American Buddhist Net

This excellent essay provides an in-depth look at the various modes of resistance we unknowingly or half-knowingly employ when faced with new information. Some of the stuff detailed here will be disturbing to those who see themselves as being guided, at least most of the time, by the light of reason. But why hold on to false notions? As Buddhists, we should be constantly striving to understand the inner workings of our own minds. Robyn
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June 2007
Laurie Manwell

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to discuss the 9/11 truth movement with a family member, friend, or even a colleague, and are met with remarkable resistance (of course if you are reading this, you most likely do not need to use your imagination). On the rare occasion, perhaps you’ve heard, “Hmm, that’s interesting, tell me more.” More likely though, merely the mention of alternative theories of the events has of 9/11 drawn dismissal, joking, or even ire: “I don’t listen to conspiracy theories,” “Yeah I’ve heard some really crazy stories that the government did it,” or “How dare you mock the victims of 9/11!” You begin to wonder, why are some people less willing to examine all of the events of 9/11 than others? Is it really because they are obstinate or in denial? Is it because they are apathetic or judiciously lazy? Or perhaps is it because they are uninformed or purposely misinformed? Are there any other explanations? These are all very important questions to be explored if all of the properly investigated facts and evidence of 9/11 are ever going to reach the forefront of public consciousness.

...How much conscious, intentional control then does an individual have over the processes that govern his or her decisions and behaviors? In a review of the automaticity of mental processes, Bargh and Chartrand (1999) present a strong case that people have very little conscious control over most of their moment-to-moment psychological lives. Specifically, they argue “that most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance”

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By Melissa Dahl
Wed., Aug. 6, 2008

When Bill Russell tells people that his severe depression was relieved by shock therapy, the most common response he gets is: "They're still doing that?"

Most people might be quicker to associate electroshock therapy with torture rather than healing. But since the 1980s, the practice has been quietly making a comeback. The number of patients undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, as it's formally called, has tripled to 100,000 a year, according to the National Mental Health Association.

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Dean Radin

...Our perceptual system unconsciously filters out the vast majority of information available to us. Because of this filtering process, we actually experience only a tiny trickle of information, by some estimates a trillionth of what is actually out there. And yet from that trickle our minds construct what we expect to see. So when we pay attention to our favorite white-shirted basketball team, the likelihood of clearly seeing darker objects moving about is substantially reduced. That includes even obvious objects, like gorillas. Psychologists call this phenomenon "inattentional blindness," and it's just one of many ways in which our prior beliefs, interests and expectations shape the way we perceive the world and cause us to overlook the obvious.

Because of these blind spots, some common aspects of human experience literally cannot be seen by those who've spent decades embedded within the Western scientific worldview. That worldview, like any set of cultural beliefs inculcated from childhood, acts like the blinders they put on skittish horses to keep them calm. Between the blinders we see with exceptional clarity, but seeing beyond the blinders is not only exceedingly difficult, after a while it's easy to forget that your vision is restricted.

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Margaret Paul

"This force [that keeps us always wanting] is known in several Buddhist traditions as the Wanting Mind. The Wanting Mind is always craving an experience different from the one it currently has." - Brent Kessel, It's Not About the Money

There is nothing wrong with wanting - wanting more time, more money, a wonderful relationship, a family, a successful career, a new car, a bigger house, and so on. It is not actually the wanting that causes us problems. Problems occur when we ATTACH our happiness, worth, and inner peace to getting what we want.

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A Memoir by Philip Chabot with Laurie Anne Blanchard - One man takes on the U.S. Government's experiments using telepathy

Mon, 7 Jul 2008

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Finally, after several decades of secrecy, an unusual and compelling true story of deception and subterfuge is finally told. This book is an in-depth look at one man's harrowing experience with the United States Government as a Psychic Spy. Now, 40 years later, Philip Chabot finally tells his story with his new book, OPERATION BLUE LIGHT: My Secret Life Among Psychic Spies (Cherubim Publishing / September 2008 / $26.95 / 294 pages).

In the 1960's, Chabot feels there was a definite conspiracy where the American government took advantage of a select group of people who had ESP. The government used and took advantage of these victims as spies and guinea pigs to find out about what other countries were up to. Chabot was one of them.

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July 30, 2008
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Stratfor Terrorism Intelligence Report

Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional subcommittee on July 22 that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the nation is significant and that the U.S. government knows its terrorist enemies have sought to use biological agents as instruments of warfare.

Runge also said that the United States believes that capability is within the terrorists’ reach. Runge gave his testimony before a subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology that was holding a field hearing in Providence, R.I., to discuss the topic of “Emerging Biological Threats and Public Health Preparedness.”

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Mon, Jul. 28, 2008
By JOSHUA NORMAN

...Dr. Mahesan Ganesan was the only psychiatrist for more than 1.4 million people in eastern Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit. The northeastern province he practiced in received some of the worst damage.

Because of his expertise, he and other local professionals formed an unofficial committee and began coordinating local disaster response.

"We didn't take a mental health approach," said Ganesan. "We took a psychosocial approach, more kind of a preventive (approach.) There is no way we can hold back the effects of the tsunami, but what we can do is to make sure that that burden" is lessened.

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One good thing about the poor memory of someone with dementia is that when as caregivers we are irritable when dealing with them, they do not remember and so forgive us completely. This is a lesson that no one else can give us. ABN
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28/07/2008

In his groundbreaking new book, psychologist Oliver James explains a revolutionary way to care for dementia patients, developed by his mother-in-law. Here, in the first of a two part-series, Cassandra Jardine talks to them both

...Talking to them and their carers she refined her methods so that now, in the course of a two-hour interview, she can show the family how to keep the person contented. This involves identifying a familiar theme from the relative's past which gives them a link to established routines and a sense of independence.

SPECAL also teaches carers to avoid asking questions, because that means the person with dementia has to search their recent memories - and that can distress them. Carers are taught to supply reassuring information if the person with dementia asks questions. What the carer says is less important than the feelings their remark generates. The third rule is never to contradict, because that will also cause upset.

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Related: Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch. ABN
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Patients believe their lives are on TV: MDs

Craig Offman , National Post

Joel and Ian Gold, brothers and psychiatrists from Montreal, believe they have discovered a signature mental illness of the YouTube era: patients who claim they are subjects of their own reality TV shows.

They have named the malady the "Truman Show Delusion," and though they are in the process of putting together a medical paper on the topic, their discovery is already causing a stir.

While traditionalists insist that this delusion offers nothing new -- it is no different from, say, a deranged man who believes that the CIA has planted a microchip in his tooth -- the Gold brothers argue otherwise.

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From "Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology", Jeff Greenberg, Ed., Copyright © 2004

Constantine Sedikides
Tim Wildschut
Denise Baden

...The central thesis of our chapter is that nostalgia is a process that facilitates the implementation of the above-mentioned distal strategies, namely, enhancement of the self, support of the cultural worldview, and bolstering of relational bonds. Nostalgia soothes the self from existential pangs by solidifying and augmenting identity, regenerating and sustaining a sense of meaning, and buttressing and invigorating desired connectedness with the social world. We review theoretical notions next and offer our own as well.

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I am pretty sure I have species dysphoria. ABN
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July 24th, 2008 by Ethel

A disorder in which a male or female feels a strong identification with the opposite sex. Gender identity disorder refers to individuals who are living as one gender but were born another biological sex and most often are having problems dealing with their situation. Psychiatrists use this term to explain the disorders that are related to issues of transgender identity and transsexuals. This classification is also used to refer to people who call themselves transsexuals, but they don’t necessarily feel that it is a disorder.

Gender identity disorder (GID) is the formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe persons who experience significant gender dysphoria (discontent with the biological sex they were born with). It is a psychiatric classification and describes the problems related to transgender identity, and transvestism. It is the diagnostic classification most commonly applied to transsexuals.

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The brain is like a muscle: when it gets depleted, it becomes less effective.

By On Amir

The human mind is a remarkable device. Nevertheless, it is not without limits. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on a particular mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When you focus on a specific task for an extended period of time or choose to eat a salad instead of a piece of cake, you are flexing your executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort-you have to resist the temptation to let your mind wander or to indulge in the sweet dessert. It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity. (See here and here.)

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07/21/2008

...Boucher is part of a growing trend of neurofeedback junkies, people who pay thousands of dollars to have their brains conditioned or harmonized. By measuring brainwave activity, then feeding back appropriate sounds through headsets, recipients can learn to modify their thoughts, behaviors and emotions. The benefits, proponents say, can be life-changing. But the question arises: Who's qualified to be slapping electrodes on people's heads?

The neurofeedback business, which is raking in about $1 billion a year according to Siegfried Othmer, chief scientist of The EEG Institute in Woodland Hills, Calif., is still "going through its Wild West phase."

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For those disappointed with the results of lengthy, expensive, traditional therapies, quantum psychology offers a different path.

July 20, 2008

It seems like everyone these days in is some sort of therapy, whether it is for stress associated with a troubled economy, family problems, or traumatic experiences such as child abuse and "battle fatigue." Now a new book offers a different solution to the problems we all must deal with in our lives. "The surprise is that our bodies are way smarter then we thought they were," says Jean Boyd, author of The Greatest Escape: Travel the Quantum Path to Personal Freedom. "Our brains are hard-wired with a remarkable program that gives us a way to solve the problems associated with our everyday lives, heal our psychological wounds and transform our lives"...

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20 Jul 2008

Many heavy meat eaters believe they eat a lot of meat because of the taste. But according to groundbreaking new research in the Journal of Consumer Research, the reason that a beef burger tastes better than a veggie burger to some people has more to do with values than actual taste.

Authors Michael W. Allen (University of Sydney), Richa Gupta (University of Nashville), and Arnaud Monnier (National Engineer School for Food Industries and Management, France) conducted a series of studies that examined the symbolic meaning of foods and beverages. They found that when it came to tasting meat or soft drinks, what influenced participants was what they thought they had eaten rather than what they actually ate.

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Which is more stressful, the country or 'Murder Mile'? David Smith uses a new gadget to find out.

Sunday April 16, 2006

Imagine strolling through the countryside or bustling down crowded city streets. Then imagine taking a bird's eye view not only of the route you took - right down to fields, footpaths and zebra crossings - but how you were feeling each step of the way.

This is called emotion mapping and it enables people to compare their moods with their surroundings more precisely than ever before. It measures not just major reactions that tend to stick in the memory, but also the degrees of stimulation caused by speaking to a stranger, crossing the road or listening to birdsong.

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May 17, 2007

A recent study found that, of the four contributing factors for generalized anxiety disorder, intolerance of uncertainty and negative problem orientation had a direct relationship to severity of the disorder.

There are four contributing factors for generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD: intolerance of uncertainty, positive beliefs about worry, negative problem orientation, and cognitive avoidance. A study performed at Concordia University and Hospital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal, Canada, wanted to find out if there was a link between any of these contributing factors and the severity of a subject’s generalized anxiety disorder.

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Tuesday, Jul. 15, 2008
Ethan Nichtern

...To date, the Green movement seems to be very much focused on the external world of objects and resources. Going green is all about external stuff: how to get more eco (and more fashionable) stuff, or else how to use the stuff we already have more effectively and less carelessly. For some folks, going green means arranging your lifestyle so you simply have way less stuff. All of these investigations are crucial. Collecting information about how to make compassionate choices in the context of a huge planet and an interwoven economy is an absolutely eye-opening practice, no matter which specific issue is closest to your heart.

But what about the internal landscape of consumption—the subtleties of our state of mind as we attempt to change our patterns? After all, we are the very individuals who have to get, use, or stop ourselves from using all this stuff! How do our mental habits and identities fuel our choices? How do our minds embrace or reject a change of habit? In the Green movement to date, there is precious little investigation regarding the psychology of ecology.

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Silverstein is smart enough not to dismiss MKULTRA. He needs to open his mind a bit more though to consider that it might not be only the CIA or the US military that ran/is running a program like that. A non-governmental group could easily do the same sort of thing. And if you think about it, it is not hard to see how such a group, over a few decades, could rather easily gain control of the USA by targeting opponents on the lower rungs of power, thus leaving the higher rungs open for their own people. See this for more. ABN
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July 12, 7:33 AM, 2008
By Ken Silverstein
From Jeff Stein at CQ:

My friend said his patients described training with drugs and other mind-control techniques to perform the mission — then forget them, like the Manchurian Candidate. But now they were remembering fragments, they told him, giving them terrifying nightmares about things they could not quite believe they had done.

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Same problem prompts the same question: How can anyone hope to get better mental health from people who cannot even apply a simple moral argument to themselves?

Well-worth reading in full. ABN
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By BENEDICT CAREY and GARDINER HARRIS
Published: July 12, 2008

It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster.

But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress, accused of allowing this relationship to become too cozy. After a series of stinging investigations of individual doctors’ arrangements with drug makers, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association, the field’s premier professional organization, give an accounting of its financing.

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If the study had worked with more children it might have found that MOST children are naturally inclined to feel empathy, just as MOST adults are. But not all of them. The problem with large societies is that those who do not feel empathy or who can suppress it are too often the ones who claw their way to the top, and hence bad leadership is the rule in virtually all human societies of any appreciable size. Moreover, many adults and children are taught to compartmentalize feelings of empathy so that they function only within the groups to which they hold allegiance, be they religious, ethnic, professional, secret, and so on.

Some of the most basic problems with social and political morality spring not from the inclinations of the many, but from those of the few. The few who lack empathy can easily trick the many who are more or less bound by core feelings. One might posit an evolutionary explanation for this by saying that social groups benefit from being friendly (or cohesive enough) within themselves but aggressive toward other groups and that thus it pays to have a small percentage of individuals who lack empathy. This basic hypothesis can be made more complex, and thus better reflect historical reality, by positing that some of the aggressive groups within a large society will naturally tend to turn against their own kind and exploit them through force or by using culturally approved norms to deceive them. ABN
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Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers at the University of Chicago, who used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.

The responses on the scans were similar to those found in studies of adults. Researchers found that children, like adults, show responses to pain in the same areas of their brains. The research also found additional aspects of the brain activated in children, when youngsters saw another person intentionally hurt by another individual.

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In a new book, psychiatrist James Gordon explains why he believes there's a more effective and drug-free way to treat depression and anxiety.

By Anne Underwood | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 8, 2008

Do we really need Prozac? James Gordon, founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., says there's a better way to treat depression--through diet, exercise and meditation.

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Psychopaths are attracted to positions of power. It seems pretty likely to me - in fact, it seems downright OBVIOUS - that the very top levels of the American political power structure are inhabited by psychopaths.

The point is - and Dr. Hare, on whose research the article below is based, makes this abundantly clear - you cannot apply a normal model of human behavior to these people. They are not simply good-at-their-core, ultimately well-meaning but philosophically misguided people who just need to learn how to sympathize with others. You can't give them "a hug, a puppy dog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay." No. They have no consciences. They enjoy the suffering they inflict on others. Or at least it doesn't bother them. Robyn
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By Robert Hercz

...The most startling finding to emerge from Hare's work is that the popular image of the psychopath as a remorseless, smiling killer -- Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, John Wayne Gacy -- while not wrong, is incomplete. Yes, almost all serial killers, and most of Canada's dangerous offenders, are psychopaths, but violent criminals are just a tiny fraction of the psychopaths around us. Hare estimates that 1 percent of the population -- 300,000 people in Canada -- are psychopaths.

He calls them "subclinical" psychopaths. They're the charming predators who, unable to form real emotional bonds, find and use vulnerable women for sex and money (and inevitably abandon them). They're the con men like Christophe Rocancourt, and they're the stockbrokers and promoters who caused Forbes magazine to call the Vancouver Stock Exchange (now part of the Canadian Venture Exchange) the scam capital of the world. (Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.) A significant proportion of persistent wife beaters, and people who have unprotected sex despite carrying the AIDS virus, are psychopaths. Psychopaths can be found in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots. They're your neighbour, your boss, and your blind date. Because they have no conscience, they're natural predators. If you didn't have a conscience, you'd be one too.

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Makes a good point. Best to practice Buddhism. ABN
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by John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
July 6, 2008

We’ve all heard the theory — a chemical imbalance in your brain causes depression.

Although researchers have known for years this not to be the case, some drug companies continue to repeat this simplistic and misleading claim in their marketing and advertising materials. Why the FTC or some other federal agency doesn’t crack down on this intentional misleading information is beyond me. Most researchers now believe depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

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How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction

By Jonah Lehrer
July 6, 2008

PROZAC IS ONE of the most successful drugs of all time. Since its introduction as an antidepressant more than 20 years ago, Prozac has been prescribed to more than 54 million people around the world, and prevented untold amounts of suffering.

But the success of Prozac hasn't simply transformed the treatment of depression: it has also transformed the science of depression. For decades, researchers struggled to identify the underlying cause of depression, and patients were forced to endure a series of ineffective treatments. But then came Prozac. Like many other antidepressants, Prozac increases the brain's supply of serotonin, a neurotransmitter. The drug's effectiveness inspired an elegant theory, known as the chemical hypothesis: Sadness is simply a lack of chemical happiness. The little blue pills cheer us up because they give the brain what it has been missing.

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