2014 - Session NotesSession Notes

Can, “Truly, madly, deeply,” ever last?
December 23, 2014 Comments Off on Can, “Truly, madly, deeply,” ever last?

Psychology Today

Being Madly in Love Can Last! The results of the study indicate that the feeling of intense passion can last in long-term relationships. “We found many very clear similarities between those who were in love long-term and those who had just fallen madly in love,” says Dr. Aron. “In this latest study, the VTA showed a greater response to images of a long-term partner when compared with images of a close friend or any of the other facial images.”

This means that the VTA is particularly active for romantic love.
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What keeps you doing such crazy things?
December 19, 2014 Comments Off on What keeps you doing such crazy things?

QZ

Much of what Siegel wants us to consider can be condensed into a simple phrase: “what fires together, wires together.” The idea is that when a set of neurons are stimulated, they link up with all those other neurons that are simultaneously firing. Whether the groups of neurons that are linking make sense to us as observers on the outside is beside the point. Odd pairings can occur, strange juxtapositions of feelings and sensations that, outside of the experience of a particular individual, seem almost impossible to the rest of us. I’m reminded of a narrative in the old DSM-IV casebook that describes an individual who had come to associate sexual arousal with being covered in insects.
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Perhaps you can make do on a little less sleep?
December 3, 2014 Comments Off on Perhaps you can make do on a little less sleep?

Forbes –

According to the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, the short-term productivity gains from skipping sleep to work are quickly washed away by the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on your mood, ability to focus, and access to higher-level brain functions for days to come. The negative effects of sleep deprivation are so great that people who are drunk outperform those lacking sleep.
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Want your relationship to last?
November 25, 2014 Comments Off on Want your relationship to last?

Business Insider

The masters, by contrast, showed low physiological arousal. They felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behaviour, even when they fought. It’s not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable.

Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters squashed it.
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Have you decided to love?
November 24, 2014 Comments Off on Have you decided to love?

Good Men Project

It was ordinary. Not fluffy, not overly romantic. Real. The kind of real I coveted in couples who married shortly after high school, in wrinkled older spouses walking down the street, still holding hands. I had wanted “real” so badly I often wondered if I had given so much power to the fantasy relationship that I couldn’t hack it, that I sabotaged it so I could never have it for myself.

What I missed when assessing other people’s relationship was their reality. I saw sugar topping the cookie, not the month-old flour involved in the baking.
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Now can we quit fretting about gamers?
November 22, 2014 Comments Off on Now can we quit fretting about gamers?

Science Alert

While the data did appear to show a link between an increase in violent video game consumption and a decrease in youth violence, just as it did for films after 1990, Ferguson is not prepared to say the result is anything other than a coincidence. But what he can say for sure is that while media violence is definitely being consumed more now than ever before, there is absolutely no clear evidence to link media violence with societal violence.
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Does loneliness create loneliness?
November 18, 2014 Comments Off on Does loneliness create loneliness?

Business Insider

The review suggests lonely people are sensitive to negative social outcomes and accordingly their responses in social settings are dampened. We know the former from reaction time tasks involving negative social words (lonely people respond faster), and tasks involving the detection of concealed pain in faces (lonely people are extra sensitive when the faces are dislikeable). Functional imaging evidence also shows lonely people have a suppressed neural response to rewarding social stimuli, which reduces their excitement about possible social contact;
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There may be hope for this profession after all…
November 16, 2014 Comments Off on There may be hope for this profession after all…

First Look

The top professional organization for psychologists is launching an independent investigation over how it may have sanctioned the brutal interrogation methods used against terror suspects by the Bush administration. The American Psychological Association announced this week that it has tapped an unaffiliated lawyer, David Hoffman, to lead the review.

In 2002, the American Psychological Association (APA) revised its code of ethics to allow practitioners to follow the “governing legal authority” in situations that seemed at odds with their duties as health professionals.
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Apparently, you’re just not that strange…
November 10, 2014 Comments Off on Apparently, you’re just not that strange…

Atlantic

The study, published last Friday in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, surveyed about 1,500 adults who rated, from a list of 55 sexual fantasies, which fantasies they were most and least interested in. The researchers found that only two sexual fantasies (bestiality and pedophilia) were statistically rare (were 2.3 percent or less of respondents included it as a fantasy) and nine were considered statistically unusual (15.9 percent or less). Urinating on one’s partner and wearing clothing associated with the opposite sex were among those considered unusual.
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The gift of compassion
November 2, 2014 Comments Off on The gift of compassion

Brain Pickings

Everybody asks during and after our wars, and the continuing terrorist attacks all over the globe, “What’s gone wrong?” What has gone wrong is that too many people, including high school kids and heads of state, are obeying the Code of Hammurabi, a King of Babylonia who lived nearly four thousand years ago. And you can find his code echoed in the Old Testament, too. Are you ready for this?

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

A categorical imperative for all who live in obedience to the Code of Hammurabi, which includes heroes of every cowboy show and gangster show you ever saw, is this: Every injury, real or imagined, shall be avenged.
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