As i was looking through my notes, I saw that there is reproductive abonormality where one is born with an XY chromosome (not X and Y, but together!), this causes a person to be male for example and have the secondary features of a female. This really made me think and curious as to how this happens. I went online to search for answers and found:
"explanation of this rare phenomenon is a parthenogentic division of a haploid ovum into two haploid ova. Upon fertilization of the two ova by two sperm cells (one carrying an X and the other carrying a Y chromosome), the two fertilized ova are then fused together resulting in a person having dual genitalial, gonadal and genetic sex."

I thought this was very interesting and made me think of the other abnormalities that we learned of. I just wonder why these things happen and how they can occur, nature is so flexible

Food Coloring and ADHD

I was just having a conversation with a woman in the community that reminded me a lot about psychology. She was saying how she thinks that doctors and parents in America over- diagnose children with ADD and ADHD. For a parent, it is much easier to give your child drugs, such as Rideline, for his/her disability rather than actually finding the root of the problem. Perhaps parents don't want to be embarrassed that their child has a disability or they simply do not want to deal with it. This is very sad because drugs like Rideline can really slow down a child to the point where he/she is truly not himself. This is similar to a Lobotomy (obviously Lobotomy is probably more extreme) that we learned about in class today. A Lobotomy severs the prefrontal cortex to the back of the brain. This makes someone emotionless and totally not himself. However, it does cure the craziness.
The main problem seems to be that no one is actually trying to fix the problems that are triggering the ADHD. Recently, there has been research done to find links between food coloring and ADHD. The government previously ruled that there is no proven relationship between food dyes and hyperactivity in most children. However, a health article in cbsnews.com states that "consumer advocates and a growing body of scientists say evidence is mounting that processed foods - including those with artificial dyes - may play a role in the inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsivity that characterize attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder."
Changing the diet of a household is, I'm sure, very difficult for a parent, but giving a child a drug to stop his/her behavior is not necessarily fixing the problem. Isn't it better for the behaviors to be LEARNED than to automatically cause it by giving a pill to a child? As we know there are causes to mostly everything, either biologically, psychologically, or environmentally (or a combination) and those causes should not be ignored. Rather, they should be tested and changed through a learned behavior rather than through drugs. Obviously, in some cases drugs are certainly needed, but not all cases are severe. I am not a parent, so I am not one to judge or act like I know what it is like to have a child with a disability, but I do think this is a problem that should not be ignored. Also, why are doctors over diagnosing and handing out drug prescriptions like it is candy?

Hello my dear fellow classmates,

We know from our daily lives as well as from numerous instances in history that people tend to dislike, judge and persecute those who are different than they are. For example, during the Armenian Genocide, the Turks found a reason to scapegoat the Armenians and brutally killed millions over the course of 25 years. Although they claim it was because the Armenians tried to help the Russians, secretly, the Turks simply did not like the Armenians because they were different and got in their way of establishing Turkey. Or take the Holocaust for example which relates more to us. The Nazis hates the Jews because they were different along with other races. Even in our day and age people constantly find reasons to kill each other and prejudice constantly exists!

In psychology, we learned that the therapist must view his subject with full positive regard, meaning that the therapist must not judge the patient no matter what he or she says. I found that a little difficult due to experience i have had with in the present as well as what i have learned. People often judge those who are different from them. It is simply human nature. Even when people say that they dont judge or try not do it is often not true. How can we therefore expect our therapist to listen to a person's deep and dark secrets and expect them not to judge? If a patient said-i used to kill little children and eat them because it made me feel better and now i want help. How are you supposed to not judge him? Even in a less severe case where perhaps a husband beats his wife sometimes. The therapist would judge him for such an action as well. How do we expect them not to?!

OCD-A True Living Nightmare

This youtube video is about a woman, Elizabeth Macondall, who is suffering from Obsession Compulsive Disorder. Elizabeth sometimes scrubs her hands up to one hundred times a day. She uses her feet to open doors, turn on and off lights, etc. Take a look at her hands- they are so discolored from constantly washing them. Elizabeth is very scared of coming into contact with germs and does all of these rituals to keep away from the germs. Elizabeth becomes so frustrated and anxious with her disorder, that she sometimes kicks and punches things such as the wall to let out her anger. With this we see a connection with something we learned last chapter. Elizabeth is using one of the ego defense mechanisms, displacement, by taking out impulses on a less threatening object such as punching the wall. Elizabeth also puts clothing 'off limits' because she thinks they are full of germs. For example, she said that she couldn't wear a certain pair of pants because "they are contaminated from vacation." I think it is amazing how Elizabeth is now the national spokesperson for OCD. This is a type of therapy for her because she is trying to help people in the same situation as her. I think it is so cool how Elizabeth takes her disorder and uses it in a way that she can help people and more importantly help herself.

Here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn1OYlYzgm8

Schizophrenia Diaries

I was trying to find something interesting to post, and I found a website called Schizophrenia Diaries. I don't know if these stories are actually weird, but i was looking through and one story really interested me.


This person is talking about his experience, and the first thing he says is "I knew something was wrong when the voice I was talking to for about two weeks straight turned on me." It's sad that this person didn't realize that hearing a voice for two weeks is abnormal. He writes that he thought he had superpowers, and he didn't realize anything was wrong until the girls told him he had to sell his soul. Then he writes that it's the voice of the girl who lives below him, a girl he had a crush on. He thinks Gd is testing him to see if lust would drive him to hell... it makes no sense, but he didn't realize anything was wrong! It's very sad.

This story also makes no sense, the way this persons thought process goes. I'm really not sure if these stories are true, but it's rather intriguing. http://schizophreniadiaries.com/category/hearing-things/

Little girl born with Schizophrenia

Since we learned in class about schizophrenia, I went on youtube to search for reallife example of people with schizophrenia. Sadly, i came across this video of a girl who has been born with Schizophrenia. She has imaginary friend and visions, making up new ideas. As a baby she never slept: only had powernaps.

Strangly,she always screamed inside and she got bored of places really quickly.

Schizophrenia has a great impact on her life, since she became very violent and not social, and changed her whole families structure completetly




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTUMt05_nCI

BiPolar disorder in everyday life

As we have learned in class, the bipolar disorder is a mood disorder of high-manic phases and then the other exteme being the depressed phases. It is the different exteremes of mood swings, that make people not able to live a normal life since it changes their life dramatically.

Here is an example of a 40 year old woman who lives with this disorder. It shows how she copes with her situation and the truth and impact the disorder has on her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s46QDKd6_AI

In the video, they show how she is a painter. I feel like many great painters had either schizophrenia or the bipolar disorder. I dont know if it is because they are famous, therefore it is more noticable or maybe these disorder has brought them to great success. I wonder then if it is right to take away their tallent with medication. What do you think?

A True Subway Experience

Click on the image to get a bigger and more clear view!

I thought it was going to be just an ordinary ride. However, it wasn't. When I was riding on the subway this past weekend in New York City, I was looking at all the maps and signs on the wall. I suddenly noticed this fantastic poster. My mom and I were both looking at it and we thought it was so cool and TRUE. As I was looking at it I, of course, immediately started thinking about psychology class. In my opinion, it accurately depicts a variety of cultures and personalities. I really think that these two qualities really are what makes this poster so cool because it shows how each person is so different and unique. Not only this but (going all the way back to developmental psychology), we see how each person is at a different stage in their life, and the expressions on their faces reflect that stage. Yes, New York is a big and wild city and we may not find people walking around in bear costumes in Memphis, but this poster goes to show that culture and personality really vary from person to person, and we cannot take this 'theme' in psychology lightly. Sometimes it is hard to 'accept' people living their lives so differently than us, but we must remember that the variety is really what makes the world and our lives so interesting and exciting.

Schizophrenia in Children

In class when discussing Schizophrenia, Mrs. Perl said that it does not usually show up until later in life. I was really curious to see if people younger than this can be Schizophrenic and I found this video. It is about a 13 year old girl who hears voices in her head telling her to kill her dogs and her parents. She says she wants to love them but the voices won't let her. Her parents obviously are very upset about this and it is heartbreaking for them, but they decide they have to send her away. The girl talks and says how she knows there is happiness somewhere inside of her but it is very hard to find it. This is so sad to me. These people can't control themselves at all. In this case it must be extremely traumatizing for both the girl and her parents. She tried to kill herself when she was only 6 and she tried to kill her sister!

Another family was found with a schizophrenic 8 year old daughter. They had to live in separate apartments to protect their son from their daughter! She hears voices that tell her to kill herself and her parents and she sees visions of strange things. When it comes down to it, these kids are not common, nevertheless, there are children suffering from these cases. It is extremely sad to see these cases and know that these kids could potentially harm themselves and others. It's obviously a huge struggle for these families.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVHNGZ0Omx0

Hypnosis and Dissociative Disorders

Hello everyone,

Today in class we learned about Dissociative disorders. These are disorders where a person supposedly loses parts of their memory or consciousness causing them to lose part of their identity. (It's also referred to as the Multiple Personality Disorder.) At one point, we compared this disorder to hypnosis because like hypnosis, the person will be more susceptible to this disorder if they are more open to suggestion or fantasy. Otherwise, the person will probably not be affected by this. Hypnosis is thought to be more in the control of the person being hypnotized and, like I said, their willingness to give in. Both hypnosis and this disorder seem to be rejected and a little bit odd. This disorder has apparently been made up in more recent years by American psychologists because it is said to have really only been found among Americans and not others in other countries. After learning this and comparing it to hypnosis, it seems to be that people tend to over exaggerate these disorders. It seems a little bit vague to me.

Hello my dear fellow classmates,
So today we learned about the biological reasons for Schizophrenia.
People with Schizophrenia tend to have produce more seratonin than other people. Furthermore, they have very low frontal lobe of prefrontal cortex activity. I found this very interesting because it made me think of something that i had learned in English last year. Last year, we randomly talked about the disease of Schizophrenia. My very wise English teacher told us that in the past people did not know what the cause for Schizophrenia was. Unfortunately, they thought that cutting our a portion of a person's brain might "heal" the person. this was a very sad procedure because it completely altered a persons identity and personality. People simply thought that it was a cure since the people were different, even though their disease wasn't actually cured. Class today really helped me understand how this terrible surgery could not possibly cure people with Schizophrenia. The problem lies with their seratonin production as well as their prefrontal cortex activity and cutting out a piece of the brain cannot possibly cure that. I found it wonderful that i could finally understand the connection between these two things.

The Moon Myth

Over shabbos, I read a book about a woman who slowly realizes her husband is serial killer. What I found interesting was that in the book, all of the news reporters thought that the man was killing women every full moon, and only on the full moon. I wondered why they thought that the moon somehow triggered this mans madness, and I looked into it. Apparently, people used to think that the moon could trigger madness in a person which isn't true. Our book discusses the full moon madness theory as well, and says the following:

James Rotton and I.W. Kelly tested the question of a full moon triggering madness in some people. They examined data from 37 studies that related lunar phase to crime, homicides, crisis calls, and mental hospital admissions. They concluded that there is virtually no evidence of "moon madness." Nor does lunar phase correlate with suicides, assaults, emergency room visits, or traffic disasters.

I think that it is obvious to us that the moon does not cause any of these problems, but I thought it was interesting that at one point people really thought that psychological disorders could be caused by the moon and its phases.

hello my dear fellow classmates,

so today we learned about mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder. In the beginning of this chapter we learned about labeling and that when we see that one small thing is wrong with a person we will only look at them through that lens and find all their other aspects of personality to confirm that they are symptoms of their "abnormality" as well.

I actually find it really funny because this phenomenon sort of happened today after we learned about bipolar disorders. My dear friend kept diagnosing people and kept saying: "you are manic because you are doing x or y." Although it was a little bit different since the other classmate clearly doesnt have ANY symptoms it was funny how she was labeling her and trying to find certain characteristics of the other person in order to show that she is manic!

oh psychology, it applies to our life and lives all around us!

Spotlight Effect

The spotlight effect is when you presume that people are noticing and evaluating you more than they actually are. This is such a simple idea that actually makes so much sense! Because I am a very self conscious person this really happens to me a lot. Not only do I always think people are watching me but I feel like every word I say is being examined so closely.
During exam week I always go through the spotlight effect. During exams, it is a proctor's job to walk up and down the rows and look at everyone's papers and everything. Even though I know that, I always feel like the proctors are looking at me! Now, that I'm writing this I know that it is not true at all, and that they are looking at everyone equally. However, when someone glances at me, I freak out and automatically assume that they are suspecting me. Another time I went through this was during the play. During the final show in front of everyone I was freaking out because I knew that this time everyone was ACTUALLY looking at me (if they were paying attention). Yes, they were watching me, but they didn't notice every step I took or every word I said. When I got home from the performance, I started asking my mom all of these things where I thought I messed up. I asked her the craziest questions, the littlest things like did you notice that I took an extra when I was walking over to Racheli. I only noticed these small things because I knew that everyone was watching, but of course, my mom did not ever recall me taking an extra step.
Do you guys think that the spotlight effect has something to do with one's inferiority complex or is just nerves that is getting to you?

Psychological Disorders

We started Chapter 16, which is all about Psychological Disorders. Because I love watching Criminal Minds, and many of the criminals (known as unsubs on the show), have psychological disorders, I thought I would talk about an episode I found very interesting.


In an episode that is played at least once every two weeks on the reruns, the BAU (behavioral analysis unit) of the FBI is tracking a man who enters womens homes and rapes them while another man calls the police, feeling bad about participating. The man who does the raping leaves messages on the internet about the women deserving it because they were immoral. Over the course of two episodes, we soon see that really, the unsub is a man named Tobias Hankel. He has multiple personality disorder- he is Tobias, the avenging angel Raphael, and his abusive, religious father. Tobias doesn't want to hurt anyone, Raphael wants to punish women cheating on their husbands, and Mr. Hankel simply abuses his son.


So, now that I hopefully caught your attention, here are some definitions about multiple personality disorders that I got off of wikipedia: Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities (known as alter egos or alters), each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment.  Tuition.com: a dissociative disorder, whereby two or more distinct and separate personalities are manifested within the same individual, each displaying different interests, memories and behaviour patterns. Askdrscully: an hysterical neurosis in which the personality becomes dissociated into two or more distinct but complex and socially and behaviorally integrated parts each of which becomes dominant and controls behavior from time to time to the exclusion of the others

Fear of Intimacy

I found an article that talks about fear of intimacy. It has to do with a lot of what we learned in Chapter 15, both about similar theories that Freud had, that you cannot be intimate because of some bad factor in the past :

"In relationship psychology, fear of intimacy involves the reluctance to open up and reveal your true self, perhaps because you've been hurt in the past. Or, if you grew up in an emotionally and socially closed environment and never learned how to be vulnerable to either friends or lovers, you may have a hard time opening up now. This is fear of intimacy."

our natural behaviors:

"we’re naturally reluctant to open ourselves up again. Not wanting to get hurt can lead to an extreme fear of intimacy"

or because of basic characteristics that are needed to contribute to the fear:

"Personality characteristics such as introversion and extroversion can also contribute to fear of intimacy issues, and so can depression and anxiety."

I thought this was very interesting since this was a great example to a personality problem that talked about many of the things we learned.
If you want to read the artice fully: http://l-pawlik-kienlen.suite101.com/fear-of-intimacy-a9950

Perceiving People

Like Mrs. Perl, my favorite approach on personality is definitely the social cognitive perspective. This perspective takes into account the complexities of life. I really like how it includes nature and nurture and doesn't just focus on one or the other. As we said in class today, we have learned about the bio-psycho-social approach in many of our chapters and it is just a great way of explaining all of the factors that can contribute to a final action/behavior. One thing that really scared me today was when Mrs. Perl was giving the example of someone who thinks of her as shy and someone who thinks of her as stand-offish. People perceive things in different ways and the way something/someone is perceived determines the future course of events. For example, Aviva sees Mrs. Perl as shy and nervous so when she meets her, Aviva is very friendly and sweet to make Mrs. Perl feel comfortable. However, Zahava perceives Mrs. Perl as stand offish and is therefore rude to her and thinks she is so mean. This is all so scary because how you think of someone else is how they will react to you. This happens a lot in school. For example, sometimes teachers think that one of their students is so sweet and caring while the students hate her because she is so mean. The teacher and the students both perceived this person differently and so that person will react or behave differently to those people. From all of this I have learned that you cannot just make generalizations about people in one moment. I really do think that all of the people in the school are good-hearted girls, but sometimes I might perceive them wrongfully. Anything can be going on in their lives: biologically, psychologically, or socially. Maybe they have a bad cold, or maybe they're really tired, or maybe they failed their test. You really never know what is going on with every person and it's important to sometimes look past mean comments or random outbursts because we do not want to make the mistake of perceiving them in the wrong way.

Hello my dear fellow classmates,
so this week we learned about how certain situations cause us to act in a different way. Sometimes when two situations come in contact we often are confused about how we should behave. This is also what we learned back in chapter 4 concerning child development during adolescence when we develop our identity and once two different identities that we are trying out come into conflict we experience a role confusion. This made me realize that so many different scenarios in life cause us to feel this confusion of behavior when we are in a certain situation. Especially, in high school where(in most schools) popularity is so important and everything is s o clique-based ones behaviors will change. For example, im sure we all have heard about the following sad scenario: the geeky nice boy is actually the kind of person the pretty girl wants to be with since he is so good to her. But because she is popular and must maintain that role she actually bullies the boy who is so sweet to her. Sad, isnt it? This is just one example of how environmental influences affect our behavior.

A Little Bit Creepy...

Hello my friends,

Last week we learned about Freud's ego defense mechanisms. One of them seemed a little bit disturbing to me: sublimation. This is when a person acts out unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable way. An example that Mrs. Perl gave on our sheet was a person becoming a doctor because he likes to cut. This reminded me of a show called Dexter. It is a very intriguing show, yet slightly disturbing. Dexter, the main character is a serial killer, but he only kills bad guys. He also works as an investigator. Because of the job he has, he can find the bad guys in each case and go after them. This show is kind of the opposite of what sublimation is because he actually kills people, but on the other hand, he has a job investigating murders and crime scenes to fulfill his desire for blood. Does anybody else think this is kind of creepy? It does not seem like it is a real defense mechanism to me. However, think about this: what if some doctors are actually doctors so that they can cut people for a good purpose (like Doctor Cullen from Twilight!) Scary!

An undiscovered Neo Freudian

Since I am interested in philosophy, I once discovered a book called "die Kunst des Liebens" (the art of loving)(1956) by a German (Jewish') philosopher named Erich Fromm. It very much interested me since we are all in the stage of life where we are trying to figure out what things mean in life and one big part of that is what is love? what is loving? who do we love? As I was reading the book, I was struggling with some of his idea and I asked my mother about Erich Fromm. She started telling me about him, the time he lived in and some reasons for his ideas. Then my mother moved on to tell me about a great psychoanalyst called Sigumund Freud. She told me how his ideas revolutionised the thinking of psychology and how his ideas opened new doors for great thinkers such as Erich Fromm. Since the book I read was very psychoanalytical, analyzing the different kinds of loves a human can give to another (mother-son father- son boy-girl person-God) it made so much sense now where he got many of his ideas from. Fromm was very interested in behaviors of groups and therefore looked at Sigumund Freuds ideas, and became a Neo Freudian, but he too critisized some of Freud´s ideas such as the Odeipus Complex, the life and death instincts.Fromm believed that society and culture also played a significant role in individual human development.
On the other hand, Fromm also had some influence on humanistic psychology.He believed that life was a contradiction, since humans are both part of nature and separate from it. From this conflict arises basic existential needs including relatedness, creativity, rootedness, identity and a frame of orientation.

Erich Fromm was a very interesting individual, a great thinker and a help for me to understand psychoanalytical psychologiy and the art of loving. If you ever have time, read his work, especially that book since it will open your eyes to human behavior.

The Autonomic Nervous System

The autonomic nervous system is something we have discussed in chapters at the beginning of the year, middle of the year, and now, the endish of the year. We all know what it does- the sympathetic nervous system prepares us for flight-or-fight; pupils dilate, heart rate accelerates, salivation stops, adrenaline rush, etc. But we do not give it enough recognition, so I wanted to devote a post to it.

One night this week, at 2:30 AM, whilst I was sleeping, I heard a huge bang and a crash. I was in the middle of a deep sleep- I was in REM, because I abruptly left whatever world I was dreaming about. Anyways, my mind had heard this sound, even though I was not paying attention to it, and then my sympathetic nervous system kicked in and I was wide awake, heart pounding, body tensed to either fight or flee. My mouth was dry, I had a major adrenaline rush, and all of the other things that the sympathetic nervous system does. I was so freaked out- I thought someone had smashed my window. Actually, what happened was my window shade fell down, because it's been broken for a while and it falls every so often, but usually during the day when I'm trying to open it. I guess it had been slipping all day, and it finally crashed down. So there was no need for me to get all tense. As you all know, we learned that it takes a while for the body to resume to normal after the sympathetic nervous system has done its stuff. I was up from 2:30 to 4:00 because I was just so awake. I was more awake at that moment that I'd been all week. I was so aware of everything, and completely energized because of the release of adrenaline. Once I realized it was only the window shade, my parasympathetic nervous system started calming my body down.

Thank G-d we have these automatic responses in our bodies, because if it had been a real intruder, my body would have automatically prepared me to run or fight. It was a huge moment of clarity and adrenaline. A moment of silence to appreciate the sympathetic nervous system!