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Permalink Reply by Bart on October 21, 2012 at 6:17am

every tale begins with "once upon a time..."

or, since you like psychology, how about a little introduction of Freud and some of his most important theories and how they are relevant/unrelevant today?

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Mckiddy on October 21, 2012 at 6:28am

That's an awesome idea. I've actually got quite a few books on Freud and his work around the house. I personally don't think he's irrelevant, it's just that as psychology has evolved people have built on his techniques and discarded things that were dis proven  But I'll try to save my explanations for the discussion.

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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on October 21, 2012 at 4:09pm

1. I think the evolution of the field of psychology itself would be a cool subject to write about. Personally I'd be especially interested in its pre-Freud origins. 

2. Since Kokomo and some other members often refer to the meds that they have been prescribed, psychology's associations with pharmacology would also be a very interesting subject. Freud, for example, thought that cocaine was a beneficial drug.  hehe  And then of course there are the experiments that have been done with the use of psychedelics over the years; and the current, pandemic use of Ritalin and antidepressants, which I know from personal experience is a hit & miss game with people, and that they usually have to "try out" several different drugs on somebody before they eventually "find" one that actually works for them.

I went to a psychiatrist once for major depression and he did that with me. Tried out 4 different antidepressants on me; and none of them helped me, at all. One of them actually induced a type of social phobia in me and made me afraid of going out of my house.  lol  Some of his other patients called him, "the pill guy",.. and when I mentioned it to him, he said, "Yeah. That's me. That's what I do."  And that really is all he did, too. He never counseled me about anything. I went to see another psychologist for that. He would just ask me if the drugs he had prescribed were working; and when I told him they weren't, he would give me some possible explanation as for why they were ineffective and say, "Ok, let's try another one."  *facepalm*

3. Regarding certain aspects, or subsets of psychological study... the areas that I have personally always been the most fascinated with involve group dynamics.  Things like Herd Mentality; Mob Mentality; Groupthink; and Crowd Manipulation.

An Example Ref. - The Asch Experiments

{Can't wait to see what you decide to write about.  Welcome back, Jon!}

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Permalink Reply by steven.a.a.bauer on October 22, 2012 at 6:01am

I think #3 from Shiz would be really good.  Right now, we have a gigantic herd of sheeple....and I personally don't like how long it takes to change people one person at a time...even though that is the best and only long term solution and what I think our ultimate goal should be.  But for the short term, that may not be good enough to prevent a societal collapse (starting to sound like a doomsday person now lol).

My question is: Can we justify large scale manipulation if it is actually in everyone's benefit?  My own answer is yes (with 1 condition...I have not yet found any other conditions I think should be allowed).  We justify this manipulation all the time with children (and sometimes call it education).  They have not had the same experiences in life that adults have...and that's presumably why adults feel justified in doing things for the children that they yet cannot.  I can only justify "being the shepherd" in times of peril so long as we teach them how to think for themselves and why they should think for themselves.  I guess I would call this being a leader (someone who makes decisions on behalf of the group).  The reason we're in deep trouble now is that our leaders are not experienced on the subjects we need them to know...just because they may have good intentions(or not...) does not mean that they know best.  Solving society's problems should be "open source" so that we allow for the greatest number of people and experience to fix things.
Something else I would throw out there is that everything we say or do is a manipulation of some kind.  Everything affects everything else and so rather than trying to avoid manipulation on any scale, I think we need to understand the ways in which it is beneficial (benefitting others is the best way to benefit ourselves...and benefitting ourselves is the only goal I think any of us truly have).

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Mckiddy on October 23, 2012 at 4:01am

Sorry for the late replies. You guys have given me a lot to work with. Heh, this is going to take me at least a month to research and write up on. 

Not to be rude to bart but I think I'm going to start with Shiz's number 3 ideal, It's an area that has a lot more areas of benefit for the everyday person. The ideal does occour to make a compendium of weird ways your primitive brain tricks itself into doing things you wouldn't rationally do.

But one thing at a time.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Watt on November 26, 2012 at 5:16am

You could have a read on positive disintegration. It's not exactly mainstream psychology but I find it incredibly interesting. Basically, It's a theory of character development. It states that anxiety, social awkwardness and generally being uncomfortable are all factors that allow one to develop character.

Self awareness is another field of psychology that isn't talked about often enough, When someone has a good grasp on self-awareness as a concept they can see that there's no difference between living in the moment and feeling self-conscious.

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