In some areas of psychology (especially in psychodynamic theory), psychologists talk about “defense mechanisms,” or manners in which we behave or think in certain ways to better protect or “defend” ourselves. Defense mechanisms are one way of looking at how people distance themselves from a full awareness of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Psychologists have categorized defense mechanisms based upon how primitive they are. The more primitive a defense mechanism, the less effective it works for a person over the long-term. However, more primitive defense mechanisms are usually very effective short-term, and hence are favored by many people and children especially (when such primitive defense mechanisms are first learned). Adults who don’t learn better ways of coping with stress or traumatic events in their lives will often resort to such primitive defense mechanisms as well.

Most defense mechanisms are fairly unconscious – that means most of us don’t realize we’re using them in the moment. Some types of psychotherapy can help a person become aware of what defense mechanisms they are using, how effective they are, and how to use less primitive and more effective mechanisms in the future.

Primitive Defense Mechanisms

1. Denial

Denial is the refusal to accept reality or fact, acting as if a painful event, thought or feeling did not exist. It is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms because it is characteristic of early childhood development. Many people use denial in their everyday lives to avoid dealing with painful feelings or areas of their life they don’t wish to admit. For instance, a person who is a functioning alcoholic will often simply deny they have a drinking problem, pointing to how well they function in their job and relationships.

2. Regression

Regression is the reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable thoughts or impulses. For an example an adolescent who is overwhelmed with fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might become clingy and start exhibiting earlier childhood behaviors he has long since overcome, such as bedwetting. An adult may regress when under a great deal of stress, refusing to leave their bed and engage in normal, everyday activities.

3. Acting Out

Acting Out is performing an extreme behavior in order to express thoughts or feelings the person feels incapable of otherwise expressing. Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts out may instead throw a book at the person, or punch a hole through a wall. When a person acts out, it can act as a pressure release, and often helps the individual feel calmer and peaceful once again. For instance, a child’s temper tantrum is a form of acting out when he or she doesn’t get his or her way with a parent. Self-injury may also be a form of acting-out, expressing in physical pain what one cannot stand to feel emotionally.

4. Dissociation

Dissociation is when a person loses track of time and/or person, and instead finds another representation of their self in order to continue in the moment. A person who dissociates often loses track of time or themselves and their usual thought processes and memories. People who have a history of any kind of childhood abuse often suffer from some form of dissociation. In extreme cases, dissociation can lead to a person believing they have multiple selves (“multiple personality disorder”). People who use dissociation often have a disconnected view of themselves in their world. Time and their own self-image may not flow continuously, as it does for most people. In this manner, a person who dissociates can “disconnect” from the real world for a time, and live in a different world that is not cluttered with thoughts, feelings or memories that are unbearable.

5. Compartmentalization

Compartmentalization is a lesser form of dissociation, wherein parts of oneself are separated from awareness of other parts and behaving as if one had separate sets of values. An example might be an honest person who cheats on their income tax return and keeps their two value systems distinct and un-integrated while remaining unconscious of the cognitive dissonance.

6. Projection

Projection is the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those thoughts, feelings or impulses. Projection is used especially when the thoughts are considered unacceptable for the person to express, or they feel completely ill at ease with having them. For example, a spouse may be angry at their significant other for not listening, when in fact it is the angry spouse who does not listen. Projection is often the result of a lack of insight and acknowledgement of one’s own motivations and feelings.

7. Reaction Formation

Reaction Formation is the converting of unwanted or dangerous thoughts, feelings or impulses into their opposites. For instance, a woman who is very angry with her boss and would like to quit her job may instead be overly kind and generous toward her boss and express a desire to keep working there forever. She is incapable of expressing the negative emotions of anger and unhappiness with her job, and instead becomes overly kind to publicly demonstrate her lack of anger and unhappiness.

Less Primitive, More Mature Defense Mechanisms

Less primitive defense mechanisms are a step up from the primitive defense mechanisms in the previous section. Many people employ these defenses as adults, and while they work okay for many, they are not ideal ways of dealing with our feelings, stress and anxiety. If you recognize yourself using a few of these, don’t feel bad – everybody does.

8. Repression

Repression is the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses. The key to repression is that people do it unconsciously, so they often have very little control over it. “Repressed memories” are memories that have been unconsciously blocked from access or view. But because memory is very malleable and ever-changing, it is not like playing back a DVD of your life. The DVD has been filtered and even altered by your life experiences, even by what you’ve read or viewed.

9. Displacement

Displacement is the redirecting of thoughts feelings and impulses directed at one person or object, but taken out upon another person or object. People often use displacement when they cannot express their feelings in a safe manner to the person they are directed at. The classic example is the man who gets angry at his boss, but can’t express his anger to his boss for fear of being fired. He instead comes home and kicks the dog or starts an argument with his wife. The man is redirecting his anger from his boss to his dog or wife. Naturally, this is a pretty ineffective defense mechanism, because while the anger finds a route for expression, it’s misapplication to other harmless people or objects will cause additional problems for most people.

10. Intellectualization

Intellectualization is the overemphasis on thinking when confronted with an unacceptable impulse, situation or behavior without employing any emotions whatsoever to help mediate and place the thoughts into an emotional, human context. Rather than deal with the painful associated emotions, a person might employ intellectualization to distance themselves from the impulse, event or behavior. For instance, a person who has just been given a terminal medical diagnosis, instead of expressing their sadness and grief, focuses instead on the details of all possible fruitless medical procedures.

11. Rationalization

Rationalization is putting something into a different light or offering a different explanation for one’s perceptions or behaviors in the face of a changing reality. For instance, a woman who starts dating a man she really, really likes and thinks the world of is suddenly dumped by the man for no reason. She reframes the situation in her mind with, “I suspected he was a loser all along.”

12. Undoing

Undoing is the attempt to take back an unconscious behavior or thought that is unacceptable or hurtful. For instance, after realizing you just insulted your significant other unintentionally, you might spend then next hour praising their beauty, charm and intellect. By “undoing” the previous action, the person is attempting to counteract the damage done by the original comment, hoping the two will balance one another out.

“What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization…It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”

A Johari window is a cognitive psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States, used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise.

When performing the exercise, subjects are given a list of 56 adjectives and pick five or six that they feel describe their own personality. Peers of the subject are then given the same list, and each pick five or six adjectives that describe the subject. These adjectives are then mapped onto a grid. (Written description from Wikipedia)

Detailed page on the Johari Window here.

Interactive Johari Window Test

This diagram shows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs at the bottom.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as deficiency needs associated with physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. While deficiency needs must be met, growth needs are continually shaping behaviour. The basic concept is that the higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus once all the needs that are lower down in the pyramid are mainly or entirely satisfied. Growth forces create upward movement in the hierarchy, whereas regressive forces push prepotent needs further down the hierarchy.
At the top of the triangle, self-transcendence is also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs .
Maslow believes that we should study and cultivate peak experiences as a way of providing a route to achieve personal growth , integration, and fulfillment. Peak experiences are unifying, and ego-transcending, bringing a sense of purpose to the individual and a sense of integration. Individuals most likely to have peak experiences are self-actualized, mature, healthy, and self-fulfilled. All individuals are capable of peak experiences. Those who do not have them somehow depress or deny them. Maslow originally found the occurrence of peak experiences in individuals who were self-actualized, but later found that peak experiences happened to non-actualizers as well but not as often.

In his The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (New York, 1971) he writes:
“I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds of self-actualizing people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central … It is unfortunate that I can no longer be theoretically neat at this level. I find not only self-actualizing persons who transcend, but also nonhealthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences. It seems to me that I have found some degree of transcendence in many people other than self-actualizing ones as I have defined this term …”

Teaching Methods

Maslow had comments on teaching children which included:

Be authentic.

Transcend their cultural conditioning and become world citizens.

Find their vocation and right mate.

Know that life is precious.

Be good and joyous in all kinds of situations.

Learn from their inner nature.

See that basic needs are satisfied.

Refresh their consciousness; appreciate beauty and other good things in life.

Understand that controls are good, and complete abandon is bad.

Transcend trifling problems

Grapple with serious problems such as injustice, pain suffering and death

Be good choosers

Be given practice in making choices, later allowing choices in their religious beliefs.

An extract from ‘Food is better Medicine than Drugs’

by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne, published by Piatkus Books Ltd, 2006


Chapter 10 - Beating Depression

‘Natural alternatives - A truly scientific approach

There is a curious contradiction at the heart of the drug-based approach to depression. The treatment is based on correcting a biochemical imbalance in the brain. So you might think a scientific approach would be to check whether depressed patients actually had an imbalance and if so, exactly which neurotransmitters were low so they could be given a boost. But that is not what happens. Instead, the diagnosis of depression is based solely on a checklist of psychological symptoms, which doesn’t tell you anything about what is going on with brain or indeed body chemistry.

In fact, it has taken a nutritionally minded doctor to take this obvious scientific step. Professor Tapan Audhya from New York University Medical Center in the US first showed that the level of serotonin found in platelets, which are tiny disc-like bodies in the blood, correlates with the level of these transmitters in the brain. Next he investigated whether people with depression do actually have abnormal levels of platelet serotonin by measuring platelet levels in 52 normal and 74 depressed volunteers. The difference was striking. In 73 per cent of depressed patients, serotonin levels were barely a fifth of those in the normal subjects. 

Knowing that this neurotransmitter is made directly from amino acids found in food, Audhya then gave his patients 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), the amino acid that’s a direct precursor to serotonin, from which it is made. This corrected the deficiency and resulted in major and rapid relief from depression.

When it comes to treating depression or any other chronic condition, nutrition is a real alternative as it is based on finding out what is actually going on in the patient’s system and then sorting out any specific imbalances. That makes a lot more sense, and is far more scientific, than giving millions of people precisely the same chemical regardless of what is actually wrong with them.

At the Brain Bio Centre, filling in the Hamilton Rating Scale questionnaire is just the beginning. You will also be asked about your diet and other health symptoms and then given blood and urine tests to discover how well you are functioning in four key areas that can affect depression: 

• Serotonin levels – do they need boosting? 
• Your homocysteine level – is it too high?
• Essential fats – are your levels high enough?
• Blood sugar balance – is yours within the healthy range?

Each of these can, if necessary, be improved with one or other of the top five natural anti-depressants, which include B vitamins, omega-3 fats and amino acids. 

Unlike drugs for related problems such as anxiety, depression and insomnia, which often interact with each other in damaging ways, the various elements of a nutritional approach all complement one another. As we saw in Chapter 5, to begin to cure any chronic disorder you need to be sure that the various biochemical elements involved are balanced in an optimum way. So what has to happen to lift depression?

First, you’ll need the building blocks for the relevant neurotransmitters (see Figure 11). These are tryptophan or 5-hydroxytryptophan, both amino acids found in protein foods. But they are no good without the catalysts that turn them into neurotransmitters, which are B vitamins, magnesium, zinc and something called trimethylglycine (or TMG for short). These nutrients will also keep levels of an amino acid known as homocysteine low in the blood, which is important for holding depression at bay.

Omega-3 fats, especially one called EPA, are vital. Not only do they act as catalysts, but they are also needed to build the receptors – the docking ports in brain cells that serotonin and the other neurotransmitters attach themselves to. Finally, the whole system needs a constant and stable supply of energy, which is why blood sugar levels need to be maintained within healthy limits. Other element of the new medicine package for depression could include exercise and increased exposure to natural light, both of which raise serotonin, along with psychotherapy.

But what is the evidence that each one of these elements not only works on its own but is more effective than anti-depressants? Just one of them may do the trick for you or you may benefit from several in combination. However, once you see how they all work together, it becomes clear just how limited the standard drug style clinical trials are for testing this sort of medicine. 

So what’s the evidence?

5-HTP
We’ve now seen how serotonin is made in the body and brain from 5-HTP. In its turn, 5-HTP is made from another amino acid, tryptophan. Both can be found in food: many protein-rich foods such as meat, fish, beans and eggs contain tryptophan, while the richest source of 5-HTP is the African griffonia bean. Not getting enough tryptophan is likely to make you depressed: people fed food deficient in tryptophan became rapidly depressed within hours. Both have been shown to have an anti-depressant effect in clinical trials, although 5-HTP is more effective. There have been 27 studies, involving 990 people to date, most of which proved positive. 

So how do they compare with anti-depressants? Eleven of the 5-HTP trials were double-blind placebo controlled, and six of those measured depression using the HRS. The studies differed in design, so you cannot just add up the scores to get an average, but the improvement rated 13, 30, 34, 39, 40, 56 and 61 per cent. It doesn’t take a scientist to realise these results are a lot better than the average 15 per cent improvement reported for anti-depressants.

In play-off studies between 5-HTP and SSRI anti-depressants, 5-HTP comes out slightly better. One double-blind trial headed by Dr W.P. Poldinger at the Basel University of Psychiatry gave 34 depressed volunteers either the SSRI fluvoxamine (Luvox) or 300mg of 5-HTP. At the end of the six weeks, both groups of patients had had a significant improvement in their depression. However, those taking 5-HTP had a slightly greater improvement, compared to those on the SSRI, in each of the four criteria assessed –depression, anxiety, insomnia, and physical symptoms – as well as their own self-assessment. 

Since in some sensitive people, anti-depressant drugs can induce an overload of serotonin called ‘serotonin syndrome’ – characterised by feeling overheated, high blood pressure, twitching, cramping, dizziness and disorientation – some concern has been expressed about the possibility of increasing the odds of serotonin syndrome with the combination of 5-HTP and an SSRI drug. However, a recent review on the safety of 5-HTP concludes that ‘serotonin syndrome has not been reported in humans in association with 5-HTP, either as monotherapy [on its own] or in combination with other medications.’

Are there any side effects with 5-HTP? Some people experience mild gastrointestinal disturbance on 5-HTP, which usually stops within a few days. Since there are serotonin receptors in the gut, which don’t normally expect to get the real thing so easily, they can overreact if the amount is too high, resulting in transient nausea. If this happens, just lower the dose.

B vitamins and the homocysteine link
People with either low blood levels of the B vitamin folic acid, or high blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine, are both more likely to be depressed and less likely to get a positive result from anti-depressant drugs.

A study published in 2003 found that having a high level of homocysteine doubles the odds of a woman developing depression, for instance. Ensuring homocysteine stays low means that your brain will methylate well, keeping its chemistry ticking over and in balance. So one way of staving off depression is to keep your homocysteine levels in check. The ideal level is below 6, and the average level is 10-11. The risk of depression doubles with levels above 15.

Normalising homocysteine levels is mainly down to getting enough vitamins B2, B6, B12, zinc, TMG – and folic acid. In fact, the higher your blood homocysteine level, the more likely folic acid will work for you. In a study from 2000, comparing the effects of giving an SSRI with either a placebo or with folic acid, 61 per cent of patients improved on the placebo combination but 93 per cent improved with the addition of folic acid. 

But how does folic acid, a cheap vitamin with no side effects, compare to anti-depressants? Three trials published in 2003 and involving 247 people addressed this question. Two, with 151 participants, assessed the use of folic acid in addition to other treatment, and found that adding folic acid reduced HRS scores on average by a further 2.65 points. That’s not as good as the results with 5-HTP but as good, if not better, than anti-depressants. These studies also show that more patients treated with folic acid experienced a 50 per cent greater reduction in their HRS after ten weeks, compared to those on anti-depressants.

As for side effects, there are none, except a lower risk for heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer’s and improved energy and concentration. However, if you are vegan – which can potentially leave you B12 deficient – taking folic acid on its own can mask the symptoms, but the underlying nerve damage caused by B12 deficiency anaemia can persist. So don’t take folic acid without also supplementing vitamin B12. (Pregnant women should also ensure they take a recommended multivitamin if they are supplementing folic acid.)

Omega-3s 
The richest dietary source of omega-3 essential fats is fish, specifically carnivorous coldwater fish such as salmon, mackerel and herring. As a 1998 Lancet article reveals, surveys have shown that the more fish the population of a country eats, the lower their incidence of depression. The omega-3 fat EPA seems to be the most potent natural anti-depressant.

There have been six double-blind placebo-controlled trials to date, five of which show significant improvement in levels of depression. The first, by Dr Andrew Stoll from Harvard Medical School, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, gave 40 depressed patients either omega-3 supplements or a placebo, and found a highly significant improvement in those given the omega-3s. 

The next, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, tested the effects of giving 20 people suffering from severe depression and who were already on anti-depressants, but still depressed, a highly concentrated form of omega-3 fat called ethyl-EPA versus a placebo. By the third week, the depressed patients were showing major improvement in their mood, while those on placebo were not. A 2006 trial by Dr Sophia Frangou from the Institute of Psychiatry in London gave a concentrated form of EPA, versus a placebo, to 26 depressed people with bipolar disorder (otherwise known as manic depression) and again found a significant improvement. 

In these trials, which used the HRS, the average improvement in depression in those taking omega-3s over the placebo hovered around the 50 per cent mark. Again, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that these results are a quantum leap ahead of anti-depressant drugs – and without the side effects. This is because omega-3s help to build your brain’s neuronal connections as well as the receptor sites for neurotransmitters, so the more omega-3s in your blood, the more serotonin you are likely to make and the more responsive you become to its effects. 

Top fish for brain fats

Amount of EPA in 100g (3oz)

Mackerel 1,400mg
Herring/kipper 1,000mg
Sardines 1,000mg
Tuna 900mg
Anchovy 900mg
Salmon 800mg
Trout 500mg
[chart ends]

What about side effects? Participants in some earlier studies, who were consuming 14 fish oil capsules a day, experienced mild gastrointestinal discomfort – mainly loose bowels. However, nowadays you can buy more concentrated EPA-rich fish oils, so you get more omega-3 with less oil. Supplementing fish oils also reduces the risk for heart disease, alleviates arthritic pain and may improve memory and concentration.

Balancing your blood sugar 
If you went to your doctor complaining of depression, you’d hardly expect them to say, ‘Eat less sugar.’ But they should, because there is a direct link between mood and blood sugar balance. As we’ve already seen, all carbohydrate foods are broken down into glucose and your brain runs on glucose. The more uneven your blood sugar supply, the more uneven your mood.

Eating lots of sugar is going to give you sudden peaks and troughs in the amount of glucose in your blood. You will experience this as fatigue, irritability, dizziness, insomnia, excessive sweating (especially at night), poor concentration and forgetfulness, severe thirst, depression, crying spells, digestive disturbances and blurred vision. (For more details on blood-sugar problems, see Chapter 8.) Since the brain depends on an even supply of glucose, it is no surprise to find that sugar has been implicated in aggressive behaviour, anxiety, and depression, and fatigue,

Lots of refined sugar and refined carbohydrates (white bread, pasta, rice and most processed foods) is also linked with depression because these foods not only supply very little in the way of nutrients, but also use up the mood-enhancing B vitamins because the body needs B vitamins to turn each teaspoon of sugar into energy. Sugar also diverts the supply of another nutrient we highlighted in our discussion of diabetes in Chapter 8 – chromium. This mineral is vital for keeping your blood sugar level stable because insulin, which clears glucose from the blood, can’t work properly without it. In fact, it turns out that just supplying proper levels of chromium to certain depressed patients can make a big difference.


Chromium and ‘atypical’ depression

‘Atypical’ depression is called that because it differs markedly from so-called ‘classic’ depression, where sufferers have little appetite, don’t eat enough, lose weight and can’t sleep. Let’s look at some of the symptoms of atypical depression; if you answer yes to five or more of these questions, you might be suffering from it.

• Do you crave sweets or other carbohydrates?
• Do you tend to gain weight?
• Are you tired for no obvious reason?
• Do your arms or legs feel heavy?
• Do you tend to feel sleepy or groggy much of the time?
• Are your feelings easily hurt by the rejection of others?
• Did your depression begin before the age of 30?

Atypical depression is estimated to affect anywhere from 25 to 42 percent of the depressed population, and an even higher percentage among depressed women, so it’s actually extremely common (and misnamed).

A chance discovery by Dr Malcolm McLeod, clinical professor of psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina in the US, suggested that people who suffer from it might benefit from chromium supplementation. In a small double-blind study published in 2003, McLeod gave ten patients suffering from atypical depression chromium supplements of 600mcg a day, and five others a placebo, for eight weeks. 

The results were dramatic. Seven out of the ten taking the supplements showed a big improvement, as opposed to none on the placebo. Their HRS dropped by an unheard-of 83 per cent: that is, from 29 – major depression – to 5, which is classed as not depressed. A larger trial at Cornell University in the US, involving 113 participants, confirmed the finding in 2005. After eight weeks, 65 per cent of the people taking chromium had had a major improvement, compared to 33 per cent on placebos.

Side effects None, except more energy and better weight control. Chromium has no toxicity, even at amounts 100 times those used in the trials above.

Light, exercise, air and friends
Exercise is a key part of the new medicine model’s non-drug approach. It also turns out to be as effective as taking anti-depressants. A number of studies in which people exercised for 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 times a week found a drop of around 5 points in their HRS – more than double what you’d expect from anti-depressants alone. In an Australian study published in 2005, involving 60 adults over the age of 60, half took up high-intensity exercise three days a week, while the other half did low-intensity exercise. Of those doing high-intensity exercise, 61 per cent halved their HRS, while only 29 per cent of those doing low-intensity exercise halved their score.

And if you exercise in bright light, you get a double dose of natural ‘anti-depressant’, as a number of studies using full-spectrum lighting (versus normal room lighting) have shown. Unlike normal ‘yellow’ lighting, sunlight is white and contains a stronger and fuller spectrum of light. Although more expensive, full-spectrum light bulbs are a worthwhile addition, especially if you are prone to the winter blues – known as SAD or seasonal-affective disorder. (See Resources for suppliers of full-spectrum lighting.)

In one study published in 2004, a third of depressed volunteers who exercised in full-spectrum lighting experienced a major improvement in their depression (a 50 per cent or more decrease in their HRS). Other studies from 2005 have also found a definitive improvement, even among those not specifically prone to SAD. The effect could be due to the direct effect of light on raising serotonin. 

One other gadget, or lifestyle change, you might want to consider to beat the blues is an ionizer. These give off negative ions, which are naturally generated by turbulent water – think waterfalls and the seaside – and are thought to be good for you, while positive ions, produced especially by electronic equipment such as computers screens, air-conditioning and TV sets are not. In one controlled trial, depressed patients exposed to both full-spectrum lighting plus a high-intensity ionizer reported major improvements in their depression. By leaving an ionizer on overnight you might substantially improve mood (see Resources for the best ionizers).

Counselling and psychotherapy
Probably the biggest non-nutritional factor in recovering from depression is having someone to talk to about life’s inevitable problems and stresses. Much depression is linked to, or triggered by, stressful life events such as a death, the loss of a job, or the breakup of a relationship. Or you may have felt that your life was out of kilter and lacking in essential elements – a circle of supportive friends or relatives or good standing at work, for example – for some time, and feel that you’re tipping over from the blues into a real depression.

Feeling bad about yourself and lacking someone supportive to listen to you can be a major cause of depression however good your diet might be. A problem shared is a problem halved. While good nutrition might give you more mental and emotional energy to solve your problems, it doesn’t take away the underlying issues that fuel depression. For this reason, we recommend counselling and psychotherapy as well as nutritional approaches.

Food or drugs? The verdict 

The evidence suggests that the nutritional approach it not only more effective. It’s also practically free of serious negative side effects. So why not do it? Well, you could argue that there’s not enough research to conclusively prove all the benefits we’ve discussed here. You might be thinking that many of the trials are small, although well designed. That’s true to an extent, and it’s also unlikely to change: there’s little profit to be made from non-patentable nutrients such as omega-3, folic acid or 5-HTP. Psychiatrist Dr Erick Turne from the Mood Disorders Center in Portland, Oregon, who uses 5-HTP in his practice, says: ‘Unfortunately, because 5-HTP is a dietary supplement and not a prescription pharmaceutical, there is comparatively little financial incentive for extensive clinical research.’ Also, since no benefits for nutrients can be put on their packaging, and there’s no army of reps or marketing budget, most people simply don’t know about these highly effective, and considerably safer nutritional options.

But then there’s the other, now-familiar problem: most DOCTORs are also unfamiliar with food-based medicine. ‘A DOCTOR receives virtually no training in nutritional approaches to depression. It’s an obvious oversight, given the wealth of evidence,’ says André Tylee, professor of primary care mental health at the Institute of Psychiatry. But that is no reason why you shouldn’t try it yourself with the help of a trained clinical nutritionist.

What works

• Set up the building blocks. Most of the studies we’ve cited used 300mg of 5-HTP, but we recommend ideally testing to see whether you are low in serotonin with a platelet serotonin test (see Resources, page 406) and starting with 100mg, or 50mg, twice a day. Be aware that 5-HTP is best absorbed either on an empty stomach or with a carbohydrate snack such as a piece of fruit or an oatcake. Otherwise, make sure you eat enough protein from beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, fish, eggs and meat, which are all high in tryptophan. If your motivation is low, you could also supplement 1,000mg of tyrosine.

• Put the catalysts in place. Test your homocysteine level, which can be done using a home test kit (see Resources, page 406). Theoretically your doctor can request this, but few do. If your level is above 9mmol/l, take a combined ‘homocysteine’ supplement of B2, B6, B12, folic acid, zinc, and TMG, providing at least 400mcg of folic acid, 250mcg of B12 and 20mg of B6. If your homocysteine score is above 15mmol/l, double this amount. Also eat whole foods rich in the B vitamins – whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. Folic acid is particularly abundant in green vegetables, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds, while B12 is only found in animal foods – meat, fish, eggs and dairy produce.

• Take omega-3s. You need about 1,000mg of EPA a day for a mood-boosting effect. That means supplementing a concentrated omega-3 fish oil capsule providing 500mg twice a day, and eating a serving of either sardines, mackerel, herring, or wild or organic salmon, three times a week. Tuna steaks are also a good source but should be eaten only once a week because of possible mercury contamination, whereas tinned tuna has very little omega-3s because of the way it’s processed. Very little, perhaps 5%, of the omega 3 fats found in flax or pumpkin seeds convert into EPA, so while these are good to eat they don’t have the same anti-depressant effect.

• Keep your fuel supply stable. Eating a diet that will stabilise your blood sugar (see page 143), and supplementing 600mcg of chromium, will help tremendously in keeping your moods stable. Chromium supplements generally come in 200mcg pills. Take two with breakfast and one with lunch. After a month, cut down to one with breakfast and one with lunch. Don’t take chromium in the evening, as it can have a stimulating effect. 

• Exercise for at least 15 minutes most days. Psychocolisthenics (see Resources, page 405) is especially good for balancing your mood.

• Consider psychotherapy (see Resources, page 403, for help with referrals).

Dig deeper by reading Optimum Nutrition for the Mind by Patrick Holford

Working with your doctor 
Much of what we recommend you can either do for yourself or by seeking the guidance and support of a nutritional therapist. However, the process of weaning yourself off anti-depressants is something you must do with the support and guidance of your doctor.

We recommend that 5-HTP not be taken in significant amounts, above 50mg, if you are on an anti-depressant – 5-HTP helps the body make serotonin while SSRI anti-depressants stop it being broken down. If your doctor is willing to wean you off anti-depressants it helps, at the same time, to wean you on to 5-HTP, gradually building the daily amount up to a maximum of 300mg, but no more than 100mg before you are completely off the anti-depressant. In our experience, this minimises and shortens the withdrawal effects that many people experience when coming off anti-depressants.

All the other mood-boosting factors we’ve discussed – from omega 3s to exercise – can safely be added while you’re on medication and will probably help you reduce your need, them come off anti-depressants with less withdrawal effects.’

End of Extract

What we eat affects how we feel and how mentally well we are. The premise is supported by a growing body of scientific research, including that in a report — published earlier this year by the charity the Mental Health Foundation and the alliance for better food and farming Sustain — which urges the Government to incorporate the link between diet and mental health into all its food-related policy and practice. 

Of course, it makes sense that if food nourishes our body it will impact the structure and functioning of our brains. Yet how many of us consider this in our role as practitioners when we think with clients about the cause of their difficulties? 

Patrick Holford, a psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts in new approaches to health and nutrition, argues that identifying and treating biochemical imbalances in the body via nutrition is a ‘third way’ in the field of mental health. In his view, neither of the traditional approaches — medication or counselling and psychotherapy — offers enough on its own. In fact, he argues that a nutritional approach, as practised by the clinic he runs in Richmond, London — the Brain Bio Centre — has the potential to make obsolete most of the drugs prescribed for mental illness — and actually cure a range of problems from depression to schizophrenia. 

‘I don’t believe that schizophrenia is always curable,’ he says. ‘But we have had hundreds of cases of people very clearly diagnosed with the illness — often with many years of medication and institutionalisation — who, after treatment with us, no longer fit any of the criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.’ 

Raising awareness among counsellors and psychotherapists of the possibilities inherent in a nutritional approach is a key part of Holford’s mission. He believes clients need help with whichever part of the equation is most relevant to what they are struggling with — therapy for a problem that has an underlying psychological issue; nutritional help for something that is biochemically based, and in some cases, such as eating disorders, a combination of both. 

Brains and nutrients

Psychotherapy was Holford’s starting point for his exploration of mental health; he trained in Transactional Analysis and psychosynthesis before making the choice to study experimental psychology. In this period he evolved a particular interest in intelligence and schizophrenia which then led him to the work of Canadian psychiatrist Dr Abram Hoffer who, in the 1950s, published the results of a double blind trial highlighting the effectiveness of giving large doses of vitamin B to people suffering from schizophrenia’”. Holford later became Hoffer’s student and has spent his career since then exploring the relationship between brain function and nutrients. In the early 1980s he started his own practice seeing clients suffering from mental health problems, and today runs the Institute for Optimum Nutrition which trains nutritionists and offers nutritional treatments, including those of the Brain Bio Centre. 

At a global level, Holford believes that we are all, to a certain extent, victims of the many and stressful physical and psychological changes to our way of living in recent decades. A web-based survey carried out in 2001 involving 37,000 people in Britain found — among other results — that 76 per cent were often tired, 47 per cent had difficulty sleeping, 50 per cent suffered from anxiety, 58 per cent from mood swings and 42 per cent from depression. These problems may be symptoms of wider societal change, but he argues that our way of coping with them — with fixes of caffeine, sugar, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs — compounds them, creating cycles of imbalance in blood sugar and deficiencies in specific nutrients: 

‘The brain is exquisitely sensitive to its fuel supply — a steady supply of glucose which is the breakdown product of all carbohydrate,’ he says. ‘So, if you drink a can of cola, your blood sugar level shoots up much too high and your body then overreacts by producing extensive amounts of insulin which then send it much too low. When blood sugar is too low, the body produces more adrenalin and, some studies suggest, five times more than a person would normally produce.’ The result of this phase? Irritability, tiredness and panic, which may lead a person to turn to more sugar, caffeine or nicotine and/or relaxants like alcohol. Over time, he says, this ‘see-sawing’ between stimulants and relaxants 

depletes the body’s store of nutrients. For example, each time the body produces insulin in response to a sugar rush, it uses the mineral chromium to make it effective, so repeated drawing on this source will start to deplete the body’s chromium and undermine its ability to control blood sugar levels. The pattern sets a background for disrupted brain function which can, Holford argues, lead to depression, disrupted thinking and ultimately to psychosis. 

For the brain to function optimally, Holford says we need a stable glucose input to fuel it, B vitamins, which act as catalysts, and essential fats — especially Omega-3 and Omega-6 — to protect us from illnesses like depression, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, phospholipids to ensure a smooth-running system of signals (so enhancing mood and mental performance) and amino acids to maintain the brain’s neurotransmitters which determine our mood and capacity to concentrate, relax and keep in sync with time and seasons. However, each individual is different and some people are genetically predisposed to conditions that leave them vulnerable to nutrient deficiency and therefore mental health problems. For example, some have a high level of the toxic amino acid homocysteine in the blood, a chemical that interferes with the important process of methylation — the balancing of neurotransmitters like adrenalin (which influences motivation) and serotonin (which influences mood). Among those unable to methylate effectively, says Holford, are people prone to depression and schizophrenia. To lower homocysteine and improve methylation, he argues that simply prescribing a dosage of vitamins B6 and B12, folic acid and the nutrient tri-methyl-glycine (TMG) can be very effective. 

Psychosis and depression

When a client comes to the Brain Bio Centre he undergoes psychometric testing, and nutritionists take a sample of his hair, urine and blood to measure what is happening biochemically to see if there are imbalances which could be contributing to mental illness and which could be corrected by nutrition. If so, he is given a tailor-made diet and supplement programme which he is asked to follow as best he can for a month. After this time, he returns to the clinic for follow-up, again after two months and three months, and at six months he is tested again for any changes. 

Holford points out that, very often, clients suffering psychosis are doing many of the things that will upset the balance of their emotions — drinking caffeinated drinks, eating large quantities of sugar, smoking, using alcohol and cannabis — in which case ‘cleaning up’ the person’s diet can make a big difference quite quickly. However, for people struggling with mental illness, this may not be as straightforward as it sounds. 

‘The biggest issue when working with someone with psychosis is their ability to stick with the programme,’ says Holford. ‘It’s not so much that the programme is immensely difficult; it’s more that the person’s circumstances may make it difficult for them. Invariably they will be coming with a parent or carer and we are dependant on that person’s ability to support them through this programme.’ 

For schizophrenic clients particularly, it may not be possible to make changes in diet in the first months, so here the advice may simply be to take the supplements each day, whatever else they do. This alone can give a person a noticeable benefit, helping him to feel more able to cope, and as a result he may well be more willing to explore and discuss possible changes to his eating and drinking at the next meeting. In cases of schizophrenia, nutritionists investigate a number of potential problems as well as the need for B vitamins and folic acid — among them blood sugar and essential fat imbalances, food allergies, too many oxidants and the need for extra zinc. What is important with these clients, Holford stresses, is to start a nutritional approach as early as possible. For, where someone has been on long-term psychotropic medication, his brain will have become increasingly dependent on this and he will be suffering irreversible side-effects which together make him less likely to make a full recovery. However, no client is taken off his existing medication straight away. The clinic’s team — which includes a consultant psychiatrist — monitors him over a period of months alongside his existing mental health practitioners to determine at what point his symptoms have reduced enough for him to gradually start reducing medication. 

Despite the challenges, Holford claims good success rates with schizophrenia. His claims are equally bold for depression where he argues that a nutritional approach — chromium, which can kick in within 48 hours, Omega-3, B vitamins that lower homocysteine and amino acids such as 5-HTP — combined with exercise, light therapy and possibly counselling or psychotherapy is more effective than anti-depressant medication. In fact, apart from crisis situations — such as may arise in mania or schizophrenia — his view is that psychotropic medication will in the future become largely obsolete. 

Where someone presenting at the clinic shows up as deeply depressed, Holford says psychotherapy would immediately be recommended and help possibly also offered to find an appropriate practitioner. Therapy would also be seen as pivotal in the treatment of a client suffering from an eating disorder, alongside a nutritional approach in which Holford highlights among other issues the disorder’s link with zinc deficiency. Too little zinc, he argues, can induce and exacerbate many of the same symptoms as anorexia — loss of appetite, weight loss, depression, misperceptions and amenorrhoea. 

A refreshing approach 

This approach to mental health is one which Holford argues his clients find refreshing after years of treatment under a medical model which may have left them feeling that they are their diagnosis: ‘We explain to people that the tests we’ve run show that their brain is not able to function in the way that it should because they are lacking certain nutrients and that this may, for example, induce depression or fear. 

We say: this isn’t you — this is your brain that isn’t getting enough for you. And it’s often a breath of fresh air for people. It provides some room for hope where they no longer carry the label that they are mentally sick.’ 

As part of this, the role of psychotherapy and counselling is essential. Holford believes that it is the correct treatment for problems arising from, for example, early trauma or from the inability to express anger — cases which nutrition won’t solve. However, he stresses that there are many situations where a psychological approach needs to be supported by a consideration of nutritional aspects. ‘It is insane for a psychotherapist to be delving deeply into a person’s depression and anxiety without having at least run a basic check for other factors that may be influencing their state,’ he says. 

What’s important for psychotherapists to take on board, he says, is that a complementary nutritional approach will enhance a person’s capacity to benefit from therapy. By improving brain function, he argues, symptoms such as anxiety and depression may well be alleviated and the client may gain a greater capacity for objectivity and insight through which he can experience a new psychological perspective. But, bearing in mind that most of us are not familiar with clinical nutrition, how does he think this would work? 

Holford wants, ultimately, to see all psychotherapy trainings incorporate at least a day on the nutritional and biochemical aspects of mental health problems. Most important, he says, are pointers on how to screen for such underlying issues — picking up on the possibility, for example, that the depressed person who finds themselves panicking for no known reason, who has asthma, eczema and who is prone to ear infections, may be suffering from a food allergy. For practitioners interested to check out whether a client’s symptoms may indicate a biochemical imbalance, his website at www.foodforthebrain.org has a questionnaire which practitioners can give to clients. The information, returned by email to his nutritionists, is then processed and a response sent back to the client, as well as to their practitioner, if their details are included. His suggestion is that, for psychotherapists and counsellors who do not have knowledge of this field, this method of screening could become part of their assessment process — and the results considered together with the client as part of an exploration of the possible next step. Meanwhile Holford is masterminding a Food For the Brain conference in London this month at which a number of experts from the worlds of psychoanalysis, psychiatry and nutrition will be speaking about nutritional approaches to mental illness. He, himself, will be giving a three-hour teaching session on the first day aimed largely at those such as psychotherapists who want to learn the basics. 

‘Psychotherapists need to know about this, even if they don’t need to be experts in it,’ he says. ‘Similarly, nutritionists need to know the kind of questions to ask that might lead to knowing if the person in front of them needs to see a psychotherapist.’ For, just as he believes that someone may present with psychological symptoms only to find that they have a biochemical base, so, he argues, they may present with what perhaps seem to them more acceptable nutritional issues which may have a psychological base. This is very much a part of the thinking at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition where students in clinical nutrition undergo four days of training in aspects of psychotherapy, during which they practise the basic skills for supporting someone who is unwell, as well as learning about and exploring the value of the psychological support that comes through psychotherapy and counselling. ‘We are all pieces of the same jigsaw,’ says Holford. 

However, such nutritional approaches to mental illness have yet to be adopted by the NHS. And, until they are, a course of treatment with tests such as those offered at his clinic is likely to continue to cost prospective clients upwards of X,600 plus the cost of the supplements, thus screening out many of those who could benefit from them. 

Patrick Holford’s hope is to continue to generate research that will provide a convincing case for the integration of his methods, so that many more people have the chance to discover that they can take action to help themselves towards healthier brains and more robust mental health. 

***

Article from Therapy Today, October 2006. Reproduced under the FAIR USE ACT for educational proposes. Therapy Today is published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (bacp).

“The essence of humanism … is that man is fully acknowledged to be human—-that is, limited and fallible—-and that in no way whatever is he superhuman or subhuman.” -Albert Ellis

REBT (pronounced R.E.B.T. — it is not pronounced rebbit) is based on the premise that whenever we become upset, it is not the events taking place in our lives that upset us; it is the beliefs that we hold that cause us to become depressed, anxious, enraged, etc. The idea that our beliefs upset us was first articulated by Epictetus around 2,000 years ago: “Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them.”- rebtnetwork.org

The cognitive part of the theory and practice of REBT may be briefly stated in A-B-C form as follows: 

At point A there is an ACTIVITY, ACTION, or AGENT that the individual becomes disturbed about. Example: He goes for an important job interview; or he has a fight with his mate, who unfairly screams at him.

At point rB the individual has a RATIONAL BELIEF (or a REASONABLE BELIEF or a REALISTIC BELIEF) about the ACTIVITY, ACTION, or AGENT that occurs at point A. Example: He believes, “It would be unfortunate if I were rejected at the job interview “Or, “How annoying it is to have my mate unfairly scream at me!”

At point iB the individual has an IRRATIONAL BELIEF (or an INAPPROPRIATE BELIEF) about the ACTIVITY, ACTION, or AGENT that occurs at point A. Example: He believes, “It would be catastrophic if I were rejected at the job interview ” Or, “My mate is a horrible person for screaming at me!”

Point rB, the RATIONAL BELIEF, can be supported by empirical data and is appropriate to the reality that is occurring, or that may occur, at point A. For it normally is unfortunate if the individual is rejected at an interview for an important job; and it is annoying if his mate unfairly screams at him. It would hardly be rational or realistic if he thought; “How great it will be if I am rejected at the job interview!” Or: “It is wonderful to have my mate scream at me! Her screaming shows what a lovely person she is!”

Point iB, the IRRATIONAL BELIEF, cannot be supported by any empirical evidence and is inappropriate to the reality that is occurring, or that may occur, at Point A. For it hardly would be truly catastrophic, but only (at worst) highly inconvenient, if the individual were rejected for an important job. It is unlikely that he would never get another job, that he would literally starve to death, or that he would have to be utterly miserable at any other job he could get. And his mate is not a horrible person for screaming at him, she is merely a person who behaves (at some times) horribly and who (at other times) has various un-horrible traits.

His iB’s, or IRRATIONAL BELIEFS, moreover, state or imply a should, ought, or must—an absolutistic demand or dictate that the individual obtain what he wants; for, by believing that it is catastrophic if he is rejected for an important job, he explicitly or implicitly believes that he should or must be accepted at that interview. And by believing that his mate is a horrible person for screaming at him, he overtly or tacitly believes that she ought or must be non-screaming. There is, of course, no law of the universe (except in his muddled head!) which says that he should do well at an important job interview, or that his mate must not scream at him.

At point rC the individual experiences or feels RATIONAL CONSEQUENCES or REASONABLE CONSEQUENCES of his rB’s (RATIONAL BELIEFS). Thus, if he rigorously and discriminately believes, “It would be unfortunate if I were rejected at the job interview,” he feels concerned and thoughtful about the interview; he plans in a determined manner how to succeed at it, and if by chance he fails to get the job he wants, he feels disappointed, displeased, sorrowful, and frustrated. His actions and his feelings are appropriate to the situation that is occurring or may occur at point A, and they tend to help him succeed in his goals or feel suitably regretful if he does not achieve these goals.

At point iC the individual experiences IRRATIONAL CONSEQUENCES or INAPPROPRIATE CONSEQUENCES of his iB’s (IRRATIONAL BELIEFS). Thus, if he childishly and dictatorially believes, “It would be catastrophic if I were rejected at the job interview. I couldn’t stand it! What a worm I would then prove to be! I should do well at this important interview!” he tends to feel anxious, self-hating, self-pitying, depressed, and enraged. He gets dysfunctional psychosomatic reactions, such as high blood pressure and ulcers. He becomes defensive, fails to see his own mistakes in his interview, and by rationalization blames his failure on external factors. He becomes preoccupied with how hopeless his situation is, and refuses to do much about changing it by going for other interviews. And he generally experiences what we call “disturbed,” “neurotic,” or “over reactive” symptoms. His actions and feelings at point iC are inappropriate to the situation that is occurring or may occur at point because they are based on magical demands regarding the way he and the universe presumably ought to be. And they tend to help him fail his goals or feel horribly upset if he does not achieve them. 

These are the A-B-C’s of emotional disturbance or self-defeating attitudes and behaviour, according to the RET theory. Therapeutically, these A-B-C’s can be extended to D-E’s, which constitute the cognitive core of the RET methodology. 

At point D, the individual can be taught (or can teach himself) to DISPUTE his iB’s (IRRATIONAL BELIEFS). Thus, he can ask himself, “Why is it catastrophic if I am rejected in this forthcoming job interview? How would such a rejection destroy me? Why couldn’t I stand losing this particular job? Where is the evidence that I would be a worm if I were rejected? Why should I have to do well at this important interview?” If he persistently, vigorously DISPUTES (or questions and challenges) his own iB’s (IRRATIONAL. BELIEFS) which are creating his iC’s (INAPPROPRIATE CONSEQUENCES), he will sooner or later come to see, in most instances, that they are unverifiable, unempirically based, and superstitious, and he will be able to change and reject them.

At point cE the individual is likely to obtain the COGNITIVE EFFECT of his DISPUTING his iB’s (IRRATIONAL BELIEFS). Thus, if he asks himself, “Why is it catastrophic if I am rejected in this forthcoming job interview?” he will tend to answer “It is not; it will merely be inconvenient.” If he asks, “How would such a rejection destroy me?” he will reply, “It won’t; it will only frustrate me.” If he asks: “Why couldn’t I stand losing this particular job?” he will tell himself: “I can! I won’t like it; but I can gracefully lump it!” If he asks: “Where is the evidence that I would be a worm if I were rejected?” he will respond: “There isn’t any! I will only feel like a worm if I define myself as and think of myself as a worm!” If he asks, “Why should I have to do well at this important interview?” he will tell himself: “There’s no reason why I should have to do well. There are several reasons why it would be nice. It would be very fortunate if I succeeded at this job interview. But they never add up to: ‘Therefore I must!’.

At point bE the individual will most likely obtain the BEHAVIORAL EFFECT of his DISPUTING his iB’s (IRRATIONAL BELIEFS). Thus, he will tend to be much less anxious about his forthcoming job interview. He will become less self-hating, self-pitying, and enraged. He will reduce his psychosomatic reactions. He will be able to become less defensive. He will become less unconstructively preoccupied with the possibility or the actuality of his failing at the job interview and will more constructively devote himself to succeeding at it or taking other measures to improve his vocational condition if he fails at it. He will become significantly less “upset,” “disturbed,” “over reactive,” or “neurotic.”

On the cognitive level, then, rational-emotive therapy largely employs direct philosophic confrontation. The therapist actively demonstrates to the client how, every time he experiences a dysfunctional emotion or behaviour or CONSEQUENCE, at point C, it only indirectly stems from some ACTIVITY or AGENT that may be occurring (or about to occur) in his life at point A, and it much more directly results from his interpretations, philosophies, attitudes, or BELIEFS, at point B. The therapist then teaches the client how to scientifically (empirically and logically) DISPUTE these beliefs, at point D, and to persist at this DISPUTING until he consistently comes up, at point E, with a set of sensible COGNITIVE EFFECTS, cE’s, and appropriate BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS, bE’s. When he has remained, for some period of time, at point E, the individual has a radically changed philosophic attitude toward himself, toward others, and toward the world, and he is thereafter much less likely to keep convincing himself of iB’s (IRRATIONAL BELIEFS) and thereby creating iC’s (INAPPROPRIATE CONSEQUENCES) or emotional disturbances. 

Adapted from: Humanistic Psychotherapy by Albert Ellis

Dr. C. George Boeree (Psychology Department Shippensburg University) has a useful website for those interested in learning more about Personality Theories. Click here. 

Listening is the communication skill most of us use the most frequently.

Various studies stress the importance of listening as a communication skill. A typical study points out that many of us spend 70 to 80 percent of our waking hours in some form of communication. Of that time, we spend about 9 percent writing, 16 percent reading, 30 percent speaking, and 45 percent listening. Studies also confirm that most of us are poor and inefficient listeners.

Why?

Several reasons are likely.

Listening training unavailable

Even though listening is the communication skill we use most frequently, it is also the skill in which we’ve had the least training. From personal experience, we know we’ve had much more formal training in other major communication skills — writing, reading, speaking. In fact, very few persons have had any extended formal training in listening.

The same is true of informal training. It’s not difficult to find workshops and conferences that provide opportunities to improve our writing and speaking skills. But it is difficult to find similar training programs to sharpen listening skills.

Thought speed greater than speaking speed

Another reason for poor listening skills is that you and I can think faster than someone else can speak. Most of us speak at the rate of about 125 words per minute. However, we have the mental capacity to understand someone speaking at 400 words per minute (if that were possible).

This difference between speaking speed and thought speed means that when we listen to the average speaker, we’re using only 25 percent of our mental capacity. We still have 75 percent to do something else with. So, our minds will wander.

This means we need to make a real effort to listen carefully and concentrate more of our mental capacity on the listening act. If we don’t concentrate, we soon find that our minds have turned to other ideas.

We are inefficient listeners

Numerous tests confirm that we are inefficient listeners. Studies have shown that immediately after listening to a 10-minute oral presentation, the average listener has heard, understood and retained 50 percent of what was said.

Within 48 hours, that drops off another 50 percent to a final level of 25 percent efficiency.

In other words, we often comprehend and retain only one fourth of what we hear. We all want to be more than 25 percent efficient. It’s not difficult to see the many problems inefficient listeners can create for themselves and others. Poor listening causes us many personal and professional problems.

Listening skill suffers with age

Other studies indicate that our listening skill suffers as we get older. Ralph G. Nichols, long-time professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota (now retired), says in his book Are You Listening? that “if we define the good listener as one giving full attention to the speaker, first-grade children are the best listeners of all.”

Nichols describes an experiment conducted with the cooperation of Minneapolis teachers from first grade through high school. Each teacher involved was asked to interrupt classes and suddenly ask pupils “what were you thinking about?” or “what was I talking about?”

Results were discouraging but informative. The answers of first and second graders showed that more than 90 percent were listening. Percentages dropped in higher grades. In junior high school classes, only 44 percent of the students were listening. In high school classes, the average dropped to 28 percent.

Listening is hard work

Another likely reason for inefficient listening is that it’s hard work to listen intently. Have you been forced to listen intently for an extended period of time? Try to remember your feelings. You were probably physically and mentally tired after such a period of concentration.

Ten worst listening habits

Nichols has described in speeches and articles the “10 worst listening habits of American people.” He says that listening training is primarily eliminating bad habits and replacing them with good listening habits and skills.

Here are the 10 bad listening habits. You’ll recognize some that you have and that you can make an effort to correct.

1. Call the subject matter uninteresting

You go to a meeting, the chairman announces the topic or you see it on a program, and say to yourself, “Gee, how dull can it get anyhow? You’d think they could get a decent speaker on a decent subject.”

So you’ve convinced yourself the topic is uninteresting and you turn to the many other thoughts and concerns you’ve stored up in your mind for just such an occasion — you start using that unoccupied 75 percent of your mental capacity.

A good listener, on the other hand, might start at the same point but arrives at a different conclusion. The good listener says, “Gee, that sounds like a dull subject and I don’t see how it could help me in my work. But I’m here, so I guess I’ll pay attention and see what the speaker has to say. Maybe there will be something I can use.”

2. Criticize the delivery or appearance of the speaker

Many of us do this on a regular basis. We tend to mentally criticize the speaker for not speaking distinctly, for talking too softly, for reading, for not looking the audience in the eye. We often do the same thing with the speaker’s appearance. If speakers aren’t dressed as we think they should be, we probably tend not to listen closely or we may immediately classify the speaker as a liberal or conservative, a hippie or a square.

But if we concentrate on what the speaker is saying, we may begin to get the message and we may even get interested. Remember, the message is more important than the form in which it is delivered.

3. Become too stimulated

We may hear a speaker say something with which we disagree. Then we can get so concerned that our train of thought causes us to spend more time developing counter arguments so that we no longer listen to the speaker’s additional comments. We are busy formulating questions in our mind to ask the speaker, or we may be thinking of arguments that can be used to rebut the speaker. In cases like this, our listening efficiency drops to nearly zero because of over-stimulation. So, hear the speaker out before you judge him or her.

4. Listen only for facts

Too many of us listen for facts and, while we may recall some isolated facts, we miss the primary thrust or idea the speaker is trying to make. Be sure that your concern for facts doesn’t prevent you from hearing the speaker’s primary points.

5. Try to outline everything that is being said

Many speakers are so unorganized that their comments really can’t be outlined in any logical manner. It’s better to listen, in such a case, for the main point. A good listener has many systems of taking notes and selects the best one to fit a speaker.

6. Fake attention

This is probably one of the more common bad listening habits. If you’re speaking to a group and suddenly you become aware that most of your audience is sitting with chin in hand staring at you, that is a good signal that attention is being faked. Their eyes are on you but their minds are miles away. We probably have developed our own faking skills to a high point. Let’s recognize what we’re doing and eliminate faking as a poor listening habit.

7. Tolerate or create distractions

People who whisper in an audience of listeners fall into this category. Some distractions can be corrected (closing a door, turning a radio off) to improve the listening atmosphere.

8. Evade the difficult

We tend to listen to things that are easy to comprehend and avoid things that are more difficult. The principle of least effort will operate in listening if we allow it to do so.

9. Submit to emotional words

We’re all aware of the emotional impact of some words. Democrat and Republican are emotional words for some people. So are northern and southern for others. There are hundreds of examples. Don’t let emotional words get in the way of hearing what a speaker is really saying.

10. Waste thought power

Nichol’s 10th bad listening habit is the one he feels is most important. It is wasting the differential between thought speed and the speed at which most people speak.

Three ways to improve listening skill

Nichols says there are three things that you can do to help yourself stop wasting thought power and become a better listener.

One is to anticipate the speaker’s next point
If you anticipate correctly, learning has been reinforced. If you anticipate incorrectly, you wonder why and this too helps to increase attention.

Another is to identify the supporting elements a speaker uses in building points. By and large, we use only three ways to build points: We explain the point, we get emotional and harangue the point, or we illustrate the point with a factual illustration. A sophisticated listener knows this. He or she spends a little of the differential between thought speed and speaking speed to identify what is being used as point-supporting material. This becomes highly profitable in terms of listening efficiency.

A third way to improve yourself as a listener is to periodically make mental summaries as you listen. A good listener takes advantage of short pauses to summarize mentally what has been said. These periodic summaries reinforce learning tremendously.

In summary, most of us are poor listeners for a variety of reasons. We have had little training and few training opportunities exist. We think faster than others speak. Listening is hard work.

We’ve listed some ways to improve skills
to concentrate, to summarize, to avoid faking, and others. Just as important are your attitudes — be positive, concerned, sincere.

It’s a challenge to be a good listener. But good listeners get big rewards.

VIRTUALLY EVERY DAY, THE NEWS MEDIA, TELEVISION SHOWS, FILMS, AND THE INTERNET BOMBARD US WITH claims regarding a host of psychological topics: psychics, out of body experiences, recovered memories, and lie detectors, to name a few. Even a casual stroll through our neighborhood bookstore reveals dozens of self-help, relationship, recovery, and addiction books that serve up generous portions of advice for navigating life’s rocky road. Yet many popular psychology sources are rife with misconceptions. Indeed, misinformation about psychology is at least as widespread as accurate information. Self-help gurus, television talk show hosts, and self-proclaimed mental health experts routinely dispense psychological advice that is a bewildering mix of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Without a dependable tour guide for sorting out psychological myth from reality, we’re at risk for becoming lost in a jungle of “psychomythology.” 

In our new book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior, we examine in depth 50 widespread myths in popular psychology (along with approximately 250 other myths and “mini-myths”), present research evidence demonstrating that these beliefs ate fictional, explore their ramifications in popular culture and everyday life, and trace their psychological and sociological origins. Here, pace David Letterman, we present (in no particular order) our own candidates for the top 10 myths of popular psychology. 

Myth #1: We Only Use 10% of Our Brains 

Whenever those of us who study the brain venture outside the Ivory Tower to give public lectures, one of the questions we’re most likely to encounter “Is it true that we only use 10% of our brains?” The look of disappointment that usually follows when we respond, “Sorry, I’m afraid not,” suggests that the 10% myth is one of those hopeful truisms that refuses to die because it would be so nice if it were true. In one study, when asked “About what percentage of their potential brain power do you think most people use?,” a third of psychology majors answered 10%. (1) Remarkably, one survey revealed that even 6% of neuroscientists agreed with this claim! (2) The pop psychology industry has played a big role in keeping this myth alive. For example, in his book, How to be Twice as Smart, Scott Witt wrote that “If you’re like most people, you’re using only ten percent of your brainpower.” (3) 

There are several reasons to doubt that 90% of our brains lie silent. At a mere 2-3% of our body weight, our brain consumes over 20% of the oxygen we breathe. It’s implausible that evolution would have permitted the squandering of resources on a scale necessary to build and maintain such a massively underutilized organ. Moreover, losing far less than 90% of the brain to accident or disease almost always has catastrophic consequences. (4) Likewise, electrical stimulation of sites in the brain during neurosurgery has failed to uncover any “silent areas.” 

How did the 10% myth get started? One clue leads back about a century to psychologist William James, who once wrote that he doubted that average persons achieve more than about 10% of their intellectual potential. Although James talked in terms of underdeveloped potential, a slew of positive thinking gurus transformed “10% of our capacity” into “10% of our brain.” (5) In addition, in calling a huge percentage of the human brain “silent cortex,” early investigators may have fostered the mistaken impression that what scientists now call “association cortex”—which is vitally important for language and abstract thinking—had no function. In a similar vein, early researchers’ admissions that they didn’t know what 90% of the brain did probably fueled the myth that it does nothing. Finally, although one frequently hears claims that Albert Einstein once explained his own brilliance by refering to the 10% myth, there’s no evidence that he ever uttered such a statement. 

Myth #2: It’s Better to Express Anger Than to Hold It in 

If you’re like most people, you believe that releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up. In one survey, 66% of undergraduates agreed that expressing pent-up anger—sometimes called “catharsis”—is an effective means of reducing one’s risk for aggression. (6) A host of films stoke the idea that we can tame our anger by “letting off steam” or “getting things off our chest.” In the 2003 film Anger Management, after the meek hero (Adam Sandler) is falsely accused of “air rage” on a flight, a judge orders him to attend an anger management group run by Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson). At Rydell’s suggestion, Sandler’s character plays dodgeball with school-children and throws golf clubs. Dr. Rydell’s advice echoes the counsel of many self-help authors. John Lee suggested that rather than “holding in poisonous anger,” it’s better to “Punch a pillow or a punching bag.” (7) Some psychotherapies encourage clients to scream or throw balls against walls when they become angry. (8) Proponents of primal therapy, popularly called “primal scream therapy” believe that psychologically troubled adults must release the emotional pain produced by infant trauma by discharging it, often by yelling at the top of their lungs. (9) 

Yet more than 40 years of research reveals that expressing anger directly toward another person or indirectly toward an object actually turns up the heat on aggression. (10) In an early study, people who pounded nails after someone insulted them were more critical of that person. (11) Moreover, playing aggressive sports like football results in increases in aggression, (12) and playing violent videogames like Manhunt, in which participants rate bloody assassinations on a 5-point scale, is associated with heightened aggression. (13) Research suggests that expressing anger is helpful only when it’s accompanied by constructive problem-solving designed to address the source of the anger. (14) 

Why is this myth so popular? In all likelihood, people often mistakenly attribute the fact that they feel better after they express anger to catharsis, rather than to the fact that anger usually subsides on its own after awhile. (15) 

Myth #3: Low Self-Esteem Is a Major Cause of Psychological Problems 

Many popular psychologists have long maintained that low self-esteem is a prime culprit in generating unhealthy behaviors, including violence, depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. From Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking onward, self-help books proclaiming the virtues of self-esteem have become regular fixtures in bookstores. In his best-seller, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden insisted that one “cannot think of a single psychological problem—from anxiety and depression, to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation—that is not traceable to the problem of low self-esteem.” (16) 

The self-esteem movement has found its way into mainstream educational practices. Some athletic leagues award trophies to all schoolchildren to avoid making losing competitors feel inferior. (17) One elementary school in California prohibited children from playing tag because the “children weren’t feeling good about it.” (18) Moreover, the Internet is chock full of educational products intended to boost children’s self-esteem. One book, Self-Esteem Games, contains 300 activities to help children feel good about themselves, such as repeating positive affirmations emphasizing their uniqueness. (19) 

But there’s a fly in the ointment: Research shows that low self esteem isn’t strongly associated with poor mental health. In a comprehensive review, Roy Baumeister and his colleagues canvassed over 15,000 studies linking self-esteem to just about every conceivable psychological variable. They found that self-esteem is minimally related to interpersonal success, and not consistently related to alcohol or drug abuse. Moreover, they discovered that although self-esteem is positively associated with school performance, better school performance appears to contribute to high self-esteem rather than the other way around. Perhaps most surprising of all, they found that “low self-esteem is neither necessary nor sufficient for depression.” (20) 

Myth #4: Human Memory Works Like a Video Camera

Despite the sometimes all-too-obvious failings of everyday memory, surveys show that many people believe that their memories operate very much like videotape recorders. About 36% of us believe that our brains preserve perfect records of everything we’ve experienced. (21) In one survey of undergraduates, 27% agreed that memory operates like a tape recorder. (22) Even most psychotherapists agree that memories are fixed more or less permanently in the mind. (23) 

It’s true that we often recall extremely emotional events, sometimes called flashbulb memories because they seem to have a photographic quality. (24) Nevertheless, research shows that even these memories wither over time and are prone to distortions. (25) Consideran example from Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch’s study of memories regarding the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger. (26) A student at Emory University provided the first description 24 hours after the disaster, and the second account two and a half years later. 

Description 1. “I was in my religion class and some people walked in and started talking about [it]. I didn’t know any details except that it had exploded and the schoolteacher’s students had all been watching which I thought was so sad. Then after class I went to my room and watched the TV program talking about it and I got all the details from that.” 

Description 2. “When I first heard about the explosion I was sitting in my freshman dorm room with my roommate and we were watching TV. It came on a news flash and we were both totally shocked. I was really upset and I went upstairs to talk to a friend of mine and then I called my parents.” 

Clearly, there are striking discrepancies between the two memories. Neisser and Harsch found that about one-third of students’ reports contained equally large differences across the two time points. Similarly, Heike Schmolck and colleagues compared participants’ ability to recall the 1995 acquittal of former football star O. J. Simpson three days after the verdict, and after many months. (27) After 32 months, 40% of the memory reports contained “major distortions.” 

Today, there’s broad consensus among psychologists that memory isn’t reproductive—it doesn’t duplicate precisely what we’ve experienced—but reconstructive. What we recall is often a blurry mixture of accurate and inaccurate recollections, along with what jells with our beliefs and hunches. Indeed, researchers have created memories of events that never happened. In the “shopping mall study,” Elizabeth Loftus created a false memory in Chris, a 14-year-old boy. Loftus instructed Chris’s older brother to present Chris with a false story of being lost in a shopping mall at age five, and she instructed Chris to write down everything he remembered. Initially, Chris reported very little about the false event, but over a two week period, he constructed a detailed memory of it. (28) A flood of similar studies followed, showing that in 18-37% of participants, researchers can implant false memories of such events as serious animal attacks, knocking over a punchbowl at a wedding, getting one’s fingers caught in a mousetrap as a child, witnessing a demonic possession, and riding in a hot air balloon with one’s family. (29) 

Myth #5: Hypnosis Is a Unique “Trance” State Differing in Kind from Wakefulness 

Popular movies and books portray the hypnotic trance state as so powerful that otherwise normal people will commit an assassination (The Manchurian Candidate); commit suicide (The Garden Murders); perceive only a person’s internal beauty (Shallow Hal); and (our favorite) fall victim to brainwashing by alien preachers who use messages embedded in sermons (Invasion of the Space Preachers). Survey data show that public opinion resonates with these media portrayals: 77% of college students endorsed the statement that “hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, quite different from normal waking consciousness,” and 44% agreed that “A deeply hypnotized person is robot-like and goes along automatically with whatever the hypnotist suggests:” (30) 

But research shows that hypnotized people can resist and even oppose hypnotic suggestions, and won’t do things that are out of character, like harming people they dislike. (31) In addition, hypnosis bears no more than a superficial resemblance to sleep: Brain wave studies reveal that hypnotized people are wide awake. What’s more, individuals can be just as responsive to suggestions administered while they’re exercising on a stationary bicycle as they are following suggestions for sleep and relaxation. (32) In the laboratory, we can reproduce all of the phenomena that laypersons associate with hypnosis (such as hallucinations and insensitivity to pain) using suggestions alone, with no mention of hypnosis. Evidence of a distinct trance unique to hypnosis would require physiological markers of subjects’ responses to suggestions to enter a trance. Yet no consistent evidence of this sort has emerged. (33) Hypnosis appears to be only one procedure among many for increasing people’s responses to suggestions. 

Myth #6: The Polygraph Test Is an Accurate Means of Detecting Lies 

Have you ever told a lie? If you answered “no,” you’re lying. College students admit to lying in about one in every three social interactions and people in the community about one in every five interactions. (34) Not surprisingly, investigators have long sought out foolproof means of detecting falsehoods. In the 1920s, psychologist William Moulton Marston invented the first polygraph or so-called “lie detector” test, which measured systolic blood pressure to detect deception. He later created one of the first female cartoon superheroes, Wonder Woman, who could compel villains to tell the truth by ensnaring them in a magic lasso. For Marston, the polygraph was the equivalent of Wonder Woman’s lasso: an infallible detector of the truth. (35) A polygraph machine plots physiological activity—such as skin conductance, blood pressure, and respiration—on a continuously running chart. Contrary to the impression conveyed in such movies as Meet the Parents, the machine isn’t a quick fix for telling whether someone is lying, although the public’s desire for such a fix almost surely contributes to the polygraph’s popularity. In one survey of introductory psychology students, 45% believed that the polygraph “can accurately identify attempts to deceive.” (36) Yet interpreting a polygraph chart is notoriously difficult. 

For starters, there are large differences among people in their levels of physiological activity. An honest examinee who tends to sweat a lot might mistakenly appear deceptive, whereas a deceptive examinee who tends to sweat very little might mistakenly appear truthful. Moreover, as David Lykken noted, there’s no evidence for a Pinocchio response, (37) such as an emotional or physiological reaction uniquely indicative of deception. (38) If a polygraph chart shows more physiological activity when the examinee responds to questions about a crime than to irrelevant questions, at most this difference tells us that the examinee was more nervous at those moments. Yet this difference could be due to actual guilt, indignation or shock at being unjustly accused, or the realization that one’s responses to questions about the crime could lead to being fired, fined, or imprisoned. (39) Thus, polygraph tests suffer from a high rate of “false positives”—innocent people whom the test deems guilty. (40) As a consequence, the “lie detector” test is misnamed: It’s really an arousal detector. (41) Conversely, some individuals who are guilty may not experience anxiety when telling lies. For example, psychopaths are notoriously immune to fear and may be able to “beat” the test in high pressure situations, although the research evidence for this possibility is mixed. (42) 

Were he still alive, William Moulton Marston might be disappointed to learn that researchers have yet to develop the psychological equivalent of Wonder Woman’s magic lasso. For at least the foreseeable future, the promise of a perfect lie detector remains the stuff of comic book fantasy. 

Myth #7: Opposites Attract 

The notion that “opposites attract” is a standard part of our cultural landscape. Films, novels, and sitcoms overflow with stories of diametrical opposites falling passionately in love. The 2007 smash hit comedy, Knocked Up, is perhaps Hollywood’s latest installment in its seemingly never-ending parade of wildly mismatched romantic pairings. Most of us are convinced that people who are opposite from each other in their personalities, beliefs, and looks tend to be attracted to each other. Lynn McCutcheon found that 77% of undergraduates agreed that opposites attract in relationships. (43) This belief is also widespread in pockets of the Internet dating community. On one site called “Soulmatch,” Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. (described as a “relationships expert”) states that “It’s been my experience that only opposites attract because that’s the nature of reality. The great myth in our culture is that compatibility is the grounds for a relationship—actually, compatibility is grounds for boredom.” 

On the contrary, research suggests that Hendrix has gotten his myths precisely backward. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, opposites don’t attract. Dozens of studies demonstrate that people with similar personality traits are more likely to be attracted to and hang out with each other than people with dissimilar personality traits. For example, people with a Type A personality style, who are hard-driving, competitive, and time-conscious, prefer dating partners who have a Type A personality. (44) Similarity in personality traits predicts not only initial attraction, but marital stability and happiness. (45) Similarity on the personality trait of conscientiousness seems to be especially important for marital satisfaction. (46) So if you’re a hopelessly messy person, you’re best off finding someone who isn’t a total neat freak. The “like attracts like” conclusion also extends to our attitudes and values. The more similar someone’s attitudes (for example, political views) are to ours, the more we tend to like that person. (47) 

Myth #8: People with Schizophrenia Have Multiple Personalities 

A prevalent misconception is that schizophrenia is the same thing as “split personality” or “multiple personality disorder.” A popular bumper sticker, for example, reads: “I was schizophrenic once, but we’re better now.” The schizophrenia-multiple personality misconception is widespread. In one survey, 77% of introductory psychology students agreed that “a schizophrenic is someone with a split personality.” (48) The 2000 comedy film, Me, Myself, and Irene, starring Jim Carrey, features a man supposedly suffering from schizophrenia. Yet he actually suffers from a split personality, with one personality who’s mellow and another who’s aggressive. 

In fact, schizophrenia differs sharply from the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID), once called multiple personality disorder. Unlike people with schizophrenia, people with DID supposedly harbor two or more distinct “alters”—personalities or personality states—within them at the same time. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is probably the best known illustration of multiple personality in popular literature. Nevertheless, many psychologists find the assertion that DID patients possess distinct and fully formed personalities to be doubtful. (49) It’s far more likely that these patients are displaying different, but exaggerated, aspects of a single personality. 

The schizophrenia-DID myth probably stems in part from confusion in terminology. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the term “schizophrenia” meaning “split mind,” in the early 20th century, and many writers soon misinterpreted Bleuler’s definition. By schizophrenia, Bleuler meant that people suffer from a “splitting” within and between their psychological functions, especially emotion and thinking. (50) For most of us, what we feel and think at one moment corresponds to what we feel and think at the next. Yet in the severe psychotic disorder of schizophrenia, these linkages are ruptured. As Bleuler observed, people with schizophrenia don’t harbor more than one co-existing personality; they possess a single personality that’s been shattered. (51) 

Regrettably, many people in the general public don’t appreciate the fact that schizophrenia is often a profoundly disabling condition associated with a heightened risk for suicide, clinical depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, unemployment, and homelessness. As Irving Gottesman noted, “everyday misuse of the terms schizophrenia or schizophrenic to refer to the foreign policy of the United States, the stock market, or any other disconfirmation of one’s expectations does an injustice to the enormity of the public health problems and profound suffering associated with this most puzzling disorder of the human mind.” (52) 

Myth #9: Full Moons Cause Crimes and Madness 

Once every 29.53 days on average, an event of rather trivial astronomical significance But according to some writers, it’s an event of enormous psychological significance. What is it? A full moon. Over the decades, authors have linked the full moon to a host of phenomena: strange behaviors, psychiatric hospital admissions, suicides, traffic accidents, crimes, heavy drinking, dog bites, births, crisis calls to emergency rooms, violence by hockey players … the list goes on and on. (53) 

The word “lunatic” derives from the Latin term luna, or moon. Legends of werewolves and vampires—terrifying creatures that supposedly often emerged during full moons—date back at least to the ancient Greeks, and were popular in Europe during much of the Middle Ages. (54) In 19th-century England, some lawyers used a “not guilty by reason of the full moon” defense to obtain aquittal for clients for crimes committed during full moons. 

Even today, the notion that the full moon is tied to strange occurrences—the “Lunar Effect” or “Transylvania Effect”—is deeply embedded in popular culture. One study revealed that up to 81% of mental health professionals believe in the lunar effect. (55) and a study of nurses demonstrated that 69% believe that full moons are associated with an increase in patient admissions. (56) In 2007, Brighton, England instituted a policy to place more police officers on the beat during full moon nights. (57) 

Psychiatrist Arnold Lieber popularized the idea of a correlation between the full moon and behavior. (58) For Lieber, the lunar effect stems mostly from the fact that the human body is four-fifths water. Because the moon affects the tides of the earth, it is plausible that the moon would also affect the brain, which is, after all, part of the body. Yet as astronomer George Abell noted, a mosquito sitting on your arm would exert a more powerful gravitational force on your body than would the Moon. (59) Furthermore, the Moon’s tides are influenced not by its phase—that is, by how much of it is visible on earth—but by its distance from Earth. (60) Indeed, during a “new moon,” the phase at which the moon is invisible to us on earth, it exerts just as much gravitational influence as it does during a full moon. 

In 1985, two psychologists reviewed all available research evidence on the lunar effect, and found no evidence that the full moon is related to much of anything—crimes, suicides, psychiatric problems, psychiatric hospital admissions, or calls to crisis centers. (61) Later investigators examined whether the full moon is linked to suicides, (62) psychiatric hospital admissions, (63) dog bites, (64) or emergency room visits, (65) and came up empty-handed. 

What psychologists term the “fallacy of positive” instances may help to explain the persisting popularity of belief in the lunar effect. When an event confirms our hunches, we tend to take special note of it and recall it. (66) In contrast, when an event disconfirms our hunches, we tend to ignore or reinterpret it. So, when there’s a full moon and something out of the ordinary, say, a surge of admissions to our local psychiatric hospital, happens, we’re likely to remember it and tell others about it. In contrast, when there’s a full moon and nothing unusual happens, we typically overlook or discount it. In one study, psychiatric hospital nurses who believed in the lunar effect wrote more notes about patients’ strange behavior during a full moon than did nurses who didn’t believe in the lunar effect. (67) The nurses attended more to events that confirmed their hunches, which in turn probably bolstered these hunches. 

Myth #10: A Large Proportion of Criminals Successfully Use the Insanity Defense 

After giving a speech on the morning of March 30th, 1981, President Ronald Reagan emerged from the Washington Hilton hotel. Seconds later, six shots rang out. One hit a Secret Service agent, one hit a police officer, another hit the President’s press secretary James Brady, and another hit the President himself. The would-be assassin was a delusional 26 year-old man named John Hinckley, who had fallen in love from a distance with actress Jodie Foster and become convinced that by killing the President he could make Foster reciprocate his feelings for her. In 1982, following a trial featuring dueling psychiatric experts, the jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury’s decision triggered an enormous public outcry; an ABC News poll revealed that 76% of Americans objected to the verdict. 

Surveys show that most Americans believe that criminals often use the insanity defense as a loophole to escape punishment. One study revealed that the average layperson believes that the insanity defense is used in 37% of felony cases, and that this defense is successful 44% of the time. This survey also demonstrated that the average layperson believes that 26% of insanity acquittees are set free, and that these acquittees spend only about 22 months in a mental hospital following their trials. (68) Many politicians share these perceptions. One study revealed that politicians in Wyoming believed that 21% of accused felons had used the insanity defense, and that they were successful 40% of the time. (69) In 1973, President Richard Nixon made the abolition of the insanity defense the centerpiece of his effort to fight crime. 

Yet these perceptions of the insanity defense are wildly inaccurate. Data indicate that this defense is raised in less than 1% of criminal trials and that it’s successful only about 25% of the time. (70) For example, in the state of Wyoming between 1970 and 1972, a grand total of 1 (!) accused felon successfully pled insanity. Members of the general public also overestimate how many insanity acquittees are set free; the true proportion is only about 15%. Moreover, the average insanity acquittee spends between 32 and 33 months in a psychiatric hospital, considerably longer than the public estimates. In fact, criminals acquitted on the basis of an insanity verdict typically spend at least as long in an institution (such as a psychiatric hospital) as criminals who are convicted. (71) 

How did these misperceptions of the insanity defense arise? We Americans live increasingly in a “courtroom culture.” Between Court TV, CSI, Law and Order, and CNN’s Nancy Grace, we’re continually inundated with information about the legal system. Nevertheless, this information can be deceptive, because the media devotes considerably more coverage to legal cases in which the insanity defense is successful, like Hinckley’s, than to those in which it isn’t. (72) As is so often the case, the best antidote to public misperception is accurate knowledge. Lynn and Lauten McCutcheon found that a brief fact-based report on the insanity defense, compared with a news program on crime featuring this defense, produced a significant decrease in undergraduates’ misconceptions concerning this defense. (73) These findings give us cause for hope, as they suggest that it may take only a small bit of information to overcome misinformation. 

We can all be fooled by psychomythology, largely because so many popular misconceptions dovetail with our intuitive hunches. As a consequence, we must turn to scientific reasoning, which is a set of safeguards against the tendency to confirm our initial beliefs, to evaluate whether the claims of the pop psychology industry pass muster. (74) The good news is that by continually scrutizing and questioning popular psychology claims with scientific thinking and scientific evidence, we can come to a better understanding of our mental worlds and make better everyday life decisions. 

Excerpted and adapted from 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior, by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry L. Beyerstein, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 

katerz22:

- Pema Chodron, is a Buddhist nun and best-selling author.

YOU DON’T SEE ME

POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH explains how our earliest relationships set us up to fail as couples, and how standing by each other with mindfulness and equanimity can help us find not only each other but true love itself.

We come into life as a couple, in the sense of being inside someone else, and we are sustained in our earliest form by a parent–child bond. The first gaze of the newborn infant is into the eyes of its caregiver, and forever after we want to find ourselves in the eyes of someone else. Regardless of whether we know it or admit it, we are paired up. We get started in an imperfect pair and we continue to make imperfect relationships for the remainder of our lives. For these reasons and more, all couples should study the Buddha’s first noble truth—life is inherently unsatisfactory—so they know, from the start, that their relationship will be stressful and it’s not their fault. 

Consider a couple we’ll call Muriel and Kent. They sat facing one another in their first therapy meeting with me, and Muriel said, “You don’t really know me. You have ideas about who I am, but you don’t seem interested in finding out what I really think or feel. We’ve been together for ten years and I can count on one hand the times I have felt you really wanted to know my experience or point of view.” Kent shrank back in his chair and replied softly, “You always say that. I do my best. It hasn’t been easy being in a relationship with you because you have all these standards for how you want me to talk with you and what you think I should say and do with our kids. I just feel really hemmed in and unable to be myself.” 

Muriel is thirty-eight and Kent is thirty-six. They’ve been married for eight years and a couple for ten. They have two children: their six-year-old son and Muriel’s thirteen-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. They both meditate. Muriel has taken refuge as a Buddhist and belongs to a local Vipassana sangha; she attends at least one week long retreat a year and has a daily practice. Kent considers himself to be “Buddhist-oriented” but hasn’t taken refuge and doesn’t go on retreat. He watches the children while Muriel is on retreat and during the Sunday morning sittings that she attends. Both try to practice “nonviolent communication,” a skill Muriel brought into their relationship. 

Muriel is a school counselor and Kent is a carpenter. They each like their work, but Kent makes less money than Muriel and feels humiliated by having to depend on her financially. Their leisure time is out of sync because Kent’s work is seasonal and he has more free time in winter, while Muriel has more time for family life in the summer. They came for therapy because they hadn’t had sex for three years. Muriel says she doesn’t “trust Kent emotionally anymore. He just doesn’t really talk to me, seems to be angry or aloof all the time. I don’t enjoy his company.” Kent says he “feels rejected and judged by her. Everything I do spontaneously just seems to fall short. I don’t like who I am when I’m with her and I don’t think she appreciates anything about me anymore.” I can feel their passive aggression—their withholding, criticism, stonewalling, and implied contempt for one another. It’s uncomfortable to be in their presence because they seem not to like each other. What could be happening with such well-meaning, upstanding, and careful people that they have become alienated in a marriage that seemed very promising when it started? 

EMOTIONAL HABITS AND PROJECTION 

We all develop habitual emotional patterns in our earliest pair bonds (with a mother, a father, or other caregiver) that keep us from clearly knowing, seeing, feeling those experiences that threaten us emotionally. And we must surely have seen our earliest beloved—our original caregiver—in an idealized way be-cause we had to trust that person (no matter how untrustworthy she or he might have been) to relax into our own being as an infant. It’s no accident that many fairytales begin, “Once upon a time there was a King and a Queen.” From our earliest fantasies, we develop later wishes for a perfect partner, our “other half” who will see, know, and accept us unconditionally. 

As we mature through childhood and perceive some of the reality of our actual emotional circumstances, we form a psychological immune system sometimes dubbed “defenses” through which we perceive just enough reality to keep going safely, but often not enough to change our views of who we and others are. This, plus our early idealizations, causes us to form hidden emotional templates that get us into muddles and troubles later in life. 

When we pick a partner or come to know our new infant, we begin with an “idealizing projection”—assimilating the other person to our own emotional and perceptional needs, often feeling the other will somehow complete or heal us. Projection, a psychological term, simply means that we impose our own hid-den template on the ways we perceive another, especially when emotions are charged. Idealizing our beloved is a normal part of falling in love. But the other person must eventually fail to measure up to our idealization because another human being cannot be a figment of our emotional imagination. If she or he tries to be, that person sacrifices her or his development, autonomy (self-governance), or identity. Our beloved should break our heart in clarifying how she or he is different from what we hoped and prayed for. 

The broken heart of disillusionment, and the power struggles that ensue, are the first opportunity for us to truly know our beloved. Obstacles to doing so abound, however, because idealizing projections quickly morph into devaluing and fearful projections once our beloved falls off the pedestal. At that point, we begin to relate to the other person in terms of our most unhealed and wounded emotional and perceptual templates. Like Muriel and Kent, we may feel betrayed. The person whom we loved now seems to fail or reject us. As we did when we were children, we feel powerless and then we do what we can to protect ourselves, like retracting our interest and intimate contact. 

Take Kent, for example. He grew up as the younger son of a father who was a very successful architect. Unwilling or unable to express love directly, Kent’s father was distant and aloof with his children although kindly and protective. Kent admired his father’s success and apparent gentle kindness. But his father never praised Kent or seemed to see what was favourable and creative in his son. Kent suffered greatly and never felt he measured up. Now Muriel has stepped into the internal spot of Kent’s father. 

Kent shrinks away from her advice and suggestions because he feels she disapproves of him. Unconsciously, Kent feels that Muriel forces him to choose between his autonomy and her love—a double bind in which he is damned whichever way he turns. Although Kent is unaware of it, this double bind repeats what he experienced with his father. 

From Muriel’s side, she was the competent and ambitious first daughter of a mother who had drug and alcohol problems and never found a way of life that worked. Muriel’s mom was warm and affectionate, but she was irresponsible, disorganized, and often turned to Muriel for advice. Now that Kent resists Muriel’s ideas about family and communication, he has stepped into the internal role of her mother, leading Muriel to see him as irresponsible. Repeatedly she says that Kent “won’t stand up and be a father.” She tries to give him the same kind of advice that seemed to work with her mother. Because Kent is aloof now, Muriel also feels rejected (a contrast to the warmth she’d felt when she helped her mother). The most painful part for Muriel, though, is that she feels superior to Kent, as she did with her mother: she feels as though she knows and understands life, their children, and the world better than he does. This is a bitter pill for both Muriel and Kent. The projections creating the biggest obstacles for this couple are from the parents of the opposite sex of the partner, making Muriel and Kent unsuspecting of their strong tendencies. 

True love means accepting

our beloved as they are, 

and doing the same for ourselves. 

I am a Jungian analyst, a psychologist, and a couple therapist who’s written books about couples. Also, I’m a long-time practitioner of Buddhism and a meditation teacher. Carl Jung said that psychological karma is unconscious emotional patterning that is passed along the generations in families. With or without words, our emotional communications unintentionally transmit both our most painful wounds and our unlived lives to our children. We long for our children to heal us and we of-ten push them to carry out the dreams we didn’t fulfill for ourselves. As a result, there is an intergenerational transmission of relational pain in every family. 

From a Buddhist perspective, though, karma is the way our intentional acions—including our speech and some of our thoughts—create consequences in our lives. As the Buddha taught, often we cannot clearly see these consequences because they are complex and entangled. 

The emotional history of Muriel and Kent, as seen from the outside, reveals how their actions are linked to fixated unconscious mental formations, some-thing Jung called “unconscious complexes.” In Sanskrit, the word for such a fixated tendency is sanskara, which metaphorically means a deep mark or cut in a stone. These rigid motivational patterns constrain our perceptions and feelings in ways that lead to repetitive actions and ideas. From a Buddhist perspective, such patterns may carry over not just from early conditioning in this lifetime, but from a previous lifetime we do not remember. 

An intimate relationship offers innumerable opportunities to discover how an unconscious complex has captured our mind. To do so requires some fundamental skills and a vow, a setting of our intention. To truly love someone whom we have promised to love, we must vow to remain interested in them. Even in times of acute emotional pain, we promise to remain open to seeing, hearing, feeling, and knowing what is being expressed by our beloved. Although we cannot fulfill this promise perfectly, we set our intentions to be an attuned witness, accepting and forgiving him or her just as he or she is. We all want a partner who witnesses us accurately and inquires into our experience, is a companion in our daily activities, and joins our life story with a desire to know and understand us. This is what I call human love, and it rises far above our instincts for sex and survival or our de-sires to procreate. True love requires that we become mindful and accepting of our beloved, opening the door to doing the same for ourselves.

Mindfulness practice provides the foundation for love to become a true spiritual path. The ability to concentrate allows us to focus our minds even in times of emotional stress, and equanimity refines our ability to remain a friendly audience to any and all experiences. Equanimity can itself be known as love because it is the matter-of-fact, gentle acceptance of things just as they are. I often teach that relational love equals equanimity plus knowledge of the beloved. Equanimity allows us to relax and keep open, and concentration refines our ability to pay attention to our beloved’s words, needs, feelings, and gestures, and to remember them. Together, equanimity and concentration are the necessary supports for any communication or listening skills we attempt to bring to conflict resolution; without mindfulness, our skills fall apart when we are triggered into habitual reactive patterns. 

As Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein has suggested, the spiritual path of love could be nominated to be the ninth of the eightfold paths. Becoming a mindful and attuned witness to our beloved—keeping open even during emotional pain and desire to withdraw—is a worthy test of our spiritual practice. 

POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH, a Jungian psychologist and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at University of Vermont Medical College, has written fourteen hooks, including The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance. 

Article from SHAMBHALA SUN  May 2011

The need for attention

Human beings are social creatures and need social interaction, feedback, and validation of their worth. The emotionally mature person doesn’t need to go hunting for these; they gain it naturally from their daily life, especially from their work and from stable relationships. Daniel Goleman calls emotional maturity emotional intelligence, or EQ; he believes, and I agree, that EQ is a much better indicator of a person’s character and value than intelligence quotient, or IQ.

The emotionally immature person, however, has low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and consequently feels insecure; to counter these feelings of insecurity they will spend a large proportion of their lives creating situations in which they become the centre of attention. It may be that the need for attention is inversely proportional to emotional maturity, therefore anyone indulging in attention-seeking behaviours is telling you how emotionally immature they are.

Attention-seeking behaviour is surprisingly common. Being the centre of attention alleviates feelings of insecurity and inadequacy but the relief is temporary as the underlying problem remains unaddressed: low self-confidence and low self-esteem, and consequent low levels of self-worth and self-love.

Insecure and emotionally immature people often exhibit bullying behaviours, especially manipulation and deception. These are necessary in order to obtain attention which would not otherwise be forthcoming. Bullies and harassers have the emotional age of a young child and will exhibit temper tantrums, deceit, lying and manipulation to avoid exposure of their true nature and to evade accountability and sanction. This page lists some of the most common tactics bullies and manipulators employ to gain attention for themselves. An attention-seeker may exhibit several of the methods listed below.

Attention seeking methods

Attention-seeking is particularly noticeable with females so I’ve used the pronoun “she”. Males also exhibit attention-seeking behaviour. Attention seekers commonly exploit the suffering of others to gain attention for themselves. Or they may exploit their own suffering, or alleged suffering. In extreme forms, such as in Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, the attention-seeker will deliberately cause suffering to others as a means of gaining attention.

The sufferer: this might include feigning or exaggerating illness, playing on an injury, or perhaps causing or inviting injury, in extreme cases going as far as losing a limb. Severe cases may meet the diagnostic criteria for Munchausen Syndrome (also know as Factitious Disorder). The illness or injury becomes a vehicle for gaining sympathy and thus attention. The attention-seeker excels in manipulating people through their emotions, especially that of guilt. It’s very difficult not to feel sorry for someone who relates a plausible tale of suffering in a sob story or “poor me” drama.

The saviour: in attention-seeking personality disorders like Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP, also known as Factitious Disorder By Proxy) the person, usually female, creates opportunities to be centre of attention by intentionally causing harm to others and then being their saviour, by saving their life, and by being such a caring, compassionate person. Few people realise the injury was deliberate. The MSBP mother or nurse may kill several babies before suspicions are aroused. When not in saviour mode, the saviour may be resentful, perhaps even contemptuous, of the person or persons she is saving.

The rescuer: particularly common in family situations, she’s the one who will dash in and “rescue” people whenever the moment is opportune - to herself, that is. She then gains gratification from basking in the glory of her humanitarian actions. She will prey on any person suffering misfortune, infirmity, illness, injury, or anyone who has a vulnerability. The act of rescue and thus the opportunities for gaining attention can be enhanced if others are excluded from the act of rescue; this helps create a dependency relationship between the rescuer and rescued which can be exploited for further acts of rescue (and attention) later. When not in rescue mode, the rescuer may be resentful, perhaps even contemptuous, of the person she is rescuing.

The organiser: she may present herself as the one in charge, the one organising everything, the one who is reliable and dependable, the one people can always turn to. However, the objective is not to help people (this is only a means to an end) but to always be the centre of attention.

The manipulator: she may exploit family relationships, manipulating others with guilt and distorting perceptions; although she may not harm people physically, she causes everyone to suffer emotional injury. Vulnerable family members are favourite targets. A common attention-seeking ploy is to claim she is being persecuted, victimised, excluded, isolated or ignored by another family member or group, perhaps insisting she is the target of a campaign of exclusion or harassment.

The mind-poisoner: adept at poisoning peoples’ minds by manipulating their perceptions of others, especially against the current target.

The drama queen: every incident or opportunity, no matter how insignificant, is exploited, exaggerated and if necessary distorted to become an event of dramatic proportions. Everything is elevated to crisis proportions. Histrionics may be present where the person feels she is not the centre of attention but should be. Inappropriate flirtatious behaviour may also be present.

The busy bee: this individual is the busiest person in the world if her constant retelling of her life is to be believed. Everyday events which are regarded as normal by normal people take on epic proportions as everyone is invited to simultaneously admire and commiserate with this oh-so-busy person who never has a moment to herself, never has time to sit down, etc. She’s never too busy, though, to tell you how busy she is.

The feigner: when called to account and outwitted, the person instinctively uses the denial - counterattack - feigning victimhood strategy to manipulate everyone present, especially bystanders and those in authority. The most effective method of feigning victimhood is to burst into tears, for most people’s instinct is to feel sorry for them, to put their arm round them or offer them a tissue. There’s little more plausible than real tears, although as actresses know, it’s possible to turn these on at will. Feigners are adept at using crocodile tears. From years of practice, attention-seekers often give an Oscar-winning performance in this respect. Feigning victimhood is a favourite tactic of bullies and harassers to evade accountability and sanction. When accused of bullying and harassment, the person immediately turns on the water works and claims they are the one being bullied or harassed - even though there’s been no prior mention of being bullied or harassed. It’s the fact that this claim appears only after and in response to having been called to account that is revealing. Mature adults do not burst into tears when held accountable for their actions.

The false confessor: this person confesses to crimes they haven’t committed in order to gain attention from the police and the media. In some cases people have confessed to being serial killers, even though they cannot provide any substantive evidence of their crimes. Often they will confess to crimes which have just been reported in the media. Some individuals are know to the police as serial confessors. The false confessor is different from a person who make a false confession and admits to a crime of which they are accused because of emotional pressure and inappropriate interrogation tactics.

The abused: a person claims they are the victim of abuse, sexual abuse, rape etc as a way of gaining attention for themselves. Crimes like abuse and rape are difficult to prove at the best of times and their incidence is so common that it is easy to make a plausible claim as a way of gaining attention.

The online victim: this person uses Internet chat rooms and forums to allege that they’ve been the victim of rape, violence, harassment, abuse etc. The alleged crime is never reported to the authorities, for obvious reasons. The facelessness and anonymity of the Internet suits this type of attention seeker.

The victim: she may intentionally create acts of harassment against herself, eg send herself hate mail or damage her own possessions in an attempt to incriminate a fellow employee, a family member, neighbour, etc. Scheming, cunning, devious, deceptive and manipulative, she will identify her “harasser” and produce circumstantial evidence in support of her claim. She will revel in the attention she gains and use her glib charm to plausibly dismiss any suggestion that she herself may be responsible. However, a background check may reveal that this is not the first time she has had this happen to her. 

Attention seeking and narcissism

Like most personality disorders, narcissism occurs to different degrees in different people and reveals itself in many ways. Many business leaders exhibit narcissism, although when present in excess, the short-term benefits are outweighed by long-term unsustainability which can, and often does, lead to disaster.

The need for attention is paramount to the person with narcissistic personality disorder, and he or she will do anything to obtain that attention. 

Over the last two years, the fastest growing sector for calls to the UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line has been from the charity / voluntary / not-for-profit sector. In most (although not all) cases, the identified serial bully is a female whose objective is to demonstrate to the world what a wonderful, kind, caring, compassionate person she is. Bold pronouncements, a prominent position, gushing empathy, sitting on many committees for good causes, etc all feature regularly. However, staff turnover is high and morale low amongst those doing the work and interacting with clients. In each case, the relief of other people’s suffering changes from an objective and instead becomes a vehicle for gaining attention for oneself. In some situations, more money is spent on dealing with the consequences of the serial bully’s behaviour (investigations, grievance procedures, legal action, staff turnover, sickness absence etc) than is spent on clients. 

This article was by Tim Field - a pioneering world authority against bullying, until his untimely death at the age of 53. 

Please visit the anti-bullying website created by Tim Field: http://www.bullyonline.org/

Bully in Sight: How to Predict, Resist, Challenge and Combat Workplace Bullying - Overcoming the Silence and Denial by Which Abuse Thrives [Paperback] by Tim Field  can be brought from Amazon 

In the book ‘Irrationality’ (which draws on 40 years of psychological research), the late psychology professor, Stuart Sutherland gives the opinion that we are all irrational in some way or other. And rationality doesn’t come so easily to us human beings as we would like to think!

At the end of each chapter the Professor ends with a list of what he refers to as ‘morals’. 

Here is a small collection of the ‘morals’ collected from the chapters:

• Never base a judgement or decision on a single case, no matter how striking.
• In forming an impression of a person (or object) try to break your judgement down into his (or its) separate qualities without letting any strikingly good or bad qualities influence your opinion about the remainder. This may seem cold, but it is important in situations, such as interviews or medical diagnoses based on a range of symptoms, where the judgement may seriously affect the person being judged. 
• When exposed to connected material, suspend judgement until the end: try to give as much weight to the last item as the first. 
• Try to avoid obtaining information that would bias you: for example, in judging whether an article or a book should be published, remain ignorant of the author’s name until you have formed your own opinion of the work.
• Think before obeying; ask whether the command is justified.  
• Think carefully before announcing a decision publicly: you will find it harder to change. 
• Ask yourself whether you are doing something merely because others do and if so, ask whether it really furthers your own ends. 
• Don’t be impressed by advice from someone you admire unless he is an expert on the topic in question – and even if he is, remember that experts are often wrong. 
• Don’t be stampeded by the behaviour of a crowd into acts you would not commit in calmer moments. 
• Don’t fail to go to someone’s assistance because there are others present who might - or might not. 
• Recall that, ‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue … You’ll be a man, my son.’ 
• Whether you are a member of a committee or a golf club, be careful not to be carried away by the prevailing views. Consider and express counterarguments. 
• No matter how much time, effort or money you have invested in a project, cut your losses if investing more will not be beneficial. 
• If you want to stop children… from doing something, try to persuade rather than threatening them with punishment. 
• Don’t take important decisions when under stress or strong emotion. 
• Remember that every time you subdue an impulse it becomes easier to do it again. 
• Search for evidence against your own beliefs. 
• Don’t distort new evidence: consider carefully whether it could be interpreted as disconfirming your beliefs rather than supporting them. 
• Be wary of your memory: you are likely to recall whatever fits with your current views. 
• Remember that changing your mind in the light of new evidence is a sign of strength not weakness. 
• Be careful not to associate things together [just] because of your expectations or because they are unusual. 
• Consider whether an event could have causes other than the one you first think of. 
• Remember that in most circumstances it is as reasonable to reason from effect to cause as from cause to effect. 
• Don’t assume that others are like yourself. 
• Do not judge solely by appearances. If something looks more like an X than a Y, it may nevertheless be more likely to be a Y if there are many more Ys than Xs. [Bayes’ Theorem.] 
• Remember that a statement containing two or more pieces of information is always equally likely or (most often) less likely to be true than one containing only one of the pieces. 
• Guard against believing a statement is true because you know that part of it is true. 
• Always work out the expected value of a gamble before accepting it. 
• Remember that whether you save on the cost of a house or on the cost of a radio, the saving is equally valuable to you. 
• If you are making a numerical estimate and have a given starting value, remember that the correct estimate is likely to be further away from the starting value than you may at first think. 
•  To avoid disappointment, try to control your own overconfidence: think of evidence or arguments that are contrary to your beliefs. 
• Remember that insidious dangers may kill more people than dramatic dangers.
• Remember that when anything extreme happens… the next happening of the same kind is likely to be much less extreme for purely statistical reasons: it reverts to the mean.
• Suspect anyone who claims to have good intuition.