Halting Schizophrenia Before It Starts (NPR Morning Edition)

This is an interesting and hopeful story that aired on NPR's Morning Edition on Monday. If we can learn how to head off the dreadful decline into schizophrenia when the very first indicators show up (the prodromal stage), while there is still insight, we might be able to prevent the suffering that comes with this diagnosis.

Halting Schizophrenia Before It Starts

by Amy Standen
October 20, 2014

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Morning Edition

8 min 45 sec

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• Transcript

Meghan, 23, began experiencing hallucinations at 19. "Driving home, cars' headlights turned into eyes. The grills on the cars turned into mouths and none of them looked happy. It would scare the crap out of me," Meghan says.

Marvi Lacar for NPR

The important thing is that Meghan knew something was wrong.

When I met her, she was 23, a smart, wry young woman living with her mother and stepdad in Simi Valley, about an hour north of Los Angeles.

Meghan had just started a training program to become a respiratory therapist. Concerned about future job prospects, she asked NPR not to use her full name.

Five years ago, Meghan's prospects weren't nearly so bright. At 19, she had been severely depressed, on and off, for years. During the bad times, she'd hide out in her room making thin, neat cuts with a razor on her upper arm.

Meghan had been depressed off and on for years, but the hallucinations signaled a subtle shift in her symptoms. Marvi Lacar for NPR

"I didn't do much of anything," Meghan recalls. "It required too much brain power."

"Her depression just sucked the life out of you," Kathy, Meghan's mother, recalls. "I had no idea what to do or where to go with it."

One night in 2010, Meghan's mental state took an ominous turn. Driving home from her job at McDonald's, she found herself fascinated by the headlights of an oncoming car.

"I had the weird thought of, you know, I've never noticed this, but their headlights really look like eyes."

To Meghan, the car seemed malicious. It wanted to hurt her.

Kathy tried to reason with her.

"Honey, you know it's a car, right? You know those are headlights," she recalls pressing her daughter. "You understand that this makes no sense, right?"

"I know," Meghan answered. "But this is what I see, and it's scaring me."

In other words, Meghan had insight, defined in psychiatry as the ability to understand that one's unusual experiences are attributable to a mental illness.

What Meghan saw did not fit with what she believed. She knew she was hallucinating.

Meghan keeps a photo of her cat, Boo, on the wall in her bedroom. "She would stay in her room and keep to herself," Kathy, Meghan's mother, says. "Sometimes that was a good thing because her depression just sucked the life out of you." Marvi Lacar for NPR

It's the loss of insight that signals a psychotic break. This can lead to several different diagnoses, but in people ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia, the break signals the formal onset of the disease. Typically, a first psychotic break occurs in a person's late teens or early 20s. In men, the range is 15 to 24; in women, 25 to 34.

That first psychotic break can lead to a series of disasters: social isolation, hospitalization, medications with sometimes disabling side effects, and future psychotic episodes.

So, what if you could intervene earlier, before any of that? Could you stop the process from snowballing?

At 19, Meghan hadn't had a psychotic break. She still had insight. That made her eligible for a new type of program taking shape in California that aims to prevent schizophrenia before it officially begins.

The program draws on research suggesting that schizophrenia unfolds much more slowly than might be obvious, even to families.

"You start to see a decline in their functioning," says Dr. Daniel Mathalon, who studies brain development in the early stages of psychosis at the University of California, San Francisco.

"They were doing better in school, now they're doing worse," he says. "Maybe they had friends but they're starting to be more isolated."

Eventually, these subtle behavioral shifts may take on a surreal quality. A young person may hear faint whispers or hissing, or see flashes of light or shadows on the periphery.

"They lack delusional conviction," explains Mathalon. "They're experiencing these things; maybe they're suspicious. But they're not sure."

"I valued my ability to think and learn," Meghan says. "To know that the one thing I valued so highly was dissolving away, that I was losing chunks of my sanity with every hallucination. ... That was more terrifying than the monsters that I saw could ever be." Marvi Lacar for NPR

Psychiatrists have a word for this early stage: prodromal.

Meghan took a screening test developed at Yale University Medical School that identified her as possibly within the prodromal stage of psychosis. That is, her symptoms could be indicative of early psychosis, but weren't predictive.

She was referred to a clinic in an office park about an hour from her house called Ventura Early Intervention Prevention Services, or VIPS, operated by Alameda-based Telecare Corp.

VIPS is one of a handful of programs that have sprung up in California in recent years, based on a model developed in Maine by psychiatrist Dr. Bill McFarlane.

McFarlane believes that psychosis can be prevented with a range of surprisingly low-tech interventions, almost all of which are designed to reduce stress in the family of the young person who is starting to show symptoms.

McFarlane cites research done at UCLA suggesting that certain kinds of family dynamics — families that don't communicate well, or are overly critical — can make things worse for a young person at risk of schizophrenia.

Meghan's family credits the VIPS program for her transformation. "She's not the broken little girl that she was three years ago," Meghan's stepfather, Charlie, says. Marvi Lacar for NPR

"Our theory," says McFarlane, "was that if you could identify these young people early enough, you could alter some of those family patterns. Then you could work with the family to start behaving not just normally, but in a way that was smarter."

McFarlane's programs bring families in for twice-monthly multifamily group therapy sessions, where participants take a nuts-and-bolts approach to resolving disputes at home and softening their responses to what the young person is going through.

"We assume parents can't figure this out alone," says McFarlane.

In some cases, participants are also prescribed antipsychotic drugs, especially one called Abilify, which McFarlane and others believe can stem hallucinations.

McFarlane himself is careful about recommending antipsychotic medications.

The drugs, he says, should be used cautiously, at lower doses than would be prescribed for full psychosis, and even then only in young people who aren't responding to other treatments.

But in programs inspired by his model, the drugs appear to be widely prescribed, including in clients as young as 10 or 13. This fact has become a flashpoint in the conversation around schizophrenia prevention.

"No one is harder to diagnose than a child or a teenager," says Dr. Allen Frances, a former chair of the psychiatry department at Duke University and chair of the task force that produced the fourth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-IV, the standard reference for psychiatric diagnoses.

"There are rapid developmental changes from visit to visit," he says. "The tendency to overdiagnose is particularly problematic in teenagers."

Frances points to studies showing that if you take three kids, all experiencing those surreal early symptoms, only one will get schizophrenia.

So what about the other two?

Frances says these kids are wrongly labeled and stigmatized. Their parents are terrified. And in many cases, they will be prescribed antipsychotic drugs, which can have serious side effects and haven't been studied well in children.

"We have to be careful of any new fad in psychiatry," says Frances. "The field has been filled with fads in the past, and often we learn in retrospect that they've done much more harm than good."

But what Frances calls a fad is to others a model for mental health care.

To see these programs in action, the best place to go is California, where over the past few years a handful of programs have sprung up based on McFarlane's PIER model.

One, in San Diego, is called Kickstart. Like the others, it's paid for by a state tax on millionaires, passed by voters in 2004, that funds mental health. Services — everything from homework help to family therapy and outings such as kite-flying expeditions — are offered for free.

Joseph Edwards, Kickstart's assistant program director, says for teenagers who might be developing schizophrenia, just being outside, with friends, is a kind of therapy.

"They'll want to isolate," says Edwards. "There's sensitivity to a lot of stimulation. And a lot times we'll see what we call day/night reversal, where they'll stay up all night and go to sleep in the daytime."

Edwards says if a teenager is really isolating, a Kickstart worker will drive to his or her house and cajole the person out. Anything, he says, to keep them engaged, with friends in school or at work.

Tony, 13, spends an afternoon at an arcade with Ashley Wood, his occupational therapist in the Kickstart program in San Diego. Marvi Lacar for NPR

At an arcade in a strip mall, we meet Ashley Wood, one of Kickstart's occupational therapists. Wood brought her client, 13-year-old Tony, here as a reward for being cooperative in therapy.

We aren't using Tony's full name because he's a minor, at the request of his parents.

Wood has an easy laugh and teases Tony gently to pull him out of his shell.

"When we first met, he was so quiet," she says, laughing. "He's like, 'Who is this chick?' "

"Nah," says Tony, smiling shyly. "I was being a jerk."

Tony had been getting in fights. He was angry at his mom, angry in school. And there was something else.

"I used to see stuff and hear [stuff]," he tells me.

"Like what?" I ask him. "Like ... weird objects," he responds. When I press him for more details, he shakes his head.

Are Tony's symptoms the beginning of schizophrenia? Or just the routine weirdness of a teenage brain taking shape?

No one — not Wood, not his therapists — can say for sure.

Wood says what she's teaching him will be helpful either way: "When he's frustrated at school or at home, instead of immediately responding, kind of finding a way to communicate. So we're trying to work on the impulse control as well."

Impulsive, unruly, prone to angry outbursts, Tony sounds like a lot of 13-year-old kids.

That's one reason that last year, the American Psychiatric Association opted to exclude the idea of "psychosis risk syndrome" from the DSM-5, the latest version of the manual of mental disorders. The screening test is generally considered to be only 30 percent accurate.

In 2011, a review of prodrome intervention programs called the idea of intervention in pre-schizophrenia "inconclusive."

"This is an experiment far before its time," says Allen Frances.

McFarlane believes the benefits of these programs are borne out in the work done at his clinic and others based on his model. In July, he published the results of a two-year study of two groups of young people at risk for, or in the early stage of, schizophrenia, which showed better functional outcomes for those who went through treatment.

He and other proponents say schizophrenia's early window may be too precious to miss.

"We're running up against the limits of what we can do for patients who develop schizophrenia, once it goes to chronic stages," UCSF's Mathalon says. "I think this is a direction we have to go in, but we have to do it carefully."

When you talk to people who have been through these programs and ask them what helped them, it is not the drugs, not the diagnosis. It's the lasting, one-on-one relationships with adults who listen, like Ashley Wood.

Tiffany Martinez, an early client of Bill McFarlane's in Maine, chokes up when asked to describe what she thinks helped her climb out of an incipient mental health crisis that began when she was in college.

"To share such personal intimate details, you know? To have these people working so hard on it and so devoted and invested in the work," Martinez, now age 26, says, "it's like getting a chance. Just the program, what the program stands for alone, is hope."

That same relief is palpable when you talk to Meghan's mom, Kathy, and stepfather, Charlie.

"I thought we were going to have to take care of her for the rest of her life," says Kathy. "I thought she'd forever be marginal, forever be medicated. I thought we'd just have to get used to it."

Today Meghan is off all her medications. She's animated, playing board games with her family, excited about being back in school.

Her family credits the VIPS program.

"We were blessed to have this for her," Charlie says. "We really were. It saved her life."

Related Stories

 

TED Radio Hour
Is It Possible To Live With The Voices In Your Head?  

Shots - Health News
Mental Disorders And Evolution: What Would Darwin Say About Schizophrenia?

Russell Brand's third book, Revolution, was just released on Tuesday (October 14), so of course he is making the rounds on NPR and various other outlets to promote his book. It seems Brand is less interested in comedy these days than he is in stirring up a revolt against the status quo. I disagree with him completely about not voting, but I can see why he and so many others feel their votes are worthless because there is no real choice.

Here is the ad copy for his book:

We all know the system isn’t working. Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.”

In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a fairer, sexier society that’s fun and inclusive.

You have been lied to, told there’s no alternative, no choice, and that you don’t deserve any better. Brand destroys this illusory facade as amusingly and deftly as he annihilates Morning Joe anchors, Fox News fascists, and BBC stalwarts.

This book makes revolution not only possible but inevitable and fun.

I like Russell Brand. In many ways, he is right on target with his criticisms. But he is also naive about the citizens of England and America, who are content to be oblivious to how their corporatocracy is stealing them blind as long as they have their football (England) or football (USA).

The chances of people actually rising up and revolting are slim to none.

Russell Brand Says He Wants A ‘Revolution’

The wild, funny, blithely offensive comedian Russell Brand takes on the world’s woes with us. He says he’s got the answer.

October 15, 2014



Comedian and actor Russell Brand, on the cover of his new book, Revolution
British comedian, actor, provocateur, activist Russell Brand knows how to mix it up wild and funny. With his big mane, sharp mind, and glittering irreverence he has cut a wide swath in entertainment realms. Played the blazing rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. Married and divorced Katy Perry. Toured doing stand-up last year with his Messiah Complex show. And now Russell Brand is going all-in on politics. Revolution, actually. Our world, our system is worn out and we know it, he says. Time for revolt. Up next On Point: Russell Brand, and revolution.

– Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Russell Brand, actor, comedian and activist. Author of the new book, Revolution. He is also author of My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up and Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal. (@rustyrockets)



From Tom’s Reading List

• The Guardian: Russell Brand: “the Revolution cannot be boring” — “I know most people want change. I know most people can’t be happy with the current regime. In any electoral process worth having, we might assume that the 3.5 billion people who have as much wealth collectively as the 85 richest people in the world are up for some amendments an’ all. I just used the calculator on my phone to subtract 85 from 3.5 billion and the answer had a letter in it. Even the calculator has gone berserk at this injustice.”
• Washington Post: Callista Gingrich has more in common with Russell Brand than you might think — “Quick, what does Callista Gingrich, wife of former house speaker Newt Gingrich, have in common with kooky British actor Russell Brand?”
• The Independent: Russell Brand is ‘left-wing commie scum’, Fox News says, as fight to the death continues – “We’re not sure how nasty it has to get between Fox News and Russell Brand before the two decide to meet up, kiss and put it all behind them, but the war of words certainly makes for good viewing. ”

Read An Excerpt Of “Revolution” By Russell Brand

Excerpt from "Revolution" By Russell Brand.

Barbara J King - Can Psychedelics Expand Our Consciousness?

From NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, Barbara J King takes issue with a passage in the new book from Sam Harris - Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion - in which he advocates for the use of psychedelics at least once in most adult lives, calling it a "rite of passage."

Ms. King enlists anthropologists Greg Downey and Daniel Lende, who co-blog at Neuroanthropology, to respond to the passages from Harris. Both are somewhat dismissive of the benefits of psychedelics for personal or spiritual growth. However, the each make the point that Harris's view represents an individual and isolated mind ingesting these substance, while these anthropologists believe the experience of psychedelics goes beyond their effects in the brain and are based more in socio-cultural context.

I kind of agree with them. 

Can Psychedelics Expand Our Consciousness?

by Barbara J. King
October 02, 2014

Andrew Ostrovsky/iStockphoto

"One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves, along with the next generation, about which substances are worth ingesting and for what purpose and which are not....If I knew that either of my daughters would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or heroin, I might never sleep again. But if they don't try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience."

Coming late in a new book by Sam Harris called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, this passage snapped me to attention. It's not that Harris's book had lulled me up to that point: It's a provocative, informative and, at times, infuriating look at consciousness and the self. Its main argument is that techniques exist, meditation prime among them, to reduce human suffering by helping us to understand that the self — as conventionally understood — is an illusion. Our feeling of "I" is a product of thought, and thoughts merely come and go in our consciousness; there's no self behind our eyes or in our head and when we grasp this, it's easier to unmoor ourselves from the sources of suffering in our lives.

The ways in which Harris supports this thesis are worth reading. Yet as a parent of a college-age daughter, I found that it was his move beyond meditation — Harris's expressed hope that his kids, once they become adults, will ingest psychedelics — that made me stop and think hard. Is Harris's wish an ethical one? What can my field of anthropology bring to bear in thinking about this matter?

On this topic of psychedelics, Harris has an advantage that I lack. Not only has he spent considerable time in serious meditative practice, he also has experienced moments of immense beauty and love — and other moments of total terror — on MDMA (ecstasy), psilocybin (mushrooms) and LSD. I grew up in the '60s in a family whose lives centered closely on law enforcement — my father was a captain in the New Jersey State Police — and I wasn't exactly the drug-experimenting type. In high school and college, I watched a few friends go through trips good and bad, but that's as close as I got.

Harris is candid about the risks of ingesting psychedelics:

"There is no getting around the role of luck here. If you are lucky, and you take the right drug, you will know what it is to be enlightened (or to be close enough to persuade you that enlightenment is possible). If you are unlucky, you will know what it is to be clinically insane."

Harris describes one LSD trip as plunging him into "a continuous shattering and terror for which I have no words."

Some readers, Harris notes at the outset, may want to consult their mental-health professionals before carrying out any of the ideas he endorses (including meditation), and he concludes that after expanding one's consciousness through drugs "it seems wise" to find other practices that "do not present the same risks."

So how should we think about the psychedelic-ingestion experience in connection with a search for enlightenment? Research in neuroscience certainly shows real change in the brain from the action of psychedelic drugs. But I don't think it's enough to say that the outcome of any given trip is a matter of which drug one ingests — and of individual luck.

Like everything else humans do, ingesting psychedelics — even if we are totally alone while doing so — is a cultural matter, and the outcomes are culturally contingent. Anthropologists Greg Downey and Daniel Lende, who co-blog at Neuroanthropology, each made the same point to me in separate emails this week when I invited them to respond to Harris's passages about enlightenment through psychedelic drug use: "One could say that Harris goes a bit far," were Lende's words. He continued:

"Certainly taking 100[micrograms] of LSD will produce a big pharmacological effect on the person; whether that relates to some understanding of personal significance is a more open book. Many anthropologists would say that he's over-emphasizing the individual view of things, in line with Western approaches to the mind. Put differently, the link between psychoactive effect and meaning is mediated by the immediate context, personal history, the framing given to the use, and larger cultural patterns.

I'm sure there are people who have rather muted responses to psychedelics, or exaggerated responses, and part of that will lie in the person's biology, from genetics to states of arousal to how they've learned to interpret psychedelic experiences.

And as I might put it as an anthropologist, experiences of spirituality can also be had through engaging with others, for example, talking to someone who has had psychosis (rather than Harris's exaggerated view of it, likely not grounded in personal experience but cultural ideas) or talking about transformative and spiritual experiences with others."

Downey made the point to me that no intoxicant has a predictable response:

"Across cultures, intoxicants of all sorts have quite different effects: even alcohol has no uniform effect. In some places, it leads groups of people to fight, in others to cry to themselves, in others still, to raucous singing or dancing. Although the chemical may have a specific effect — such as emotional disinhibition or visions — the effect in the brain does not necessarily produce the same emotional or perceptual effect. Hallucinogens may make us prone to have visions, but they do not determine entirely what sort of visions they will be, or whether they will be a profound and life changing event, or a temporary intoxication.

To really have the sorts of effects that Sam Harris hopes for, you would need the symbolic resources and social support to leverage the hours of intoxication into serious insight. In a society hostile to visions, convinced that there is no higher form of consciousness than everyday awareness, I think it's unlikely that most users would have the sorts of experiences that Harris describes. Some will, and they show us what's possible; but they do not point the way to anything inevitable."

It's hard to escape our own cultural lens: It's a constant struggle, for anthropologists as much as anyone. Still, Harris's perspective would, I think, be strengthened by his explicitly considering the variable cultural contexts for what he's espousing.

"It is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life," he writes, then repeats this sentiment in similar words throughout the book.

Does Harris really think that mushrooms and meditation are enough to overcome, to take but one example, a life of hunger or poor health emerging from poverty? Of course not. Harris is smarter than that — but he's writing for a certain audience, and what comes to the fore is not a global perspective on human suffering or on what society should do about it.

Circling back to the passage from Waking Up that I used to open this post, I'll wager that we can collectively create a lengthy list of responsibilities that our society has — to each other, to our environment, to other animals — that take priority over eating mushrooms or dropping acid and urging our adult children to do so.

---

Barbara's most recent book on animals was released in paperback in April. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape

Narcissism - To the Best of Our Knowledge

From NPR's To the Best of Our Knowledge, this week's show focuses on narcissism, including interviews with Jeffrey Kluger (The Narcissist Next Door), Elizabeth Lunbeck (The Americanization of Narcissism), and Sam Harris (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion) - includes and extended interview with Harris about his new book.

Narcissism

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09.21.2014 | TTBOOK

Nobody wants to be a narcissist -- a relentless, self-loving, self--promoter. But look at Facebook and Twitter. We talk about ourselves all the time on social media. Which raises the question -- Are we living in a Golden Age of Narcissism?

YOU CAN TAKE THE NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY QUIZ HERE

* * * * *

The Narcissist Next Door - Jeffrey Kluger

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Jeffrey Kluger talks about his book, "The Narcissist next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed -- in Your World."

Sonic Sidebar: Tusk

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Narcissists make great film characters. Think Hannibal Lecter, Gordon Gekko. We can add a new one to the list -- the old sailor in Kevin Smith's new movie, "Tusk."

The Americanization of Narcissism - Elizabeth Lunbeck

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Elizabeth Lunbeck talks about her book, "The Americanization of Narcissism."

Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself - Anneli Rufus

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Anneli Rufus talks about her book, "Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself."

Dangerous Idea: We Matter

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Theoretical physicist Marco Gleiser's Dangerous Idea? We matter.

On Our Minds: Sam Harris

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Extended Interview

Neuroscientist Sam Harris is on our minds this week. Harris is best known as one of the guys who helpd lauch the New Atheist movement. So it comes as a surprise to see the title of hsi new book -- "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion."

* * * * *

Related Books:


The Narcissist Next Door
(Jeffrey Kluger)



The Americanization of Narcissism
(Elizabeth Lunbeck)



Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself
(Anneli Rufus)



The Island of Knowledge
(Marcelo Gleiser)



Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion
(Sam Harris)

Frans de Waal - Do Animals Have Morals?

Frans de Waal is one of the foremost researchers in primate emotions, especially prosocial behaviors. He is the author of several books, including Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (2006), The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society (2010), and The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates (2014).

In this TED Talk he discusses the morality of animals.

Do Animals Have Morals?

by NPR/TED Staff
September 05, 2014

• Listen to the Story
• TED Radio Hour
• Transcript

Frans de Waal explains his work regarding morality and animals. LeahAndMark.com

About Frans de Waal's TED Talk

Empathy, cooperation and fairness seem like distinctly human traits. But biologist Frans de Waal explains why other animals might share those same qualities.

About Frans de Waal

Dr. Frans de Waal is a biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates. His first book, Chimpanzee Politics, compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimps to that of human politicians. He is a professor of psychology at Emory University and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center.

The Amazing Brain (To the Best of Our Knowledge)

Here is this week's To the Best of Our Knowledge from PRI (Public Radio International and NPR). The topic this week is the amazing brain.

The Amazing Brain

09.07.2014 | TTBOOK

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It's hard to wrap your head around the future of the human brain. Augmented intelligence, memory playback, downloadable skills - it's all coming. We explore the future of the mind, and hear how a brain injury can transform your life.



Guest(s):

• Jason Padgett
• Michio Kaku
• Noa Guy
• Albert Nerenberg
• Steve Almond

Producer(s):

• Steve Paulson

Stories: 

Struck By Genius - Jason Padgett

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Jason Padgett was a hard-partying guy until a traumatic brain injury turned him into a math genius. Now, he sees complex geometric designs everywhere he looks.

***

Future of the Mind - Michio Kaku

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What if you could take a pill or download netware to supercharge your brain? Physicist Michio Kaku says augmented intelligence and memory playback systems are the future of brain science.

***

Disharmony - Noa Guy

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Noa Guy was a promising Israeli composer whose musical career was derailed by a car accident. In this episode from Israel Story, Shai Satran tells the story of how she learned to make music again.

Click here to hear more pieces from Israel Story.

***

Dangerous Idea: Simulating drugs through hypnosis

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Filmmaker and hypnotist Albert Nerenberg explains how we can simulate the effects of drugs through hypnosis.

***

On Our Minds: Against Football

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Steve Almond has loved football his whole life. But after investigating the violence and social ills that shape football, he explains why he no longer watches his favorite sport.

Related Books:

Struck By Genius (Jason Padgett, Maureen Ann Seaberg)


The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (Michio Kaku)


Against Football (Steve Almond)

Life, Art, and Therapy - To the Best of Our Knowledge

This week on NPR's To the Best of Our Knowledge, the topic is psychoanalysis - whatever happened to it? Sadly, the question they ask refers more to Freudian psychoanalysis, and not any of the relational, object-relations, or intersubjective systems models that have emerged from the charred remains of Freudian analysis over the last several decades (beginning especially with the object-relations school in England and Kohut's Self Psychology in the U.S.).

Still, there is some interesting stuff here.

Life, Art, and Therapy

07.27.2014

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Whatever happened to psychoanalysis? It used to be the most influential science of the mind, but today its founder, Sigmund Freud, just looks like a sex-obsessed old man. Analyst Adam Phillips says we got Freud all wrong; he remains a radical thinker if we know how to read him. This hour explores the connections between therapy and art.

Guest(s):

• Adam Phillips
• Erin Clune
• Alison Bechdel
• Alain de Botton
• Nic Pizzolatto
• James McBride

Producer(s): Steve Paulson
Related Link(s):

• Alain de Botton's website
• James McBride's website

* * *

Chapters:

Rethinking Freud - Adam Phillips

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Extended Interview

Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips says we've gotten Freud all wrong. He wasn't a scientist; he was a great writer and countercultural figure. And his insights still have the power to dazzle us.

* * *

Growing Up Freudian - Erin Clune

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What's it like to grow up with a mom who's a Freudian therapist? Commentator Erin Clune has a few personal observations.

* * *

Cartooning & Psychotherapy - Alison Bechdel

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Extended Interview

Acclaimed cartoonist Alison Bechdel has written two brutally honest memoirs about her parents. She tells Steve Paulson about her complicated relationship with her mother and how it inspired her as an artist.

* * *

Art as Therapy - Alain de Botton

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Maybe you're familiar with art therapy - making art to cope with pain. Philosopher Alain de Botton has a different idea. He thinks just looking at great art can be therapeutic.

* * *

BookMark: Nic Pizzolatto

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"True Detective" creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto recommends "Absalom, Absalom" by William Faulkner.

* * *

On Our Minds: James McBride

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James McBride won the National Book Award for "The Good Lord Bird," his novel about the abolitionist John Brown. He explains why he doesn't like most fictional portraits of slavery and how he tried to tell a different story.

* * *

Related Books:


Becoming Freud
(Adam Phillips)


Are You My Mother?
(Alison Bechdel)

Art as Therapy
(Alain de Botton, John Armstrong)


The Good Lord Bird
(James McBride) 

3 Things Everyone Should Know Before Growing Up (NPR)

This is a nice post from NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog - numbers one and three would have helped me immeasurably if someone had shared that wisdom. Number two I would ignored, but it has become a cornerstone of how I live my life. There is IQ (what the tests measure) and then there is intelligence, maybe better known as wisdom (knowledge + experience).

3 Things Everyone Should Know Before Growing Up

by TANIA LOMBROZO
June 30, 2014


We take it for granted that children should play. Why not adults? iStockphoto
With peak graduation season just behind us, we've all had the chance to hear and learn from commencement speeches — without even needing to attend a graduation. They're often full of useful advice for the future as seniors move on from high school and college. But what about the stuff you wish you'd been told long before graduation?

Here are just three of the many things I wish I'd known in high school, accumulated at various points along the way to becoming a professor of psychology.

1. People don't judge you as harshly as you think they do.

In a 2001 study, psychologists Kenneth Savitsky, Nicholas Epley and Thomas Gilovich asked college students to consider various social blunders: accidentally setting off the alarm at the library, being the sole guest at a party who failed to bring a gift or being spotted by classmates at the mall while carrying a shopping bag from an unfashionable store. Some students imagined experiencing these awkward moments themselves — let's call them the "offenders" — while others considered how they, or another observer, would respond watching someone else do so. We'll call them the "observers."

The researchers found that offenders thought they'd be judged much more harshly than the observers actually judged people for those offenses. In other words, observers were more charitable than offenders thought they would be.

In another study, students who attempted a difficult set of anagrams thought observers' perception of their intellectual ability would plummet. In fact, observers' opinions hardly shifted at all.

Why do we expect others to judge us more harshly than they do?

One of the main reasons seems to be our obsessive focus on ourselves and our own blunders. If you fail to bring a gift to a party, you might feel embarrassed and focus exclusively on that single bit of information about you. In contrast, other people will form an impression of you based on lots of different sources of information, including your nice smile and your witty banter. They'll also have plenty to keep them occupied besides you: enjoying a conversation, taking in the view, planning their evening or worrying about the impression that they are making. We don't loom nearly as large in other people's narratives as we do in our own.

Now, it isn't the case that others are always charitable. Sometimes they do judge us harshly. What the studies find is that others judge us less harshly than we think they will. But that should be enough to provide some solace. We can take it as an invitation to worry less about what others think of us and as a reminder to be generous in how we judge them.

2. You should think of intelligence as something you develop.

Is a person's intelligence a fixed quantity they're born with? Or is it something malleable, something that can change throughout the lifespan?

The answer is probably a bit of both. But a large body of research suggests you're better off thinking of intelligence as something that can grow — a skill you can develop — and not as something set in stone. Psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues have been studying implicit theories or "mindsets" about intelligence for decades, and they find that mindset really matters. People who have a "growth mindset" typically do better in school and beyond than those with a "fixed mindset."

One reason mindset is so important is because it affects how people respond to feedback.

Suppose George and Francine both do poorly on a math test. George has a growth mindset, so he thinks to himself: "I'd better do something to improve my mathematical ability. Next time I'll do more practice problems!" Francine has a fixed mindset, so she thinks to herself: "I guess I'm no good at math. Next time I won't bother with the honors course!" And when George and Francine are given the option of trying to solve a hard problem for extra credit, George will see it as an attractive invitation to grow his mathematical intelligence and Francine as an unwelcome opportunity to confirm she's no good at math.

Small differences in how George and Francine respond will, over time, generate big differences in the experiences they expose themselves to, their attitude toward math and the proficiency they ultimately achieve. (The gendered name choices here are not accidental: Girls often have a fixed mindset when it comes to mathematical ability; mindset probably accounts for some of the gender gap in girls' and boys' performance in mathematics in later school years.)

The good news is that mindsets are themselves malleable. Praising children's effort rather than their intelligence, for example, can help instill a growth mindset. And simply reading about the brain's plasticity might be enough to shift people's mindsets and generate beneficial effects.

That's enough to convince me that whether or not intelligence is malleable, our skills and achievements — the things we do with our intelligence — certainly are. Let's do what we can to "grow" them.

3. Playing isn't a waste of time.

We take it for granted that children can and should play. By adulthood, that outlook is expected to give way as we make time for more "mature" preoccupations. In her recent book Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, Brigid Schulte takes a close look at how American adults spend their leisure time. She isn't too impressed: We don't have much of it (especially women and especially mothers), and we don't enjoy it as much as we could.

Young adults are somewhere in the transition: too old for "child's play" and not yet into adulthood. But the lesson from psychology is that there's a role for play at all ages, whether it's elaborate games of make-believe, rule-based games, unstructured summer playtime or forms of "higher culture," like art, music and literature. Playing is a way to learn about ourselves and about the world. Playing brings with it a host of emotional benefits.

Play is joyful in part because it's an end in itself. It's thus perhaps ironic (but fortuitous) that play is also a means to greater wellbeing and productivity, even outside the playroom. So make time for play; it's not something to outgrow.

Finally, if you're in search of more advice, check out NPR's collection of more than 300 commencement addresses, covering 1774 to the present.

This week on NPR's On Being, Jonathan Haidt is the guest. He is the author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, as well as Professor of Ethical Leadership at The Stern School of Business at New York University. In this conversation, he talks about the psychology behind morality.

Jonathan Haidt — The Psychology Behind Morality

On Being | June 12, 2014
Krista Tippett

The surprising psychology behind morality is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research. He says “when it comes to moral judgments, we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.” He explains “liberal” and “conservative” not narrowly or necessarily as political affiliations, but as personality types — ways of moving through the world. His own self-described “conservative-hating, religion-hating, secular liberal instincts” have been challenged by his own studies.


Photo courtesy of TED
Listen

• Radio Show/Podcast (mp3, 51:00)
• Unedited Interview Jonathan Haidt  (mp3, 1:49:21)
• Transcript

Voices on the Radio

Jonathan Haidt is the author of the bestselling book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. He is Professor of Ethical Leadership at The Stern School of Business at New York University.

Production Credits

• Host/Executive Producer: Krista Tippett
• Executive Editor: Trent Gilliss
• Senior Producer: Lily Percy
• Technical Director: Chris Heagle
• Associate Producer: Mariah Helgeson

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