psychology

Synchronicity - the sense of significance beyond chance

Why we ask questions: Questions are the basis of human freedom. Our mind, as a part of our_ self experience, is curious and always challenging that part of us that can think about the essence of things. We interpret our lives all the time - with unconscious deep conceptualization - and these conceptualization raise questions.Why did I feel the way I felt yesterday when I spoke with X? What is the meaning of my answer? Why I chose to spend time in X's company and not Y's? And how it changed my attitude toward Y?(Interesting paragraph I translated from the Hebrew edition)

Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

Don't you agree that if I act like there is nothing going on, other people will behave that way too?

When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge

Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justification. When we began working on this book, the poster boy for "tenacious clinging to a discredited belief" was George W. Bush. Bush was wrong in his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong in claiming that Saddam was linked with Al Qaeda, he was wrong in predicting that Iraqis would be dancing joyfully in the streets to receive the American soldiers, he was wrong in predicting that the conflict would be over quickly, he was wrong in his gross underestimate of the financial cost of the war, and he was most famously wrong in his photo-op speech six weeks after the invasion began, when he announced (under a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED) that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

The test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact.

Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.

But dividing the mind into __iological_ and __sychological_ is as fallacious as classifying light as a particle or a wave. The natural world makes no promise to align itself with preconceptions that humans find parsimonious or convenient. (167)

Volatile expressions of anger and hostility combined with a tendency to blame others often result from feeling shame.... If you are shame-prone, any accusation directed at you, regardless of how mildly it may be delivered, has the potential to make you feel that you have failed or that you are inadequate. Rather than simply admit wrongdoing, you get angry and accusatory in order to hold yourself blameless. Using anger or hostility for self-protection hides your vulnerability and needs. Unfortunately, since most people are repelled by an angry response, this method may be effective. Your anger may drive away the very people who should know your real feelings, and it may deprive you of the opportunity to allow others to be aware of your needs. Behaving in an offensive or frightening way toward others can cause them to retreat out of fear. But, actually, the fear is your own, which you have turned against someone else in the form of anger.

Retirement with its open canvas, is an especially opportune time to cultivate expanded experiences.

..various people had long had the feeling that gain through pain was nature's way

Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings__hat is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.

Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.

A disruption of the circadian cycle__he metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life__eems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression; this is why brutal insomnia so often occurs and is most likely why each day__ pattern of distress exhibits fairly predictable alternating periods of intensity and relief.

In general, people are not drawn to perfection in others. People are drawn to shared interests, shared problems, and an individual's life energy.Humans connect with humans. Hiding one's humanity and trying to project an image of perfection makes a person vague, slippery, lifeless, and uninteresting.

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact.But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.

Narratives are universally used for mediating emotional experiences. The purpose of aesthetic objects has been defined, in part, as 'the awakening, intensifying, or maintaining of definite emotional states' (Lee, 1913: 99_100). When we read or hear stories, we put aside our own goals and plans, and we temporarily replace our own goals and plans with those of the story characters.