Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Monday, 10 December 2012
Psychological Explanations of Ghosts And The Paranormal
While visiting a friend in hospital, a woman suddenly finds herself transported to a beautiful garden where she is surrounded by friendly people and the sound of happy laughter, in an apparent near-death experience.
A poltergeist takes up residence in a suburban home terrifying the family who move in there, while a man foresees the mortal danger facing his young son just in time to avert a terrible accident.
It all sounds like the stuff of Hollywood psychological horror films – the kind of thing most of us would probably scoff at if we were told it was happening next door. But these stories do not come from the imagination of a fiction writer, they are real cases which are being investigated at Edinburgh University.
A poltergeist takes up residence in a suburban home terrifying the family who move in there, while a man foresees the mortal danger facing his young son just in time to avert a terrible accident.
It all sounds like the stuff of Hollywood psychological horror films – the kind of thing most of us would probably scoff at if we were told it was happening next door. But these stories do not come from the imagination of a fiction writer, they are real cases which are being investigated at Edinburgh University.
Each of these stories has been told, perfectly sincerely, to one researcher based at the famous Koestler Parapsychology Unit in recent months, by people who you would otherwise regard as absolutely “normal”, sane and healthy.
There, French clinical psychologist Thomas Rabeyron, 27, is undertaking a year’s research attempting to trace the roots of paranormal experiences.
During the last six months he’s interviewed more than 160 people from across Edinburgh and the Lothians, hearing their tales of everything from telepathy and psychic healing, to ghosts and alien abductions.
“One of the most striking things to note,” he begins, “is that most of these people are not crazy.
“They genuinely believe that these things have happened to them, are often very traumatised by these experiences and are struggling to understand them.
“As a clinical psychologist it’s very important to me to understand these phenomena, as the ultimate aim of this research is to provide a counselling service for people coping with unexplained experiences.”
Thomas – a sceptic when it comes to belief in an afterlife, although more open minded about unexplained phenomena such as ESP (extra-sensory perception) – is fascinated by how these apparent experiences can defy all regular logic.
Some people who say they have been abducted by aliens display symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, he points out, and there are many examples of people once seen as incredibly rational who come to believe they are communing with the dead.
“One of the first cases I encountered was a woman with a very firm scientific background,” he explains. “She was an engineer who had never given any consideration to the paranormal until she experienced something like a near-death experience while visiting a friend in hospital. She wasn’t actually near death, but she said she was spontaneously transported to a beautiful garden with a lot of people and laughter all around.
“When the doctors snapped her out of it, she became very angry with them because she was so at peace.
“She didn’t give it much more thought until a couple of years later when a child close to her died. After that, she began reading up on the afterlife and began interpreting her experience as a near-death experience and soon she started to perceive that she was communing with the child from the afterlife.”
Thomas came to attribute the roots of the initial incident to a traumatic hospital experience from the engineer’s childhood, but could find no way to explain how this once rational woman had suddenly started believing she was communing with the dead.
“I was told another story from an engineer here in Edinburgh who said he was walking through a building with his son and they became separated,” he continues. “Suddenly, the man had a very clear vision of his son falling from a great height, so he turned and ran in a very definite direction to find him perched on the edge of a steep drop, exactly where he’d stood in the vision.”
Precognition is one of the most common experiences described to Thomas, alongside spiritual healing, communing with the dead and apparitions.
In addition, around ten per cent of his interviewees claim to have had an out-of-body experience, while a handful say they’ve been abducted by aliens, experienced memories of a past life and even met God during a mystical journey.
He is currently interviewing scores of people who claim to have had paranormal experiences, in an attempt to analyse any character traits which may differentiate them from those who don’t.
His initial findings are leading him to the perhaps unsurprising initial conclusion that most people who believe they have had paranormal experiences have artistic inclinations, rather than making a living in a profession where hard facts and analysis are demanded as a matter of course, like accountants and policemen.
“Many sceptics say that it’s important to separate people from what they would term delusions,” says Thomas, who first took an interest in paranormal experiences while studying for his clinical psychology masters in Lyon. “I have a lot of respect for scientists like Richard Dawkins, whose approach is very logical, but many people who harbour these beliefs actually cope perfectly well in society – and are often happier than some sceptics. It’s not enough to say to them that they’re putting their faith in nonsense as this can often be more traumatic.”
Not all paranormal experiences are comforting, as Thomas discovered during a visit to a very ordinary modern suburban house.
“It was very similar to the Spielberg movie Poltergeist, where this family moved into a new house and started hearing ghostly noises and experiencing things moving around.
“I went to visit them and discovered the woman was going through a very stressful time, wasn’t happy about the move and hated the new house, so I began to attribute the experiences to her own resentment of the move. As she started talking about the poltergeist experiences, though, I heard seven very loud, definite bangs coming from the second floor, as though someone was banging on the ceiling.
“I have to admit I was scared but I couldn’t let it show, so I went to investigate and couldn’t find any rational explanation.
“My theory is that this woman was somehow projecting her resentment and it was manifesting itself in these phenomena.”
Thomas tries to deal in hard scientific fact, but it can be a bit of an elusive commodity in the world he now inhabits.
The Koestler Unit has just secured a £27,000 grant to attempt to investigate poltergeist activity.
It will explore the problem ghost-hunters have repeatedly stumbled across – that poltergeist activity has a nasty habit of disappearing whenever anyone tries to capture it on camera.
Thomas and his colleagues are now trying to identify a suitably poltergeist-plagued home for the test.
“All we know is that in similar experiments, whenever the cameras were around, the occupants were more comfortable and the phenomena came to an end.
“The only explanations for this would be that the occupants were faking it and didn’t want to be caught out, that there was some kind of psychological explanation that was cancelled out by the presence of the cameras, or that the phenomenon was caused by a real poltergeist that didn’t want to be caught on film.”
Thomas is going to continue his interviews and investigations until the middle of next year, and is soon to begin the process of compiling all of his information to put his theories to the test.
He refuses, though, to be drawn on how many of the stories he actually believes.
“Believing in the paranormal is like believing in an object at the other side of a closed door that you cannot see,” he insists. “No matter how many times someone tells you it’s there, you’ll never believe until you have more information.”
Saturday, 8 December 2012
The 3 Components of Hypnosis: Absorption, Dissociation and Suggestibility
Hypnosis is often called a 'trance state.' A trance state is an altered state that is different from normal wakening state characterized by beta waves in the brain. It is simply a heightened state of concentration and awareness. Most people achieve a hypnotic trance state every day and many times a day by driving a car or getting absorbed in a book. It is thought that people have a certain capacity for hypnotic trance. People who are able to have hypnotic experiences during their everyday life are thought to be highly suggestible.
There are three main components of hypnosis: absorption, dissociation, and suggestibility. Generally speaking, the more suggestible a person is, the more they are able to dissociate and a person is able to direct their attention and their absorption is more focused (Spiegel & Spiegel, 2004). It has been found that people who are highly hypnotizable have the personality trait of 'absorption.' They are more likely to find themselves absorbed in a task.
A study was performed on the hypnotizability of 481 undergraduate women. In addition to measuring their hypnotic suggestibility, their personality traits were studied. The study found that absorption was a common personality trait of highly suggestible women and there was a correlation between hypnotizability and absorption. These women commonly had moments of full attention on specific tasks in their everyday lives. The absorption was also characterized by fully engaged representational systems including their visual, auditory, and kinesthetic resources (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974).
Another study looked to compare the differences between low hypnotizables and high hypnotizables. It was found that the hypnotic responsiveness of high hypnotizables was due to dissociated control. This indicates that suggestions from a hypnotic trance activate cognitive control. During hypnosis a person is often able to dissociate themselves from normal conscious and cognitive thought. People who possess the ability to be more likely to become hypnotized also have an easier time dissociating themselves from their surrounding or from cognitive thought (Bowers, 1992).
The third component of hypnosis is suggestibility. The induction aspect of a hypnosis session increases suggestibility. When a person has increased absorption and increased dissociation due to a hypnotic induction or trance, they become more suggestible (Kirsch, 1997).
Due to these three main components of hypnosis, there are varying degrees of hypnotizability and suggestibility in people. The capacity to be hypnotically induced can be either genetic or learned. Hypnosis can occur in three different ways: spontaneously, induced by a hypnotist, or self-induced. People respond to hypnosis in different ways and in different capacities.
http://www.naturalnews.com/027260_hypnosis_absorption_hypnotherapy.html#ixzz2DiyUgVe8
http://www.naturalnews.com/index.html
There are three main components of hypnosis: absorption, dissociation, and suggestibility. Generally speaking, the more suggestible a person is, the more they are able to dissociate and a person is able to direct their attention and their absorption is more focused (Spiegel & Spiegel, 2004). It has been found that people who are highly hypnotizable have the personality trait of 'absorption.' They are more likely to find themselves absorbed in a task.
A study was performed on the hypnotizability of 481 undergraduate women. In addition to measuring their hypnotic suggestibility, their personality traits were studied. The study found that absorption was a common personality trait of highly suggestible women and there was a correlation between hypnotizability and absorption. These women commonly had moments of full attention on specific tasks in their everyday lives. The absorption was also characterized by fully engaged representational systems including their visual, auditory, and kinesthetic resources (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974).
Another study looked to compare the differences between low hypnotizables and high hypnotizables. It was found that the hypnotic responsiveness of high hypnotizables was due to dissociated control. This indicates that suggestions from a hypnotic trance activate cognitive control. During hypnosis a person is often able to dissociate themselves from normal conscious and cognitive thought. People who possess the ability to be more likely to become hypnotized also have an easier time dissociating themselves from their surrounding or from cognitive thought (Bowers, 1992).
The third component of hypnosis is suggestibility. The induction aspect of a hypnosis session increases suggestibility. When a person has increased absorption and increased dissociation due to a hypnotic induction or trance, they become more suggestible (Kirsch, 1997).
Due to these three main components of hypnosis, there are varying degrees of hypnotizability and suggestibility in people. The capacity to be hypnotically induced can be either genetic or learned. Hypnosis can occur in three different ways: spontaneously, induced by a hypnotist, or self-induced. People respond to hypnosis in different ways and in different capacities.
http://www.naturalnews.com/027260_hypnosis_absorption_hypnotherapy.html#ixzz2DiyUgVe8
http://www.naturalnews.com/index.html
Thursday, 6 December 2012
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Understanding The Sadist and Sadism
Sadists love to build themselves up at the expense of others. It makes them feel powerful to wield almost tyrannical influence over those they perceive as weaker or inferior. They derive pleasure from watching others cower, grovel, or struggle in one-down positions.
I’ve been posting a series of articles on the “aggressive personalities.” This group of individuals is among the most seriously disordered in character of all the various personality types. Despite the fact that official diagnostic literature neither recognizes the inordinate predisposition for aggression as the core problem for such personalities nor recognizes the distinct differences between aggressive personality types, I have outlined what I believe to be the core attributes aggressive personalities in general as well as the major aggressive personality subtypes. I’ve written in more detail about the characteristics of the Unbridled Aggressive Personality as well as the Channelled-Aggressive Personality. (See “Understanding the Unbridled Aggressive Personality” and “Understanding the Channeled-Aggressive Personality”.)
The Sadistic Personality is a relatively rare but very different aggressive personality subtype. It’s not uncommon for any aggressive personality to injure others in some way in their relentless, thoughtless, and untempered pursuit of their agendas. They want what they want and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. And, what distinguishes aggressive personalities from assertive personalities is that aggressive personalities don’t particularly care about whether others get hurt in the process, nor do they take particular heed not to injure others. All that said, most aggressive personalities do not set out to hurt others. Their objective, purely and simply, is to get what they want. Contrarily, sadistic personalities have a primary agenda of hurting, degrading, demeaning, and inflicting agony upon others.
When I was doing early research in the area of character disturbance, I happened to encounter a president of a small corporation who boasted to me quite frequently that he was aware that if he weren’t successful as a ruthless businessman, he would probably have ended up in prison for most of his life. He was well aware of his aggressive predispositions and the ruthless aggressiveness that permeated all of his interpersonal relations. One day I witnessed this man call a female subordinate into his office and begin to berate her in a most vicious fashion. The degree to which he brandished rage had me shaking a bit in my own boots. After he finished berating her, he warned her of dire consequences if she did not accede to his demands and then dismissed her.
As soon as the woman left the room he looked at me and began to smile and chuckle. He expressed that his pre-planned expression of rage was meant to instil fear in the woman and that he was sure she would be more conscientious about doing his bidding because of it. He also expressed disgust for her weakness. His deliberate use of rage when in fact he seemed in a jovial mood after the fact made me aware for the first time how rage can be used as a manipulation and control tactic and that it doesn’t have to arise out of genuine anger or hurt. The long self-aggrandizing speech this man then engaged in with me also let me know the degree to which he was willing to make his sense of his own power and worth dependent upon the degree to which he could make others feel powerless and worthless. This man was extremely adept at spotting fairly conscientious individuals in one-down positions in their lives who needed support and were willing to put up with his bullying behavior. He surrounded himself with these types of folks and relished opportunities to terrorize them.
Although Sadistic Personalities seem to be an increasing percentage of the aggressive personality types in prison settings, they do not appear to be very common in the general population. Nonetheless, they cause an inordinate amount of distress for those who happen to become entangled in some kind of relationship with them.
Traditional theories on personality development have always presumed that individuals like the sadistic personality became the way they are out of deep-seated feelings of inferiority or as a reaction to being themselves severely abused or demeaned as children. While it sometimes turns out that such things may be factors, there is no evidence to suggest that all such personalities have such characteristics in their background, although many will lie about it to engender the sympathy of others. Rather, it seems that the majority of these individuals simply consider themselves as superior to those whom they perceive as weak and take particular delight for pure entertainment’s sake in the torture of others.
By Dr George Simon, PhDI’ve been posting a series of articles on the “aggressive personalities.” This group of individuals is among the most seriously disordered in character of all the various personality types. Despite the fact that official diagnostic literature neither recognizes the inordinate predisposition for aggression as the core problem for such personalities nor recognizes the distinct differences between aggressive personality types, I have outlined what I believe to be the core attributes aggressive personalities in general as well as the major aggressive personality subtypes. I’ve written in more detail about the characteristics of the Unbridled Aggressive Personality as well as the Channelled-Aggressive Personality. (See “Understanding the Unbridled Aggressive Personality” and “Understanding the Channeled-Aggressive Personality”.)
The Sadistic Personality is a relatively rare but very different aggressive personality subtype. It’s not uncommon for any aggressive personality to injure others in some way in their relentless, thoughtless, and untempered pursuit of their agendas. They want what they want and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. And, what distinguishes aggressive personalities from assertive personalities is that aggressive personalities don’t particularly care about whether others get hurt in the process, nor do they take particular heed not to injure others. All that said, most aggressive personalities do not set out to hurt others. Their objective, purely and simply, is to get what they want. Contrarily, sadistic personalities have a primary agenda of hurting, degrading, demeaning, and inflicting agony upon others.
When I was doing early research in the area of character disturbance, I happened to encounter a president of a small corporation who boasted to me quite frequently that he was aware that if he weren’t successful as a ruthless businessman, he would probably have ended up in prison for most of his life. He was well aware of his aggressive predispositions and the ruthless aggressiveness that permeated all of his interpersonal relations. One day I witnessed this man call a female subordinate into his office and begin to berate her in a most vicious fashion. The degree to which he brandished rage had me shaking a bit in my own boots. After he finished berating her, he warned her of dire consequences if she did not accede to his demands and then dismissed her.
As soon as the woman left the room he looked at me and began to smile and chuckle. He expressed that his pre-planned expression of rage was meant to instil fear in the woman and that he was sure she would be more conscientious about doing his bidding because of it. He also expressed disgust for her weakness. His deliberate use of rage when in fact he seemed in a jovial mood after the fact made me aware for the first time how rage can be used as a manipulation and control tactic and that it doesn’t have to arise out of genuine anger or hurt. The long self-aggrandizing speech this man then engaged in with me also let me know the degree to which he was willing to make his sense of his own power and worth dependent upon the degree to which he could make others feel powerless and worthless. This man was extremely adept at spotting fairly conscientious individuals in one-down positions in their lives who needed support and were willing to put up with his bullying behavior. He surrounded himself with these types of folks and relished opportunities to terrorize them.
Although Sadistic Personalities seem to be an increasing percentage of the aggressive personality types in prison settings, they do not appear to be very common in the general population. Nonetheless, they cause an inordinate amount of distress for those who happen to become entangled in some kind of relationship with them.
Traditional theories on personality development have always presumed that individuals like the sadistic personality became the way they are out of deep-seated feelings of inferiority or as a reaction to being themselves severely abused or demeaned as children. While it sometimes turns out that such things may be factors, there is no evidence to suggest that all such personalities have such characteristics in their background, although many will lie about it to engender the sympathy of others. Rather, it seems that the majority of these individuals simply consider themselves as superior to those whom they perceive as weak and take particular delight for pure entertainment’s sake in the torture of others.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)