Why Psychology is suddenly becoming useful as well as interesting

This video will probably prove to be the most interesting thing to happen to me this week.

Last time I applied for grad schools I wondered if I was really that interested in psychology. (I didn't get in by the way.) This time around I can hardly stand the thought of having to wait another year to start, and not just because the job market walked from Wall Street to the East River* and jumped in last year.

It's 23 minutes long, but if you watch the first minute, you won't mind.

*a surprisingly short walk, it turns out. Only about a half mile according to google maps.

A Journey (Part 7)

7. I conformed.

This might be the most individual thing of all about my experience with therapy. My therapist once hypnotized me. He said that he was doing this in order to turn off all of my thoughts except for the portion of my brain that was causing my depression. His plan was to then talk to just that part of the brain (not the rest of it), and ask it what it wanted in order to quit making me miserable.

Besides the numerous assumptions that one must make to think this treatment would work, it all sounded weird to me, but I was intrigued, and not about to turn down some kind of radical treatment. Plus it kind of played into my appreciation for science fiction.

He put me into a trance and eventually addressed this one little part of my brain. He asked it to manifest itself so that he would know if it was listening. While I was wondering what he meant by “manifest” itself, I suddenly felt my fingers start twitching uncontrollably as though they’d been electrified. It was frightening, and I panicked, and felt myself breathing quickly and my eyes opening until he reassured me. “It’s okay”, he said. “Relax. This is what we want.”

Then he asked this little part of my brain what was wrong in my life to cause the suffering. There was no answer. Eventually the therapist brought me out of the trance and asked me if I had learned anything. Particularly he wanted to know if I had had any thoughts come to my mind when he asked his question.

I had. Just one thought. I had thought “to be normal”. The therapist seemed disappointed, and I realized he had understood this answer differently than I had. He thought “normal” meant “not depressed”, but I actually meant “normal”.

You see, in high school and now into college, I had been a bit of a non-conformist (don’t we all like to think so?). I wore weird clothes (not clothes my parents thought were weird, but clothes that have never really been in style). Example: purple corduroys with a black and white flowered Hawaiian shirt. A brown wool driving cap. A maroon double-knit polyester shirt. And I never wore jeans. Ever. Because everyone else wore jeans. Crap like that. People seemed to respect my individuality so I kept it up. I tried to do everything in a way that was unique, no matter how time honored and obviously sensible the conventional way was.

But I guess I got tired of it long before anyone else. It had become a compulsion rather than an exercise in creativity. And I guess some part of me was sick of it.
People tell me I haven’t changed a lot, but I think I have. I wear jeans all the time now. I try to dress nice and look good. I try to not stand out too much. The nice thing is, I still kind of do stand out once in a while, but it is not an obsession any more.

I don’t know how large a role this played in helping me manage my depression, but it taught me several important things. First, that there are processes going on in my mind that, while difficult to discover sometimes, are valuable to explore through meditation and talking to others. Second, that its ok to be mediocre. Actually, I believe “ok” is the definition of “mediocre”. And being mediocre is certainly preferable to being sad.

Since then I have been hypnotized several more times, and have actually gotten better at staying in a trance (it does take some practice). It has given me more respect and awe for the human mind and I think it has been therapeutic even when it wasn’t intended to be.

You're not Getting Fatter

I was always taught in Sunday School that feeling the Spirit of God is like a "burning in the bosom" or, less frequently, a "swelling". Bosom is a funny word for at least two reasons, and one of those is the way that it's spelled.

Anyway, here is how Alma explained it:

behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul;
Alma 32:28



Well, the wikipedia entry for "Positive Psychology" has something similar to say:

Elevation

After several years of researching disgust, University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt and others studied its opposite, and the term "elevation" was coined. Elevation is a moral emotion and is pleasant. It involves a desire to act morally and do "good"; as an emotion it has a basis in biology, and can sometimes be characterized by a feeling of expansion in the chest or a tingling feeling on the skin.

Despite a regular barrage of compelling scientific evidence that refutes things like the Book of Genesis, as a Mormon, I am taught to expect science to eventually come into further and further harmony with the scriptures and the things the Church teaches. So why is it so unsettling (although thrilling) when this actually happens?