Weekly Psych Rounds 17-08-12

It’s childhood regression week on Shrink Things.

Were you a geeky kid? Then the chances are you needed a swift parental kick up the backside to get those social skills working in order to become a happy adult  according to this article in the rather amazingly named Journal of Happiness Studies. What a strange concept. Personally, being a geek and then avoiding all humans is what has led me to be the incredibly content (if rather misanthropic) e-cartoonist you see before you today.

Or perhaps all you needed was an imaginary friend. Because apparently those who have such things have greater narrative skills. Not sure I’m buying that.. imho creative kids who become creative adults need two things – a massive pile of books and an engaged, intelligent, loving adult to share them with.

I’m continuing with my Zen/Buddhism/Mediation kick this week, continuing to add resources to the pile and came across this article on why introverts love meditation and why extroverts hate it. Honestly, sometimes I think I’ve had too much therapy. I’m an introvert who mostly avoids meditation because I’m sometimes an extrovert in certain situations. I look at the Myers Briggs questions and can answer both “yes” and “no” to every question. Still, some interesting ideas in here on why some people (whichever side of the coin they fall) like, do and benefit from meditation. And if you are looking to start out, there’s a nice little introduction here.

I also came across this Scribd file of a “Foreword to Suzuki’s ‘Introduction to Zen Buddhism’” …written by a certain CG Jung.

There was a bit of Shock! Horror! science news as someone wrote an article pointing out that Psychotherapy works rather well but that not many people are getting access to it. I could have written that – do I get a retrospective research grant?

Alt_mentalities blog also has a great post from a guest blogger about the Mental Illness “industry” and how it’s set up to categorise, medicate and monetise. Even the psychiatrists are aware that they’re tying themselves in knots over medication it seems.

One of the symptoms (see what I did there..) of the establishment’s determination to make us all officially crazy is evident in the whole “technology is making us mentally ill” debate/controversy/soapboxing that has been going on. There’s a great round up of all that here.

Although it’s got a business slant to it, there’s an interesting article in the HBR about how so many conflicts and misunderstandings come from our inability (unwillingness?) to understand an “other’s” internal logic. A bit of pop psychology for business men, but I can see it working well in explaining situational subjectivity to clients and colleagues.

If you’re after something a bit more shrinky and intense, then there’s this excellent (if exhausting) blog post about the experiences of an inexperienced therapist. Rather you than me. How do you think it feels from the other side?

If you’re stressed by all of this then there’s an article on about.com (I am aware that most of the stuff on about.com is bullsh1t but I’ll make an exception on this one) about managing obligations – ideas on how to turn things down, manage priorities, avoid burnout and all those things. Just don’t pay too much attention to the freaky advert on the right hand side which appears to show a woman pulling off her own face. What do you reckon.. weightloss scam?

Time to calm down, read a book and check out some of those empathy-spouting archetypes. If you are reading on a beach somewhere (it is August after all) then please be sure you’ve not left anything behind.

That’s it. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you all next week.

~ WG

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