Weekly Psych Rounds 10-08-12

This is the Not The Olympics edition of Psych Rounds. A disconnected mess this week as the world doesn’t quite know what to do with itself if it’s not talking about sports psychology. I’ve been to the Olympics in the last few weeks. They are a marvellous embodiment of sporting achievement, overly-cheerful British people and of course.. advertising. As much as I love the flags and screaming (and I have been partaking of both) I like my psychology a little more rounded.. so let us begin.

The “psychology is all a bit made up” scandal continues this week, with BPS reviewing various articles and studies and suchforth that point out just how many studies are strangely significant. Funny that. I’d like to see a website of “things that are mildly true in psychology”.. we could put all the research about how great CBT is on there.

There have been a couple of weird and wonderful and completely awesome articles this week including this review/discussion on the connection between psychology and… Lego. What more could you want?! Every therapist’s office, in my humble, requires a giant bucket of bricks so that you can build the relationship (see what I did there?)… the transference.. or tiny voodoo models of your parents.

Another entertaining read this week from the NYT which points out the value of negative thinking and why doing everything that Tony Robbins tells you might be a bad idea (ya think?).

And for the grammatically challenged, science journalists who end sentences in prepositions bring you “Why Do Older Adults Display More Positive Emotion? It Might Have to Do With What They’re Looking at”. Whatever is the world coming to… … oh.

Mindhacks draws our attention to a plethora of articles about psychosis including (gasp) actual PDFs of the actual information that some brilliant person has put online for our eyes. I am always joyful when this happens as it nicely offsets the people who insist on tweeting locked down abstracts. **grumble**.

Now.. things therapeutic. First up, an interesting post about Rights and Responsibilities when working in mandated treatment situations which asks if too much responsibility is a bad thing. I can’t imagine the challenges involved in treating people who don’t want to be in therapy and really couldn’t give a sh1t.. it’s hard enough to engage “the willing” in the private sector.

Also this week Martha at What a Shrink Thinks has a wonderful post which blew me away (once again). So much so that I drew a cartoon in response about honesty and vulnerability in the therapeutic situation. This kind of stuff restores my faith in humanity/therapy.. such as it is.

The flipside of course is the ongoing discussion amongst psychiatrists of the place of psychotherapy (its the 10 seconds where you ask how the patient is feeling before giving them tons of drugs then wheeling them out the door) though this article in the Psychiatric Times entitled “The Essence of Psychotherapy” (free login required) at least shows some movement afoot to educate if not the medicating masses at least the upcoming generation of shiny new psychiatrists who haven’t been taught to see psychotherapy as part of their work.

The next shrink-theory link I’m drawing your attention to this week might actually be my best find of the year… It’s an interview with Psychiatrist Phil Stutz about a new type of psychotherapy which combines CBT and things Jungian. If that’s not weird enough.. please note that the interviewer/writer is John Cusack. Yes that’s right.. the God of the silver and indie screen. Utter genius.

And there’s more out there for the Jungians this week, with what appears to be a Jungian perspective on all history ever. But if Jung is not your bag, then there’s a pretty decent series on Humanistic Psychology going on over here.

There’s also an article by the increasingly attractive Christian Jarrett about how helping others can impact on your creativity.. I wonder what the implications of that are on therapist self-care.

Talking of self-care, it might be time for a nap..

And the world is certainly sleeping its way through the summer (a fine idea if you ask me) and the JKP blog has an interesting article on the History of Sleep whilst Lifehacker website discusses the power of powernapping and why it’s good for creativity, productivity and.. er.. being an evil Emperor.

That’s it for me.. and here are a million and one reasons why I need a holiday.. I’m winding down for August whilst I take stock of things in the offline realm so you can expect the odd cartoon here or there but not a lot else.

Until the next time..

~WG