will have a certain similarity with other characters invented by that author. The character in a Huxley novel will be airily interested in ideas, whereas that of , say, a Christopher Isherwood book is likely to be a humorous, bright, self-aware, slightly amoral individual with an actively observed inner life. Meanwhile, the world of Hemingway seems peopled with characters with alcohol problems, a proneness to fight, and a love of fishing.
In striving to be more aware of the variety of individuals in this world--and that is not a goal everyone will find important--but, in striving, if that is important, to be discerning of individual types, the best we can do is develop habits of mind that let us passively register other people without too quickly jumptng to conclusions about them. I'd say that perhaps the best single person to read, for improving this ability, is Theodore Millon, who, unfortunately just died. He was instrumental in developing the Axis II portion of the DSM-III. A lithuanian, I believe.
Projection can be thought of in other ways too, not necessarily psychodynamic. It may be, too, that as observers, we have only so many constructs for interpreting the world. We use the same ideas to interpret others as we do to understand ourselves. Ask a person to describe another person, and the description will tell more about the describer than the describee.
One impediment in understanding the inner life of others, is that we have different brains than others do--our organ of experience is different. Our hardware is never quite the same as the next person Our brain may have a different arousal level, different proneness to emotionality, different propensities to experience certain types of emotion, and different ability to process different types of information. So it is difficult to get into their shoes, mentally.
But we can improve in our understanding. Like anything else, it is a matter of practice, listening intently without judging, exposing yourself to many different situations, and reading books by people who themselves learned how to do it.
It takes great discipline for a therapist to "decenter", and attempt to register different configurations of personality. Familiarizing oneself with psychological taxonomists helps--- It helps to read Kraepelin, Sheldon, David Shapiro, Millon (particularly) other personality theorists as well as some literature. Chaucer is said to be a good, or really one of the first, taxonomers in literature, and Shakespeare's characters seem differentiated, with a full scope. But for the most part, authors suffer the same problem. Their characters tend to be extensions of the authors themselves.
Actually, computers are probably best at sorting human types. Along this lines, a famous (and for some very upsetting) paper by Meehl indicating the superiority of statistical over expert diagnosis, is germane.
The ability to recognize human types gets better over time. When we are children, we are particularly bad at interpretation, and getting beyond our own perspectives. This is the Piagetian notion of egocentricity. Adolescents are a little better by virtue of their increasing maturity and experience. However, the self-encapsulated thinking style of adolescents, often a source of despair or humor to parents or teachers, tends to be self-referential, and therefore not flexible.
The more complete or enclosed or recognizably self sufficient a person's system of thought or beliefs, the more they are to be dense to the inner world of others. The more religiously or politically or morally doctrinaire an individual, the worse they tend to be. The best attitude is one of non-judgmental observation.
Another interesting phenomena is that we tend to absorb the perceptual style of those around us.We tend to pick up others way of seeing the social world. Say, if you spend time with someone who sees the world through money, and you begin to see people in terms of economic ideas. If you spend time around a person who is paranoid, you begin to see the world as full of deceit. These thoughts are similar to that of Freuds notion of introjection. We sort of absorb those people we are bonded with.
Even great writers seem to recreate worlds of multiple selves. They have as hard time escaping themselves as any others. The characters in most any authors books seem to be varied extensions of their authors. A character in an Aldous Huxley book is different from a character in a Philip Roth book, and all the characters of each author will have a certain similarity with other characters invented by that author. The character in a Huxley novel will be airily interested in ideas, whereas that of , say, a Christopher Isherwood book is likely to be a humorous, bright, self-aware, slightly amoral individual with an actively observed inner life. Meanwhile, the world of Hemingway seems peopled with characters with alcohol problems, a proneness to fight, and a love of fishing.
In striving to be more aware of the variety of individuals in this world--and that is not a goal everyone will find important--but, in striving, if that is important, to be discerning of individual types, the best we can do is develop habits of mind that let us passively register other people without too quickly jumptng to conclusions about them. I'd say that perhaps the best single person to read, for improving this ability, is Theodore Millon, who, unfortunately just died. He was instrumental in developing the Axis II portion of the DSM-III. A lithuanian, I believe.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Its always discouraging to meet a person who, with a little guidance or direction in their early years, might have had a much better, more accomplished, much more fulfilled life.
Success so often is more a result of opportunity than talent. Mingling with people day to day remind me that there are very many bright, even brilliant people just hanging around, unemployed, or underemployed and unfulfilled. For some reason at a pivotal time in their lives they made a wrong turn, or just were not pushed in the right direction. Or--here is a big one--they became involved in drugs that kicked off addiction or associated psychological problems.
Intelligence and talent are not enough. There has to be fertile soil. Many obviously bright and very gifted people are not directed to college, or not directed to colleges that are anywhere near where their capabilities might have landed them. I meet many talented people who in school or high school received little career guidance, or never get treated for psychological problems such as anxiety or ADHD, and underachievement became the norm. When and if they do get finally diagnosed and treated, their self-esteem is damaged, they have perfectionistic and self-critical habits, are identifying themselves as non-achievers, and trudging along in a lackluster job.
Or these people with untreated ADHD have had their career choices narrowed to the type of jobs where ADHD is not an impediment--often a high adrenalin, or active, hands on job. Maybe its in construction, or a blue collar, or hospitality job requiring little schooling. There is nothing wrong with that work. Indeed, physical work or construction or many so called blue collar jobs are probably healthier physically. But one wants to choose a job rather than have it thrust upon one because there are no other choices. And those jobs are becoming scarcer.
Then there are kids who grow up in households where they have too many duties, or are not given transportation or money for extracurricular activities, the purchase of books, or pursuit of hobbies that might grow into a lifelong interest. Or they have a bully for a sibling, or a parent who regards education as a luxury or too expensive. Another career killer is a job that pays just enough, or are just enough fun (e.g., playing music) to be enticing, and take up years of a person life.
Having grown up in a family that provided many opportunities, I realize just how important guidance is. If not for parents who insisted that I study--to the point where it was not even an option not to, I might never have put in much effort. They discouraged part time work for a dismal minimal wage, they lived frugally in order to finance education, they avoided luxuries that might spoil work ethic, and oriented us kids to long range goals as opposed to immediate gain or social popularity. They or used whatever influence, skills, connections, or leverage they had to help their kids in school.
And luckiest of all was the lesson of grit. You just stay with something until you succeed. You don't have a car when you are a teen, you don't put on expensive airs, you just work like a maniac until you get what you want, and that may mean living poorly or cheaply for a while. The one who wants it most succeeds and sometimes you have to be possessed to get what you want. Because there are smarter and richer and luckier people around who will edge you out if you don't.
Every day I see people stuck--people with extraordinary abilities in arts, literature, math--who could be so much further. It seems a duty to help. Maybe give some information or direction to someone who needs it, encouragement of their abilities, some mild admonishment about their drug using habits or other unproductive habits, or even countering disinformation they have received from others.
Nothing is worse than unfulfilled dreams and regrets. Nothing is worse than knowing that you had the abilities or talents to pursue your goals, but let them languish, and that many of life's roads were never open or available, or worse, that there are many paths that, later in adulthood, you discovered and never even knew existed and missed.
Success so often is more a result of opportunity than talent. Mingling with people day to day remind me that there are very many bright, even brilliant people just hanging around, unemployed, or underemployed and unfulfilled. For some reason at a pivotal time in their lives they made a wrong turn, or just were not pushed in the right direction. Or--here is a big one--they became involved in drugs that kicked off addiction or associated psychological problems.
Intelligence and talent are not enough. There has to be fertile soil. Many obviously bright and very gifted people are not directed to college, or not directed to colleges that are anywhere near where their capabilities might have landed them. I meet many talented people who in school or high school received little career guidance, or never get treated for psychological problems such as anxiety or ADHD, and underachievement became the norm. When and if they do get finally diagnosed and treated, their self-esteem is damaged, they have perfectionistic and self-critical habits, are identifying themselves as non-achievers, and trudging along in a lackluster job.
Or these people with untreated ADHD have had their career choices narrowed to the type of jobs where ADHD is not an impediment--often a high adrenalin, or active, hands on job. Maybe its in construction, or a blue collar, or hospitality job requiring little schooling. There is nothing wrong with that work. Indeed, physical work or construction or many so called blue collar jobs are probably healthier physically. But one wants to choose a job rather than have it thrust upon one because there are no other choices. And those jobs are becoming scarcer.
Then there are kids who grow up in households where they have too many duties, or are not given transportation or money for extracurricular activities, the purchase of books, or pursuit of hobbies that might grow into a lifelong interest. Or they have a bully for a sibling, or a parent who regards education as a luxury or too expensive. Another career killer is a job that pays just enough, or are just enough fun (e.g., playing music) to be enticing, and take up years of a person life.
Having grown up in a family that provided many opportunities, I realize just how important guidance is. If not for parents who insisted that I study--to the point where it was not even an option not to, I might never have put in much effort. They discouraged part time work for a dismal minimal wage, they lived frugally in order to finance education, they avoided luxuries that might spoil work ethic, and oriented us kids to long range goals as opposed to immediate gain or social popularity. They or used whatever influence, skills, connections, or leverage they had to help their kids in school.
And luckiest of all was the lesson of grit. You just stay with something until you succeed. You don't have a car when you are a teen, you don't put on expensive airs, you just work like a maniac until you get what you want, and that may mean living poorly or cheaply for a while. The one who wants it most succeeds and sometimes you have to be possessed to get what you want. Because there are smarter and richer and luckier people around who will edge you out if you don't.
Every day I see people stuck--people with extraordinary abilities in arts, literature, math--who could be so much further. It seems a duty to help. Maybe give some information or direction to someone who needs it, encouragement of their abilities, some mild admonishment about their drug using habits or other unproductive habits, or even countering disinformation they have received from others.
Nothing is worse than unfulfilled dreams and regrets. Nothing is worse than knowing that you had the abilities or talents to pursue your goals, but let them languish, and that many of life's roads were never open or available, or worse, that there are many paths that, later in adulthood, you discovered and never even knew existed and missed.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
On Photography
After this was photographed, I noticed that there were two flies inside the pod. The plant digests them as its source of nitrogen. In any case, such photos give me a slightly different view of the world around me.
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