Tag Archives: Psychology

How to Create a Memory

20 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in Apologetics, John, Psychology, Uncategorized

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Many researchers have created false memories in normal individuals; what is more, many of these subjects are certain that the memories are real. In one well-known study, Loftus and her colleague Jacqueline Pickrell gave subjects written accounts of four events, three of which they had actually experienced. The fourth story was fiction; it centered on the subject being lost in a mall or another public place when he or she was between four and six years old. A relative provided realistic details for the false story, such as a description of the mall at which the subject’s parents shopped. After reading each story, subjects were asked to write down what else they remembered about the incident or to indicate that they did not remember it at all. Remarkably about one third of the subjects reported partially or fully remembering the false event. In two follow-up interviews, 25 percent still claimed that they remembered the untrue story, a figure consistent with the findings of similar studies.

Read the rest

The trouble with eye witness testimony

What then can help guarantee a good memory? Notice that events which are traumatic are questionable. Notice that distant, vague events are questionable. Compare that to events which take place over a period of time, events which are witnessed by multiple persons, events subject to objective independent corroboration. And with the case of the Scripture, Jesus speaks of receiving supernatural assistance of the Spirit. John 14:26

Listening to Ourselves (a comparison of some recent psychology and a Puritan and a 20th Century Preacher)

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Psychology, Richard Sibbes, Uncategorized

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Suicide because we “listen to ourselves”:

the consistent finding of the role of the destructive inner voice in suicide. This voice drives suicidal tendencies, deceptively convincing people that it is better to end their lives than to find an alternate solution to their suffering

This author picks up on that idea and applies to other self-destructive behavior short of suicide:

For many, understanding there is an innate voice that wishes for death and destruction can help to separate, and thereby distance, one from these thoughts. Distance from the thoughts helps one disown them and take away their power. You are not your thoughts. Once these thoughts are recognized, they can be challenged, minimized, and disregarded. Healthier thoughts can be put in their place.

This observation is actually much older than these psychologists realize. First, Richard Sibbes in “The Soul’s Conflict With Itself”, writing of depression, explains:

Whence we may further observe, that we are prone to cast down ourselves, we are accessory to our own trouble, and weave the web of our own sorrow, and hamper ourselves in the cords of our own twining. God neither loves nor wills that we should be too much cast down. We see our Saviour Christ, how careful he was that his disciples should not be troubled, and therefore he labours to prevent that trouble which might arise by his suffering and departure from them, by a heavenly sermon; ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ &c., John 14:1. He was troubled himself that we should not be troubled. The ground, therefore, of our disquiet is chiefly from ourselves, though Satan will have a hand in it. We see many, like sullen birds in a cage, beat themselves to death. This casting down of ourselves is not from humility, but from pride; we must have our will, or God shall not have a good look from us, but as pettish and peevish children, we hang our heads in our bosom, because our wills are crossed.

And as for speaking to ourselves about such things, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, taking his cue from Sibbes, formulates the answer thus:

The main art in the manner of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, you have to preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul, “Why art thou cast down?” — what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God” — instead of muttering in this depressed unhappy way. And you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, “General Consideration”

Carl F. Henry, Secular Man and Ultimate Concern

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Carl F Henry, Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized

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(Chapter 8, God, Revelation and Authority. Btw, these short takes on his essays cannot begin to cover the density and wealth of thought in Henry.  They really must be read, but) Theologian Millard Erickson once said, “I love Carl Henry’s work. It’s extremely important. I hope someday that it is translated into English!”

Secular Man and Ultimate Concerns

There is a Woody Allen joke, “If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit, in my name, at a Swiss bank account.” But what sort of evidence would show that God exists. No matter how power an agent were to display itself, would that ever be proof of God? If something as powerful as the aliens in a thousand movies were to appear about a large city, would that prove God? What if the agent were as dazzling as the sun?

In this essay, Henry argues that the radical secularism – which the is the default “intelligent” position of the age – itself bears witness to God. It is an answer to the question, “If God is real, then why don’t I see Him?” To answer this question, Henry speaks of “cognitive levels of experience”. The reason why God is not obvious is because He is not being sought in the right place and the right way. (This is an interesting sort of presuppositionalist argument.)

Western secularism has made naturalism, a radical empiricism to be the entire basis for rational discourse and understanding. This radical naturalism entails a number of related entailments:

A correlative implication of this theory of the comprehensive contingency, total transiency, and radical relativity of all reality and experience is the absolute autonomy of man. Man alone remains, self-sufficient and autonomous, to rescue the cosmos from absurdity and worthlessness. No divine sovereign places human life under unchanging commands, no divine revelation tells man what is true and trustworthy, no divine book stipulates what is permanently right and wrong. External reality supplies no transcosmic supports for human security. A clean break is required with all transcendent, heteronomous absolutes as alien and arbitrary.

Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 139. The universe – and us – are contingent, transient, relative – and somehow also autonomous. It is an odd sort of agency, because it is grounded in absolutely nothing.

This autonomous agent, contingent and existent only for a whisper of time, seems strangely to be completely unable to believe this true. For instance, if we are truly meaningless, then what is the basis and what is the point seeking for “meaning” and security. Then why do we do what we do? “Modern man actually has a much wider range of experience than the naturalistic credo acknowledges.” (145)

This simply does not work.

And when we move beyond just our desire to be meaningful, we run into other problems.

For example, how do we explain any moral fact? Why is murder wrong? It certainly and without question is evil. But why? Because we don’t like it? There is no naturalistic explanation. But what if someone were to make the adaptive argument: not murdering was necessary for the survival of the species and those camps which held to the no-murder position survived better than others. That merely proves it is more adaptive, but not that it is truly right or wrong. Moral facts are just feelings about things, not truths. If one were merely able to overcome the feeling, there would be no morality at all.

Here is where makes the argument for God. God is “inescapably an aspect of everyday experience” (149). God is there and cannot be gainsaid or avoided. The fact of God is built into our consciousness; a “primordial ontological awareness of God as the ultimate given.”

If this is so, then why do we deny its truth:

The reality of God as depicted in his revelation best explains why secular man refuses to order his life exclusively by the naturalistic world life view, while the fact of sin best explains why he refuses to order his life exclusively by the truth and will of God. (148)

He makes an interesting observation which deserves further consideration. The conflict inherent in humanity as a result of a conflict with a sovereign God creates psychological damage within the human being, which we attempt to manage by various psychological and psychiatric methods. (149)

Our very existence, our concern for meaning and morality, our refusal to take our own and other life as utterly meaningless (which is precisely what secular naturalism teaches), is constant undeniable evidence of God. Sin makes hypocrites of Christians; God makes hypocrites of secularists:

Not only his secret alternatives to meaninglessness, but also his distressing anxieties concerning personal worth, imply presuppositions that touch upon man’s responsible relationship to his Maker. The ongoing revelation of God and remnants of the imago Dei in man supply the continuing conditions of man’s humanity. The ineradicable convictions we harbor about the character of reality and the way we frame the fundamental questions of our lives reflect, however unwittingly, a response to God’s revelational confrontation of his creatures. The universal disclosure of God penetrates deeply into all man’s confidences and doubts. God is the Eternal with whom unrenewed man, in all his experiences, has a vagabond relationship. Evidence of God’s reality and power and truth and goodness is ongoingly refracted into the course of man’s daily life. (151)

In short, the espoused secularity of the modern world cannot account for itself. Even the bare attempt to “explain” the world in terms of secular naturalism is itself a contradiction of that naturalism.

 

You’re not as smart as the Internet makes you think you are

22 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Culture, Persuasion, Psychology, Uncategorized

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Journal of Experimental Psychology
2015, vol. 144, no. 3, 674-687
Matthew Fisher, Mariel K. Goddu, Frank C. Keil
“Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates of Internal Knowledge”

Human beings can create systems for distributing tasks and information. Families and businesses do this sort of thing: work and information is distributed across all the members of the system. This permits the system to do more than any individual could do alone. Or to quote our authors,

By reducing redundancy, transactive memory systems work to encode, store and retrieve information more effectively than could be done by any individual.

Id., at p. 674. Now, our transactive partner in this memory storage and recall process could be a technological: indeed, the Internet has taken over as perhaps the primary source of information storage.

But the Internet goes far beyond what a spouse or business partner can provide in terms of information: it is always there, always ready, always responsive, nearly instantaneous and provides seemingly inexhaustible resources:

The Internet has been described as a “supernormal stimulus” in that its breadth and immediacy far surpass any naturally occurring transactive partner to which our minds have adapted.

Id. at p. 675. Thus, not surprisingly, the Internet has a profound effect upon how we understand our possession of knowledge. But rather than humbling us, the Internet plays to our pride and causes us to over-evaluate our self-understanding:

And in the case of the Internet, an especially immediate and ubiquitous memory partner, there may be especially large knowledge overestimations. As people underestimate how much they are relying on the Internet, success at finding information on the Internet may be conflated with personally mastered information, leading Internet users to erroneously include knowledge stored outside their own heads as their own.

Id. at p. 675.

The authors of the study note that there may be dangers in this freely accessible information. This unnoticed tendency to overestimate our intellectual abilities is coupled to a decreasing ability to retain and access “internal” information.

To draw this point out further, the Internet seems to have the ability to make us increasingly vulnerable to information: (1) we have decreasing ability to critique this information (granted the question of critique was not tested in the study, however, that seems like an inherent trouble with an atrophied cognitive mechanism: one merely “finds” the information, rather than segregates the information; and, the hideous ability to manipulate public opinion almost instantly through the “news” media seems proof of this point); and (2) when we ingest this information we are not realizing that it was sourced outside of ourselves, but rather come to believe that this is our “own” information.

The Universe has a serious psychological disorder

19 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Apologetics, Psychology, Uncategorized

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O18.1Potamos

The authors of an essay in Scientific American have couple constitute panpsychism and Dissociative Identity Disorder as a mechanism for explaining the existence of consciousness in the material universe. A fundamental trouble of the materialist worldview is that there is consciousness and rocks don’t have consciousness — so how things made out of powdered rocks and water (human beings) have consciousness presents problem.

One way to solve that problem is to say the consciousness is just a physical property and so my electrons have a rudimentary consciousness. As the authors explain:

Under this view, called “constitutive panpsychism,” matter already has experience from the get-go, not just when it arranges itself in the form of brains. Even subatomic particles possess some very simple form of consciousness. Our own human consciousness is then (allegedly) constituted by a combination of the subjective inner lives of the countless physical particles that make up our nervous system.

This leads to a problem: how then can human beings experience their own center of consciousness? If there is one great consciousness which underlies the entire universe (it is inherent in everything), then how to we explain our individual identities?

This is where Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) helps: One human being can be the locus of multiple centers of consciousness which is known as DID. The same mechanism which permits one human body to have multiple centers of consciousness is the mechanism which permits individual humans to have their own center of consciousness separate from the universal consciousness in all things.

Essentially, the universe has DID and we are one of those personalities.

It should be noted that this is paganism: where the universe is animate. Indeed if you scratch this hard, you end up with tree spirits and water sprites.

An Essay on Common Grace, Biblical Counseling and Psychology

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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I have attached a rough draft copy of an essay on common grace, biblical counseling and psychology  here. If anyone is interested and willing, I would appreciate the comments, critiques, et cetera.  It is 11,457 words, with 42 footnotes, so it is not a breezy read. In its final version, it will be in the Journal of Biblical Soul Care

Again, this is far from finished: any and everything in it is subject to revision.  It (probably) has typos, incomplete citations, and gaps in the argument. But fortunately I have a couple of months before publication.

A Proposed Mechanism for Relating “Psychology” and “Biblical Counseling”

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Psychology, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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(The following is a draft of a tool for analyzing the common grace elements of psychology. It will be for the second half of an article on the usefulness and limitations of common grace for counseling in a manner which is consistent with the claims of Scripture).

As will be set forth at length below, I propose the following rubric for utilizing the results of “common grace” in social sciences, particularly psychology as an academic discipline; and a means for rejecting certain other ideas as incompatible with a consistently biblical position for soul care. This position is begins with both a scriptural understanding of common grace, and an understanding of the biblical of the nature and end of human beings before God. This position recognizes both the extent to which common grace can provide insight into the natural world; and the fundamental limitations of common grace when it comes to human problems.

A fundamental problem which takes place concerns what is meant by the word “psychology”. The range of meaning assigned to this word has exacerbated the disagreements between Biblical Counselors and those who hold one of the various positions commonly labeled as “integrationist” (and yes, there are a variety of labels which are utilized here; and often there is a rejection of label by Christian counselors, but the word will work well-enough for present uses).

I propose three categories of information which move from information most accessible to common grace to information which cannot be known by common grace.

 

Common Grace Special Revelation
Category One:  Observations The physical environment; including the human body. This includes study of the nervous system, functioning of the senses, et cetera.

Information from this level is often leveraged as an attack upon the Biblical Counseling position as unscientific for “refusing” information learned here.

 

  

 

 

 

 
Common Grace is most effective here.

Common grace does permit one to see the environment, the understanding is limited by the failure to take God’s creation and providence into account. However, due to the ability of unbelievers to ‘borrow’ from Christian presuppositions, reasonably accurate observations.

 

Thus, human physiology can be observed and reported. This area of “psychology” (neuropsychology, the operation of senses, et cetera) can be utilized with the normal sort of skepticism necessary for review of any scientific work

 

 Special Revelation: Informs us of the fundamental nature and existence of the physical environment, but does not provide much detail. We know that it is the creation of God and maintained by providence, but the mechanics of the operation are not treated in detail. This is the place where Special Revelation offers the least information and common grace the most.

 

 

 

 

 
Category two:

Social science observations. With a markedly lesser degree of reliability, social scientists can make observations of patterns in human behavior and internal psychological states. Thus, we can see that people under certain circumstances, and/or with certain physiological conditions, will have a tendency to display certain behaviors and/or expressions.

 

  
Common grace makes it possible to make observations patterns.  However, there are serious limitations on the usefulness of such information.

These observations are fundamentally limited by (1) the inability to observe the internal workings of the human heart (observations of neurology and one’s self reported subjected experience are of some value, but cannot correlate to the depth of the human heart); (2) these observations are fundamentally limited that they cannot include the effects of the Godward relationship of the human being (observations which are commonly accounted as “the psychology of religion” are limited to objective observations and cannot provide information about the working of God); (3) these observations cannot take into account the effects of the “flesh” and the Spirit (this is related but not perfectly coextensive with point (2)).

 

 

 

  

Special revelation is critical at this stage, particularly in any attempt to “make sense” of social science observations. Understanding the deceitfulness of sin, for instance, may help to make an observation understandable.

The biblical counselor can use such observations as data points: for example, a study may suggest a line of inquiry; knowing that there is not a determinative relationship between one environmental circumstance and a future manner of life — even if there is a positive tendency toward a certain outcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Category 3

This category consists of what most people mean when they say “psychology”. Here we find theories which concern the matters are both (1) inaccessible to common grace and (2) are explicitly theological anthropology, teleology and methodology for change (ATM). These are the aspects of human life which are most directly affected by the breach between God and man.

While this category may make reference to elements of category 1 & 2, it goes further and assigns values. This aspect specifically concerns “spiritual” concerns:  matters of sin and sanctification, the action of God (and even evil spirits) upon human beings: these are precisely the matters which the Scripture claims as for its authority.

When biblical counselors reject “psychology”, they are referring primarily to information from this category.

 

  
Common grace is least valuable at this stage. Common grace  was not given to heal this aspect of the Fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Special Revalation is needed for work here

First, this concerns anthropology: What constitutes a human being: this is beyond observations concerning the human body and human behavior. It is consists of the “manishness of man” to use Francis Schaeffer’s phrase. This concerns the human heart: the spiritual aspects of humanity and in particular human interaction with God.

 

Second, this category concerns teleology: what is the purpose of being human. For instance when a psychologist speaks of what is “healthy” for human sexuality, the psychologist is speaking to what is the purpose of a human being. The purpose of a human being cannot be known by observations, since, as Jay Adams notes: we are living in an abnormal environment under abnormal conditions (being on this side of the Fall).

 

Third, this concerns methodology: those things which are necessary to change the direction of the human heart.

 

 

Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life – Screen Memories

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Psychology, Uncategorized

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In this chapter, Freud discusses memories which function in a manner similar to the word substitutions in earlier chapters: one thing stands in for another; one idea is repressed and another fills the space to cover up the repression. He is in particular interested in childhood memories which “frequently seem to be of trivial and unimportant matters”.

Why don’t we remember more of our childhood? When we consider the matter, it seems strange. A child does have a “high intellectual achievements and complex emotions”. The events of earliest years have a profound effect upon the entire rest of our lives; and yet we remember a few, often innocuous, seemingly random events.

Freud proposes that similar to his theory of words there is the “construction of a substitute” through “displacement by way of some superficial association”.  Yet, these differ from word substitutions, because when we get words wrong, we typically realize the error. Moreover, the word substitution does not persist; whereas the “screen memory” is not recognized as false (indeed, it may very well be a real event) and it does not fade like a misspoken word.

Why this is important,

It is perfectly possible that the forgetting of events in childhood can give us the keys to understanding the amnesia of the king which, according to the latest findings, lies at the heart of the construction of all neurotic symptoms.

He gives an example of a young man who had the memory of his aunt teaching him that a M was like an N except for the “extra part” — which of course relates to the boy realizing that boy were like girls except for “an extra part” (this is Freud, after all).

In a line which helps show the line from from Freud to Jung, he writes, “Childhood memories in general thus take on the significance of ‘screen memories’ and in this are remarkably analogous to early racial or national memories as recorded in myths and legends.”

Psychology Links

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Psychology, Uncategorized

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A review of the book, I am Jazz, by a board certified endocrinologist at Public Discourse. It provides a detailed explanation of what must and will take place for a child who “transitions” from their birth sex to the opposite sex as a remedy for their “gender dysphoria” (the current name for the psychological condition), “This is further evidence that Jazz does not in fact have a “girl brain.” He has a boy brain. It is his mind that is giving him the trouble. This is a psychological condition, rather than a biological one.”

A quick review of the literature on the “inference problem” in science, “Over the past few years, many scientific researchers, especially those working in psychology and biomedicine, have become concerned about the reproducibility of results in their field.”

Here is an explanation of how to critique research

The planning which lies behind (many/all?) mass murder attacks, “Extensive planning indicates that rampage attacks serve purposes. These also fall into clear repeated patterns, including vengeance, infamy seeking, and a need for a sense of macho power, often with a background of long-term internal discord and interpersonal defeats.”

Rioting when happy, “Aggressive behavior, property damage, is actually pleasant behavior—it feels good for a lot of people,” Chester told Fortune in an interview.” (People like to sin.)

Does your brain produce new neurons?

The October 2017 updates to the DSM-V 

Curious if you have dementia? Here’s the Mini-Mental State Exam (a common fact in lawsuits involving capacity)

Public displays matter, “The new study shows that individuals who watch events such as a  or State of the Union address have a more favorable impression of a president’s ability to govern than those who do not, even among those who disagree with the president’s policy goals.”

As Wallace Stevens wrote:

Theory

I am what is around me.

Women understand this.
One is not duchess
a hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits:
a black vestibule;
a high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.

Conspiracy theories are just a way to slander and gossip, “The bottom line is that people don’t necessarily believe in the conspiracies they’re peddling – they just want to use them to make a point or promote a way of thinking.”It’s a way of expressing a dislike for something – like a politician or a group of people,” says Klein.”
How to manipulate your brain to hallucinate.
My brain implant made me do it, “Considering the impact brain implants can have on moral and legal notions of responsibility, it’s time to discuss whether and when brain interventions should excuse people.”
Flip Wilson did it better:

 

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Aberrant Behavior, and Moral Culpability

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Psychology, Uncategorized

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da64c41efc52765752ec2cbddc60b359--frontal-lobe-function-nursing-notes

“Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) or frontotemporal degenerations refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears)”

Also known as Pick’s Disease, FTD differs from Alzheimer’s Disease in various areas, but most noticeably in age (FTD comes at a younger age) and FTD does not necessarily involve the memory loss which makes Alzheimer’s so noticeable. For a more detailed look at the distinctive testing on FTD see here.  As a general matter,

The frontal lobes, situated above the eyes and behind the forehead both on the right and left sides of the brain, direct executive functioning. This includes planning and sequencing (thinking through which steps come first, second, third, and so on), prioritizing (doing more Important activities first and less important activities last), multitasking (shifting from one activity to another as needed), and monitoring and correcting errors.

FTD is also correlated to “bad” even criminal behavior:

In addition to the inclusion of social cognition as one of the six domains potentially impaired by an NCD, forensic practitioners will be encouraged to note that legal involvement is specifically mentioned as one of the potential sequelae of frontotemporal NCD (Ref. 5, p 617). Behavioral and personality changes, including criminal acts and violations of social norms, are not uncommon in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). For example, a recent article in The Journal described several examples of aberrant and criminal behavior in a series of subjects who were subsequently found to have FTD. These included repetitive shoplifting despite the ability to pay, attempted child molestation, and hit-and-run. The relatively early age at onset and often, preserved memory and other abilities in FTD can make these types of cases challenging to explain to family members, victims, and courts as being due to organic disease rather than willful bad behavior. The new language concerning this diagnosis may help in explaining FTD and its effects to those involved.

DSM-5 and Neurocognitive Disorders

This leads to the question of the relationship between the brain damage and the behavior. If the brain damage causes the behavior, then why does the behavior differ so radically from person-to-person? The variety of bad acts suggest perhaps a variety of causes. Does the loss of executive function mean that previously existing inclinations are “permitted”? Since each instance of FTD would not be precisely the same, the difference stem from the difference in the area of the brain damaged? Do the people who have such damage act completely without restraint? If someone is shop lifting do they attempt to hide their acts — which would indicate an awareness of the “wrongness” of the activity. Can people who have such a condition rely upon an “external brain”, such as is suggested for people with FASD?

The cases reported seem to indicate a continued moral awareness:

Despite cognitive deficits, he had sufficient cognition to recall and understand his behavior and its wrongfulness. His lack of empathy and disinhibited compulsive tendency appeared to drive his pedophilic behavior. He was started on paroxetine 20 mg, divalproex 500/750 mg, and conjugated estrogens 0.625 mg. With this medical regimen and increased supervision, the patient had significant behavioral improvement. His case was not prosecuted.

And:

On being confronted, he recalled his egregious behaviors in detail, described them as inappropriate, and understood why he got into significant trouble because of them.

When the actor understands that his behavior is wrong, and has brain damage, how do we rightly judge the quality of his moral conduct?