Ambivalence to Addiction by Prof FT

Higher Order Systems versus Lower Order Systems.
Can we train our HIGHER ORDER SYSTEM?
The higher order might need to energise the lower order too.

Imagine the woman who is married to a drunkard. She is forced to have sex with him. She has a higher level intention that overrides the disgist of the lower level.
The wanting goes up and the liking remains much the same.
Sometimes it works the other way around. A happily married couple never get around to sex but enjoy if they ever get around to it. They no longer wat each other but like each other.


Id of Freud is wild and constrained by the super ego. And Skinner discuessed basic reinforcement issues.

Ambivalence

"I had prayed to you for chastity and said "Give me chastity and continence but not yet." For I was afraid that you would answer my prayer at once and cure me too soon of the disease of lust which I wanted satisfied, not quelled."
St Augustine, Confessions Book VIII. 7

Conflict between wanting to stop and be different but then not in a way that others might suggest. I wanted change but on my terms.

Some people talk about acting on instinct and this might suggest that the lower system or the older system within the brain is in charge. So when does it occur that reason and logic, the more evolved part of the brain can override the wild side, the side that wants to be satisified in terms of St Augutus?
What was the point for eample when I'd had enough even though I didn't know what it was that I had had enough of or what I needed to do? When was it that I gave in to AA for instance and let this programme support or develope the supposed missing evolved side of me?

An instincutal murder as opposed to a serial killer which is premeditated urder such as Ted Bundy. Vincent Tabak however, was this premeditated or unplanned as suggested by Prof FT. He murdered a girl in Bristol. He watched violent pronography it was discovered. He saw a smile as a come on sign and followed that up somehow. In her presence perhaps he was replaying the fantasies that seemed to take over. This seems to be the conclusion the police made. Bandura certainly produed evidence that would suggest that behaviours can be learnt or indeed inspired through mimicing others and in fact the censoring of TV programmes for children was based on this evidence. I think this was in the 70's it really started. There is a separate argument perhaps for the removal of choice perhaps weakening the self-censorship that might come through experience. There will be the percentage of people I am supposing that will never develop a self-censorship and perhaps that links in with addiction. Again I am not sure at what point I knew that I couldn't go onin the way I was going. It was destructive and I was so very unhappy. Despite desperately seekig the feel good factor I was simply getting to under normal which was better at least than despair. But it wasn't enough.

MOTIVATION theory

Biopsychosocial -
lures bring us on like magnets to certain behaviours. The fundamental drives being hunger, thirst, lust. Satisfied with food, drink and sex.
Incentives pull on our behaviour. And this seems to be general across all motivations.

The combination of the physical stimulus and the cognitive representation, for example imagination, that can stimulate behaviours or in other words underlie motivation.

I can so identify this with sex addiction. Just yesterday talking about the fantasy of M/s with G was stimulatig. I did not have to have any physical stimulation to feel desire purely based on memories and imagination. I was aroused and wanted G to play along. However, there is another side that is developing withi me. Instead of being animalisitic, instinctive or level 1 of the system, I also recognise how that draw, that lure can be dangerous. I can see how it removes from the two people just as they are. The role play can become the relationship and something is lost. It becomes all about sex. I could feel it happenig in a sense and then where would G and I be in that situation again. I could feel the pull though. And last night I was tempted to take a look at SL. I signed into the website and thank goodness noone was logged on that could have been a further lure. It is there within me. I fell into the cyber sex routine so easily with LW and felt the shame and also he disappointment within me that I had been disloyal to G despite myself. It is a strong and powerful driver of my behaviour counter to my spiritual principles that I value so highly. Gosh!

Skinner developed his box drawing on the natural motivation of hunger. He showed that the rat would "learn" to press a lever to get food. A behaviour that would not necessarily be a natural behaviour
And so incentive motivation theory - based on homeostasis, the tendency of the body to keep the body stable.
Homeostasis however is not the dominant drive, the incentive is shown to be the stronger drive.
Ie when intravenously injected with water this wasn't enough to create the learning in the rat - ie the lever injection pairing.


Some addictions can be mutually supporting because they share a bit of common brain machinery. Sex and drugs, alcohol and gambling for example - basically describing what I see call cluster addictions.


Drugs hijack biologically-adaptive processes.
They cheat the system and use the system - lure with the incentive for their potent consequences.
There is no advantage to survival to using drugs but lure on their changed effect.

Dopamine out of alignment casue catastrophe. It is used only in a small number of areas in the brain.
It is believed to be a part of the seeking out - the incentive activity in the brain.
It seems to make life seem good - excitation of the dopaminergic system.

Incentive salience - dopamine turns life into magnets that draw us in.

Tolman and Bowls Bindra - 3 giants in the research of addiction.

There is  specific brain pathway that seems linked with the magnet behaviour, the lure to the outside world.
Change is key in this area of the brain. Coolidge Effect - wanting uncertainty and change. It excited dopamine. Las Vegas research is full of people with uncertainty, machines maximising on uncertainty.
Dovovyetsy, The Gambler - was suddenly overcome by risk.
Uncertainty drives for more and more of it.

The nearer to the target the more intense the pull of the magnet. Motivational myopia. Strongly motivated means that consequences get ignored i.e. ignore the effect on waistline when wanting to eat
Discounting the future.

Differences in brains shows that stimulated by sex or food and the pathway activity with individuals meant that the researcher could predict their behaviour in connection with food and sex.

Measuring cravings - some people are craving at the image of food for example. Some people are strong cravers and others not. It's triggered by cues.
Common dopaminergic centres - this could spill over into making another incentive attractive. Sex for example is used to sell other things - cars, smoking etc.

Ian Huntley - perhaps it was not planned and happened on impulse. He thought he was on to a good thing but discovered he wasn't and something spilled over into his aggression.


Addiction
Dopamine underlies our wanting of the addiction.

Dopamine medication shows that it spills over into the wanting pathway and [eople develop an addiction.
People like drugs and alcohol and sex etc. Liking is driven by the opioids in the brain.


Rat pups protest when taken away from their mother. Injected with morphoine their distress is greatly reduced. Soothing.

Nicotine is one of the most difficult to give up of the substances.
Thene tere are behavioural addictions - there are natural opioids in the brain. If injecting opioid for example the brain is artificially stimulated then.
Life is not broken down anymore into physical or psychological. Now they are known to be both.

All addictions serve the end to bring up the level of opiods. Short term pleasure for long term pain is the trade off.

Even with all the misery the addict believes that life is better than without despite the long term pain.

If shown the trigger cue there is low level dopiminergic activity. ie show a sex addict pornogrpahy then the craving is triggered. And the drive to get the person and the craving gets stronger when the possibility gets more probable.

There is an example of flight crew who are smokers - one short haul and one long haul team. The short term crew craved the closer they got to Berlin but the other crew didn't start craving strongly until approaching Japan.

Smoking however don't get a high rate as do cocaine addicts for example. It's not a massive noticeable rush.

Want what we like and like what we want.
Liking can come down though. A dissociation can occur as they are two seperate bases.
ONe dopamine and one opioid.

An addict will approach cues.

Control and motivation come together - how to weaken the influence of system one.
Preemptive action - Homer - he knew he'd given in to temptation but he knew that he needed to take preemptive action - ie. could resist the lure.
Food TEMPTATIONS - if you feel you may give in and value your waistline take your own food and don't wait as in the "hot" state you will give in.
Gamblers often put themselves on the banned list as if they get there they will give in to the temptation.
Some are good at restraint some are not.
Wilde - I couldn't help it I could resist everything but temptation.

There are differences in people with regard to temptation. It shows in rats as well.
Some rats will engage more vigorously than others - there is a large amount of incentive salience.
Both incentivised in the same way but some are more intrigued than others.
Thre seems to be a tendency towards the low level control and the high level control but whats the difference.
The ones that are vigorous have a high level of dopamine in the brain - they have certain traits and things become a positive reinforcer in their own right.
Is it the same in humans?

Love Prof FT who is so proud of his photo with Skinner.

Skinner was the father of operant conditioning. Reinforcement - we do them because we get reinforced.
There were two students who challenged this - they talked about the misbehaviour ...
Misbehaviour can be a priming word in cognitive explanations.
They trained animals to work for food. They would pick up a coin and earn food that way.
Thigns went down hill and behaviours degenerated. Aniumals did anything but deposit the coin.
The conditioning gave the token enormous incentive salience.
Dovovetsjy talked about the racing heart as he neared the gambling hall. Fetishes are usually a male phenomenon - and could be linked with similar to high incentive atttributions to the fenmal attire is underdriven by dopamine.

Addiction is a stronger than normal system 1 and weaker system 2.
The prefrontal brain is damaged with certain drugs.

relapse - predictive lures will weaken the resolve to quit.
Vietnam War was an example that only some are actually addictive. The expectation was theat there would be an increase in drug addicts. There wasn't the levels returned to the same as they were.

There is more and more addiction in society - not just substances but behaviours too. It is suggested that there is dislocation driving addiction. People are torn from their social norms.
Opiates reduce distress of separation - a social alienation might underlie addiction.

Is biology the issue or is it sociology? I don't think it can be extricated as a separateness.
Of course it's both. The fact that the environment changes is also linked within internal environmental changes.
Both are crucial to each other.

As a species we are most able to predict the future and yet discount this with addiction.

Why do we vote the way we do?
Is it appearance? - Kennedy was tanned, taller and more attractive
Evidence suggests that its not just issues that people vote on
Dispassionate vision is one level - Passionate vision - people are moved by what is illicit in the person
2 systems? They co-exist and we make up our mind based o appeals to system 1 or system 2?
Bush for example appealed more to system 1 ie he could get on with people.
Those who were attracted to the more cignitive canditate may have been stronger on system 2.

Balance - Obama- appealed to both.
Clinton seemed to appeal to both. He did get out of kilter. But his speeches were genius.
Consumer society produces an excessive level of wants.

System 2 both needs to energise and restrain ie ie the driver and the horse. The driver needs to get the horse going but also slow it down when necessary.
If the horse takes control the drive is being disengaged.
It will operate then at a very low level - prediction and awareness are removed.

Politicians. How well bealanced are system 1 and 2.
Bush appealed to system 1 - TWICE.
What drives the politician. Driven by system 1 and 2 in combination.
There may be a bias towards system 1 - does a psychopath have a higher drive by system 1?
Gore or Kerry work on system 2 and appeal to system 2 people.
Clinton is a textbook case of getting the balance of the two systems.
Highly intellectual but incredibly affable.

Approach and avoidance - the control of active behaviour ie moving towards or avoiding and aversive situation. If the animal avoids a shcok to its foot then that pathway is activated.
There is a pathway that seems to characterise depression. Three is a distinction b etween wanting and liking
Some people just don't want but if can get out of bed do enjoy what they engae with ie the liing is till therre. Some people can not want nor like

Smoking- manage to quits. Some people will stay awayfrom addictions - is system 2 more dominant?
What a dread for the good question. There is no answer to this question.
Yes the system 2 seems to become more active if they manage to quit.
Why do some people get this inspiration to swtich off the habit totally - does chock treatment trick system 2 into activity?
Nicotine only ever takes away the distress of not having it. Possibly.
ALEXANDER SAYS THAT THE DISLOCATION OR DISPOSSESED TURN TO ADDICTION.
Not everyone smolking is dislocated or dispossed but it creates a craving for itself.
It doens't bring any great hedonism expect the alleviation of the craving
Why do some people kick the habit?

Nicotone is only addictive for 3 days - the habitual side is the difficulty afterwards.
Change things and behaviours around the smoking and it starts to break the addiction cues.
A 60 a day smoker was given some support and given some suggestions. There was something about not being told and believed the persona dn followed the suggestions.
Belief is therefore important in people deciding to follow the path of change.

Influence could be key in giving up.











Bliss




 

Freud vs Jung

Mapped out the human psyche for the 20th century
Both friends and rival

Their partnership lasted a short time 1907 - 1913 - bitterly divided.

Jung - paid a visit to Freud in Vienna - talking for 13 hours without interruption "tremendously interesting"
They had been corresponding since 1906. Jung sent a diagnostic assopciation studies - psychoanalysis and association experiments - argue the strength of Freuds views of discipline.
Nearing 50 Freud was established and head of psychoanalytic movement - studies on histeria, interpretation of dreams and psychopathology.
Jung - 30 - Pioneering hospital just outside Zurich - Burgholzli clinic.




Deidre Bear - Jung's biographer.
Father a country parson in Swiss reformed church - limited environment. Coupled with religiong emphasis on spiritism - communicating with the dead. His family known for this - seances.
After educated at Uni of Basle - went to work at Burgholzli - very poor.
Pretended he was utterly engrossed so couldn't go out for the simple reason he had no money nor clothing to go out socialising with the other young men.
Jung worked under the hospital director Eugen Bleuler - lived and worked with the students.
Jung lived with Emma his wife within the clinic.
Jung was interested in the scientifics of humans. He wanted to know what was going on with schizophrencs. These people were not available with private patients. People with this diagnosis were out of the general society.
These hospitals were whole citied or towns - ha everything needed for a whole life. The doctors were like masters of their Universe.
1904 - troubled young Russian woman. Relationship that went far beyond what would be ethically tolerated today.
Puberty started at 13 - fantasises developed of a perverse nature that pursued her obsessively.
She could not sit at a table without thinking about these fantasies. There was some link with her father according to Jung.
Her family brought her to Zurich. She had a history of being analysed. Blueler passed her onto Jung.
Her father beat her when she was a young child. She spoke of feelings of orgasm and induced masturbation. Highly charged sexualised child.
Her mother made certain that any school she went to there was never any teachings about sex. Sabrina was ill-educated sexually which may have led to confusions. Tabelra rasa - she knew nothing
She could not feel her fathers hands without feeling sexual excitement.
She would convulsively laugh or gestures of horror if she was reproached for any reason which would become blatant mastrubation.
She would eat with the doctor and spend time with him. She would act out but was told she needed to behave if she wanted to spend time with Jung.
He spent time sailing on the lake and spending time talking. Her euphermism for sex was poetry . There was no evidence that there were lovers but poems suggest that there might have been something between them.

(Oh I see there is a film to be released in January called a Dangerous Method based on this relationship between Jung and Sabrina Spielrein)

This article was in the Telegraph - Aug2011. It's so interesting finding out all these little sub plots behind the greater stories we hear about generally.

Jung Love: Sabina Spielrein, a forgotten pioneer of psychoanalysis

A new film starring Keira Knightley documents the torrid and ultimately tragic life of Sabina Spielrein, patient, pupil, rumoured lover of Carl Jung, and one of the forgotten pioneers of psychoanalysis.

Sabina Spielrein, a pioneer of psychoanalysis Photo: MIA OVERGAARD

By Nisha Lilia Diu

7:00AM BST 28 Aug 2011

Think of the last time you described someone as having a 'complex’. Or as an 'introvert’. Or as having 'subconsciously’ let something slip. This time last century these words – these concepts – were entirely new.

They’ve become common parlance only thanks to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, champions of what was then the mysterious and fashionable new science of psychoanalysis.

Their game-changing theories and turbulent friendship is the stuff of great drama. But David Cronenberg’s film A Dangerous Method, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival next week, encompasses a third figure: a young woman whom Jung first analysed then became passionately involved with, whom the two men wrote to and about for years, and who inspired some of their most important ideas.

Sabina Spielrein (played by Keira Knightley) was dropped off at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich by her uncle and a medical police officer at 10.30pm on 17 August 1904.

The wealthy Jewish-Russian 18-year-old was in Switzerland for a restorative sojourn that had failed to ease her troubled state of mind. She made a terrible scene – presumably not the first – at the luxury hotel where she was staying and her relatives gave up.

Her hospital records note that the 'patient laughs and cries in a strangely mixed, compulsive manner. Masses of tics; she rotates her head jerkily, sticks out her tongue, twitches her legs… Cannot stand people or noise.’ The notes are written by a newly qualified Dr Jung. He diagnosed her 'hysteric’.

Ambitious and eager to join the race to uncover the mysteries of the mind, Jung decided to try out a new technique on her, one he’d read about in a book by a Viennese neurologist called Sigmund Freud. This was psychoanalysis, later dubbed the 'talking cure’ – the dangerous method of the film’s title.
Jung was particularly keen on the 'word-association experiment’: a series of random words were fired at the patient, who had to respond with the first thing that came to mind. Jung noticed that mentions of the girl’s father provoked 'grimaces and gestures of abhorrence’.
Gradually, an extraordinary family portrait emerged. Spielrein’s mother, Jung discovered, 'has the odd habit of buying everything she sees’. She then 'has to borrow from relatives’ and 'there is constant anxiety that the father might find out about this’.
According to John Kerr, the author of A Most Dangerous Method, on which Cronenberg’s film is based, she also 'competed with her adolescent daughter for the attentions of various men’. Spielrein’s father, meanwhile 'insults and tyrannises’ the family, frequently going 'wild and threatening suicide’. Spielrein is 'always afraid that he will kill himself’.
Moreover, he frequently beat Sabina 'on her bare buttocks’ in a 'special room’ away from the family. Sabina, the eldest of five terrorised children (the youngest died of typhoid aged six), eventually confessed to Jung that she felt sexual excitement when her father beat her.
Kerr reveals that Spielrein’s mother had raised Sabina 'in complete sexual ignorance’, which may explain her confused reaction to these oddly intimate episodes with her father. Either way, she came to conflate suffering – both physical and emotional – with love.
Jung achieved amazing success with Spielrein. Within the year this exceptionally bright girl was living independently in Zurich and studying medicine at the university. Jung later claimed (in a letter to Freud, with whom he’d started corresponding during Spielrein’s treatment) that he maintained contact with her only because he 'feared a relapse’. Whatever the truth, five years of increasingly intense relations followed.
'I love you too much,’ she wrote to him in 1906. A year later Jung rather lewdly told Freud, 'she admits that her greatest wish is to have a child by me. For that purpose I would naturally have to “let the bird out” first.’
It’s clear from Jung’s letters that they were meeting every few days, in her flat 'so you are less inhibited’ or taking boat rides 'so we can be alone’. In 1908, when she went to Russia for the summer, Jung wrote, 'I realise how much more attached I am to you than I ever thought.’
By spring people were whispering about an affair. Spielrein’s mother received an anonymous letter (probably from Jung’s wife), which prompted her to write to Jung asking him not to 'ruin’ the girl he had saved.
His reply is startlingly callous: 'You do understand that a man and a girl cannot possibly continue indefinitely to have friendly dealings with one another without the likelihood that something more may enter the relationship.’
Until then, Jung and Spielrein’s meetings had been social. If she wanted him to remain strictly professional, he suggested, she should resume paying him : 'My fee is 10 francs per consultation.’
The rumour was widespread enough to reach Freud in Vienna. Jung, terrified for his reputation, wrote to him that 'a woman patient’ had 'kicked up a vile scandal’. He went on to say that he offered her friendship only to realise 'she was of course systematically planning my seduction’.
He admitted, however that, 'during the whole business Gross’s notions [he was referring to Otto Gross, an analyst, morphine addict and enthusiastic advocate of free love] flitted about a bit too much in my head.’
Spielrein was furious to be cast in the role of temptress and wrote to Freud to defend herself. He apologised for jumping to conclusions, commenting to Jung that she was 'very bright. There is meaning in everything she says.’ Freud continued to correspond with her for years, even after he and Jung had ceased all contact.
Despite this upset, Spielrein and Jung were back in touch within months – 'We both loved each other fervently again,’ she says in her diary – and remained so for most of the next decade.
It’s amazing to think that until 1977, when the first cache of Spielrein’s papers was discovered in the former Psychological Institute in Geneva (these letters formed the basis of an acclaimed 2003 documentary, My Name Was Sabina Spielrein), Spielrein existed only as four footnotes in the works of Sigmund Freud.
Jung was married with two children, and it is clear that his relationship with Spielrein was inappropriately intimate (whether it was sexual or not is the subject of debate). He was also Freud’s declared 'son and heir’; as the father of psychoanalysis, Freud certainly didn’t want to bring his baby into disrepute. But there was more to it than that.
Jung and Spielrein’s letters discussed theory at length. Just as Jung and Freud became increasingly distrustful of each other and possessive of their ideas, so too did Jung and Spielrein.
When he read her university dissertation on schizophrenia Jung told her, 'I am surprised by the abundance of excellent thoughts, which anticipate various ideas of my own. But it is good that others see things the same way as I do.’
He hung on to her next paper, 'Destruction as a Cause of Coming into Being’ (written immediately after she graduated with top honours), for six months before commenting, 'As I read your paper I find uncanny parallels with my own new work.’ Somewhat improbably he explained, 'I had read your title incorrectly: “distinction” instead of “destruction”.’
Spielrein clearly exploded, for his next letter exclaims, 'You are upsetting yourself unnecessarily again!’ His reassurance that, 'your study is extraordinarily intelligent and contains splendid ideas whose priority I am happy to acknowledge as yours,’ is undercut by his assertion that, 'I express myself so differently from you in my work that no one could imagine you had borrowed from me.’
Jung – and Freud, too – were dismissive of her work even as they appropriated it. Eight years after reading Spielrein’s 'Destruction’ paper, Freud published Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Spielrein’s 'destructive drive’ – which Freud had told Jung 'was not much to my liking’ – forms the basis for his 'death instinct’. (He duly credited her in a footnote.)
Ten years later he remembered his 'defensive attitude when the idea of an instinct of destruction first emerged’, and wondered at 'how long it took before I became receptive to it’.
According to Coline Covington, who found more of Spielrein’s papers in 1995 and eventually published them in her book Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis in 2003, they couldn’t get past the fact that she was a former patient and a woman; they call her 'the little girl’ and 'the little authoress’ in their letters to each other.
But it was also because, as the two men’s relationship soured, each came to resent the other’s influence on Spielrein; they belittled her work as a means of disparaging each other.
When she presented her paper at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1912 – a bold move in view of the city’s rivalry with Jungian Zurich – Freud’s disciples were cool towards her, opining that 'the presentation provides the opportunity for a critique of Jung’.
Freud became sarcastic about her attachment to 'her Germanic hero’, while Jung smarted at her 'Freudian’ notions. She was at once the colleague of both men and neither.
That same year Spielrein suddenly married a Russian doctor, Paul Sheftel, and in 1913 they had a daughter. It seems it was a desperate attempt to forget Jung.
As Covington notes, Jung’s bouts of coldness and passionate despair contained more than an echo of her father’s temperament. Whether the parallels went as far as the film claims – Knightley and Fassbender (as Jung) plunge into a sado-masochistic affair – we simply can’t know.
For years Spielrein moved endlessly, seemingly incapable of settling anywhere or with anyone. She was lauded everywhere she went ( training analysts at the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva, becoming the director of child psychology at the First Moscow University), but she always moved on before she became established.
Meanwhile, says Kerr, 'Jung was busy making her immortal.’ In the years following the First World War, Jung developed a means of categorising the mind. The 'persona’ was the outward personality. The 'anima’ was the soul.
He invested the anima with all sorts of qualities, some exhilarating and some dangerous which, Jung wrote, he’d recognised in 'a woman… a patient, a talented psychopath who had become a living figure in my mind’. Jung’s anima is Sabina Spielrein.
In 1924 she returned to her home town, Rostov-on-Don, where she reunited with her husband and gave birth to a second daughter. Biographical detail from then on is sketchy. What we do know is that on 27 July 1942 Hitler’s troops occupied Rostov-on-Don, herded Spielrein and her daughters through the streets and shot them.

A Dangerous Method goes on general release in February

So she became fixated on Jung as we have already read - she wanted his child. He let her become a student.
(Back to the programme) - Jung used word association to lead to the complexes underneath -
She went to medical school - he would meet with her and have conversations. No direct evidence that they were lovers. Her euphemism for sex was poetry and in her writings she mentions poetry in association with Jung. So it's possible they were lovers.
Sabrina brought Jung and Freud together.
First patient using Freudian methods of free talk - tics and offensive gestures were dissolved, Dreams were analysed and linked with masochist experiences as a child at the hands of her father.
Gradually she was cured.
Jung writes about Sabina to Freud.
Freud - was pleased Sabina was a student and therefore educated aiding research. He wrote
Stories suggest numerous analogies - even infants derive pleasure from their attention of feaces.
Anal auto eroticism - often typical characteristics or traits - often neat, stingy - sublimations of anal eroticism.
Freud guesses Jungs predicament and refers to the pscyhoanalytic cure through love - he urges Jung to dominate his counter-transference.
Ah ha mention of the film A Dangerous Method. The film is from the stage play by Christopher Hamption The Talking Cure. I hope some day I might be able to see that somewhere.
He ventriloquises Freud and his crown prince Jung.
Christopher Hampton says - the relationship as a very emotional relationship. Fredu the father figure.
The talking cure effected a miraculous cure for Sabina so Freud was very impressed with Jung.
He was embattled in Vienna at the time - his ideas being contested. But also Jews were subject to anti-semitism movements.
Freud was prone to enthusiasm by others as a result of this and when his works and ideas were being supporting.
He was conscious not to get involved in the arguement between the two of them. He wanted to stay true to the historical circumstances and not take a position. His lean was towards Freudian interpretation though as was Sabina's.

Freud and Jung travel to America in August 1909 - Freud delivers his lectures at Clark Uni
Things between them not OK
Jung recounts a dream and Freud interprets that Jung wants him dead. Wants to kill off the father.
Freud isn't ready to die. He pretends to faint a second time.
Over the years disagreements escalated between them
- the incest taboo, over sex and over religion.
 Freud knew Jung was religious - where there is a religious transference apostasy will follow (a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principles, party, cause, etc. )
Jung was jealous of his rivals' to Freuds attention
Freud jealous of conceptual unity and his own authority in the field.
Jungs heated outburst of Dec1912
He critiscised his finite analysis of father son relationships - treating his followers like patients.
Freud called for the ending of their relationship as a result of the outburst and malinguering disappointments. He accused him of having difficulties of having a relaitonship with a man.

6Jan1913 - Jung agreed to the split.

1938 Freud cam to London - seriously ill.

Mirror neurons and pain synaesthesia

An axolotl - apparently when given the thyroid hormone it reverts to its land-dwelling ancestor. Amazing! Dr Ramachandran has been studying acromegaly - it seems there has been an excess of growth hormone resulting in people with the disorder reverting to an earlier stage of evolutionary man - square jaws and and ridged eyebrows.


Dr Rama seems to be brilliantly involved in many explorations of syndromes and the physicals of the brain. He is exciting and pioneering in his research. So many questions. No time to research it all. I should be studying - more avoidance!!
Although of course the topics are closely related and relevant.

I wonder if Dr Rama's mirror neurons he mentions, that seem deficient for example in people with autism, are linked at all with the recent investigations into pain synaesthesia. People who feel other people's pain - in extreme, i.e. limping at the sight of someone else twisting their ankle.
JB is certain my seeing of colours is a type of synaesthesia. I have not linked the colours with anything specifically occurring. I will try and note it.

Dr Rama has also observed how time goes faster when people are flirting. The olfactory bulb is smaller in people with autism and also with schizophrenia. Interesting. I wonder if this would link at all with Prof Fallons' psychopath brain. Ah an example of genetics potentially affecting individual behaviour but the influence of the environment triggering or not the disposition. That is a part of one of my essays and we are permitted to use material outside of the course (referenced of course).

Surely autism is a genetically influenced condition that occurs environment or not??


Time Magazine 19April2011
Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time?

The answer to both questions is yes. The study of psychedelics in the '50s and '60s eventually devolved into the drug free-for-all of the '70s. But the new research is careful and promising. Last year two top journals, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published papers showing clear benefits from the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Both were small studies, just 27 subjects total. But the Archives paper--whose lead author, Dr. Carlos Zarate Jr., is chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Unit at NIMH--found "robust and rapid antidepressant effects" that remained for a week after depressed subjects were given ketamine (colloquial name: Special K or usually just k). In the other study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona gave psilocybin (the merrymaking chemical in psychedelic mushrooms) to obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients, most of whom later showed "acute reductions in core OCD symptoms." Now researchers at Harvard are studying how Ecstasy might help alleviate anxiety disorders, and the Beckley Foundation, a British trust, has received approval to begin what will be the first human studies with LSD since the 1970s.

Psychedelics chemically alter the way your brain takes in information and may cause you to lose control of typical thought patterns. The theory motivating the recent research is that if your thoughts are depressed or obsessive, the drugs may reveal a path through them. For Leary and his circle--which influenced millions of Americans to experiment with drugs--psychedelics' seemingly boundless possibilities led to terrible recklessness. There's a jaw-dropping passage in last year's authoritative Leary biography by Robert Greenfield in which Leary and two friends ingest an astonishing 31 psilocybin pills in Leary's kitchen while his 13-year-old daughter has a pajama party upstairs. Stupefied, one of the friends climbs into the girl's bed and has to be pulled from the room.

A half-century later, scientists hope to unstitch psychedelic research from their forebears' excesses. Even as the Clinical Psychiatry paper trumpets psilocybin's potential for "powerful insights," it also urges caution. The paper suggests psilocybin only for severe OCD patients who have failed standard therapies and, as a last resort, may face brain surgery. Similarly, subjects can't take part in the Ecstasy trials unless their illness has continued after ordinary treatment.

Antidrug warriors may argue that the research will lend the drugs an aura of respectability, prompting a new round of recreational use. That's possible, but today we have no priestly Leary figure spewing vertiginous pro-drug proclamations. Instead we have a Leary for a less naive age: Richard Doblin. Also a Harvard guy--his Ph.D. is in public policy--Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986 to help scientists get funding and approval to study the drugs. (Doblin, 53, says he was too shy for the '60s, but he was inspired by the work of psychologist Stanislav Grof, who authored a 1975 book about promising LSD research--research that ended with antidrug crackdowns.) Doblin has painstakingly worked with intensely skeptical federal authorities to win necessary permissions. MAPS helped launch all four of the current Ecstasy studies, a process that took two decades. It's the antithesis of Leary's approach.
All drugs have benefits and risks, but in psychedelics we have been tempted to see only one or the other. Not anymore.

Mmm
He defended the use of the drug LSD for its therapeutic, emotional and spiritual benefits, and even believed it showed incredible potential in the field of psychiatry. Leary also popularized the phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Both proved to be hugely influential on the 1960s counterculture. Largely due to his influence in this field, he was attacked by conservative figures in the United States, and described as "the most dangerous man in America" by President Richard Nixon.
(information taken from Wikipedia)






Discuss the statement that "differences in genes between people can contribute towards differences in their behaviour".
The point I wish to make is that there are currently just a few conditions that occur regardless of the environmental situation. Therefore whilst genes clearly play a major part in creating the predisposition towards an individuals behaviour, genes alone are not the only contribution in the main. However reductionists would argue that humanity is seated in the physical brain which is purely genetic. I can use the diseases that will occur as the evidence for this part of the argument but things like Prof Fallon who so far has not shown signs of murdering anyone (tee hee) is evidence that environment can change the course of the predisposed behaviour - although his family suggest he is emotionally detached. Mmm more evidence in favour of -
The plasticity of the brain might be evidence that changes can occur - the development of stem cells etc, are evidence of something but I am not quite sure how to put this yet.
My real point is that clearly genes are a major contribution but cannot be considered the only cause towards differences.
Oh twin studies have shown twins separated at birth have certain inherited personality types - probability and heritability calculations.  But then there is also the argument that they are often adopted into families with similar backgrounds.
I need to read Chapter 1 Book 1 all over again to draw out relevant points and evidence of my argument.
Well at least  have a bit of a plan. Though I can see how my argument is evolving already.
Like Dr Rama said - have a bit of fun with the science.
Terminology, points to be made, evidence etc will all bolster the marking points.


As for how I am - well it's a little like a car engine nearly firing. I want to be able to return to work next week. Not for the job conditions, the work I love, financially I need to as my income starts to reduce to half as from this week I think. I will have to ask my dad for a loan and am terrified of his judgement. I hate being the failure he sees in me. Contributes to me not accepting myself and I am already in a deep state of that!
I think I am coming more to terms with the fact that the relationship I had is well and truly over. Whilst I had deep feelings for the man himself, I can see the dysfunction in my choice of entering into it after it initially being something that was connected strongly with sexual arousal. This did develop but I think I really want to be loved by a man of my visions. I really think I wanted the man to be that but of course it turned out, evidently, that he is not that man at all.
There is that sense of something being wrong with me if he were then able to go off and develop something as per my imagined love. But the truth is if he does find that contentment either in his own behavioural choices or how I imagine loving can truly be, then I would be truly happy. I would like to find it myself. What I want to learn in the meantime is how to be loving with myself. Then I can be even more certain of what is OK for me.
I do agree with SC that I need to have time to heal the wound tat I have kept re-opening. It just seems so sad that it's at this stage in my life and not earlier. However, that is the path I have travelled - I have had a lot of fun along the way. Truly. Even in the drinking drugging stages, although they brought me to my knees eventually. And at this stage the path took on a different direction. One that if I can stay with it is one of light and spirituality. Like I say it's like an engine firing and nearly catching, sometimes, catching and other times not even sparking.
I feel the catching and then dropping off. This is progress.

I am still convinced that hormones have contributed massively to the mood swings. I noticed this morning that I haven't felt extremely high in the past few days. Also that the darker thinking is on and off during a day. It seems to come on after lunchtime. I wonder if wheat is contributing or maybe sugar. I have read I think in the past research that these can have an influence. I noticed yesterday I had no appetite around lunchtime. I did not feel hungry until the evening.

So anyway, there is a change. Right now I want to get on and study. I am not sure if I will attend Art Natters. I will see how the studying goes.

Bliss
XX

Toe tapping with the Universe

In time and space, Bliss, if you just look for what's right - in others, in relationships, in yourself and your journey - you'll always find it.
Same when looking for what's wrong.
Tallyho,
    The Universe

Well the awareness of rage and anger is trully helping, as in the last two days I seem to have a reprieve from the deadly thinking.
I was aware of sitting and feeling angry at how JP had left without any explanation all those years ago now. And I could observe me in that anger. It has subsided now because of time and actually I think I am left with more loving thoughts. I would prefer an explanation still and I would hope by now that there has been some room for change and at least courteous behaviour. I also observed how vulnerable and unsafe in that vulnerability I felt. I need some time to create my safety but I was also comfortable that me as a person is OK. I think if this had been in a deadly dread moment it could have been very different and turned inwards.
And it seems there is more synchronisation with the Universe. The messages I am receiving are more meanginful for me. That's just the way it goes. I have been very out of synch which has been a difficult time for me. Maybe things are becoming more aligned and I can hear and see more clearly when the deadly dread isn't hanging over me. Perhaps that will lift with the synchronisation too. As I write this it brings to mind how of the Step 10 list I have been in the last year. It didn't need to be that way but I stepped off the path - quite a lot. This brings me into conflict then with the M/s stuff. The  external criticism or an inner discmfort? I am not sure which right now and that is still to be exlored I guess within a very closed and safe environment. I am yet to find the person that I feel I can trust to discuss these things - not in a sexual manner but in a practical and open discussion to explore my sexuality around this. There is a lot to explore in terms of self understanding without needing to be n the middle of it all.

So yes I sat and I listened last evening identifying similarites but also acknowledging differences. When I listened to JP it wasn't so much listening for me within what she was saying but taking inventory of her. I can be gently with yself about this because the hurt in me wants to protect me and keep her away. The loving part of me can reflect on this today. I was scared, you know, that she would be sounding all entirely well and holy somehow. I have heard JP like that when knowing the reality isn't actually how she has told it. But actually I thought she sounded very genuine - not trying to be perfect and acknowledging excitement whilst all the difficult emotions too. Some things sounded as if they continue to be troublesome for her. It was a relief to hear that.
It was also lovely that a couple otheres there were familiar to me and very warm and friendly. I did not feel out on my own and having to be ready for battle.. I could be soft and gentle.
I was able to share how despite difficulties in the relationship I had had last year, there had also been growth - an awareness was brought to me about me which happened to coin cide with matters with my dad taking a change. This, blended with hormonal shifts has brought me to my knees. Excrutiating as it is at times I am keeping afloat. Sometimes it's scant. But it's sufficient to keep at least on ths spot.
Today I can see it because I am not in the thick of the black cloud with it's poison pores choking my veins.

http://podcast.open.ac.uk/oulearn/science/biology/podcast-fsc-dna-rna-protein-formation

I have been sent a great podcast from the OU - it's just made the understanding I have of DNA, transcription and translation so much clearer. Why they didn;t give this to us in the first place instead of the complicated texts - phew thank goodness I was able to persistently ask questions until they thought to send me this. I am grateful for thte forums which give me a degree of anonymity and the space to work somewhat at my speed and level. This type of working is appropriate for me. Whilst I have questions in the classroom assimilating all the information is quite tricky.
Dyslexia? Maybe
Next I need to contact my dyslexic tutor. I do not want him in my home though.

Sure to be more
Bliss
X

Home sweet myth

It's better to know the glory and ecstasy of defeat and victory than live forever in the twilight of never having felt either one ... (Theodore Roosevelt)


The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)


I haven't found the context within which these statements were actually being made. And although I have encountered Csikszentmihalyi during my psychology studies I had forgotten his major theory. I have looked it up again though - flow - positive psychology. Depression or anxiety in his view are states that block flow, which is related to happiness.
Clear goal/s
Concentration and focus on goal/s
Distorted sense of time
Balance between ability and challenge
A sense of personal control
Activity is intrisically rewarding
Lack of awareness of bodily needs (can get quite hungry or tired without realising)
Absorption into activity
Apparently not all are needed to achieve flow .....

   Balance!!!!
Intresting actually as somewhere in here I could fit in Vygotsky's theories of Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding - i.e the value of good teaching to help cross the pain barriers of too much demand and how this works to increase one's potential. BUt there is also value in Piaget's theories, that people need time to develop alone as well. Self satisfaction. But knowing when to reach out for help is vital, otherwise there is surely a possibility of being too self centred or focused and getting stuck. Each persons ZPD is different. And the interesting thing is why? When most brains are the same size, weight and have similar structures. What is it that will make one persons ZPD vaster than anothers? I love these questions and the theories which still are mainly unproven. I would encourage anyone to be able to go outside of themselves and be humble enough to think that the teacher is always someone else. To remain teachable is humble and gives room for ever growing. I pray that I might be able to take this on board.

I am missing being with RF and the family. I do not feel content with the way things are in my life right now.
Things I want to change - the length of my journey to work, the company I work for or at least the conditions under which I work, loneliness, living location. These things all seem wrong for me right now and bring a gloominess over the things that I really enjoy. Oh and being overweight. Now that contributes to a distraction and also I do not want to go out so much. So being overweight actually reinforces my dislike of myself. And then I don't get out and about as much so augmenting the feeling of isolation and loneliness and dissatisfaction. Vicious cycle when all the components are added in.

What I do like and love and am passionate about
- my studies this year
- my friends
- art
- visits to London
- visits with friends
- LouLou
- writing
- exploring
- information at my finger tips
- films that inspire me in some way or other


Anyway back to Csikszentmihalyi. I somewhat agree with him on different levels. There are some challenges that are so engrossing. Finding out new information and researching certainly completely challenge me but also grab my focus. And I get such a sense of achievement and pleasure, especially if there is a way to share the discoveries and develop the ideas. It's the same with sketching. I can be completely engrossed for as long as it takes to complete it. I am not very patient though at times and tell myself "I can't do it" and then of course I can't. It's funny though - some things I truly love I will persevere and other things I will give up so easily on. I do have this perfectionist streak in me which is dibilitating. I continue to learn how to be acceptant without letting that become a de-motivator. There is a fine balance. And keeping half an eye on it is helpful. I can be very lazy too. An image of sloth comes to mind and how inattractive that is - then I lose self esteem again. Back onto the vicious cycle. My mum used to say I was a 5 minute wander. By that I always took it as a negative view from her. But actually I can look at this differently and see how I can be interested and inspired by so many things. There is a diverse world and I am curious about so much of it. The more I know the ore I realise I don't know and so the more there is to discover and participate and explore. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Csikszentmihalyi once said "Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."  

Ah that terrible phenomena of fear. Fear has it's uses. It's a human emotion and very useful in the right place and time or situation. The difficulty is that the way fear is interpreted through generations can misappropriate fear onto things just beyond our feeling of control.  And yes then it can keep the world and life ecperiences very small. I have bee fortunate to have had a sort of blind courage for many years and therefore have had a wealth of experiences. I do think I took courage using tools that gradually became unhealthy. However, they served a purpose and usefully I think until there were unhealthy consequences. So having removed them to the best of my ability, I now need to rediscover faith and courage more fully. And then I am at at my most most content - experiencing and change and adventure. Now thought I have a growing awareness of feelings. And trying to accommodate the range of feelings whilst embracing courage and faith - well it's a new turn in life. I am more conscious and so the experiences are more emotive? Maybe. Or maybe something else is occurring. Difficult to really know. I do not like a small world though.
I like of course the reference to the bounds of reason - decency, morals, spiritual practices. Now when I write that I wonder if people think spiritual practices simply refer to meditation or routine and structure, or prayer etc. When I write it I do mean principles. Step Three always reminds me that I seek to do things the way God would wish of me and God is within me. When I feel most at one with myself and God is when I behave in line with my principles.
I was thinking about the stealing of stuff off the Internet - films and music. It satisfies my want for things but it sits uncomfortably on my conscience. It is so important to be aware of conscience. BUT I think conscience can create fear as well. I can think too deeply about the impact or effect on others or the world and it will stop me from doing things that are not against my principles. Amazing how it has all become muddled up over the years. And the starting point is the beliefs, principles, etc that were taught in the first years of my life - parents, schools, peers. A big influence that gets stuck there right or wrong. For some they can go off on their journey and change these early lessons for others the lessons are stuck hard and fast and actually influence the choices instead of the influences of life being able to challenge the "rules".
Interesting thoughts - would be interesting to have a discussion about these things. And to remain open to others experiences and musings - stay open to this theory not being finite. But one aspect of being human that is so multi-layered and multi-sided, that there is room for everything and anything. And it is OK. Of course some people are more compatible with other and some people are not.
Brings me back to wanting to be able to share my time with compatible people but to continue to encounter other aspects and perspectives to keep the growth and diversity. I hope to develop this openness.
Openness as opposed to transparency which I also hope to continue to develop.

Right off to study now
Bliss
XX

p.s. with this in mind - sorry to harp on about him, I have learnt from JH and all of the experiences together. And on days when I am not self-obsessed, I can see all positivity from everything and not be blaming at all.
Right now I am unable to put this into words. It will come.

THE END!

Yup - it's all but written!! Well I will go out with RF and see the horses and come back to read the draft, repair any damage and terrible hiccups to it and then send it off. I think it's drivel personally but perhaps the main points are there. I don;t know. I will send it to JB my proof reader and see what he thinks. He is great at telling me what doesn't make any sense to him even when he knows he knows nothing about the subject in any great detail. He will be able to decipher my grammar mistakes and also discern whether he has been able to understand the points being made. He's great even though not at all interested.

And then this evening I will send it off. And then start counting the flipping vesicles int he neurons. That looks a task and a half. Then tomorrow I can start the reading I am now slightly behind on.
Horrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy for getting the essay nearly completed.
Home stretch now - yip yip!!

Bliss
XX

The mystical alchemy of the Blog

Aaaaargh - I am trying to write an essay - it's only 800 words. BUT it is about how the human brain is considered to have a reptilian brain at it's core - the brainstem and we are to write about the accuracy of this thought. I need to describe the parts of the brainstem in humans and the functions and consider the same in the alligator and whether similar functions can be considered. Actually overall, already I would say that this is a valid statement but that the human brainstem has further developed with functions that seem to project to memory and emotional connections with functions whereas the reptiles or alligators are very much more instinctual and emotionless. The functions of the alligator seem much more motor than will, for instance they do not choose their pray, they will attack anything that moves. But similar functions seem to be at a lower level such as the links with the autonomic system ANS - breathing, sleep regulation, blood circulation. And  the link with the parasympathetic system which is involved in regulating homeostasis or returning the body to a resting state which is the opposing action of of the sympathetic system, which stimulates reactions for example the increase in heart rate , and helps respond to sudden emergencies.

So this Blog was always intended as a sort of sinking into thinking space away from the task itself or indeed to just brandish ideas or brainstorm them. And a way of keeping sat at the laptop rather than wandering into the land of distraction. Furthermore keeping away from the destruction of FOOD. Everyone I know talks about the amount of food they partake of when studying. It certainly raises its ugly head when I am confounded and bereft of original thought or quite simply stuck for knowing what to say!!
And today is the first day of being more healthy around food and exercise.
In my sorrow I have turned further towards food as a comforter than ever before. And it is such an uncomfortable result. More self-hatred when I already feel that I am not good enough. I know this not to be true in an intellectual way. But recent events with JH have added fuel to my more emotionally responsive thoughts around this. There is  similarity of wanting to be approved of or valued as there was with my dad. JH said he loved me but his propensity towards untruths give a different message. This is not "blaming". This is perception of behaviours. I think he truly wanted to love me, and truly loves. But he seems not satisfied with just me or even one other. Now that maybe his own insecurities, I will never really know, but how it translates to me is that I am not enough and therefore always disposable when someone else would come along that offers something I am lacking in. And of course I am lacking but I also know I am good enough just as me. Perhaps it merely was that we were too different - but again how that translates to me is that I am worthless. I just want to be loved for being me. I loved myself enough though not to tolerate his indiscretion and dishonesty. What it leaves me with though is missing him so so so much - the things that I loved about him are no longer accessible either. Well for now. Maybe some time in the future we can be friends??


Blah blah blah. No more thinking about this for now. I need to return to my essay.
At least I know the angle I am coming from for that.
Yes there is an accuracy in the human brain having a reptilian core but there are differences in the human brainstem. I need to identify the similarities and evidence the differences.

Bliss
XX


It's 13:30 - stopping for a lunch break and some time with RF if she is back fromt he stables. I have 643 words to write about the parts and functions of the human brainstem and the same for the reptile and in those words point out the similarities and differences. Not many words to do that.
Basically, there are similarities in the basic functioning but the reptile has not got the parts that seem to link with the conscious awareness and memory and decision making or emotional parts that would probably contribute to making decisions. So they are far more instinctiaul. They are of course functiojing according to external stimuli - the optic tecta feature in both human and reptile brainstems and in the humans these are also concerned with tactile senses. and as apparently the reptile is sensitive to changes through skin receptors, it is not surprising that this part of the brainstem is common. BUt there is not the equivalent of the inferior colliculum, which is concerned with relaying information to the cortexes where there appears to be links with consciousness and will inform decisions etc.

Blah blah blah - how on earth am i going to write this with evidence. Blimey this is difficult
Frazzeld
Time for a break!