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Stranger #94 – Chlo
“I will resume my psychology studies. I will do a post graduate course in Geneva. In the beginning, I didn’t really know, I did the undergraduate course. Then, I took a break. I want to become a psychologist because I used to be down and now I’m better. I want to accompany people, to help them. Where do I see myself in 5-10 years? I’ll be a psychologist, I’ll have my practice. If it’s possible I want my practice in a forest, I want a simple life. I want to live with someone I love or not or live with people I love. I know what it’s like to be down and then to get better. Some advice for my younger self? Believe!”
“Believe in what?”
“In me! Some advice for people? Believe in yourselves! Do I still have faith in humanity? Yes, of course. I’m studying psychology because I believe, in humanity I don’t know but in each person, yes. The best memory from my childhood? When I’d wake up in the morning, my father would be mowing the lawn, it smelled life cut grass, I would see my mother planting flowers. That’s too precious. What am I proudest of? Having gone through with my therapy. It took two and a half years. There are a lot of different types of therapy, I did a cognitive behavioural therapy. The aim is to give you tools to face certain situations.”
In order to make Chlo's portrait I used a reflector for the first time. Clara was kind enough and skillful enough to hold the reflector for me in order to light Chlo properly.
Thank you very much Chlo!
This picture is #94 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
This is my 89th submission to the Human Family Group. To view more street portraits and stories visit The Human Family Flickr Group page
“Je vais reprendre mes études de psycho, en master à Genève. Au début je savais pas trop. J’ai fait la licence et j’ai fait une pause. J’ai envie de faire psy parce que j’allais mal et ça va mieux et j’ai envie d’accompagner les gens. Dans 5-10 ans, j’aimerais être psy, avoir mon cabinet, si possible avoir mon cabinet dans la forêt., avoir une vie simple. Vivre avec quelqu’un que j’aime ou pas ou vivre avec des gens que j’aime. Je sais ce que ça fait d’aller mal et d’aller mieux. Un conseil à moi même quand j’étais plus jeune? Y croire!”
“Croire à quoi?”
“En moi! Un conseil aux autres? De croire en eux. Est-ce que j’ai encore foi en l’humanité? Oui, bien sûr. Je fais psycho pour ça, parce que je crois, en l’humanité je sais pas mais en chaque individu. Le meilleur souvenir de mon enfance? Quand je me levais le matin, que mon père tondait la pelouse, ça sentait le gazon, je voyais ma mère planter des fleurs. C’est trop précieux. La chose dont je suis la plus fière? Être allé au bout de ma thérapie. Ça a pris deux ans et demi. Il y a plusieurs types de thérapies, j’ai fait une thérapie cognitivo-comportementale. Le but c’est de te donner des outils pour faire face à des situations.”
Pour faire le portrait de Chlo, j'ai utilisé un réflecteur que Clara a eu la gentillesse et la dextérité de tenir pour éclairer Chlo au mieux.
Merci beaucoup Chlo!
Cette photo est la #94 dans mon projet 100 strangers. Apprenez-en plus au sujet du projet et visionnez les photos prises par d’autres photographes sur la page Flickr du groupe 100 Strangers
C’est ma 89ème participation au groupe The Human Family. Pour voir plus de portraits de rue et d’histoires, visitez la page Flickr du groupe
Psychologists have studied and concluded that pink is a calming color, and tends to get rid of resentment, agression and anger! It's regarded as a sign of hope. Violent and aggressive prisoners have successfully calmed down when being placed in a pink room for a limited amount of time. Oddly enough however, longtime exposure in a pink room can result in the opposite effect, but the fact that it triggers calmness initially is intriguing.
The Institute of Cognitive Institutions today announce that longtime psychological model Maslow’s Pyramid has been revised by the Institute’s board of review, replacing self actualization with chocolate as humanity‘s greatest need...
“Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without forgetting.”
~Bernard Meltzer
HBW :D
The forensic psychologist Gustave M. Gilbert categorised Rudolf Höss as mentally normal with schizoid apathy and lack of emotion. During the interrogations, Gilbert described him as patient, matter-of-fact and dispassionate. Höss was characterised by his foresighted conscientiousness and diligence, always in the service of a higher authority. (Gustave M. Gilbert: Nuremberg Diary. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1962)
On 16 April 1947, the former commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp, Rudolf Höss, was executed by hanging from this gallows on the grounds of the Auschwitz I main camp in front of his former home adjacent to the camp. It is said that he did not understand until the end why he was called to account, as he had only carried out orders.
Former Auschwitz I concentration camp - main camp
Lesser Poland, Poland 20.10.2019
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_H%C3%B6ss
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vfg3KkV54
Bestrafung ohne Sühne
Der forensische Psychologe Gustave M. Gilbert stufte Rudolf Höss als geistig normal mit schizoider Apathie und Emotionslosigkeit ein. Gilbert beschrieb ihn während der Verhöre als geduldig, sachlich und leidenschaftslos. Höß zeichnete sich durch seine vorausschauende Gewissenhaftigkeit und seinen Fleiß aus, immer im Dienste einer höheren Instanz. (Gustave M. Gilbert: Nürnberger Tagebuch. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1962)
Am 16. April 1947 wurde der ehemalige Kommandant des Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, durch Erhängen an diesem Galgen auf dem Gelände des Stammlagers Auschwitz I vor seinem ehemaligen Wohnhaus am Rand des Lagers hingerichtet. Angeblich verstand er bis zum Schluss nicht, warum er zur Rechenschaft gezogen wurde, da er nur Befehle ausgeführt hatte.
Ehemaliges Konzentrationslager Auschwitz I - Hauptlager
Kleinpolen, Polen 20.10.2019
www.welt.de/geschichte/article244198987/Rudolf-Hoess-Man-...
www.spiegel.de/geschichte/nazi-jaeger-hanns-alexander-auf...
Es gibt doch noch Hoffnung!
Penisneid kommt bei immer mehr Elchinnen auch bereits in juvenilem Stadium als Komplikation ihres ohnehin schon turbulenten Daseins im Fahrgeschäft vor.
Doch mit Hilfe einer speziellen Lagerungstechnik konnte nun ein therapeutischer Ansatz gefunden werden! Die Fachwelt horcht auf.
Grapfapan ist wie immer am Puls der Zeit und life dabei.
My psychologist told me I need to value myself more. So now when I miss the train, I don't get upset, because it's the train that misses me.
The side of this car park in Cardiff Bay reminded me of the gills from some kind of robotic, alien fish. A psychologist might worry about my thought process...
Psychologist Timothy Leary developed an interaction behaviour theory which demonstrated a strong and consistent interdependency of behaviour between people.
Based on his research Leary arranged a set of interpersonal variables into a circle and which lead to an interpersonal circumplex model for assessing interpersonal behaviour, motives and traits. The construct of the model is formed by two main dimensions:
-1 - the degree of dominance / submission and
- 2 - the degree of friendliness / unfriendliness.
The first set of behaviour is located on the orthogonal y-axe of the model; the latter set of behaviour is located on the orthogonal x-axe of the model. Interpersonal behaviour plotted in the model reflects the degree of friendliness and dominance of that specific person at a given moment in time.
7 Days of shooting
Week #39
Flowers
Shoot anything saterday
Dr. Victoria Zdrok, clinical psychologist, sex therapist and 2004 Penthouse Pet of the Year. Photographed December 9, 2009 at the Jacqueline Marie Couture studio in New York City.
This image, and MANY MORE from this shoot are AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE! Prints, Originals, Personal Downloads and Rights-Managed at: archive.benjaminchertoff.com/c/benjaminchertoff/gallery/P...
Copyright 2009, Benjamin Chertoff
Actually according to several psychologists and physiologists; flowers in general cause the body to produce "feel good " brain chemicals. These are known as serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, and dopamine. This is enhanced of course when we view our favorite flowers and colors. Hello yellow roses! 💛💛
I was inspired by those psychologist ink blot tests.
What do you see?
I missed posting one day somewhere along the way last week. Posting two today.
Yukiko Hoffman, team psychologist
My first shot in this game, was kinda experimenting with all stuff from free cam, hidehud, reshade to Photoshop. So, hope to make something better soon ;)
Good morning Durban!
Sunrise at Port of Durban today :).
"Psychologist Dr. Oliver James said, "If you want to live a full and fulfilled life, do your own thing on your own terms."
The reality, however, is that the vast majority of people want us to confirm the validity of their beliefs by conforming to them. This is particularly true of most bosses.
So in your desire to be accepted, it's easy to end up thinking like everyone else.
But the problem is that if you're thinking like everyone else, then you're not thinking, and your need for acceptance can make you invisible.
Fitting in is fine, but not to the extent that you disappear and your voice is unheard.
If you celebrate your uniqueness, the world will too, because subconsciously it wants the same freedom.
Besides, the world pays more for originals than it does for copies" ~ Sunil Bali
Canon 6 D, F 11, 1/30 sec. ISO 100. Exposure blending with one file using Raya Pro by Jimmy Mcintyre. Go see his recent views on shooting into the sun: www.shutterevolve.com/photographers-shoot-sun-including-t...
Cristina, Catalan, psychologist and probably now in the United States. Although she was kind enough to be photographed and collaborated in front of the camera, she was completely indifferent to the photographic fact.
Cristina, Catalan, psychologist and probably now in the United States. Although she was kind enough to be photographed and collaborated in front of the camera, she was completely indifferent to the photographic fact.
It may be the best I can manage this year. So I guess it's time to get a little closure.
This are two extra guys from "The winning number" doll story. Simon, who supposedly has mental issues, and his psychologist, Olya. And Simon's dog, whose name is just Dog.
The crooked red leaf in the forefront dates back to the mid-2010s. That's when I picked it up from an autumn pile, with the intention to include it in this very scene. It has taught me why fallen leaves should be stored between the pages of a book. It had remained a very beautiful, burgundy-red seashell for the first 5-6 years, and then it curled on itself completely.
The same tineframe goes for the leafy fabric used as the backdrop. That's what happens when your experience as a photographer outgrows the staff you have gathered for a particular photo set. I'm a wunderkind of procrastinating, you know )) Or rather, of waiting for the right moment.
I don’t get embarrassed much anymore at my age. A psychologist might tell me that is because I have lowered my expectations of myself.
But I did feel a little uneasy a few days ago on an isolated country road. My full-time wildlife spotter and I were traversing our way alongside a large partially snow-covered field when we spotted a male and female sandhill crane stopped in a field just about 15 yards from the road.
The larger male crane was seeking to impress the uninterested female with a traditional crane mating dance, jumping high into the air, picking up some dead grass and throwing it as high as he could and just generally making a fool of himself.
He must have gotten a little discouraged the lack of response as he paused when he saw our stopped vehicle. He then left his mate and came over to the edge of the field directly in front of us. With little ado, he began a dance just for me, at least I hope it was for me.
This photo gives a pretty good view of just how enormous the wingspan is of these creatures who are now flying back to Minnesota to spend time with us.
(Photographed near Cambridge, MN)
Profile
Name: Dr. Lawrence Adam Sullivan, PhD
Hero's name: Atomfuse
Age: Early to mid-40’s
Bio: An expert university professor, psychologist, nuclear physicist and lecturer, Dr. Sullivan was a famous man at campus and on TV. He was also the mentor of Adrian Kane and Megan Hinds during their university days, (who they considered him like an uncle and a father figure). At some point in his mid 30s, he had a secret career as a superhero, operating for more than a decade or two, (around 12 years approximately). However he had lung cancer and one of his hands contacted gangrenes, resulting him giving up superpowers for good. His suit was nearly destroyed in his last battle, forcing him to crawl to the nearest hospital (he managed to change clothes in a few minutes. Weeks later when the cancer reached his hand, he was miraculously cured of it, but as a side effect and consequence, half of his affected arm had to be chopped off.
The powerless doctor had to accommodate his death, and took a “leave of absence”, leaving his niece to be in charge and replace him, which the both agreed. One day, he stumbled across a “compass”, which he believed were extraterrestrials, but was left by a dying superhero instead. Lawrence managed to rewire, encode and reprogram the man’s mind into the “compass”. His mind was connected to it, linking both knowledge and history together, lots of things were shown to each other.
As a result, Lawrence decided to spring back into action after 2 years of temporary retirement, and rebuilt his own suit from spare, custom parts. Part of his powers also came back, but not every one of it. Despite keeping the compass, Lawrence figured it was some sort of high tech tool that housed amounts of stuff, and the hero popped up to him in hologram. His words inspired Lawrence to make something more better, giving him courage. But realising his former students were in danger and having big duties, he decided to help them—-and the world.
Powers and abilities: Currently possesses
ESP, high intelligence, telepathic resistance, environment adaptation, atomic manipulation and absorption, generate plasma, alter his molecular structure, control matter, atomic vision, breath, consumption and etc. He is also resistant to nuclear energy and cannot be split, but can reform if need. Absorption of too much energy will not harm him. Despite losing a lot of powers, he has skills in engineering, psychology, survival, knowledge history, philosophy, science, medicine as well as other physical skills. Lawrence is good at observing people, can give great speeches (i.e pep talk), has levels of humour that makes him like a comedian. He does possess some skill in fighting and firearms.
Weaknesses: His fear of cancer returning anytime, his niece, has a need to protect the compass as if he owes it, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Inability to fly and has no access to his lost powers.
Equipment: Only his arms, hand, legs and feet have armour (plus some awesome green socks, it’s his favourite colour), his right arm is robotic and covered by his suit, the torso is mainly a jacket with some protective clothing. Owns some guns, especially a energy one, the “compass”, a jetpack that he developed years ago, reinvented with functions as a backpack and has fuel that never runs out.
Personality: Observant, humorous, calm, independent, persuasive, reflective, somewhat complex.
I just finished work @ the San Diego Fair.. 200hrs in 21days.. I'm beat... Sorry if I've overlooked your streams.. I promise to catch up soon!!
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung
Swiss psychologist (1875 - 1961)
This photo was from the 2 days I spent with John from Phoenix AZ. aka Johopo www.flickr.com/photos/johopo/
We tried our best to catch a sunrise, but never actually saw the sun.
Thanks again for letting me borrow your filters and lee holder! makes a world of a difference!!
today is friday.
the psychologist said
"doesn't it alarm you?"
"that what"
"that you choose to spend your fridays alone."
"no.
it doesn't."
it is 10:54 pm.
i am sitting on my queen sized bed.
in the middle.
with six blankets on top of me.
each with a different texture. each with a different pattern.
my head pounds.
my hands shake.
my eyes close and then open. and close and then open.
as if trying to escape vision.
or at least, my current vision.
one hour. and 6 minutes.
my mind tells my mind.
it is 12 am.
i pull back the heaviest blanket,
which has japanese flowers caked all over it.
and dark stains from the numerous times
i've spilled hot chocolate.
the light blankets float off, and the moonlight carries them to the floor.
i climb out of the warmth,
onto the hard ice floor.
i pull back the long silk curtains.
and stare at the streetlamp, glowing in the distance.
it's time.
i wrap my right arm around my ribs.
and my left arm around my neck.
i bite my lip.
i reach the door to my room.
there is already light
permeating the cove
through the tiny crack beneath the door.
without further thought
i open it.
light pours on me from every angle
i am thrown to the ground in utter astonishment.
mist explodes from the foyer below
and flows through the entire expanse of my vision.
my heart beats fast
but i don't even feel it.
all i can see are the bold colors
eating at my mind
consuming my desires
this is all we need.
all we want.
i lay down in the hall where i'm standing.
and slide next to the rails
the one reminder
that i am not allowed to enter.
i am not allowed to fall into this majestic world.
because i am human.
i am only a 16 year old
human.
and i am stuck on earth.
[53.365]
A tryout for the correct position when preparing for a conversation with a forensic psychologist ...
From Natalia's Blog:
According to the renowned psychologist Paul Ekman:
◦An average person lies 3 times in a 10 minute conversation.
◦People are taught to lie at the age of 3, to avoid getting in trouble,
and later on at the age of 5 they learn to lie to avoid punishment.
Children are also taught to lie in order to protect someone’s feelings.
◦According to Dr. Robert Feldmen, “People will lie to appear more
agreeable and to impress others in a social situation. In effect,
they want to elevate their self-esteem.
◦Research has shown that pathological liars have more gray matter than
normal people.
◦Extroverts lie more than introverts, men lie no more than women, and
virtually everyone lies at work.
◦The disadvantages of lying: destroys trust and distances people, lying
leads to more lying, it can lead to more trouble.
◦The advantages of lying: the truth can be hurtful, it helps avoid
unnecessary conflict, helps maintain a sense of privacy.
will you still love me tomorrow
multiple textures courtesy of the lovely and talented lenabem-anna
" The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling
back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises. "
..........Sigmund Freud ... ( 1856 - 1939 ).
.....Austrian neurologist, psychologist.
According to Erikson, a psychologist famous for identifying 8 stages of human development that considers all ages of life, the psychosocial challenge for someone my age becomes centered on“the need to create or nurture things that will outlast the individual.” That could be anything f...
Suretta Lisker
INTJ, 63, Professional Extrovert, ASD, ADHD MentorAuthor has 14.9K answers and 28M answer views9y
Originally Answered: Do you agree with the statement that "what you see in other people is a reflection of yourself"? Why and why not?
I was brought up with that adage, but it was not correctly explained to me.
I was told that, "What you see wrong with others, is wrong about yourself." That's not entirely true, and it created a great deal of distress, because I wondered how bad I was since I saw other people as bad.
What the statement really means, is that there is a reason you see or feel things in others. For instance, if you see someone as unsafe, it means you know the difference between safety and danger. <-- that's the reflection.
If you see someone as insincere, it means the reflection is that you can sense insincerity because you are, in fact, sincere.
Had I understood this growing up, I would not have developed the paranoia I have now. I thought that the reason I didn't trust people was because I was untrustworthy, not because I knew the difference between the truth and a lie.
Research indicates a person’s own behavior is the primary driver of how they treat others
Diana Yates, University of Illinois News Bureau
August 9, 2023
What is selfish behavior? Selfishness is defined as the tendency to act in one's own interests without regard for the impact on others. New research shows that a person’s own behavior is the primary driver of how they treat others during brief, zero-sum-game competitions.
Generous people tend to reward generous behavior and selfish individuals often punish generosity and reward selfishness – even when it costs them personally. The study found that an individual’s own generous or selfish deeds carry more weight than the attitudes and behaviors of others.
The findings are reported in the journal Cognitive Science.
Previous research into this arena of human behavior suggested that social norms are the primary factor guiding a person’s decision-making in competitive scenarios, said Paul Bogdan, a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the research in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology with U. of I. psychology professors Florin Dolcos and Sanda Dolcos.
“The prevailing view before this study was that individuals form expectations based on what they view as typical. If everyone around me is selfish, then I’m going to learn to accept selfishness and behave accordingly,” Bogdan said. “But we show that your judgments of other people’s behavior really depend on how you behave yourself.”
To test the factors that guide expectations and drive behavior, the researchers conducted a series of experiments involving the Ultimatum Game, which captures how an individual responds to offers from another player proposing to split a pot of money with them. The game requires the proposer to suggest how much each person receives of a $10 pot. The receiver must decide whether to agree to that split or reject it. If the offer is rejected, neither participant receives any money. Rejection can be seen as a form of punishment, even though it costs both players, the researchers said.
Some people tend to be generous – or at least fair – when offering another person a portion of a $10 reward. Others try to take as much of the money as they can, offering lopsided splits that benefit themselves at the expense of their competitors.
When on the receiving end of an offer, generous people tend to accept only generous offers, while selfish people are happy with selfish offers – even though the other player’s selfishness hurts them financially, the researchers found. Having the players switch between receiving and proposing offers allowed the team to explore the relationship between a player’s selfish or generous behavior and their evaluation of other players’ offers.
Further experiments showed that generous and selfish individuals tend to trust others who behave as they themselves do, regardless of the economic outcome.
Sanda Dolcos, Florin Dolcos, Paul Bodgan
In a new study, psychology professors Sanda Dolcos, left, and Florin Dolcos and PhD candidate Paul Bogdan, right, tracked how a person’s own behavior guides their expectations of others’ generosity or selfishness. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
“Participants will gain more money with a generous person. But a selfish person will prefer to play with someone who behaves as they do,” Bogdan said. “People really like others who are similar to themselves – to a shocking degree.”
The team also evaluated data from a previous cross-cultural study that found that individuals sometimes punish others for their selfishness or for their generosity in a collaborative game involving resource sharing. They found that, when deciding whether and how much to punish others, participants were guided primarily by their own behavior and less by the pressure to conform. People who behaved generously tended to punish selfishness and people who put their own welfare first were much more likely to punish generosity – even in situations where one approach was more common than the other.
Cultural norms toward self-interest or generosity do influence people, as other studies have found, Florin Dolcos said. “But we are not only observers. This study is showing that we filter information about the world through our own view.”
Those individuals whose behavior switched from generous to selfish over time were more likely to punish generosity and reward selfishness – but only after their own behavior changed, the team found.
This helps explain the phenomenon of social alignment, for better and for worse, Florin Dolcos said.
“You may have groups of selfish people who are more accepting of other selfish people, and in order to be part of that group, newcomers might display the same behavior,” he said.
Ultimately, the study finds that a person’s own generous or selfish nature drives their behavior in many arenas of life, Sanda Dolcos said.
“This is not just about decision-making,” she said. “It has practical relevance to many types of social interactions and social evaluations.”
The paper “Social expectations are primarily rooted in reciprocity: An investigation of fairness, cooperation and trustworthiness” is available online. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13326
las.illinois.edu/news/2023-08-09/study-finds-people-expec...
Kristin Dombek’s The Selfishness of Others begins by introducing three characters. There’s Allison, one of the stars of the MTV reality show My Super Sweet 16. (For her birthday parade, she had an entire block of Atlanta shut down, right in front of a hospital: “They can just go around,” she said.) Next is Tucker Max, the celebrity whose books and blog posts about “getting wasted and sportfucking” made him a hero among pickup artists and men’s rights activists. And then there’s Anders Breivik, who in 2011 killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo, Norway. After that he proceeded to a summer camp, where he shot and killed 69 more. He would later claim that the massacres were a publicity stunt to promote his 1,500-page manifesto deriding women and Muslims, and featuring pictures of him smiling in Knights Templar costumes.
If Breivik seems like an outlier—if the comparison with two relatively harmless figures strikes you as inappropriate—this is intentional. The millennial girl, the bad boyfriend and the murderer: these examples show the range of our obsession with narcissism, a condition we hear more and more about these days. As I write this, half the country is still reeling from the election of a self-absorbed millionaire (or billionaire, if you believe his boasts) whom numerous psychologists have publicly diagnosed as a narcissist, while an online petition calling for the Republican Party to #DiagnoseTrump has been signed by more than thirty-four thousand people.
●
Dombek begins her own discussion on more personal ground, in the depths of what she calls the “narcisphere.” This is her name for the metastasizing cluster of blogs, vlogs, quizzes and support communities where self-described victims gather to vent and to discuss the behaviors of their personal “narcs.” One website, the Web of Narcissism, quotes Dracula and employs gothic castle imagery; its members, who call themselves “keyboard faeries,” trade recommendations for media about sociopaths and vampires, enacting narc victimhood as a kind of underground subculture. There are many gurus and experts to choose from in the narcisphere, but their advice converges on one remedy. If you find yourself in a relationship with a narcissist—and you’ll know because they withhold care and attention, or do not seem to love you with the exclusivity you deserve—then the only solution is to cut your losses and get out. The narcissist can’t love you, and trying to change them is hopeless.
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What’s tempting about this “narciscript,” as Dombek calls it, is that it reduces a complicated situation (e.g. the average relationship) to a heavily weighted binary: Do I continue to extend an imprudent empathy, or do I go cold, the way the other person already has, in the interest of self-preservation? Clearly the latter course is the more “reasonable” one, but the moment I take it—go cold, withdraw, run—is the moment I can no longer safely distinguish my own behavior from the narcissist’s. “The script confirms itself,” Dombek writes, “and the diagnosis and the treatment confound the evidence, until it gets harder and harder” to tell whether the word “narcissism” describes anything at all. This is why, although The Selfishness of Others seems to promise an investigation of whether the “narcissism epidemic” (as it’s been called) is real, the book’s main interest derives from Dombek’s posing of another question, which may shed new light on our urge to #DiagnoseTrump: What’s at stake for us in believing it’s real?
Dombek spent the first part of her life in Philadelphia, where she was homeschooled by her parents, affable-sounding Jesus freaks she has described as “long-haired, corduroy-bell-bottom-wearing, antiauthoritarian biblical literalists.” When she was nine her father became sick with a host of terminal illnesses and the family relocated to a farm in Indiana, where they lived with a lot of animals: according to one (maybe exaggerated) list there were “not only about twenty cats and a dog but a half-dozen roving demented geese and two ornery pebble-shit-spewing goats and a couple dozen hysterical hens and a tyrannical rooster named Sam.” After high school Dombek attended Calvin College, a Christian Reformed (Calvinist) school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She struggled to fit in with her classmates, who had all grown up in suburban neighborhoods.
As a freshman, Dombek became politically active in the fight against abortion—a practice she firmly believed, along with her parents and many of her friends, was not only murder but “a first step toward state-run infanticide and euthanasia.” At church, she and her friends watched films of months-old fetuses writhing in pain as machines snapped them apart piece by piece. Dombek would describe the anguish of those images in “The Two Cultures of Life,” her first article for n+1. The essay, which questions the left-right polarization of the abortion issue, contains many of the hallmarks of Dombek’s later work, including her attempt to bypass either-or distinctions by staging an argument on the page, and her insistence on directing empathy toward those viewed as incapable of returning it: the fetus, the animal, the murderer.
The year after she participated in an anti-abortion march in Washington, Dombek picked up smoking, started wearing flannel shirts and declared herself a Marxist. But her belief in the importance of empathizing across ideological and (sometimes) ontological boundaries seems to have persisted, along with her certainty that, as she writes in “Two Cultures,” “if it looks like violence, it is.” Studying literature at NYU after college, she emphasized persuading secular people to be “more empathetic toward fundamentalists, even those who conduct or support great atrocities.”
Her dissertation, “Shopping for the End of the World,” drew on the ideas of the French philosopher and literary theorist René Girard, who was interested in the ways that violence emerged within social groups. We tend to believe that violence happens when people don’t understand or empathize with one another, but Girard argued, first in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) and later in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), that violence springs just as much from our similarities. We think we desire things and people for their particular qualities but, according to Girard, this is an illusion; all desire is in fact an anticipatory mirroring of the desires of those closest to us. When two people reach for the same thing at once, as they inevitably will, not only are they hurled into conflict over that thing; they are also each confronted with disturbing evidence that their deepest self is little more than a bundle of imitations. Desperate to destroy the bearer of such news, they lash out. And because violence, too, is mimetic, it spreads through the community in a destructive, destabilizing feedback loop.
According to Girard, archaic societies developed a stopgap solution to these epidemics of violence: ritual sacrifice. (All archaic societies, apparently: Girard, who based his theory of sacrifice on readings of ancient myth rather than direct anthropological research, had a tendency to overgeneralize.) The group would select a scapegoat, and the selection itself was a significant decision. Ideally, this being—whether human or some other animal—would be enough like the sacrificers themselves that destroying or exiling it would satisfy the sacrificer’s need to banish what they hated. At the same time, the scapegoat needed to seem, or be made to seem, inhuman enough that everyone could safely assume its suffering didn’t count. This is how Dombek’s interest in empathy led her to the narcissist—the being our society often claims is too inhuman to truly suffer.
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The first people labeled as narcissists, writes Dombek, were almost exclusively homosexuals and women—and for Freud, who popularized the label, almost all homosexuals and women were narcissists. Beautiful women, whom Freud compared to children and “certain animals which seem not to concern themselves about us,” seemed to him particularly resistant to therapeutic practice. To his mind, the abnormal resistance of these women to transference—love, basically—appeared to be a form of regression. Normal, healthy people start their lives in a similar state of selfish inaccessibility, he reasoned, but eventually they develop the capacity for empathy and love. The narcissist, for Freud, was the person who maintained or returned to this self-sufficiency.
Dombek’s criticism of the Freudian interpretation of narcissism draws from another work by Girard. In “Narcissism: The Freudian Myth Demystified by Proust,” Girard compared famous passages from Proust about desire with Freud’s vaguely moralistic theorizing about his desirable patients. The similarities he found were remarkable. Both writers ascribed to their subjects an inhuman autonomy, compared them with children and animals (specifically birds: large birds of prey in Freud’s case, seagulls in Proust’s) and marveled at their indifference to those around them. The difference was that Proust didn’t present his descriptions as true. “There is no such thing as a ‘real,’ objective narcissism for Proust,” Girard writes. It’s just less painful, when someone doesn’t feel about us like we feel about them, to believe that they’re incapable of feeling. What looks to us like someone else’s arrogance, according to this line of thinking, is actually our own inverted neediness.
Are these insights about scapegoating and the “narcissistic illusion” (as Girard called it) helpful for understanding today’s “narcissism epidemic”? The claims that narcissism is becoming pathological on the level of the whole culture go back to at least the late Seventies, when Tom Wolfe’s “The Me Decade” (1976) made the cover of New York and Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (1979) became a national best seller. Despite Lasch’s scattershot approach—sections of The Culture of Narcissism are devoted to confessional writing, radical feminism and the use of AstroTurf in sports stadiums—his account of “the new narcissist” remained firmly rooted in psychoanalytic theory: specifically, Dombek notes, that of the analyst Otto Kernberg, who modified Freud’s theory by positing that the narcissist’s performance of self-sufficiency was part of a compensatory attempt to fill a vacuum of self-esteem.
Just as Lasch’s book was published, however, scientists began laying the tracks for the more clinical conception of the condition that prevails today. In 1979, two social psychologists developed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), a diagnostic tool that reduced Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) (enshrined in the DSM as a mental illness the next year) to a set of eight traits. The NPI is a forced-choice questionnaire, which means it tests NPD by asking subjects to select from a pair of statements—for example, “Sometimes I tell good stories” or “Everybody likes to hear my stories”—which it then correlates with clinical traits. The resulting numerical score tells you next to nothing about the individual test-taker, not even whether that person is a narcissist (as the test’s creators readily admitted). But it makes it much easier to generalize across large sample sizes.
In The Narcissism Epidemic (2009), for instance, social psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell reported that because millennials scored 30 percent higher on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory than ever before, they were likely the most self-involved generation in history. But according to Dombek, the study the book was based on actually only revealed that a “slight majority of students in 2006 answered, on average, one or two more questions in the narcissistic direction than did those in 1986.” Another caveat is that the people surveyed in Twenge and Campbell’s study were not just American college students, but specifically freshman psychology students, participating for course credit—an extremely common form of institutional bias which leads Dombek to wonder how much of popularly reported psychology research “would actually be more accurately framed as an understanding of what young psychology students think about themselves.”
The problem is not just that studies using this paradigm mask an absence of real knowledge, although this is a problem. More importantly, by presenting narcissism as a diagnosis with a firm empirical basis, journalists quoting social psychologists often make it seem like a condition someone—or a whole group of someones—just has. For researchers, this sort of shorthand isn’t unusual—it’s more or less how most sciences operate. But such research isn’t usually being cited to support sweeping claims about entire generations, nor to explain the behavior of our bad boyfriends, murderers and politicians.
The fact that, with narcissism in particular, such labeling has become so common, speaks in favor of Dombek’s suggestion that the narcissist occupies a special place in our social imagination. For Twenge and Campbell, millennials play the role of arch-villains in a story about our culture’s refusal to grow up. More recently, many of us have focused our attention on a villain who looks very different from a millennial, though we call him the same name we call them. Which makes one wonder what, in this case, is the underlying sameness that we’re hoping to purge.
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It’s likely no coincidence that one of the terms commentators often used to describe the political divides of the 2016 presidential campaign—“echo chamber”—brings us back to the Narcissus myth. In the classic version told by Ovid, Echo is a girl who, cursed by Hera, can only speak by repeating what others say. In the forest she falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful Narcissus, but when she tries to embrace him he reacts fearfully, with angry words that she can only whisper back to him; then he abandons her in favor of his own reflection in a dark pool. In our modern rendition, the term “chamber” is supposed to suggest a technological component to the problem, but the basic story is the same. In it, the other side of whatever divide—political, ideological, demographic—is imagined as being trapped in the echo chamber of “fake news” and bias-confirming feeds, while “we” play the role of Echo. We want to communicate, but the only way our voices can carry across the divide is if we repeat exactly what the other side already believes.
Although the echo chamber presents itself as a tragic picture, Dombek can help us recognize its flattering features. We, the ones who bemoan being stuck in our chamber, desire earnestly to reach out to the other side. They, the narcissistic ones, refuse to leave their chamber and meet us halfway. Scapegoating has always been an effective political tactic, and it is one Trump used ably, if offensively, during his campaign. But if Dombek and Girard are right that narcissism functions today largely as a scapegoating technique—a way of justifying coldness, maybe even violence, toward the one we label the narcissist—then it is Trump himself who emerges as the ultimate scapegoat, precisely because of his refusal to even pretend to care what his adversaries think.
Other presidents, after they win, at least make a show of reaching out; our narcissist-in-chief just keeps insulting us. Apparently he’s seeing other people, or maybe he really does just look into his reflection on TV all day. In any case, a better pretext for our own unapologetic anger and hatred could hardly be imagined. Which is a relief, in a way: all that empathizing can be exhausting.
The problem is only that, as Girard believed, scapegoating could never truly end violence or hatred, because, in misidentifying its source, it leads us to think we’re outside the dynamics responsible for it. “The moment you begin to find that the other lacks empathy—when you find him inhuman,” Dombek writes, “is a moment when you can’t feel empathy, either.” We say, this is how things are, fair or not. Either they burn, or we do.
Imagine that ur life is a hand made bracelet you chose the colors the pattern and enjoy doing it!
~written by: Me
this Goes to GLOW :)
مبارك عليكم الشهر :)
By training I am a psychologist, so I had to reflect that in my 365. Maybe I'll do a series ;)
I love looking at the Rorschach ink blots...although I am skeptical about their validity as a diagnostic tool. The ink patterns are mesmerising.
This is me. It is not a new idea to place yourself in ink or even Rorschach tests. But I like the effect...
This is built around the first of the ten cards in the Rorschach inkblot test. It has been reported that popular responses include bat, badge and coat of arms, and sex organs, but then all 10 are apparently commonly seen as sex organs...
Can you spot the giveaway about my character and what this test says about me? What stories does this tell?
Technique:
I opened a new canvas in photoshop and used a Rorschach brush to add the original ink blot in brown.
Then I took a picture of me, changed it to monochrome and altered the contrast and brightness to get a strong contrast of black and white. Then I ran a posterize alteration at 3 colours to get a good cutout effect. I then changed it back to RGB colour. Lastly I ran a gaussian blur to blend the edges.
I then selected the white on the silhouette layer with the select color range tool and deleted it, opened a new layer on top of the silhouette of me and stamped the ink over that to cover the black image and clipped that mask so the ink was in the shape of my silhouette. Then I increased the lightness on the silhouette layer so it turned white and no longer affected the ink colours. Then I moved the face (select both layers) to the right location and blurred the edges.
I repeated this with a picture of a cupcake.
Then I duplicated the layers of the silhouette and the cake, flipped them with the transform tool and moved them into the opposite locations from the originals.
For today's FGR..."Pictures With Stories"
and Theme Of The Week..."Technique"
*** #47 in Explore ***
040/365
33 years, 9 months, 2 weeks and 4 days old
I need a head exam, or a psychologist or maybe it will do with a new graphics card, (one can hope at least). I'm getting a bit bored of the "studio" photos up in the sky and I wanted to try again to take shadow photos on the ground, with real background....ok,(and this is the short version) first I'd tried Firestorm but I crashed and crashed, the I switched to Kirstens and nothing would rezz, camera focus was not working, crashed and rebake, rebake, rebake and then I finally got one snap and then crashed again....I give up...for now...because I will probably try again, and again. As I said I think there is something seriously wrong with me. I mean look at me...all sad.... :-(
“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.”
~Gail Devers
Cuteness overload...unless you are cold and lifeless you probably can't avoid the sense of something almost intolerably cute about these lion cubs. You may try to hide the feeling inside but you know exactly what I'm talking about. Don't be ashamed! You can't help it! It comes from millions of years of genetic programming. No matter how big and tough you are there are characteristics of babies that will make at least a little corner of your heart melt. The characteristics seem to cross species boundaries, and even if the thought of having a pet or child of your own is uncomfortable, the cuteness factor will still reach some warm fuzzy part of your inner being. Psychologists have been able to tease out some of the physical characteristics that contribute to cuteness. Smaller noses, higher foreheads, and comparatively larger heads and eyes are just a few of the features that lend themselves to cuteness. It is believed that this inherent program helps to contribute to nurturing the young. But then maybe I shouldn't dissect a perfect moment. Perhaps there is a time to leave well enough alone and just by chance allow oneself to be engulfed by the warm and fuzzy cuteness that makes us break a smile. #iLoveWildlife #iLoveNature #WildlifePhotography in #Tanzania #Nature in #Africa #Serengeti #Lions #LionCubs #DrDADBooks #Canon #WildlifePhotography
Psychologists believe that taking selfies can become a dangerous addiction. More often than not, those addicted to taking and posting selfies are suffering from body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, or depression, all of which can significantly interfere with your daily functioning. British psychologist David Veal, PhD, says selfie-addiction is a “mental health issue with an extremely high suicide rate.” Seek help if you feel yourself needing to snap selfies compulsively
Seeing a camp prisoner smoke his cigarettes usually meant that he realized he could no longer go on. The psychologist and survivor Viktor Frankl notes in his report:
"And now I was in possession of the equivalent of twelve cigarettes! But twelve cigarettes meant twelve soups and twelve soups all too often meant a real lifesaver from death by starvation for two weeks. Smoking cigarettes could only be afforded by a capo, who had his guaranteed few bonus coupons per week, or a prisoner who was in charge of a workshop or magazine in the camp and was rewarded with cigarettes for certain services in return. All the others, the ordinary prisoners, used to convert cigarettes, which they came into possession of via bonus coupons and thus via life-threatening additional work, into food, unless they had given up on continuing to live, considered their situation hopeless and decided to "enjoy" the last remaining days of their lives: once a comrade began to smoke his own few cigarettes, we knew that he no longer believed he could go on - and then actually couldn't.”