This month’s Harper’s Magazine had an article on the smorgasbord of cognitive behavioral therapies: “The War on Unhappiness: Goodbye Freud, Hello Positive Thinking” by Gary Greenberg: …all these paths lead to the mountaintop, a miracle known to my profession as the Dodo Bird Effect: psychologist Saul Rosenzweig’s discovery, in 1936, that therapeutic orientation doesn’t matter [...]
I’m thoroughly enjoying Douglas Rushkoff’s Life, Inc.—“how the world became a corporation and how to take it back”. The following comes from the middle of a discussion of how marketers themselves are stuck in wealth bondage, and a critique of Malcolm Gladwell: This [current] generation of ad strategists and corporation psychologists is well aware of [...]
Interesting article from Ben Goldacre on homeopathy. In regard to medicine in general, he makes this point: Prescribing a pill carries its own risks: it medicalises problems, it can promote the idea that a pill is an appropriate response to a social problem such as shyness or difficulties at work. Neverwas dvd
It’s the holiday season which seems to make a lot of people think about beliefs. I’m thinking about this great book on my desk entitled Communication Planning: An Integrated Approach by Sherry Devereaux Ferguson and reading the section on understanding the psychology of audiences (Chapter 7). Citing social psychologist Milton Rokeach the book outlines five [...]
Astrologers and psychics have known these tricks for years. The magician Ian Rowland, in his classic “The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading,” itemizes them one by one, in what could easily serve as a manual for the beginner profiler. First is the Rainbow Ruse — the “statement which credits the client with both a [...]
While it is undeniable that people who watch lots of vampire movies have nightmares with vampires, it is also true that people who work at UPS have nightmares about boxes (according to a former anthro teacher of mine who also once worked at UPS). From Wired’s Geekdad Blog
