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!