Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder? (Extra Credit 1)

By Christopher Lane, Ph.D.

This article talks about how the American Psychaitric Association having floated the idea of
"Apathy Disorder" to see how many fish they could catch. And just to see if it would catch on. This organization has generated large amounts of publicity this week. Now their newest idea is whether or not Bitterness should worm its way into the mental disorder category.

Bitterness is "so common and so deeply destructive," writes Shari Roan at the Los Angeles Times, "that some psychiatrists are urging it be identified as a mental illness under the name post-traumatic embitterment disorder."

I would have to agree with Christopher Lane on this one, because for the rest of this article he pokes fun at the whole idea of having Bitterness jump in with all the other actually Mental Disorders. It would just be another excuse for people to jump on the disorder band wagon. It's and awful idea for them to import random ideas and pawn them off as disorders.

An hour a day makes you more aggressive apparently

According to a 17-year study, adolecents that watch more than an hour a day makes them more likely to commit violent acts as adults. Yes, 17-years of this. What I don't quite understand is how more than 1 hour can really affect someone so deeply. Unless they were straped to a chair and droned to their very core could an hour-and a half of television make for a monsterous adult.
How does this make any sense at all? Sure they can hurl their numbers and their statistics and their percentages at you but what does it all mean? Also what are they trying to gain by telling people that letting your children watch more than an hour a day will lead them down a path of violence? This adolecents aren't sitting around watching slasher films all day, teenagers and children just want to sit down and watch tv. This whole study just seems to me to be anothing thing they're trying to convince parents to put a stricter hold on their children.

Nokomis: Help or Hurt?

My strengths are not very defined to me. Lucky for me our school has the blessed "Career Pathways" program (Gags self). This program tries to draw out the strengths and weaknesses for its unexpecting prey. However taking that multiple intelligence test in Psychology and comparing it to test taken in the past in the beginning of my high school career. It seems to me that my intelligences have actually improved.
So how then could I say that the msad48 district has not helped me in someway to improve my intelligence? In the beginning of this high school experience I was a shy person with an interest in music. (So said my intelligence test) Now, I'm more of an outgoing person and have been able to take advantage of the opportunities the school can provide. However I don't think the school academics is really the thing you should say was the reason for multiple intelligence improvement. It's more of the environments the school makes rather than academics in classes.

Will Our Kids Be Happy? Why we don't allow them to find out for themselves?

Stanton Peele talks about the children on technology. They kids that are growing up with iPhone and probably in the future robots. Peele wonders if in the very near future kids won't be going outside to play, but simply surfing the web for something fun to do. Peele says that many people think it's paving the way for smarter and more productive children who will achieve more in their later lives. But as for Peele, he's skeptical on the whole movement.

He talkes of days when children would have to go outside to find their fun. It was a time when children's imaginations were allowed to roam free, and you could play for hours without having to stop and text your friend and the new phone you got (but it has a keyboard!) Peele wonders if people will use neuroscience to discovers what makes kids happy.

It sounds like a sarcastically written article about how children of the new age have come to rely on technology for fun. I can see where he's coming from. Maybe children now are being the short end of the stick, perhaps they're less happy and less inventive. But then of course on the other hand, maybe they'll be more intellectual and more intuative.

I don't think this article is quite to the level of contributing anything new to psychology. Howeverm I do think that it is asking questions that will be explored more by other people. Then I'm sure we will get the answers and those answers will be helpful to psychology.

Peele, Stanton. Will our kids be happy? Why we don't allow them to find out for themselves. 13, March 2009. Psychology Today Online. 26 March 2009.
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/200903/will-our-kids-be-happy-why-we-dont-allow-them-find-out-themselves

The Failure of Male Initiation in Post-modern Culture

Michael J. Formica writes about the fact that men are not taught how to access their emotions. He says, "Plainly put, boys will be boys and men will be boys -- because no one is there to teach boys to be men." He goes on to talk about women in out culture have biologically-based rites of passge that allows a clear path towards womanhood.

Since the Industrial Revolution men lost some things that were key points to a smiliar social rites of passge. Affecting boys, making them loose the conect of their manhood. He saus that global continuity of femal social development and socialization has made a sort of group momentum but when boys go through the process they split in a dramatic way.

So according to Formica, you can re-parent the things involved with making a boy into a man. Using the idea of strength in numbers to give boys the manhood they are robbed of. He thinks that it's essential for them to find this manhood to define and find themselves.

I thought this was a really interesting article. To think that the rites of passage were happening around us without really noticing it at all. Maybe ever explaining why girls have close bonds, perhaps they're formed over the crossing from girls into womanhood. Perhaps this gives a reason why boys are deamed more independent, but perhaps this means it's not as good as they thought if it's striping boys of their manhood. I'd want to see somekind of article on steps it would take for a boy/man to cross over into his manhood.

Formica, Michael J. Male Initiation in Post-modern Culture26 March 2009. Psychology Today Online. 26 March 2009.
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/enlightened-living/200903/the-failure-male-initiation-in-post-modern-culture

Memory

I very very recently did my memory test on one of my friends. The 4 memories I told her were about making a fort, playing pretend in a basement, drag racing shopping carts and getting lost while shopping for her mother's day gift with her dad. Obviously being the little copycat I am, the one about getting lost is the fake. When asked to rate the memories on a scale of 1-5, 5 being "I really remember this" and 1 being "I think you're making this up." She rated the fort a 5, the basement as a 3.25, the shopping carts as a 1.75 and getting lost (the fake) as a 2.5. When I told her that one of the memories were a fake, she first called me names, and then she wanted to guess which one was fake. She assumed it was the memory that she least remembered being drag racing shopping carts one day before going to camp. When I told her which one was actually the fake she started talking about memories of us getting lost, different from the one I told her. The memory she told me about us getting lost I would rate about a 1.

The Illusion of College Drinking

Erik Strand writes an article on the misconceptions of college drinking. According to a study held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, clearing to misconceptions they can reduce alcohol consumption on campuses. Saying that the drunk frat boy is a myth and when students found out that their fellow classmates were not the heavy drinkers they thought, they cut back on their own drinking.

Robert Foss of the UNC Highway Safty Research Center measured blood alcohol concentration of 2,00 students returning to their living areas on a party night. They found that two out of three students hadn't had any alcohol to drink. Mondays - Wednesdays 85% had no alcohol.

Then the researchers publicized their findings by talkins and posters distributed on campus to every dormroom. When the students were polled again 91% had herad the slogan. Student drinking had declined. The average numnber of drinks consumed by the drinkers went from 5.1 to 4.3.

This article was basically talking about how social norms can shape how other behave. I think can be important, there seems to be a way to reduce the number of college students who consume alcohol. It may not stamp out college drinking all together but it's a step forward to reducing it.

Strand, Erik. The Illusion of College Drinking. 16 Dec 2008. Psychology Today Online. March 22, 2009.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-3045.html