To prepare youth for success, we must first know what success is. Success has two loci, the mind and the body. Mentally speaking, success is preparation to adapt cognitively to external demands. Physically, it is keeping the body fit so that one dies of natural causes. Any other form of death is considered failure. The possible exceptions are death in war or from a terrorist attack. However, the former can be avoided if one lives in a country with an all volunteer army.
From the mental perspective, the aim of youth development should be academic and social competence. Academic competence will allow youth to attain appropriate careers to take care of their family members. It will also provide a source of fulfillment, as one can reward the self by solving challenging problems or reading good books. Socially, learning how to make and keep friends, respond to socially awkward situations, and find a mate will assure the self generativity, or the ability to leave a mark on the planet. Further, having a mate will increase the likelihood of having a child, and experiencing the rewards of parenting.
In the physical realm, staying healthy will provide extreme fulfillment, especially if one can avoid physical damage and live out one's years without excessive suffering. Death by natural causes should be the ultimate outcome. This is achieved by not over straining the body unnecessarily through the use of negative substances such as drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes, or by taking untold risks (e.g., extreme sports).
Having stated these two key characteristics of success, one can now academically explore the determinants of success.

My time has been so limited lately because I've been occupied preparing an R01 grant for resubmission. R01 grants are National Institutes of Health multi-year grants (5 years) with relatively high budgets. Although my first submission wasn't funded, we get a second chance at the grant, provided one adequately addresses the peer reviewers' comments. I hope I did so, but more important than getting the grant is the lessons I learned re-working the grant. That sounds crazy since my salary depends on grant funding. However, I will not live my life in fear of salary loss as that would restrict my creativity and desire to truly understand the nature of things.
Writing grants is an excellent opportunity to refine one's theoretical perspective. That's exactly what I did with this R01. Although chances are no better than 50/50 that I'll get this grant, the work I've put into it has set me up for future grants, and to me that's a big deal. Further, learniing to write grants is very important, given that the ability to attain federal funding is in reality the most critical skill a researcher or faculty member can have. When I was an undergraduate, I learned that one must publish or perish. Well, that's not quite true. Publishing is important, but nothing is more critical than being able to attain funding for the University. Grants have direct and indirect costs. The direct costs are what I need to do my project, including equipment, surveys, and participant incentives. The indirect costs, however, are what the University likes. Indirect costs are used to fund infrustructure. Indirect costs are determined by NIH, and at Penn, the University gets over 20% of the total grant value. Essentially, if I bring money in to do my study, the University benefits as well. Compare that to a paper. Papers are good in that they may bring the University some publicity, but money is money and grants bring money and publications and publicity. Thus, they are critical.
At any rate, I hope my readers studying psychology will follow my course and learn to write grants.

I haven't posted anything in a while because I've never been so busy. We research faculty are always in need of funding to keep our salaries. So, when grants get tougher to get, like they have been over the past several years, it's time to get down and work. Although I still have free time, my mind is constantly occupied with ideas for future grants and how to improve upon my current application(s). So, that's where I've been; locked in an internal world of psychology where time and space are second to cognition.
I've also been teaching and this semester's students are good. I do enjoy teaching and am happy that I've been able to make it a part of my life. My favorite thing about teaching is watching students learn and seeing them struggle with difficult concepts and then overcome their difficulties to attain a higher level of understanding.
That's my update for today. I think I'll be doing this every day from now on, even if it's just a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs. I leave you with this thought. Mastery is more important than outcome. If you focus on mastering new skills, you will develop a love for the process instead of the outcome. Within the process, though, you will find many outcomes as each step toward full mastery is a reward in itself.

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, but we've been so very busy working on grants and related analysis. At any rate, there are two new notable student papers on my website Psychoadaptation.com. Please visit my journal Proprium Journal of Psychology and read these notable papers. Please also make an effort to submit papers soon. The journal is turning its focus toward creative psychological thought. I believe the field has become a bit stagnant lately. We are missing the creativity of old. I'll post more details about that soon.

I love doing research but in today's world research is all about following up on the findings of prior research. Creativity is eschewed as if it were false science. Sure, one can be creative within the constraints of this scheme, however there is little place for pure creativity. As such, I doubt there will ever be another Freud or Jung, or even William James for that matter. Of course the advances in statistical science have assured that garbage is sent where it belongs, in the trash can.  Yet many of the most creative and perhaps helpful ideas never see the day of light. Further, and perhaps more important, the more the establishment neglects creativity, the more likely our science is not to reach the people whom need it the most, the practitioners in the field, and the victims of psychological/psychiatric disease. This leaves the people needing help most at the mercy of false psychologists and self-help gurus. The problem is that creativity has a large intuitive component, and intuition does not fit logical reasoning, as intuition is often difficult to make explicit (see Piaget). At any rate, we must find a way to include good intuition (intuition of the experts) in science. Only then will we attain the real results we desire, the elimination of unnecessary psychological disease

Addiction is a process that has its origins in childhood. Actually, I go further to the pre-postnatal period, from when the mother and father first notice the woman is pregnant up to the first six or so months postnatal. I have to agree with Donald Winnicott who believed that primary maternal preoccupation and then good enough mothering are in large part responsible for the future wellbeing of the developing human. I purposefully leave out the father at this point, as he doesn't carry the fetus and although he may care for the infant, he cannot breast feed the neonate.

Primary maternal preoccupation refers to a nearly hypnotic state in which nothing is as important to the mother as the developing human being. Winnicott believed that if the woman were not pregnant, this state would be diagnosed as mental illness, so strong is the preoccupation. At any rate, this period ushers in a fantasy world for the developing human has magical control over the environment. First, it sees itself and the mother as a single unit. Later though, as the mother withdraws her attention gradually, she introduces frustration and if mothering (and fathering at this point) is good enough, the developing human comes to tolerate frustration. It is this frustration tolerance which will one day allow the human to become culturally competent; one cannot be competent unless one can tolerate frustration.

Moving ahead to later childhood, good parents take control of their child's development in an attempt to assure cultural competence. This is what Urie Bronfenbrenner referred to as a proximal process. Proximal processes are functions that result in positive development based on the developing person's unique Environmental and Personal (genetic, personality) makeup [i.e., Development=f(PXE)]. One specific example of a proximal process is parental monitoring (e.g., checking on a youth's whereabouts, knowing a child's friends). Another example is enrolling youth in extracurricular activities, such as sport or music lessons. It is these proximal processes that assure that youth will develop cultural competence, even if the youth has a difficult personality disposition that makes the youth more prone to problem behavior (e.g., ADHD, annhedonia), or if the family lives in difficult circumstances (e.g., poverty, a drug-infested neighborhood). In fact Bronfenbrenner proposed that proximal processes are especially beneficial for youth developing in difficult circumstances.

When parents assure that infants and toddlers develop frustration tolerance and then enroll youth in activities that promote cultural competence, they are more likely to produce a young person less prone to need substitute reinforcers such as drugs like cigarettes or marijuana to attain reward. For the youth not receiving good parenting, the need for reinforcement is without a culturally acceptable target. In such cases, youth will need to seek alternative means for reinforcement, such as drugs or other dangerous activities. Most drugs work by stimulating the brain's reward centers (mesolymbic system), acting through dopamine (DA) pathways. Thus, without culturally valuable activities to provide reinforcement, youth must seek alternative pathways that provide reinforcement so long as the youth adapts to the alternative pathways' reward constraints. One such alternative pathway is the antisocial peer context. This context has its own cultural constraints to which the youth must adapt, such as smoking in the peer smoking context; it's a reverse proximal process. While proximal processes are considered positive in nature, a reverse proximal process would necessarily have to be negative by nature. Like the proximal process, though, it would foster a particular developmental outcome, taking advantage of the contextual and personal factors. Therefore, if the youth enters the peer smoking context with a genetic predisposition for addiction, such as having sparse extracellular DA due to over-active transporters or sparse recepters, the reverse proximal process assures addiction as smoking is the constraint to which the youth must adapt; one cannot belong to a peer smoking context unless one smokes.

I will leave this brief introduction to the Psychoadaptation theory of addiction with a brief summary. Development is a process that begins in the prenatal environment. Parents foster positive development by introducing frustration early and managing its development such that children and adolescents learn to tolerate frustration and can become culturally competent. As culturally valued activities generally preclude drug addiction, this means that youth benefiting from positive parenting are less likely to need drugs for reinforcement. Thus, learning to adapt to culturally valued contexts assures positive development whereas having to develop to fringe cultures like antisocial peer contexts will necessarily result in poor developmental outcomes including the possibility of drug addiction. What this says for the treatment of addicted individuals will be discussed in future postings. However, for now I'll say that understanding why an individual is addicted by learning the addict's history through careful therapeutic interviewing will help find the correct long term solution to prevent resumption of the addictive behavior. Although pharmacological treatments will be useful initially, without addressing the root cause of the addiction, the addiction will surely return.

I am sorry that I haven't been able to post entries lately, but I've been busier than ever before. Research is far more complicated that undergraduate and even graduate students are made to believe. It's easy to conceive of a world of publishing articles in great journals, it's a whole other thing to get funding to conduct those studies, run those studies, and finally when all is said and done, go through countless journal submissions and rewrites until one finally gets an article in press. It really does not end there either; one may have to wait many months before the article appears in print. Oh how I long for those naive days when it all played out so simple in my mind. Thank goodness for conferences! The beauty of the conference is that I actually reinvigorate that naive image of a pure world of psychology. At conferences I think the big picture again, instead of burying my head in the minutia of running studies and analysis. I always carry a notebook with me and find serene settings to jot down my thoughts. I've come up with some interesting stuff during these sessions, some of which have found their way in publications, others of which served no greater purpose than to help me sink into reverie. I'll always do this. One day, though, and hopefully soon, I'll put it all down for you to read in my "GREAT WORK." Of course, I've been contemplating this for some time. However, since I've achieved everything I've set out to achieve so far, I guarantee my "GREAT WORK" will be out soon.

What a mess we are in! Whose fault is it anyway? It's hard to say. I've heard many possible causes and of course there are those with agendas. One conservative man I spoke to recently of course blamed it on minorities. We minorities of course are responsible because we want something we cannot have, homes. The government of course decided to somehow allow us minorities to think we can own homes. Thus, according to this person, it's the government's fault for permitting minorities to believe they can have something they should not have.
Naturally, I disagreed. So, I've looked into this issue quite a bit. The causes seem to be complicated but it would seem that it started with lenders trying to make more home loans. For years, home loans were strict, with people having to come up with down payments and closing costs to purchase homes. Further, people had to be able to afford mortgage payments. With all those restrictions, it was difficult to increase the number of home buyers. Then came 911. After 911 there was a terrible financial crisis and then Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan intervened in ways to make housing more affordable, such as decreasing interest rates. This, I believe made lending possible to people who are not as economically worthy of purchasing homes, so bankers started lending to more people. Soon this mushroomed into lending to high risk buyers and Wall Street started buying loans like crazy, and created CDOs, a type of Asset Backed Security that are based on pools of assets. These were traded heavily and given high AAA ratings by credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's and Moody's, even when they didn't deserve it. Unfortunately, as people started purchasing homes, home prices skyrocketed and did so at a rate way above income increases. In the mean time, unscrupulous lenders started advertising refinancing homes and people were taking out second and third mortgages with adjustable rates. When rates increased above what people could pay, the bubble burst and then came massive foreclosures and Wall Street no longer buying mortgages. This led to lenders going broke and CDO investers going broke, even investers in Europe and the Far East, all of whom trusted the American homeowner to continuing paying debt, that is if they even knew what CDOs are. Next think we know, some of our big banks went under and here we are baling out these massive financial institutions.
Of course I am not an economist and I may be wrong in my view, perhaps even naive. However, I do know one thing. Given the opportunity, investers will create ways to increase income, including CDOs and cheap loans. On the other hand, people want to live the good life, and normal individuals will if given the opportunity spend more than they can afford. If we are to get out of this crisis, we all need to be more responsible, spending only that much we can actually afford, and avoiding credit whenever possible. This is hard because it is not easy to see the wealthy flaunting their wealth in front of the poor. When I was in college and didn't have a car or had an old broken down car, I enveyed the kids with good cars. I know it's hard. However, if we learn to re-define wealth by focusing on what's free or inexpensive, we can live well. We don't have to go out to dinner every night or to the most expensive restaurants. There are good restaurants that are cheaper. We don't have to travel to Europe or Asia to have a good time. One can have just as good a time traveling to a local park, and it's a lot cheaper. Spend money wisely on things you really need, like a good bed or a reliable car. There is much we can do to improve the quality of our lives without spending much, but I'll leave that for each individual to decide on his or her own how this is achieved.

Throughout the history of psychology, formal and informal, mental health has been characterized in part by self-awareness.  Whether it came from the oracle in Delphi, or C.G. Jung, the message was the same, know thyself. Knowing oneself means having a clear understanding of one’s attributes, positive and negative. However, it is important that search for self knowledge is done within the constraints of safety. It’s hard for one to look into the depths of the self without the danger of losing the self in the details, especially when some of what is found within the closet of one’s personal experience is quite negative. The oracle should have said Know thyself but be careful of what you find for some things were kept hidden for a reason. Thus, a warning label should come with this advice. Of course the Oracle was high on earthly gases when she made her comments, so I have to forgive her for that.

 

When I say the healthy self has an uncanny sense of self awareness, I don’t mean that everyone should go out and start trying to understand the self without appropriate precautions. This is what differentiates my blog from self-help sources. The authors of these dime store psychology sources tell readers what to do without warning them of the consequences of actions. When one begins a self-investigation, one must be prepared for what is uncovered. For instance, if one did something extremely negative in the past, all of the emotion that was unconsciously dissociated from that action through repression returns to be re-lived as if the event from the past was occurring in the very present.

 

Re-experiencing events with full emotion is a good thing. It is what C.G. Jung referred to as the transcendent function. According to Jung, the psyche serves to balance the conscious and unconscious, keeping certain material outside of consciousness unless that material is needed to improve an individual’s adaptation to the environment. So long as that content is separated from consciousness, and this occurs through repression, it is disassociated from emotion. Some unconscious material though, should never (again) see the light of consciousness.  This material is relegated to the deepest dimension of the psyche, the collective unconscious. In the collective unconscious is found the archetypes, the primordial images that were once used to trigger behaviors when consciousness was in its most primitive state. This material is so foreign that when experienced it is experienced as coming from an outside source rather than from within the self. Thus, for instance, a person in need of help in a desperate situation may hear God speaking to him, or may see a vision of a dead relative. Jung believed that when collective unconscious content rears it self, it does so to very sick individuals, and is perhaps a last psychological resort when all other possible aides have failed.

 

Unlike the collective unconscious, the personal unconscious contains personal material that is either forgotten or repressed because it is not compatible with consciousness. One reason it may not be compatible is that this content is associated with negative emotion. Thus, when unconscious, it is dissociated from emotion. Unfortunately, our psyche is quite clever and never lets one forget negative experiences. With time these experiences like magnets attract similar experiences so that the latter trigger the same emotional responses as the original source (nuclear) experience. In time, these experiences constellate into what Jung called a complex. This complex with time can constellate so many diverse experiences that each one no matter how different from the nuclear experience sets off the same emotional response. The complex, though uncomfortable, is a key element of the transcendent function and is the real reason one should know the self. One goal of knowing one’s self is to rid the self of complexes, as complexes tend to usurp control; Jung said people don’t have complexes but complexes have us. Thus, for instance, a person scarred by a childhood experience of being unexpectedly and publically exposed may now fear revealing himself to romantic partners so much that he becomes a priest and takes a vow of celibacy.

 

Thus far I’ve discussed two dimensions of the psyche, the personal and the collective unconscious, both of which have their conceptual origins in Jungian psychology. The transcendent function is the function that is meant to align the psyche with reality. A health psyche is one that is aware to the extent necessary to deal with the constraints of its environment, and no more. Consciousness is the third dimension of the psyche and is awareness. With time, our psyches have evolved to the point where consciousness dominates functioning. Life has become conscious and there is little room for the unconscious, particularly the collective unconscious. At times, though, collective unconsciousness reemerges and directs behavior, such as when people believe they see images of the Virgin Mary in a cup of coffee, or when her statue appears to cry, or when UFOs appear mysteriously in the night sky. People tend to flock to such anomalies as if all the answers to life’s mysteries will be revealed by these strange occurrences, but that’s what the collective unconsciousness is all about. That notwithstanding, life today requires directed thought and consciousness is directed thought. Nevertheless, each psyche is filled with unconscious content and some of that unconscious content must gain the light of consciousness if the individual is to adapt well to the environment. In other words, individuals need to be self aware to a certain degree if they are to succeed in their environments.

 

The healthy self has an uncanny sense of self-awareness, a strange almost supernatural self awareness. It’s a bit unsettling to the rest of us that one can be so well adjusted to know the self well and do so without being bothered by what is known. This of course takes years to achieve and must be achieved with the help of a trained professional counselor or psychotherapist. Even Jung embarked on his own self journey and failed, losing himself in the depths of his psyche, in a somewhat acute schizophrenia. When one has a helper, though, the helper can manage self-awareness so that consciousness can assimilate the new – old content in slow progressive fashion. There is a reason some material is kept outside the light of consciousness. Thus, it is hard to assimilate by oneself. If it were not hard to assimilate, it would have been done so already; it’s just that simple.

 

Everyone should strive to attain the characteristics of the healthy self. However, these are characteristics of individuals already attaining healthy self status; they are not prescriptions of how one is to attain self health. Nevertheless, like all journeys, one needs a destination before seeking directions from the present position. Thus, an uncanny sense of self-awareness is where we should all strive to go, but the first step is to get the best directions and a good map. The psychotherapist is the best available map to help an individual provide the best directions to the self to get there. Like most rewards in life, this one takes a little help to achieve, but imagine the end…

I love Christmas, but this year I've been so busy it's been hard to enjoy the holiday. Besides of course buying presents, I've been working on an R01 grant. That's taken a great deal of my time and mental effort, both during the time I spend at my desk and while I'm at home. I even think about this and other grant-related stuff while I'm in bed. It's not been an infrequent thing for me to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about grants.
Writing grants is one of my joys because it's a time when I get to be creative. To write a successful grant, one must present a theoretical reason for why the proposed study will be a success, and support every sentence with some data. I enjoy the theory part a great deal. However, I also like how I employ my generalized other while grant writing; I think about what others would think about what I write. If you've read my blog before, you would know that the generalized other is the collected perspective of others. A strong person has a strong generalized other. Thus, while I write my grant, I experience what the critics would say when they read some part of the grant. For instance, if my sample is not very diverse, I envision the reviewers complaining about lack of diversity. At any rate, that's how grant writing goes. I keep on writing and then adjust my writing as I conceive what the reviewers will perceive when reading my grant. So, I've been very busy writing my grant and thinking about it. At any rate, duty calls as I must change the batteries in my son's Leapster.
Until next time,
DR

Everyone should make it a point to learn something new. Learning is beneficial for many reasons, among which are keeping the mind occupied with the task at hand (problem focused), reinforcement for effort, and overcoming failure. All of these are part of the adaptation process and easily generalize to the remainder of life's challenges. For this reason, being a student is such a positive experience. Students go through a variety of feelings over the course of a semester. They experience highs when receiving positive feedback, and lows when they get negative feedback. With time and effort, though, their skills improve, and that is reinforcing. There are other ways to attain reinforcement, such as using drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. However, none of those require effort, and the negative consequences associated with each far outweigh the ephemeral high associated with use. Moreover, since substance use doesn't require discipline, nothing is learned from the experience. Thus, taking up a new skill is so much better.
Recently I started learning Karate. My son takes Karate and has received his blue belt. The karate school decided to have a parallel parent course which takes place the same time as the youth course one day per week. The first course was nine-weeks long and culminated in a yellow belt. Now, I'm in the second course which will also last nine weeks but end in an orange belt. I feel great learning this new skill for many reasons, not the least of which is the overcoming of failure experiences. Further, I enjoy getting feedback when I do something wrong, and using that feedback to improve my technique. That's what learning is all about. Moreover, unlike drug and alcohol use, learning Karate is beneficial to my overall wellbeing, physical and psychological. Although I love the taste of beer, it's not the same as the powerful feeling I get with a good roundhouse kick.
I think skills training can be used to help addicted individuals quit their substance. However, it is a process that will require intense effort and guided participation. Some of my colleagues have tried this approach already in research. However, they fail to realize the subjective importance substances have to the user. Although it was easy to get me to take Karate, it would be hard to convert a life-long substance user to a learner. First, one must rid the self of dependence to the substance, and this can be done with chemical means, such as nicotine replacement therapy with cigarettes. Then, one must start to work on finding a suitable replacement for the subjective importance of the substance. For many users, such as smokers, life without the cigarette is very empty. Thus, one must find an adequate psychological replacement for the cigarette as the cigarette has become something akin to a teddy bear to a toddler. This could take quite some time. Therefore, while I'd recommend learning as a treatment for addiction, there's a lot more to it than telling the addict to take a Karate course.
For those of us whom feel entitled to learning, but haven't experienced the joys of mastery in a while, I recommend taking a course. Find something safe and motivating to do and go for it!

Why is Napoleon Dynamite so angry at Tina?

And why would he want to feed her ham, isn't she an herbivore?

Why does Charlie Brown always get rocks when he goes trick or treating?

How did Snoopy know about Sopwith Camels and the Red Baron anyway? He's a dog!

Why does Frank the Tank want to go streaking in the quad?

Where does someone get a nickname like Cheese anyway?

Why is there a beach under water in bikini bottom?

How come Spongebob and Patrick can make fires under water?

Oh, and how is it that they drink water in cups when they are already under water?

How come Courage the Cowardly Dog talks some times yet other times he cannot speak at all?

Speaking of Courage, what does Muriel see in Eustice anyway?

According to sociologist George Herber Meade, the self is a generalized other, a collection of others' perspectives; it is impossible to see one's self without taking on the perspective of others. The generalized other is what helps us to decide how to behave, from what clothes to wear to what to say in social situations. In deciding, we take on the perspective of the generalized other. Thus, when we put on a pair of pants, we wonder what others would think of those pants. When we prepare to say something, we reflect upon the possible responses our statement would elicit.  This suggests that adaptive functioning requires an accurate generalized other. Is your gernalized other accurate?

Testing your generalized other

To assure that the generalized other is accurate, start paying attention to what others think about what you do and say. This doesn't mean that one must accept everything anyone says, as the generalized other is after all "generalized," the average perspective of others. As with all averages, there is variance. Thus, for instance, one person may think what you say is completely wrong. However, if on average people believe it is accurate, the negative view may be considered an outlier. Nevertheless, learning to listen to what others say can only increase the accuracy of your statements, and cognitions for that matter, as the latter dictate the former.

Psychoadaptation psychotherapy and the generalized other

What's the role of the generalized other in Psychoadaptation psychotherapy? For the Psychoadaptation therapist, therapy is a matter of helping the client attain an accurate generalized other. To do so, the therapist must have an accurate generalized other. Thus, the therapist is not really a therapist but an embodiment of the generalized other. After establishing trust, the therapist proceeds to help the client allign the client's conceptions with the generalized other. This does not mean that the therapist eschews divergent thinking or is aiming to make everyone average. This is not at all the case. However, for the individual functioning poorly, the aim is to first re-align conceptions. This having been done, the client can move forward to the extremes of cognitive space.

Does one need a therapist to correct the generalized other? Not necessarily, unless of course psychological suffering is great. The key is to listen to others by actively attending to what others say, particularly after making statements. Further, reading the newspaper, research literature, and books published by reliable sources is helpful. I'd also stay away from fringe publications. Eventhough I'm writing a blog, not all blogs are accurate. You should trust the source before believing what is said. However, since the generalized other is the average perspective of others, if only one person says something, I'd be cautious.

I have never been prouder to be an American than now. The election of Barack Obama to President shows that for the majority of Americans, race is less important than policy. However, there remain those for whom race is key. I'm sure there are many Americans angry that a black man is president-elect. However, those people are few, and will soon have to adapt to reality; Obama is president and he is a black man. Therefore, this is not only a historic event, but a great learning opportunity. I hope that all Americans will benefit from Obama's win and attain a higher level of mental health.

Good job guys! Hammels, Lidge, and the rest came through in the clutch. The Phillies willed their way to the championship. It seems that they wouldn't take no and said to themselves that returning to Tampa was not an option. So they won. I am especially happy for Charley Manuel, the skipper. He's such a nice person. It's almost hard to believe he's the manager of a pro team. How can one not like this guy. At any rate, let the celebration begin.

For the sake of this city, Phillies, please win. That's right, I am appealing to the Philadelphia Phillies to win the world series. The fans here depend so much on their sport teams for their self-esteem that a loss in this world series would have dramatic effects on hundreds of thousands of people. This wouldn't be the case in many other cities, where individuals have other ways to evaluate their self-worth, but not in Philadelphia. For instance, as a Washingtonian, I love the Skins, Wizards, and Caps, but even if one of them loses in a championship game or series, after a day of sadness and depression, I'd get over it and move on. That's because my life is full and I have many ways to earn self-worth. Some people here, and I really don't mean everyone, have so little positive in their lives that their whole self-worth depends on how their sport teams perform. This is problematic as psychologically locating control of one's self-worth outside the self means that one forfeits control of one's life. Let me break the news to such people, you have no control over how well Hammels pitches or Utley hits. However, you do have control over how well you complete a task of your own. Thus, locating self-worth in an external factor means that one has no control over the self's own success or failure. That's a recipe for disaster; it's like believing that breaking a mirror will lead to 7 years of bad luck. However, there's no time to change this before game five terminates tonight. So, Phillies please win tonight for the sake of your fans. Later, I hope these fans take back control of their own self-worth; that's what therapy is for. Get a psychotherapist!

The current financial crisis is devastating to many. I do not feel sorry for indviduals losing money if the money they earned was at the expense of the less fortunate. This whole issue has to do with sub prime loans. Clearly, it's an ideal that every American should own a home if that person desires to own a home. However, some people cannot just cannot afford it. If banks played on people's dreams of home ownership by offering them easy startup terms for loans knowing that individuals would struggle to make monthly payments, whose to blame? I blame both parties. People who cannot afford to buy homes should wait until they can afford to buy, or they should rent. There's nothing wrong with renting; I rent. Bankers and other financial wizards should stop preying on others to fill their pockets. I have no sympathy for those individuals who greedily filled their coffers with empty loans. Trading in risky loans and then failing sounds like a good plan to me. Actually, it's quite stupid and I'm happy to see those idiots doing it suffer. I'm less happy that we have to bail them out. Nevertheless, I hope everyone learns a lesson from this. Don't spend more than you can afford, and don't entice others to spend more than they can afford.

Check out this raw footage from Philadelphia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p4np9zJNtQ

Research isn't always easy. I've been very busy lately but it never stops being fun! Today, though, I went shopping with my son for school supplies. This is a big year as it's first grade and the first time he'll be doing full days of school. I look forward to seeing how it goes, but as a Buddhist monk once told Peter Matthiessen, "expect nothing." I don't know what to expect so I'll expect nothing and adapt to all that comes.

Yes, it's true I'm finally talking about therapy. Psychoadaptation psychotherapy is simple. The aim is to help the individual fit the self's conceptions to the constraints of the environment. That's easy, right? Wrong. First the individual must know the constraints. Second, the individual must be willing to compare the self's conceptions to the prevailing environmental constraints. Third, the individual must be willing to let go of prior conceptions in favor of more accurate conceptions. If these three conditions are met, the individual will adapt to the self's environment(s) and attain equilibrium. 

How is this accomplished? The therapist is like a mirror for the client. However, instead of seeing the self as the self sees the self, the mirror reflects the collective societal perceptions, what George Herbert Meade referred to as the "generalized other." As the therapist is entrusted with this task, the therapist must possess an accurate generalized other, and more important, the therapist must be able to communicate society's perceptions to the client. This is accomplished, of course, only after basic trust has been established between the therapist and the client. Once trust is established, the therapist begins to point out discrepancies in the client's views and behaviors. As such, the therapist is doing what the client should have done all along, or perhaps what the client's parents should have done when the client was a child; instill an accurate generalized other.

This is obviously a long and complicated process. It is also one fraught with dangers, as the therapist skillfully deconstructs the client's old self and then replaces it with a more accurate self. If therapy should end prematurely, the client is left at risk of self damage. Thus, the therapist and client must enter into this task willingly and with full commitment to a successful outcome.

The aim of psychoadaptation psychotherapy then is conceptual accuracy, and behavior that fits within the prevailing environmental constraints. However, one shouldn't wait until later in life to instill an accurate generalized other. The correct generalized other should be a priority from birth. Thus, parents in raising their children should aim to teach children to reflect societal views accurately. This having been accomplished, the child is able to grow up healthy and able one day to transcend the boundaries of societal convention and achieve the healthy self. However, one cannot attain a healthy self with all the trimmings (e.g., the oceanic feeling) without first adapting completely to society. Paradoxically, to become unique one must first attain perfect fit to societal expectations. It's only then that the self can truly see the follies of perfect fit and attain higher consciousness.