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  #11  
Old March 5th, 2005, 09:00 AM
Fred H. Fred H. is offline
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Default Re: blink: Thinkin,' Even in Therapy, Won't Get You Anywhere

JimB—Speaking of psychosis, the other night on Letterman, Dan Rather—referring to his infamous and obviously forged memos supposedly written by Bush's National Guard commander—made the following statement: "Although they [the independent investigation] had four months and millions of dollars, they could not demonstrate that the documents were not authentic, that they were forgeries."

Some rather substantial denial I’d say. Surprised he didn’t add, “I am not a crook.”

Somewhere Richard Nixon is smiling.
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  #12  
Old March 13th, 2005, 08:44 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Default Networks, CBT & Fred: Curse Beck & Die!

Fred disrespects the only legitimized tool in psychology. Nurses, waitresses, social workers, preachers, and hookers use our instinctive hooks, strings, and levers, the things that Fred possibly respects, and their so doing turned most psychologists into bottom-feeders! It becomes important, because Fred is a zanier and often better writer than I, not to change Fred (his wife gave up!) but by changing the connections that he makes with CBT. This means using a little CBT on him!

First, someone (Dawkins? Wallace Austin?) observed that popular belief goes through phases: the earth cannot possibly be round; it's round but so what?; and we knew all the time that it's round. CBT has a similar career: first, it can't possibly do anything; next, it works only when applied by experts to those developmentally enhanced by estrogen; finally, it can be used by medical residents, nurses, caseworkers, or computers behind a screen and works just like we always knew it could! Fred is still in Phase 1 but, no surprise, he's an older guy!

CBT researchers, the offspring of Aaron (Tim) Beck, are now in Phase 3 and claim statistical victories for treating anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, and even some of the personality disorders. Tourettes and Aspergers are probably next on the list and, perhaps someday, we may use CBT to make a wife love her husband after he takes a pay cut!*

Second, I am suspicious of any faith, exercise, or weed that treats everything. Serotonin regulators, for example, have landed and mutated and, like any exploratory system, pill-makers target ever-smaller segments of the pill-takers for their next mutation. Serotonin, however, adjusts our reactivity to external stimuli, changes sleep and dreaming patterns, regulates appetite and digestion (90% of it is in your gut!), and interacts with social experience. Lose a woman, take a pill, and change your whole body so that you don't care if you ever get another one (woman or body!). Chemicals also help you to hear whispers instead of shouts when you hallucinate but you also lose some of your working memory and initiative. (What a deal!) CBT can amount to a very specific numbing of your dominant reactions: it helps you buy a little time and find options that you otherwise miss. You can be selectively depressed and use that emotion as a tool in accord with its original design.

Networks and the rest of my story about CBT:

The CogSquad distinguishes "core beliefs" from "automatic thoughts," the private conversations that we each have: core beliefs and automatic thoughts nicely overlap with the concepts of hubs and nodes as defined by network theorists in physics. Nature, for example, (Song, Havlin, & Makse, 2005) has a drawing of an emergent network: a very large core surrounded by a hundred tiny balls, each one connected to the core and often to two or three other balls. The big thing is a "hub," the smaller ones, "nodes."
Core beliefs can overlap with the network concept of hubs and automatic thoughts, the thoughts that derive from core beliefs, align with the concept of nodes. Network theorists sometimes argue that early nodes become hubs because they are more "fit," that is, they are more successful at recruiting new nodes. More primitive instincts eventually collect specialized tools that can be thoughts, habits, or a cellular phone. Let thought grow from instinctive, brainstem and cerebellar sequences that get warmth and a full belly. Also that get beer and a full tank of gas in the car. Broads appear just like fundamental particles do from total vacuum. "Evolvability" applies! (See Kirschner & Gerhart, 1998.)

Cognitive therapists are ahead of the physics types who have not yet considered that some nodes may connect to more than one hub! Swap your thought, one of your nodes, and activate a different hub and everything connected to it! (They also haven't tied network structure to resource availability!) Nodes possibly take on adaptive functions and allow their network to have greater access to novel resources and to early warnings. Human minds can trigger a particular node, reinterpret an automatic thought, and elicit a connection to a less troubling hub. Examples:
A smiling baby might love you, it might have gas.
A rude clerk might think you're poor and ugly: she may also be coming down from cheap cocaine and, evicted by her parents, not have a place to sleep. In the first case, you frown and walk away, in the second, you lock up your money and offer a door key!

More subtly, a lady has intrusive thoughts about harming her children. She dislikes her thoughts but cannot control them. I ask, accidentally, about several scars on her face. When an adolescent, she had unpredictable, uncontrollable acne that kept her away from proms and beer parties. The overlap between her inability to control either her acne or her intrusive thoughts is striking, one that she had never noticed, and tied perhaps to core beliefs that possibly emerged from helplessness and hopelessness more than 360 million years ago...What we now dream about network behavior allows us to imagine tactics that might bring some of her thoughts under rein...

Hope this helps!

JimB

* Doubtful that even CBT can overcome this kind of dispair: probably need a generation of antidepressants that manipulate not serotonin but oxytocin and vasopressin. Imagine: pee less, swell up, and smile through your divorce!
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  #13  
Old March 13th, 2005, 08:59 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Default Re: blink: Thinkin,' Even in Therapy, Won't Get You Anywhere

"...half of Gladwell's examples argue directly against the interpretation that the burning of Alexandria was a good thing because "we think too much.'"

I didn't want to commit more work to a fun but not a deep book.

Yep, Malcolm slides around and you have to watch carefully to notice his seams and appreciate his ambivalence.

His position(s) are also defined by market: smart people buy books and most of them, perhaps for reasons of prenatal estrogen, hang on to some instinct that their stories count for more than drawing attention from mates and allies.
I just went through "Tipping Point" in a blink and found a similar difficulty...

Thanks for your thoughts!

Jim
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  #14  
Old March 13th, 2005, 11:44 AM
Fred H. Fred H. is offline
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Default Re: blink: Thinkin,' Even in Therapy, Won't Get You Anywhere

My bottom line on cognitive therapy is that it’s really not much more than religion and/or faith—“As a man think in his heart, so is he"—Proverbs 23:7. (And I don’t know that the behavior in CBT is necessarily a whole lot more than works, as in, “Faith without works is dead”—James 2:14.)

As you know JimB, I’m a big fan of religion and faith, but I suppose I tend to get a bit skeptical when folk attempt to sell cognitive therapy as something more than it is—after all, there’s nothing new under the sun (Ecc.1:9 . . . my, my, aren’t I religious today?)

On the other hand, if therapists explain the primacy of emotion—subcortical biology—then perhaps they’re providing something more than their clients could get from Church. So I say screw the cognitive therapy—I get mine at Church. What we really need is sub-cognitive therapy.
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  #15  
Old March 14th, 2005, 02:00 AM
ToddStark ToddStark is offline
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Thumbs up Cognitive vs. Suggestive

Hey Fred,

One of the classic contrasts with cognitive therapy is suggestive therapy ("hypnotherapy") because it presumably targets "unconscious" rather than explicit thinking processes. The empirical data show that it changes the relapse characteristics of other things, like cognitive therapy, and so probably does work on different hooks in us.

It does make an interesting contrast because it deals in conviction, which is your point as well. One of the most innovative theorists regarding hypnosis is Ted Sarbin, who looks at it in terms of immersion in role taking. This essentially translates to our conviction in our beliefs at the time and how these convictions relate to our thought and behavior. Our convictions follow through to behavior and physical effects. That's where it involves the "subcortical" aspect, getting beneath the surface of thinking to get at what turns it into action and relates it to our body.

I've always been impressed by the similarities between the way faith healers and successful hypnotherapists work.

kind regards,

Todd
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  #16  
Old March 15th, 2005, 07:53 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Cool Re: blink: Thinkin,' Even in Therapy, Won't Get You Anywhere

"I've always been impressed by the similarities between the way faith healers and successful hypnotherapists work."

I smell a war....

JB
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