Psychological Disorders

Hopefully Mr. Dreier will give me credit even though this blog is a bit late due to dance team events. I really enjoyed the movie we watched in class this week. To us psychological disorders seem funny until you are showed the reality of how dangerous they can be. In A Beautiful Mind the main character John Nash obviously has schizophrenia. They at first show us the movie from his point of view and make us believe that his roommate is real although he isn't. It seems like his schizophrenia starts off somewhat harmless but becomes more and more severe throughout the movie. His delusions begin to take over his life. He almost drowns his baby and kills his wife because his fantasies tell him to. He is extremely dangerous when his disorder is not controlled by medications. I am not sure the point of the insulin shock or how it is supposed to help schizophrenia because the movie didn't explain or show that to us. Once John learns that ignoring his delusions and acting as though they don't exist makes him more in control he begins to regain his life. He goes onto to become a professor at Princeton and his equilibrium equation changes the world of trade and economics. He is truly a genius. It is remarkable that he even wins the Nobel peace prize while suffering from schizophrenia.

Conditioning

As a young kid I also took ballet and other dance classes. At my old studio it has always been tradition that after class for the little kids they receive stickers if they behaved well and did what was asked that day. I always received stickers after class because I was so well behaved and because I loved going to class. This still goes on and when I taught this class I continued to do the same and hand out stickers for being well behaved. I have also been conditioned by Mr. Dreier to be afraid of "country music". I was conditioned using operant conditioning and it was on a fixed interval schedule because we always had class at the same time on the same day each week and only once a week. We received positive rewards for our behavior. Sorry this post is so short but there is lots to doo.....

Letter Writing

Dear Mr. Dreier,

Hmm.. Where should we start. I am going great in psychology. In fact it is my best grade right now out of all my other classes and it is my easiest class. I look forward to it because it is a relief from all the dreadful classes in my day. I am definitely excelling in psychology and I have learned more than I expected so far. It is all very interesting because the stuff we learn about deals with each of our own everyday lives. Somehow it all relates to each of us. Outside of classes and school there is college. That is always more than enough to handle on its own. Plus there is always family, friends, relationships, and dance for me. Dance season can become stressful at times especially with state appraoching but it also becomes a time that I enjoy. Life is life. It keeps on going no matter what. As for Criss Angel... We all know he isn't a real magician because magic does not exist but he is on the other hand a master at deceiving people. He can't levitate or walk on water like people believe. If you're a believer just search youtube. You will find plenty of videos that explain each of his tricks in depth and how he pulls them off. But I have never heard of John Edwards? Someone please inform me as I am too lazy to do the research myself.....

Piaget

This week in class we took a lot of notes and had a lot of discussions about childhood development. We learned about physical development and cognitive development. When we were learning about how young children cannot judge number and volume I thought of my little cousin. She has recently started to learn conservation of number and volume since she is almost 7 now but I remember in past years that she didn't yet know this concept. During Christmas and Thanksgiving we always have snack foods on the table before dinner or lunch is served. We typically have cheese with crackers, sausage, pickles, and olives. My little cousin loves pickles and this particular year we had both pickle spears and baby dill pickles. She asked for a pickle and instinctively grabbed a baby dill since those are what I typically eat but she demanded the other kind because the size was bigger. I could have given her 100 baby dills and she still would have wanted a pickle spear because her mind told her that a pickle spear would give her more pickle than a 100 small ones. Now that she is 7, she can determine that a tall, skinny glass and a short, fat glass can have the same liquid even though it appears that the tall, skinny glass has more.

Agnosia

I loved learning about brain disorders this week. It was so interesting! My two favorites were Savant syndrome and Synesthesia. This made me wonder what other disorders are out there so I decided to research my own. I decided to research some information on Agnosia. Agnosia is a loss of knowledge. There are may diferent forms such as mirror agnosia where a person cannot tell if the object is real or a reflection. There is also color agnosia where a person cant recognize colors. Some of the causes include dementia, strokes, heredity, brain related injuries, or infections. some forms are genetic. Like all the other disorders, there is no medical cure, only ways to deal and cope with the disorder. Therapy is the most popular form of treatment and can sometimes reverse the effects of the disorder. Some of the symptoms are the inability to recognize people, colors, shapes, sounds, smells or objects. a patient has to go through many tests in order to be officially diagnosed with the disorder. If you want to hear more watch this VIDEO.

Ashalee :]

Left Brain vs. Right Brain

 This week I got really interested in the left brain vs. right brain debate. I took a lot of online quizzes and the one we took in class. All the quizzes that I took said I was slightly more left brained that right brained while only one said I was equally right brained and left brained. This quiz that I took said I was 58% left brained and continued to break down the percents and explain each category. Click HERE. It was really interesting in my opinion.

After taking this quiz I learned a lot about the way I think. It told me that I do things in a logical systematic way, like making lists and schedules. It told me also that when solving math problems I typically like to draw pictures to help me solve them. One part I think this quiz was wrong about though was my Reality- Based Analysis. It said that I adjust easily to changes in my environment when I believe that I really do not. I do not like changes is things. I like when things stay routine but it was correct in the sense that I am not very verbal. I like to use images and gestures when explaining or talking to someone.  Overall I thought this was one of the better quizzes out there and it does a lot of explaing which is interesting and helpful.

Take the quiz yourself and post your results! :)

Jung, Adler, and Horney

Jung's Theories
One of Jung's theories is the Collective Unconscious Theory. It contains three parts and it very similar to the Id, Ego, and Superego Theory of Freud. The first part is called the ego which is a person's conscious mind and thoughts. The second part is the personal unconscious which is very similar to the ego. The personal unconscious means anything that is currently unconscious but could be conscious. The part that makes this theory stand out from Freud's is the collective unconscious. This part refers to something we are born with or inherit during birth. Its our experiences across cultures and it influences behaviors and experiences mostly the emotionally ones. It's not our own personal opinions on things but everyone has a general sense of what love is. We all have an idea of what love is like but no one knows for sure what love is to them until they have personally experienced it. The next theory of Jung's is the Archetype theory which is part of the Collective Unconscious Theory. He says that everyone is born with a general sense of what a hero or archetype is. We all have a basis idea of good versus evil and we all know that guys like Superman are good guys and they are heroes. The fact that we all have this sense influences our behaviors and our actions.


Adler's Theories
Adler came up with a theory called the Inferiority Complex. This complex is something someone feels about themselves but towards another person or people. It happens when you think others are better than you and it is based on ego, power, dominance, and social status. An example would be if you were just dressed in normal jeans and and t-shirt and you walked into a high class restaurant. In this case you feel that everyone around you is "better" than you simply because they are wearing dressy clothing and eating in an expensive restaurant.
Karen Horney
Horney was a very intelligent women and greatly helped the field of psychoanalysis. She disagreed with Freud on the penis envy theory and believed that Freud was really trying to get to the point that women are simply jealous of how much power men have in the world compared to women. She thought that just like women were said to have penis envy, men also had womb envy. She believed that men were jealous that women were able to bear children and they were not. She also said that the Oedipus complex of Freud was wrong and over thought. She said that children clung to one parent and was jealous of the other because of anxiety. She thought this anxiety was caused by the relationship between a child and their parents. She also believed that the basis of one's core was the self. If someone had an accurate idea of themselves then they would be able to reach their full potential.