The physiology of RET – the stimulation of inner brain mechanisms associated with neurogenesis – makes me lean toward a positive expectation.

According to new research released by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), pedophilia might be the result of faulty connections in the brain. MRIs and sophisticated computer analysis techniques compared a group of pedophiles with a group of non-sexual criminals. The pedophiles had significantly less “white matter” – which is responsible for wiring the different parts of the brain together.

The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatry Research, challenges the commonly held belief that pedophilia is brought on by childhood trauma or abuse. This finding is the strongest evidence yet that pedophilia is instead the result of a problem in brain development.

Pedophiles tend to have lower IQs, are three times more likely to be left-handed, have higher rates of head injuries in childhood, and even tend to be physically shorter than non-pedophiles.

“There is nothing in this research that says pedophiles shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for their actions,” said Dr. James Cantor, CAMH Psychologist and lead scientist of the study, “Not being able to choose your sexual interests doesn’t mean you can’t choose what you do.”

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A study, published in the September 2009 issue of the journal Psychological Science, “addresses the age-old question: ‘Do we see reality as it is, or is what we see influenced by our preconceptions?’” said study coauthor Piotr Winkielman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. “Our findings indicate that what we think has a noticeable effect on our perceptions.”

This should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. We’re talking about the relationship between what we believe and what we experience. Our thinking goes: “I perceive an event and the way I perceive it is THE way it happened. Further, the way I feel about the event has nothing to do with how the event went down.” Thinking error!!

“We imagine our emotional expressions as unambiguous ways of communicating how we’re feeling,” said coauthor Jamin Halberstadt, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, “but in real social interactions, facial expressions are blends of multiple emotions – they are open to interpretation. This means that two people can have different recollections about the same emotional episode, yet both be correct about what they ‘saw.’ So when my wife remembers my smirk as cynicism, she is right: her explanation of the expression at the time biased her perception of it. But it is also true that, had she explained my expression as empathy, I wouldn’t be sleeping on the couch.”

You mean, if I change my mind about my interpretation of the data, the event changes for me? Whoa! That’s radical!

“It’s a paradox,” Halberstadt added. “The more we seek meaning in others’ emotions, the less accurate we are in remembering them.”

Oh, and, by the way – the less accurate we are at interpreting them, too!

“The novel finding here,” said Winkielman, of UC San Diego, “is that our body is the interface: The place where thoughts and perceptions meet. It supports a growing area of research on ‘embodied cognition’ and ‘embodied emotion.’ Our corporeal self is intimately intertwined with how – and what – we think and feel.”

Well, I guess we really do see (and hear, smell, taste, feel) what we believe! And at the root of it all is our body. We give lots of kudos to our magnificent minds, but when you really get down to brass tacks, our body plays a much bigger role than we give it credit – it has the starring role!

This adds significant credibility to my own theory about emotional healing – it’s in the body! Sensation is the language of the body. We ignore our body’s language at our peril – getting fatter, more stressed, and less resilient. I wonder what would happen if we were to focus emotional healing processes on the physical aspects of those emotions – the physical sensations that arise during the expression of our emotions. We might find the key to healing our emotions and our mental constructs that hold those emotions in place. Maybe my theory is worthy of study, too.

Study source: University of California, San Diego. Coauthors on the study are Paula Niedenthal and Nathalie Dalle, both at the Universite Blaise Pascall, Clermont-Ferrand, France.

You can’t possibly account for every possible patient treatment outcome.

During the years I worked with a local physician, I learned from him that physicians struggle with the same “insecurity” I did – that is, he often prescribed a course of treatment that did not appear to work. I spoke with him occasionally during those years about this apparent discrepancy between treatment expectation and actual outcome.

His basic philosophy, which he learned while at med school and during his internship and which I agree with, was that you can’t possibly account for every possible patient treatment outcome. Physicians deal in probabilities. It is probable that a specific treatment will work for a patient based on past experience with that treatment for those particular patient symptoms – but it is just plain unreasonable to think it will work for every patient exhibiting the same symptoms every time – or predict exactly how an outcome of treatment will appear in a specific patient.

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“Ah ha!” can sometimes lead us down the path of rightness – along with its associated narrowing of choices.

Have you ever suddenly “got it” and said to yourself, “Ah ha!”? Maybe you felt you suddenly came to some realization that would solve your current or life problems. Many new therapists believe that if a client comes to a “realization” or “ah ha” then all is well and the client will come away from the session with resolution. This presupposes the insanely incorrect misconception that if we just know enough about our problem we can solve it and that resolution means solution.

“Ah ha’s” are fine and often make you feel you are progressing toward your goals. And sometimes that feeling is right on and correct. However, just as often or more, the “ah ha!” is merely the mind’s way of keeping you stuck or in the status quo – no progress toward substantial change.

When I was doing Rapid Eye trainings I’d often see students light up with “ah ha! I get it now!” and then return to doing exactly what they were doing before my feedback/correction. Their mind formed an image or “lock-on” – and with the lock-on they would lock out whatever else seemed different from their image. It’s called a scotoma and it feels very good – releasing endorphins in the brain. It is NOT resolution, though it often feels like it.

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“If you act nice to them, people won’t take you seriously.”

“What the hell do I care?”

“But if it doesn’t help you, why do it?”

“Sometimes it helps me. But don’t you just like being nice to people?”

“Sometimes. But then if they’re not nice back I get mad.”

“Yeah; just skip that part. How often are you nice to people?”

“Not too often. I’m usually waiting for them to do something where they deserve me being nice.”

“Then that’s not being nice. That’s being fair.”

Conrad Cook, Mindlist
onewetsneaker.wordpress.com

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The problem with “fairness” is that it’s always lopsided: “balanced” more toward the person doing the judging of such “fairness” – my grandchildren always judge something as fair if they got what they wanted – and not fair if they didn’t get what they wanted. Being nice, on the other hand is just a simple frame of mind that says, in effect, “I’m a person I respect who does nice things for others just because I can.”