New Stuff: Böse: Die Psychologie unserer Abgründe

New Stuff: Mindhunter

First Lines: Margaret Mead - Coming of Age in Samoa

During the last hundred years parents and teachers have ceased to take childhood and adolescnce for granted.

First Lines: Joseph Campbell - The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Whether we listen with aloof amusement to the dreamlike mumbo jumbo of some red-eyed witch doctor of the doctor, or read with cultivated rapture thin translations from the sonnets of the mystic Lao-tse; now and again crack the hard nutshell of an argument of Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning of a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale: it will always be the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find, together with a challengingly persistent suggestion of more remaining to be experienced than will ever be known or told.

R.I.P. Oliver Sacks

Eulogy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/31/science/oliver-sacks-dies-at-82-neurologist-and-author-explored-the-brains-quirks.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

New Stuff: Klaus Theweleit

A new Klaus Theweleit book on the recent history and psychology of young male murderers.

From my vaults: Jean-Martin Charcot

Bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Charcot

From my vaults: Dr. Joyce Brothers

Bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Brothers

First Lines: Stanley Milgram - Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

Obedience is as basic an lement in the structure of social life as one can point to.

First Lines: Sigmund Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurment - that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.

First Lines: Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams

In the following pages I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state.

New stuff

Vignettes #18

Before I decided to study philosophy and German language and literature I did think of taking up psychology. However, the specific branch of psychology at our university in Regensburg was fully orientated on statistical research. My belief still is that the human psyche is a bit more complicated than simple numerations can describe.

Nevertheless I did have to deal with one specific psychology professor, since he and I attended several interdisciplinary seminars together. These are classes with a variety of faculties dealing with a certain topic and dealt with from each point of view and sharing the results. From every faculty at least one professor would attend plus students from that particular branch.

One such seminar was about censorship, and the psychologists were to illustrate the effects of pornography on its recipients. The professor let one of his female assistants do the report on about 25-30 major experiments and their results on the topic. Some were just questionnaires, others were real physical tests like placing sensors on a test person's penis while he watched a porn movie. Describing that last experiment he went over to his assistant, placed his hands on her shoulders and remarked that the test persons gladly had those sensors applied by his wonderful assistant. She went all red in an instant.

In about 2 hours we heard about all the results, one experiment contradicting the other or producing plainly different possibilities for interpretation. After ending the report there was a discussion, and very soon one law professor angrily remarked what use all that experimentation had, if you can't really pin it down to any singular result.

The psychology professor objected, and the law professor - a bit surprised - replied: "Now what supposedly has been proven?" And the psychologist said triumphantly: "Without the slightest doubt the experiments have proven that porn creates arousal!"

The expression on his face revealed that he genuinely did not know why everyone was laughing.