Let's dive deep into life and its complexities
“What about Bob?” “What about Bob???” “What about BOB??!!” The above lines from the movie, What About Bob?, not only share the title’s name, but are a running question that the central characters ask throughout the film. And it begs another question: What exactly is it about the film – and the main character, Bob…
First — because getting definitions down is central to discussing topics — what exactly does coping mean? It generally involves how an individual cognitively deals with stress-triggering events. These events can start from within the individual (feeling anxious about starting a new job or going on a first date, waking up with a severe headache,…
As everyday people, we are generally aware that the inner workings within our bodies can affect how we get through life. If you have a headache while you are at work, you may become more irritable with your co-workers and feel disjointed overall. Or if you are fired from your job one day and out…
Before I dive into this topic, I need to make a comment about behaviorism, which will somewhat tie into how it pertains to life on social media. That is, the reasons why the field of psychology has moved significantly away from behaviorism almost teeter on a logical fallacy called an *Argument from Ignorance*. Namely, one…
Sigmund Freud…Erik Erikson…Carl Jung…Abraham Maslow…Jean Piaget…Heinz Kohut…Carl Rogers…these are all names that can come up in conversation when exploring the word psychology. These names also represent the evolution of psychology throughout the 20th century and until today. And they show that the field of psychology does not live in a vacuum. After all, it deals…
For now over 100 years, there has been a major divide between the scientific approach to psychoanalysis and how psychoanalysis is typically structured. In recent years — mostly because of significant advances in neuroscience, neuropsychology, and biopsychology — psychoanalysis has been under heavy scrutiny. In short, because psychoanalysis often involves clinical sessions with a patient…
The term “narcissism” has grown quite a bit in popularity in recent years. In the social media world, “narcissism” is used to describe everything from being mildly self-absorbed, to pointing out showy behaviors that public figures / celebrities amplify, to the clinical definition of narcissism (when psychologists / subject matter experts weigh in on the…
We are all familiar with the term “personality.” We even qualify as lay “personality theorists” to a certain degree. We often use the word personality as a way to describe a person’s general disposition, or perhaps a certain quality that we appreciate, “My best friend is an adrenaline junkie”. Or “my partner is the ‘nurturing…
In this age of widely available, easily accessible information, learning about brain related disorders, such as schizophrenia, are just a couple of mouse clicks and Google search away. Unfortunately, these terms also often get colloquially re-clothed into different definitions. And many of these definitions are flat-out wrong. The term “psycho”, for example, has become so…
True story: Last night, while I was flipping through YouTube channels, one of the videos in my “recommended” list was a throwback to the famous (or now infamous) interview in 2005 between Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise. (I am subscribed to several channels involving science, history, and philosophy, which probably explains the cross-match with that…