Category Archives: Psychology

“Science”

05 Sunday Sep 2021

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I’ve had a lot of friends sending me studies on masks and vaccines. I’m generally in favor of medical care and am of the opinion that whatever else may be true, a lack of polio and smallpox is a good thing. But as for whether this type of mask works at this level of effectiveness, I have no idea. As a practical matter, how could I? I have no expertise in any of this. I don’t know how to design a proper study, nor how to evaluate the results. I don’t know why the tests come back with different results.

I do know that a confirmation bias seems to underscore the results which I am shown. Those who think masks are magic send me one set of results. Those who think masks are fairy dust, send me a different set. Thus, the posting tells me something about the person who sent it, but perhaps it tells me nothing about the actual science.

Anyway, in my reading I came across this:

“There’s an ­unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like.” 

EMDR and Memory (and some questions)

21 Monday Jun 2021

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Reading a ‘Critically evaluate Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) as a treatment method for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)” by Milauro Giovanni of the University of Kent (a review the literature on EMDR for treating PTSD, particularly in respect to certain co-morbidities) got me wondering about memory. I jotted down a few questions to perhaps take up some other time.

The “point” of the therapy is to erase the effect of a peculiarly unpleasant memory and thus the negative effects upon behavior, cognition, and affections which come with that memory. (I’m being careful here to not say that the memory causes the negative behavior; there may be any number of relationships between a behavior or thought and a memory. But there certainly is some connection between the two). 

The unique aspect of EMDR is in the desensitization phase, which the APA describes as follows: “During this phase, the client focuses on the memory, while engaging in eye movements or other BLS. Then the client reports whatever new thoughts have emerged. The therapist determines the focus of each set of BLS using standardized procedures. Usually the associated material becomes the focus of the next set of brief BLS. This process continues until the client reports that the memory is no longer distressing.”

Somehow talking about the unpleasant memory while trying to keep track of the light causes the memory to fade in effect. 

Giovanni reports that studies have not shown a distinction between moving the light up and down as opposed to side-to-side. This seems to rule out the theory that the light movement is integrating the hemispheres of the brain.  

The other explanation for the effects of EMDR is that “the overcharging of working memory, that will lead to a less vivid memory of a traumatic memory and the related emotion.” (It should be noted that watching the light while discussing good memories, also results in good memories being less vivid.)

So, if I am understanding the research correctly, watching the light while speaking about a particular memory makes the memory less distinct.

There are some other observations which may be relevant here. First, there is a theory of dyslexia which explains certain effects as a failure of eye tracking and other effects as an inability to remember the correct sounds to visual image. It is as if the eye sees some X and the brain delivers a Y to the mouth. 

Second, years ago I received some advice following an unpleasant interpersonal experience: Every time I began to recall the unpleasant event, I was to pinch my hand and deliberately think of a particularly pleasant event in its place. 

Related to this would be the technique advanced by Jeffery Schwartz in “You are not Your Brain”. When my brain throws up a response to an unpleasant sensation (hey, why not get drunk/go shopping/etc rather than have this bad feeling), see this as a “deceptive brain message” and seek to repackage the event while heading in another direction: I’m feeling stress and my brain has grabbed my previous go-to response, but that is a terrible idea, let’s do this other productive thing in its place. In short, it is about reworking bad habits. 

If this analogy is correct, then EMDR may be breaking a habitual connection between the emotional/behavior/cognitive response to the memory and the memory itself. The memory functions like a key to start a habitual chain of responses. The therapy disconnects the chain of memory-to-panic/anger, et cetera. 

If it is merely a practice of disconnecting the memory from the responsive chain, is that always a good thing? Someone recalls the memory of being a victim of a crime. They respond with horror (and then perhaps some additional responses for the purpose of alleviating or displaying the horror). While I am certain that someone who has anxiety, inability to sleep, et cetera would be very happy to be freed from such painful experiences, does the disconnection of the memory from the chain of responses (as opposed to merely obscuring the memory), does this result in a desensitization to that particular stimulus in all events?

Say I am the victim of a violent crime who then suffers horrible memories and reactions to that crime. Thereafter, I undergo EMDR and no longer have that response. Am I desensitized to violent crime altogether? Or am I desensitized to only my particular memory?

Or, does it simply obscure the particular memory. The chain of memory to horror is still in place, but the first link in the chain (the memory) is removed so the remaining links do not arise.

Could the chain of memory and horror be reworked at the level of the horror? Is that what happens when someone turns to revenge rather than fear? (Anger is an easy substitute for fear). 

What happens when I recount the event in terms of (1) the sovereignty of God, (2) the knowledge that God will judge all sin, (3) that God will vindicate, (4) that we will receive “praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ”?  

Is this something which can be reworked at the level of thought? What additional behavioral responses are necessary to respond effectively such that the memory does not perpetuate a cascade of dangerous behavioral/emotional/cognitive responses?  

What is a human being, if you extirpate love?

04 Friday Jun 2021

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In The Criminal Psychopath, Jurimetrics. 2011 Summer; 51: 355–397, Kiehl and Hoffman provide a thorough summary of the history, diagnosis, and treatment of the psychopath, particularly with a view to amount of crime committed by this relatively small proportion of the population.

It raises the interesting issue of the degree to which the condition is the result of a brain disorder and the interaction with this brain in its environment. There is apparently some evidence that the condition has a genetic component, and perhaps it is a peculiarly vulnerable brain in connection with the “right” environment which leads to the exhibition of utter moral inability. Plainly performing standard experiments by tormenting and mistreating children in rigorously similar manners to see whether the condition can be induced regularly would be evil. Therefore, one needs to consider proxies, such as the condition shows some responsiveness to treatment if the treatment early enough in life.

That there is correspondence between the condition and certain brain function is interesting: But note that the information cited shows the functioning of the brain: their brains function differently. When faced with moral situations the parts of their brain which were involved differed from “you and me.” But what does that exactly prove? The argument that the brain is causing this condition actually contains a hidden premise: that all thought must begin from the brain, not pass through the brain.

For a moment take a different body part: the psychopath and the mother with her child both use their hands, but the use is strikingly different. No one believes that the mother hand causes her sweet caress.

Reddit Turned an MIT AI Into a Psychopath. What Is It Doing to Your Brain? | Inc.com

Now a mother with broken hands could not caress in the same manner. The status of her hand both limits and permits certain behavior, but it does not cause her behavior.

But when it comes to the brain, it is easy to believe that the brain is causative. This is because the functioning of rest of the body relies heavily upon the functioning of the brain. In particular, the use of the brain in thought could imply that the brain is directing the thought.

But need that be so? If one adds as an element of the human being a mind, it is no difficulty to concluded that the minds of two different men would use their brains in a different manner: just as the psychopath murders and the doctor heals with the hand.

If we posit that information flows from the body toward the mind and the mind toward the body, effects can move in both directions. (The precise nature of mind and body is not the issue. Although at present I am very intrigued by Dembski’s Being as Communion (information is the ultimate base, not matter) and Thomas’ hylomorphism which seems to resolve Descartes’ hard cleavage interaction problem.) Thus certain types of brains would have effects without being the univocal cause.

Another element in the article which intrigued me was “His very disconnectedness is his mask. We cannot see him because we assume all humans have the connections that bind us, and because the psychopath’s very lack of those connections allows him to mimic them.” The psychopath, to use the Ancient Greek term, is a-storge: he lacks human connections. The fact of storge among other humans creates the framework which the psychopath exploits: “One explanation is that being exposed to the frailties of normal people in group therapeutic settings gives psychopaths a stock of information that makes them better at manipulating those normal people. As one psychopath put it, ‘These programs are like a finishing school. They teach you how to put the squeeze on people.'”

They bear a resemblance to Nietzsche’s Nobility who know themselves better than all others and are willing to command and exploit. They also exhibit the final end of depravity in Romans 1.

What should think of them. The authors were hopeful there were ways to get the psychopaths to slow down a bit on their crime spree of life. But there really wasn’t any element of hope.

“As one psychotherapist wrote, his psychopaths in treatment ‘have no desire to change, … have no concept of the future, resent all authorities (including therapists), view the patient role as … being in a position of inferiority, and deem therapy a joke and therapists as objects to be conned, threatened, seduced, or used.'”

That reference to the “future” stuck out. It is not merely that they have no concept of future punishment, they have no mechanism for hope. Perhaps they can move by hungers, I want this-then-that, but would be based upon a present hunger. I might plan to fulfill my hunger, but not be different.

Authorities obviously are merely impediments to be beaten or seduced. That is easy enough. But without the future, without hope. That again is a state described in Paul as the depth of lostness, “having no hope without God in the world.”

Now we come to this character: no authority, no hope, no future. Such a man is ultimately depraved.

It is the cognitive capacity of a man without love: because love is built around the future. Love does not exult in oneself, but puts another first. Love becomes a sort of authority for the other’s good becomes paramount.

Freud on the “Freudian Slip”

23 Tuesday Feb 2021

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The previous look at The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is found here.

            The “Freudian slip” is the most famous of all concepts from Freud. It occurs when someone reveals a hidden motivation by substituting the “wrong” word. As he begins this essay, Freud reviews the work done by Meringer and Mayor, and then the observations of Wundt. 

Freud underscores an element from Wundt – an element which Freud will enforce at the end of this essay: These slips of the tongue take place when there is a “suspension of the attention that it would inhibit it, the uninhibited flow of associations is activated and may be said, even more definitely, to do so through that suspension.” (60) As he says toward the end of the essay, “I do not think anyone would make a slip of the tongue [examples given], in short in all those cases where, as one may say, the mind is really concentrated on the matter in hand.” (96)

Freud rejects the argument that slips of the tongue are merely the result of confusing or substituting sounds of words. He does not deny that sounds of words can have an effect upon errors, and indeed may be the cause of some errors:

But they do not seem to me strong enough to impair correct speech by their own influence alone. In those cases that I have studied closely and of which I can claim some understanding, they merely represent an existing mechanism that can easily be used by a remote psychic motive without its binding itself to the sphere of influence of those connections. In a great many substitutions, a slip of the tongue occurs quite regardless of such laws of phonetics. (79)

Freud explains that he uses these slips to “resolve and track down neurotic symptoms.” (78) Patients “may try to conceal the subject, but cannot help revealing it unintentionally in many different ways.” 

He contends that his theory “will stand up to examination even in its minor details.” (95)

To support his contention, he notes dozens of instances where someone substitutes one word for another, and thereby discloses a secret they had hoped to conceal. 

I found most compelling the example he gave from the novel Egoist by George Meredith (I cannot agree with Freud that Meredith is the “greatest English novelist”). Without rehearsing the entire nature of the example, the proposition is that a woman in the novel, by a confusion of names reveals a secret hope and desire she tries to keep concealed – but cannot. Why I found this example compelling is that is an independent attestation by someone other than Freud (or a professional psychologist/psychiatrist) of the same idea.  Now, since Meredith was a rough contemporary of Freud, it is possible that such ideas “were in the air.” 

However, Freud provides an example from Shakespeare where Portia discloses herself by a slip.

Let’s take his concept seriously, that people sometimes say what they mean to conceal. I would think that best explained by the fact that a person is intently thinking about two things and is speaking with the hope of not saying something but the thoughts get the better of the tongue – we can’t concentrate on two things at once. For instance, Freud gives an example of where he is attempting to defend himself from a conflict with his wife and thus discloses something he did not wish to say.

But Freud has a rather different theory of what happens: He puts the emphasis on the unintended nature of the disclosure. In his theory, the concealed fact just finds a way out because sufficient control is not being brought to bear upon the speech so the unconscious makes a break for it. 

Yet, I think his examples could easily be re-read as not an unconscious escape but rather the conflict of multiple thoughts. 

For instance, he gives the example of where a soldier on trial for burglary used the word Diebstellung – position as thief – when he meant to use the word Dienstellung – military service.  The soldier made this blunder while testifying in Court. But it is in just such a circumstance that Freud said a slip would not occur, “in a speech made in defense of his name and honor before a sworn jury” (96). The soldier was trying to explain that he could not have committed the crime because he was still in the military: but he would at the same time be thinking of what he had been accused. 

If there are revealing substitutions, I don’t think he proves a subversive unconscious but rather a confusion of thoughts. 

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.4 (with some notes on current Church)

29 Friday Jan 2021

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The pervious post in this series concerning Rieff may be found here: https://memoirandremains.com/2020/08/28/philip-rieff-the-triumph-of-the-therapeutic-4-3/

In the remainder of the book, Rieff is going to examine what various disciples of Freud did with Freud’s original work. Thus, we will examine Jung, Wilhelm Reich, and D.H. Lawrence. But before he turns to these men who developed the ideas of Freud in strikingly different directions, Rieff considers those who make up the mass of psychoanalysts. In the main, Rieff has little good say about such practioners.

The fault, as I read Rieff, is that the analysts follow Freud so well. The practice of psychoanalysis is not to construct some new culture but rather to free one from the symbolic world which they have internalized. As such, it is a sort of indefinite project, but the world which followed Freud domesticated it, Freud “could cope with his enemies; his friends defeated him.” (85) 

Those who take up the practice have attended “trade schools” (89) who wish to take up a quiet, stable, “suburb[an]” life.

The need for conflict with opposing structures is necessary to keep the disciple alive, “As an ultimate rule of organization, honesty is death to organization itself. Reticence, forbearance, tolerance – these civilities and hypocrisies are necessary to organized life.” (91)

To that extent his epilogue is of little interest except as an observation. What I do find interesting is an observation he makes early in this section. He notes that orthodoxy is sharpened in conflict: which is a point Harold O.J. Brown made in his work Heresies.

It is at this point he makes a point which may be of some encouragement to Christianity at this point in the West, “Nowadays, the world is full of tame Christians; in consequence, the churches are empty of life, if not of people.” (84) The Church seems to suffer worse from excess of ease than even trial (which seems to be true for us personally as well).  Thus, our current conflict may be of use by putting the church into a position where it may critique the culture rather than be overly at home. 

While there are various positions which have been offered by many, such as Niebuhr’s Christ & Culture, (Christ Against Culture, Christ of Culture, Christ Above Culture, Christ and Culture in Paradox, Christ the Transformer of Culture), Luther’s Two Kingdoms, and so on. All of these positions have shown themselves to be useful at some times and places, and disastrous at others. 

When the Netherlands can elect a Kuyper as Prime Minister, Christianity is a position to influence culture in a way that the Baptist in the Gulag of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich could never dream. When being an influence entails comprising, then the church must take a prophetic stance. There are issues on which the church has no dogmatic position (should the capital gains tax be 15% or 20% on securities held over five years but less than ten?). But there are issues where the Church – if it has a public voice, cannot remain silent.

There are issues of wisdom: At what point does one confront the state; at which point should the church retreat? The church in the West (this is not to prioritize the Western church, nor to ignore the very real troubles faced throughout the world; it is simply I know far more about where I live and what I experience than things which I learn secondhand. I simply wish to avoid speaking where beyond what I could reasonably know) is coming to face increasing troubles from a direction it did not expect. 

In the early 20th century, the church on one-side retreated from intellectual engagement with a hostile culture. Another element of the visible compromised. The space of engagement deepened theological positions in many areas and gave us an apologetic and social voice. 

Now we are facing an entirely new challenge for which the church broadly is not ready. Even the previous secular adversaries of the church have little idea on how to respond. But as Rieff noted in connection with Freud’s tame disciples, conflict can deepen and sharpen our thinking. Let’s pray that God gives us the wisdom for our age.

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.2

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

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(In Defense of the Analytic Attitude)

In the remainder of the chapter, Rieff distinguishes Freud from what came after.  The distinction which Rieff draws is between Freudian “freedom” and a “cure.” Freud offers no solution, only a “technology” which will allow one to understand the working of their subconscious. The end game, as seemingly proposed by Rieff would be the freedom from the “residues of religious compulsion.” (79) This may be achievable with a combination of Freudian analysis and behavioral technique. (Ibid.)

Freudian analysis “is the aim of science – power; in this case a transformative technology of the inner life….This is ultimate technology.” (79)

The purpose of “faith” is to mitigate suffering: “all religions have a therapeutic function.” (76) Jung sought to scoop up all religions with his theory of archtypes. An interesting observation is how Rieff sees Jung and Freud as inversions of one another. Freud understood “erotic instinctual forces” sublimate themselves into the “highest ethical and religious interests of man.” While Jung saw the process going in the other direction. (77)

Freud’s aim of “freedom” comes at a cost:

“What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility.” (79)

This freedom is of course something which is at issue. It is taken by everyone that Freud’s theories of pscyho-social development and dream analysis and slips of the tongue – however interesting – are unquestionably not “scientific.” His technology is simply untrue. 

What is strange is that his basic proposition that your sensation of ethical constraint is a trick society has played upon, that restraint is what is holding you back, mixed with Rousseau and Hegel and whatnot and developed by his followers (some who – as we shall see – were criminally insane) has become a default argument over against the “illusion” of religion and God. It is a curious sort of position to occupy. 

But on the same ground, by what basis do Hegel’s thesis-antithesis, Rousseau’s sociology, Marx’s economic history still have currency? It seems that people pick bits and pieces of ideas without ever well-understanding either what they believe or why. They could never articulate their axioms much less their conclusions. 

We live too easily in cages built of the thought of others. Freud in his effort to bring a technology of freedom foisted insupportable conceits upon the world. When his conceits proved to be nonsense, the conceits remained.  

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 3.1 (Community and Therapy)

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

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The prior post on Triumph of the Therapeutic may be found here.

Community and Therapy, Chapter 3

In this chapter, Rieff begins with an understanding of mental health as provided by means of a symbolic system. By means of a symbolic system, the society creates a matrix in which the individual person can achieve a character ideal. To be a functioning person, the person must belong to a “positive community” which “offers some sort of salvation to the individual through participant membership.” (60)

In this scenario, the system works if the individual functions reasonably well. The system will need a sufficiently robust symbolic format and mechanism for involvement in that system. 

For the individual to function well, the individual not may but must participate in the communal life: it was only the life of the community that the life of any individual would be sufficiently well served.

Rieff then subsumes the history religion and culture into a concept of therapy:

Ultimately, it is the community that cures. The function of the classical therapist is to commit the patient to the symbol system of the community, as best he can and by whatever techniques are sanctioned. (57)

Rousseau provided a seeming break from this concept by introducing the idea that the individual must break free from the confinements of the community. But in the end, Rousseau ended up in the same place, because he merely posited the creation of a new community in the future.  

Marx took Rousseau a step further and argued that the community was utterly broken and that all that currently existed is cash interactions. But Marx was still looking for a community, just a new future community where the individual could finally be integrated into the communal whole.

From a slightly different perspective, De Tocqueville considered the possibility of a wholly democratic society where all communal bounds would be broken down and all life would be private.

But for all that, Rieff contends that prior to Freud, mental health was a matter sociology: it was obtained by means of integrating the individual to the society’s system to simultaneously define and give room for expression of the individual. 

At this point, Rieff places Freud as the one who provides a therapy to the individual when no positive community exists. 

Anxiety and Thoughts of Death

20 Wednesday May 2020

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Short version: It’s not just the idea, but the anxiety produced by the idea, which gives rise to an increase in thoughts of death. If I tell you your worldview is stupid and you don’t care, you don’t have increased thoughts of death. But if you take my “you’re stupid and so’s your worldview” to heart and feel anxious, you’ll have increased thoughts of death. If you have increased thoughts of death, you try to defend your worldview from attack.
Longer version: Terror Management Theory proposes that when we are confronted with thoughts of death, we seek to (1) shore up our self-esteem, and (2) our worldview. For example, an atheist confronted with death can say, I won’t know I’m dead so there is no reason to fear death. A Muslim can say, I will be resurrected to Paradise, so I have no need to fear death. When I thinks about death, they can think about their response to death.

When confronted with some information which undercuts their worldview, (say, there is a god, or Muhammed was not a true prophet), research shows that the victim (or test-subject, depending upon your point-of-view) has more thoughts about death (DTA death-thought accessibility).

Since thoughts of death produce anxiety, human beings seek for ways to relieve that anxiety (anxiety being unpleasant). Researchers have noted two basic mechanisms, first were used to relieve the anxiety. The immediate response is to distract oneself or otherwise try to ignore the information). Then, after a passage of time and as thought the immediate thoughts of death fade, one begins to various “distal defenses” are brought to bear. The victim seeks to shore-up their symbolic mechanism to deal with death.

The research has primarily dealt with the thoughts of death, not the emotion of anxiety. A study published 2014 sought to examine the emotive functions.

The study sought to produce anxiety in Protestant Christian undergraduate students. They were told that the they were testing how a drink effected memory. Some of the students were told the drink contained caffeine and would them “jittery,” others were told it was a vitamin drink.

The reason for the two different drinks has to do with “attribution of arousal manipulation.” The students who drank the “caffeine” might attribute their anxiety to the drink and not to the article challenging their beliefs.

The students were given an article which challenged their religious beliefs (Jesus is the same as Krishna or Mithra or Horus). A control group read an article on the northern lights.

The next phase asked the students to complete words . So they were given coff–. Do they write “coffee” or “coffin”? The reason for this section to was both assess their thoughts of death and to give time for the “distal defenses” to engage.

The final phase as the students to evaluate their article – did it make you angry? How smart was the author?

When the students were given the “caffeine”, there was a marginal tendency to attribute their anxiety to caffeine and to have fewer “death-related” thoughts than the vitamin drink group. The students with the vitamin drink did experience more death related thoughts when having their religious beliefs attacked.

Not surprisingly, the students who read the attacking article had greater emotional response than those who read the article on the northern lights.

But since the researchers had given an introductory questionnaire on death related thoughts, they wanted to make sure that initial questionnaire did not poison their results.

They performed a very similar test. But this time they gave the students an opportunity to set bail for a prostitute. The thinking was that death-related thoughts would lead to more protection for their worldview, which would lead to higher bail amounts.

The surmise was true.

Here is what the researchers believed was significant in these tests: When the student attributed their anxiety to the caffeine they did not seek to protect their world view. It seems that when they blamed the drink for their anxiety it acted to protect them from thinking further about death.

A third test was premised upon this idea: Humans protect ourselves from thoughts of death by distinguishing ourselves from other animals. Therefore, we experience disgust when someone eats strange food, defects on the living room floor or commits incest, because it reminds us that we are animals; reminding ourselves that we are animals, reminds that we can die like animals. Therefore, we feel disgust in those circumstances.

You don’t need to take that explanation for why we experience disgust when someone decides to imitate a dog in your apartment.

The third experiment sought to determine the extent to which misattribution could apply to disgust.

And so we come to a test which I am glad I did not have to experience. The students were going to be subjected to viewing a number of gross pictures, someone vomiting, urine, feces, snot, a dirty toilet, a bloody finger. These apparently makes us think we are animals.

All the students were given an essay to read. One essay said, you’re just animal. The other essay had nothing to do with animals.

All the students were given instructions on viewing the pictures. Some were told to view the pictures carefully. Others were given specific instructions to take a “detached and unemotional attitude.” They were to be clinical and unfeeling as they examined the pictures.

After looking at the pictures, they were examined for disgust.

The students were instructed to have clinical detachment when viewing the pictures had fewer death-related thoughts after viewing them.

And so again, an increase a serious negative emotion increased one’s thought of death.

Here was the upshot:

Our findings suggest that threatening material will only increase DTA when that material is experienced as emotionally unsettling.

Webber, D., Schimel, J., Faucher, E.H. et al. “Emotion as a necessary component of threat-induced death thought accessibility and defensive compensation.” Motiv Emot 39, 142–155 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9426-1.

What precisely takes place is unclear.

This research reminds me of some research I did in college on the grotesque in literature. There is a theory that we are attracted to disturbing things in art because it allows us to focus our existing anxiety on a point and attribute our anxiety on that artwork (rather than on some other matter which may be disturbing me.

There is an important consideration here for persuasion study. Persuasion functions by creating some sort of dis-ease, some anxiety and a proffered means of resolution. You see the car, you want the car: anxiety. You can buy the car: resolution.

If the creation of anxiety generally has a tendency to increase thoughts of death – and thus thoughts of protection of my worldview – this creates a certain complication. The research showed only a “marginal” decrease in death related thoughts when the anxiety could be attributed to the caffeine drink.

If we seek to create a powerful persuasive movement, we have the potential for creating greater anxiety and thus increased death related thoughts. An increase in death related thoughts comes along with protection of one’s worldview.

Thus, a powerful persuasive move have the wind at its back if the persuasion accords with one’s worldview. But, an attempt to make a strong persuasive move (by generating a great deal of anxiety at first) will have a headwind if that persuasive move is contrary to the worldview.

This does not mean that the issue under persuasive pressure is distinctly a facet of the worldview; only that it can be concordant or discordant with a worldview.

Persuasion and Education

14 Thursday May 2020

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Karen Murphy and Patricia A. Alexander, “Persuasion as a Dynamic, Multidimensional Process: An Investigation of Intraindividual Differences,” American Educational Research Journal41, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 337-63.

In a study published in 2004, Professors Murphy and Alexander considered the relationship between persuasion and education research. As they note, “persuasion is neither inherently good nor evil, but a catalyst for thinking analytically about the messages encountered by individuals.”

The study consisted of 234 college students, primarily undergraduates who were given three articles from the popular press to read. The topics were likely to provoke emotional responses, assisted suicide, AIDS and school integration.

The students were examined for perceived and actual knowledge of these topics, prior to reading the articles. The students were then examined after reading the articles to determine the persuasive effects upon the students. Specifically, the researchers wanted to see how knowledge, interest and belief prior to reading the articles effected their beliefs after reading the articles.

One of the most unusual features of their research was a finding that the students with a high degree of knowledge about the topic and a high (to moderate) interest in the topic “were associated with low beliefs levels at prereading and post-reading.” That is the more they were interested and knowledgeable, the less they had firm positions (I assume that is the meaning of “belief”) on the topics.

Here is an example of something interesting which may not tell us much at all.

Consider:

A person considers life precious in all circumstances. Such a person may have a very strong position on assisted suicide and think it always wrong. Having determined that assisted suicide is wrong, the person then decides not to read many arguments on the subject and has relatively little interest in subject.

Another example, I am firmly convinced that racism is wrong and thus I don’t really intend to spend any time reading arguments in favor of racism. I have little “knowledge”  (in the sense of an extended body of research) and strong belief.

Or consider another person who has thoroughly studied a subject for years: Say a professional medical ethicist. The ethicist has a very high degree of knowledge and a high degree of interest – and likely has rather firm conclusions about the topic.

The subjects of this experiment were undergraduates. They are being introduced to all sorts of new ideas in college. Their high degree of knowledge and interest is likely not all that “high”. They may know more than they did in high school, but it is unlikely they have any profound understanding.

Consider this: the articles they were reading were from the newspapers and popular magazines — not academic journals. That does not make the articles bad, but the articles are certainly not exhaustive explorations of the topics. By nature of the medium, the information is will be limited to a few hundred words.

What the researchers discovered is that making education more interesting made education more effective.

They also discovered that what works for one person may not work for another. As they note, the existing studies on the topic show that “persuasion is a multidimensional process that is influenced by individual and intraindividual differences in learners and how they interact with varied texts.”

Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic 2.2 (Therapy as Re-Education)

12 Tuesday May 2020

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The previous post on Rieff may be found here. 

Therapy as Re-Education

Rieff has a useful understanding of therapy in contrast religion (which in the case of Freud would be Christianity of Judaism) which Rieff refers to as “older moral pedagogies.” (45) The prior moral system required one “concentrating on the life of trying to order the warring parts of the personality into a hierarchy.” (45).

This ordering of one’s competing demands and impulses is done in accord with the requires of a “positive community” which promised “a kind of salvation” for such accord. (43).

Freud and therapy provide a completely different manner of understanding one’s self. Rather looking at the various “impulses” as a matter of good or bad, higher or lower, one should consider demands as “a jostling democracy of contending predispositions”. (46-47)

Freud realized that this new means of understanding the various “impulses” would result in a subversions of the expectations of life. In particular, the position of the “father” would be particularly subverted, because the position of father takes the position of maintaining of “repressive command”. (47).

Now it may be thought that Freud encourages immorality. But the understanding of the impulses as there does not necessarily result in the encouragement of acting on such impulses.  What Freud did do was seek to exhaust a sense of guilt built upon these moralities.

At this point, Reiff makes a rather self-contradicting argument. Freud’s analysis:

Help[s] us distinguish between guilt on one hand and a sense of guilt on the other, between responsibility for an offense committed and fantasies about offenses intended or merely imagined, seems a moral as a well as a therapeutic aim.

This argument seems to be that the older moral orders merely imposed a “fantasy” of moral order in exchange for a promise of salvation as contrasted one making a conscious decision based upon “responsibility.”  Upon what moral basis could one determine concern for “responsibility”?

There is not any rational basis for responsibility. You could say I would like to avoid whatever I might see as a negative consequence (like avoiding imprisonment) was rational – but seeing a connection between the consequence and the result does not determine whether I should not engage in the conduct. The decision to avoid the behavior to avoid the consequence is a moral decision. Granted it is a very limited morality (I want to avoid negative consequence), but it is still a moral decision.

If the negative consequence is less than imprisonment or death, than what do we mean by “responsibility”? Does he that I could care about what my behavior would do to another? That would be a moral decision.

The only sort of amoral decision would be one where I see the consequence and have not concern for the consequence.

Perhaps the concept is that I can decide whether I wish to abide by the moral code I see raised by my “impulse”. But one still must made a decision to be moral; that decision may have a very habitual basis, but it is not a reflex in the sense of blinking an eye.

Indeed the decision to forgo an “older moral paradigm” is itself a moral decision.

Freud may make one explicitly conscious of the moral decision. Freud also grants a certain sort of sanction to forgo moral decisions (this is an evil desire, it is just a desire – evil is what I have been taught to call this desire; but the desire is not in itself evil). All Freud has done lay the basis for a new morality where personal desire is necessarily good.

Thus, therapy is a matter of “re-education” into a new basis for morality.