Cassandra Mae was “rejected” by right-to-die groups because she wasn’t terminally ill. (She wanted to end her life after being bitten by a brown recluse. “It was so painful I wanted to die.”) She found Exoo after a recommendation. Apparently, he’s the go-to guy for individuals who want to commit suicide but aren’t terminally ill. He was happy to help. But Mae changed her mind – after she couldn’t find anyone to look after her pet snake.

Now she’s Exoo’s assistant. However, they have different philosophies. She sees what she’s doing as a business. She charges $7,000 per person. “George sees it as a calling. There’s a big difference there. For me it’s ‘No cash, no help.’”

In response to why Mae assisted a woman with a breathing disorder in committing suicide even though “she was fine” after taking medication, Mae says, “Somebody’s got to pay the bills so you can have some water in that glass you’re drinking.”

This is just one example of the disturbing, bizarre and often unjust stories you’ll find in Jon Ronson’s newest book Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries. (Neither Exoo nor Mae has been charged with any crimes.)

Ronson is a British journalist and the author of The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare at Goats (which probably sounds familiar because it became a film starring George Clooney).

Lost at Sea is an eclectic collection of essays organized into five parts: “The Strange Things We’re Willing to Believe,” “High-Flying Lives,” “Everyday Difficulty,” “Stepping Over the Line,” and “Justice.”

Ronson begins his book with the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse, known for their over-the-top, violent and really appalling lyrics. He interviews them about their work and the revelation that they’re actually religious.

Ronson also writes about meeting Bina48, a robot commissioned by multi-millionaire Martine Rothblatt to resemble her wife. He writes about being on a cruise ship with Sylvia Browne, one of the most famous psychics who’s known for revealing the locations of missing kids to their parents. Her track record is abysmal – she’s been tragically wrong many times, as Ronson points out – and yet people flock to her.

He writes about everything from a thwarted school shooting at the North Pole to a pop star’s fascination with the extraterrestrial and trip to a UFO conference to a broadcaster’s bogus confession on live TV that he smothered his terminally ill partner.

Ronson’s patchwork of stories reveals the strange things people do and believe in. But he treats many of his subjects thoughtfully and often sympathetically. Readers might even find themselves understanding the behavior of some, while others will remain beyond belief. (I have a very hard time sympathizing with Exoo and Mae, among other individuals Ronson profiles. But I’m sure that’s not the point, anyway.)

Ronson is a skilled storyteller, which makes Lost at Sea a captivating and compelling read. He asks great questions. And his subjects seem to open up to him quite easily. It’s interesting how many people consent to talk to him – along with the sensitive information they reveal.

Ronson stays away from superficial, sensationalist headlines. His stories dig deeper. He ponders people’s motivations and choices, and tries to better understand their behavior. He investigates how other factors — such as people, technology and society — might play a role in those actions, and travels down the rabbit hole they lead to.

For instance, in the story “Who Killed Richard Cullen?,” Ronson creates 13 personas to investigate why so many credit card companies seemed to target Richard Cullen, while Ronson hadn’t received the hordes of junk mail.

Ronson’s investigation leads him to a powerful technology that profiles people and places and explains precisely why Ronson, who lives in an affluent neighborhood, won’t ever be receiving the same “Congratulations! You have been pre-approved…” mail.

At first glimpse, Lost at Sea is a hodgepodge of tales. But each narrative takes a fascinating — and sometimes shocking — look at human nature and our contemporary culture. It’s absolutely an absorbing and worthwhile read.

Contributor Joris M. Koene, an animal ecologist based in the Netherlands, cites one definition of sexual conflict as “conflict between the evolutionary interests of the two sexes” or, more simply, “what is good for one sex can be bad for the other.” Indeed, much of the book is concerned with examining why negative relationships exist.

According to contributors Charles Crawford and Catherine Salmon, humans ordinarily are cooperative in mating interactions, but can engage in exploitative and detrimental interactions, including jealousy, physical threat, coercion, intimate partner violence,  infidelity, rape, infanticide, and murder. These two experts along with the other essayists raise questions including: Does evolution help explain why men rape women? Why would human females experience orgasm? What physical and chemical adaptations help men ensure fertilization? If a child doesn’t resemble the father, will that affect his willingness to pay child support? And, did anorexia evolve as a way for women to control the timing of reproduction, since a certain amount of body fat is required for menstruation to occur? In general: What sort of hidden mechanisms are controlling our behaviors?

In humans, there are no obvious outward signs when ovulation occurs. Yet studies have shown that men and women change their behavior during a woman’s menstrual cycle. For example, when women are ovulating, they prefer more “masculine” men and they have a greater interest in having affairs. During a woman’s ovulation, men tend to become more jealous and increase the use of “mate-guarding” — all due to a seemingly hidden state.

In contrast to one politician’s recent statement that women have a mechanism to get rid of pregnancies caused by rape, in reality, one essay tells us, the risk of becoming pregnant after rape is “approximately three times higher than after consensual sexual intercourse.” Why would this be? A theory floated by the authors is that men subconsciously are able to trigger ovulation through the content of their sperm.

Some theories in the book seem impossible to prove. For example, the authors of one essay posit that oral sex was probably less prevalent before the advent of “effective methods of personal hygiene.” Aside from this cultural prejudice, they give only one bit of scientific evidence, that “genital herpes, which is of relatively recent origin, appears to be a consequence of transferring the herpes virus that causes cold sores to the genitals through the practice of oral sex.” Genital herpes is new, therefore oral sex is new? This is a weak correlation.

Most of the contributors cite the parental investment theory set forth by Robert L. Trivers in 1972. The theory is described as the state where “females are bound by their physiology to make a significantly greater and longer minimum investment in offspring production and development.” Because of this asymmetry in obligatory parental investment, females are “generally the more valuable sex, and have, in response, evolved to be more selective in their choice of mating partners.” On the other hand, males of most species “have evolved to be less intersexually discriminating and to compete more intensely with each other for access to the reproductively more valuable resources offered by females.”

Parental investment is put forth as a key theory — but a lot of sexual conflict may occur before we’re even born. Koene explains that in Soay sheep, if twins in the womb are of different sexes, “some circulating hormones from the male fetus negatively affect development of the female fetus…[which] are born with a reduced weight…have lower first-year survival, and…a lower lifetime breeding success.” And as for ensuring parenthood, Koene says that dragonflies have “impressive copulatory organs that are specialized for removing sperm from the females’ spermathecae before transferring their own sperm.” The list of competitive mechanisms in both human and non-human species goes on.

As the final essay states, “We live our lives ignorant of the majority of the agents that manipulate and deceive us. … Their manipulative powers have been perfected over eons of evolutionary time.” And, whether we realize it or not, or wish to believe it, “our spouses, our families, our friends, and our colleagues are all hidden troves of manipulative intentions and schemes.” Reading about those manipulative schemes in “The Oxford Handbook” may make you realize that you, too, are the complex product of an inescapable past.

The Oxford Handbook of Sexual Conflict in Humans
Oxford University Press, USA, January, 2012
Hardcover, 384 pages
$135

Cialdini spent three years going undercover in writing his book. He applied for various jobs and training positions in order to experience and observe real-life situations of persuasion in action. Since then the book has also been published as a textbook, titled Influence: Science and Practice. Its key ideas can be applied to politics, business, economics, and psychology.

In the book Cialdini identifies and explores the six key principles of influence and persuasion, which he lists as follows:

1. Reciprocity (people tend to return a favor)
2. Commitment and Consistency (once people have made a decision, they tend to stick with it)
3. Social proof (people tend to conform, and do what other people are doing)
4. Authority (people tend to obey authority figures, regardless of the situation)
5. Liking (people are easily persuaded by people that they like)
6. Scarcity (perceived scarcity will generate demand)

This new collection of essays was written in honor of Cialdini’s retirement from Arizona State University. In it, several authors draw upon Cialdini’s findings to discuss their own experiences of influence and persuasion, and to further some of the ideas in Cialdini’s own writing.

What becomes clear from the outset is that this book is not intended for the general public. It isn’t going to be on any bestseller lists anytime soon, and certainly shouldn’t be considered as light holiday reading. The essays herein are detailed scientific and psychological studies, and are all written as such. The collection seems to be almost an ode to Cialdini and his ideas. It will most likely be best appreciated by those who are familiar with his work, or who at least hold a fascination for social psychology and ideas of influence and persuasion.

Rewards await those who do take the time to delve deeper into each of the essays, though. Many of Cialdini’s ideas are explored through real-life anecdotes and stories, e.g., infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick’s thrilling account of how he obtained the passwords to hack into the source code of a top-secret Motorola project in 1992. Mitnick’s essay ends with some tips on how to avoid being hacked, reminding us that we should “develop methods of fending off inappropriate requests” which might be as straightforward as “refusing Facebook friend  requests from people not known personally.”

The essays’ content goes far beyond the topic of social psychology alone and touches on numerous other areas of interest, including attachment theory and group bonding. One essay in particular, titled “Social Influence on Reproductive Behavior in Humans and Other Species,” focuses on the social and cultural aspects of reproduction. It offers numerous useful insights to any mental health professionals dealing with families or multi-generational clients. Those who are familiar with the works of John Gottman, James Coan, or Sue Johnson may all be interested to learn about selective investment theory, which highlights the important motivational properties of caregiving. It has paved the way for a paradigm shift in the ways we think about altruism, group selection, social neuroscience, self-interest, and collectivist thinking:

Selective investment theory suggests that social bonds that motivate high-cost helping are instantiated in the brain and that the underlying neural and hormonal features of social bonds and their consequent effect on prosocial behavior have implications for physical health. For example, the hormonal basis of social bonds and helping behavior includes the neuropeptide oxytocin, which not only triggers helping behavior, but also has restorative physiological properties.  For example, oxytocin down-regulates hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA; stress) axis activity and lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which can be harmful to health with prolonged exposure. Oxytocin is also related to immune function as it is involved in cellular repair, storage of cell nutrients, and cellular growth. Thus, bonding and helping behaviors triggered by the bond may be good for one’s physical health. Indeed, there is a robust association between social relationships and health, such that people in close relationships are healthier and live longer than do those who are socially isolated.

There are 14 essays in this volume, each of them compelling in its own right. It’s unlikely that all of them will interest every reader, but there is doubtless much to enjoy and learn here for those who invest their time and who already hold an interest in the subject matter. Perhaps it is not the best place to start for newcomers to the topic, but for anyone already familiar with Cialdini’s ideas of influence and persuasion or the tenets of social psychology, this is certainly a fascinating read.

Six Degrees of Social Influence: Science, Application, and the Psychology of Robert Cialdini
By Douglas T. Kenrick, Noah J. Goldstein, and Sanford L. Braver, Eds.
Oxford University Press, USA: February 10, 2012
Hardcover, 208 pages
$29.99

Spanning 21 essays, the first of which Hanson wrote (as well as four others which he cowrote), Ideology, Psychology, and Law is an academic book that belongs either on a classroom desk or a library shelf. It’s not really the kind of book you bring to the beach for light reading. That said, for students and academics looking to examine the intersection of the three titular areas, Hanson’s new contribution is nothing short of a marvel.

Each of its essays is distinct, coherently argued, well written and worthy of reading. Hanson starts the book with his own essay, “Ideology, Psychology, and Law.” In it, he lays the groundwork for the remaining essays and gives some background on and context to the meaning of the three terms under discussion. He does not aim to define them, leaving that task to the essays that follow. Rather, Hanson provides the reasoning behind the book’s composition:

It should not be obvious what a volume titled Ideology, Psychology, and Law is actually about. After all, each category—ideology, psychology, and law—has numerous definitions and covers a vast domain. Furthermore, the concepts are not commonly understood as closely linked. One goal of this volume, however, is to help delineate the sizable overlap between the categories of ideology, psychology, and law and to show that the links between them are tighter and stronger than conventionally perceived.

Hanson’s other goal is to, in a sense, create a new field of study—or rather, to look at preexisting fields in new ways. He writes:

In bringing together some of the world’s most illustrious scholars in law, political science, political psychology, and social psychology, my aspiration for this book has been not only to illuminate the intersections among those disciplines but also to expand the ties between those fields in the hope of encouraging more interdisciplinary collaboration, research, and insight in the future.

Hanson is almost calling for some quasi-revolution in how we study these three fields. Human behavior is not only dynamic, but also largely misunderstood. In this way, the implications contained in Hanson’s book can result in profoundly new ways of conceiving of these disciplines. And by attempting to reorient the reader’s world and renegotiate his perception of reality, Hanson is implicitly catalyzing the evolution of our studies. Are there arguments in Ideology, Psychology, and Law that will be contested? Of course. But they are rooted in such substantive theory and testimony that it is not easy simply to dismiss them.

Moreover, Ideology, Psychology, and Law does not have one single or even several themes that abstractly bind the book together. Instead, Hanson gave his contributors free rein to write and argue as they pleased. In this way, readers will surely agree with certain arguments and disagree with others, and they will surely favor certain essays over others.

My personal favorites are the first section of Hanson’s introduction from which I quoted above, “Ideology, Psychology, and Law;” “Bias Perception and the Spiral of Conflict” by Kathleen A. Kennedy and Emily Pronin; “Backlash: The Reaction to Mind Sciences in Legal Academia” by Adam Benforado and Hanson,;and “Crowding Out Morality: How the Ideology of Self-Interest Can Be Self-Fulfilling” by Barry Schwartz.

The second section of Hanson’s introduction provides brief synopses of each essay to come. He succinctly describes the scholars’ arguments in readable, concise language. To Schwartz’s essay above—perhaps my favorite—Hanson writes:

Contrary to popular opinion and to legal theory, that is, people are not inherently self-interested. Schwartz shows that the ideological presumption that people are self-interested in law and in other institutions creates powerful, self-fulfilling expectations and situations. Schwartz further describes the problems with allowing market ideologies to govern social interactions and he examines the impact of economic thinking on legal justice.

I quote Hanson’s summary for two reasons: one, because I enjoy Schwartz’s essay and I think it is worthwhile, but two, and more important, I believe it shows the level of commitment to and investment in this book that Hanson professes. Ideology, Psychology, and Law took a long time to assemble, and though he himself did not write everything contained therein, Hanson did write a substantial amount and he did edit everything that did not bear his name. Given its timeliness, thought-provoking nature and ability to elucidate key and heavy ideas, Ideology, Psychology, and Law should without question be studied by those interested in its subjects. As well, Hanson should be commended for his staggering efforts.

Ideology, Psychology, and Law (Series in Political Psychology)
Jon Hanson, Editor; John Jost, Series Editor
Oxford University Press, USA: January 11, 2012
Hardcover, 816 pages
$110

If you’re still young, you might wonder what could possibly be better about getting older.  Lustbader gives one of the major advantages as self-acceptance.  We move from our youth where we are “trying to figure out what we are good at” to a point where we know what we’re good at and may therefore find it easier to make decisions, to learn new things, and to take risks.  Since time is limited, we may become more courageous and thus become “true to ourselves.”   In her persistently optimistic way, she even discusses the advantages of physical deterioration because as we encounter physical limitations, they “jar…us into prizing that which we can still do.”  Aging can be difficult, but Lustbader reframes the negative aspects of aging, helping the reader to view aging in a more positive way.  To those who fear aging, this is a relief.

Aging involves many losses, not just physical ones.  How does one handle the grief that comes with having lived for many years?  In the essay Loss, Lustbader states that “inside all of us is a great pool of grief that keeps enlarging as each fresh loss is added to the others….Grieving does not get easier, but we acquire the skills to bear it and the wisdom to accede to its rhythms.”  She says that we become more resilient as we age since “we become increasingly confident that we will be able to bear whatever befalls us.”  It becomes easier to go through the grieving process because we have an idea of how long it will take and we know that we will make it through.

Although Lustbader feels that many of our relationships may improve with age, her optimism doesn’t mask reality.  She gives the example of siblings who no longer speak to one another.  As she puts it, “nothing is guaranteed between siblings–neither friendliness nor allegiance.”  The process of aging can, however, heal old wounds.  Lustbader says that relationships between couples can improve because couples who’ve been together a long time learn how to “resolve their conflicts more easily and leave less of a hurt residue.”

In her essay about stories, she stresses the importance of finding the “right kind of listener”–someone who takes the time to listen and who doesn’t interrupt.  This essay might be a useful one to share with the less patient listeners in your life.  The young may not value the telling of stories, but it is so important that our stories be heard that a stranger may become the best audience.  Why is storytelling important?  If our stories are painful, telling them can help us heal.  As Lustbader puts it, “Turning an onerous event into a story changes it into something we can bear.”

One of the greatest fears we have about aging is becoming dependent on others because of lessened physical ability.  Lustbader discusses the value of learning to accept help from others.  She gives the case of a woman who was going blind, so she gave away her books to friends, keeping only a few.  Some of her friends began weekly visits where they read to her.  By sharing the books with her friends in this new way, the accommodation made for her disability brought both her friends and her new joy.

From the first essay, I kept thinking of people I wanted to give a copy of this book to.  An essay about how difficult the twenties are compared to later life would be perfect for my daughter or a young male colleague;  Lustbader’s writing about gratitude and acceptance would be valuable for my mother.  It took me longer to read the book because I found so many quotations that were applicable to my life or that of others. 

The book is not only beautifully written, but because the perspective is so useful, I found myself wanting to lead a group of senior citizens in a discussion group about the book.  Each essay could provide a focus for healthy group discussions. What would a group of seniors feel about this quotation, from the essay on giving and receiving: 

“Life improves when we attend to our interdependence… Those who do not miss a chance to make life easier for someone else wake up each day with eagerness and have less fear about their own future.”

How would a group feel about her statement that “we must move through difficulty rather than try to get around it if we wish to be strengthened by life experience”?  Does life really get better as we age?  After reading Wendy Lustbader’s book, I’m inclined to agree with her that, in many ways, the answer is “Yes.”

Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older 
by Wendy Lustbader
Hardcover: Tarcher
256 pages, $16.77

What exactly is BPD? Trying to explain it to someone who has never experienced it can be quite a daunting task. My psychiatrist describes borderline personality disorder as having an “emotional sunburn.” Imagine touching the skin of a person without a sunburn as opposed to touching the skin of someone with a horrible, blistering burn. While the person without a sunburn will be fine, the one with a sunburn will be in excruciating pain. Having BPD is like always having a bad sunburn but instead of covering my skin, it covers my emotions, making it so every negative thing I feel is magnified.

Living with BPD can be tough, especially when you go through all of your childhood not knowing exactly what is wrong with you but having the overwhelming feeling every day that you aren’t exactly normal. Now, thanks to a concrete diagnosis, I can pinpoint the areas in my life that I have always had trouble with as symptoms of my disorder.

• I am extremely sensitive. I have zero capacity to accept even criticism that is being given with good intentions. I take it as a personal attack instead of seeing it from the logical standpoint that someone is simply trying to help me out. When people make negative comments about me, I overreact. I have a bank system in my brain of disparaging comments that people have made to me throughout my life. I still remember when girls were mean to me in kindergarten. I guess you can say that I have a hard time letting go of a grudge. This extreme sensitivity made growing up in a household where yelling was common very difficult.

• I can’t process stress. Stressful jobs, stressful relationships, people fighting, large groups of people, driving in traffic are all extremely difficult for me to deal with. Holding down a job when you have zero capacity to tolerate stressful situations is a challenge, along with being a college student.
• I change my identity … a lot. Finding one’s identity is a normal part of growing up but what isn’t normal is when you don’t eventually settle into one and when you alter yours so often that it eventually begins to take a toll on your wellbeing. One day I’ll be wearing Lilly Pulitzer and pearls and playing the role of a perfect Southern belle and the next I’ll be dyeing my hair black, wearing tie dye and hemp necklaces, smoking pot and listening to The Grateful Dead. I’ve been to three different universities since I started college three years ago, and I’ve changed my major about ten times. Not knowing who you are can make choosing one thing and sticking with it an impossible feat. One day I see my future self as a journalist, the next day I see myself as a psychiatrist and the next I see myself as a housewife married to a rich executive.
• I am terrified of abandonment and will do anything to avoid it, at any cost. In college my friends all wanted to join sororities. Because of my borderline personality disorder, I perceived this as them abandoning me, when in reality they really weren’t. It’s sort of a catch-22; I fear abandonment so much that I start to act so crazy when faced with the prospect of it that it ends up driving people away.
• I am extremely impulsive. I’ve shoplifted, I’ve drank myself into a coma, I’ve abused drugs, I’ve had sex with people I probably shouldn’t have had sex with, I’ve signed leases I couldn’t afford without telling my parents, I’ve gotten five speeding tickets, I’ve gone on food binges, I’ve gone on spending sprees when I didn’t have the funds.
• I think about killing myself virtually every day. This can be a tough one to deal with. It’s hard to function when you’re constantly thinking about how you want to slit your wrists or stick your head in an oven a la Sylvia Plath. My psychiatrist refers to this urge as a wave that I have to learn how to surf, instead of drowning in.
• I have severe dissociative symptoms. For example, I’ll be driving and 20 minutes later I’ll realize that I have blacked out and have no idea where I am, which can be extremely scary. Sometimes I convince myself I’m not real, or that the world around me is not real, a phenomenon that can be very unsettling. Life constantly feels like a dream (or sometimes a nightmare) to me. Sometimes I even go as far as convincing myself I am dead and that I am in purgatory. I tend to retreat into my mind when I feel anxious or stressed.
• I’m constantly paranoid that other people are talking to me, even though I know that logically they have no reason to be. My mind also tricks me into believing that my friends hate me and that they want me to go away.
• I’m constantly bored and will do anything to fill the big black hole in my heart. I’ve learned that filling it with meaningless sex, and drugs just makes things harder.

Being a college student with BPD can be extremely challenging at times. I have to closely monitor my thoughts and actions and separate the ones that are really mine from the ones that belong to my BPD. Seeing a therapist, attending support groups, sticking to a strict regime of taking antidepressants and mood stabilizers and finding ways to reduce my anxiety such as writing have helped me learn how to manage my disorder, however, and I am confident I can graduate college and have a normal life despite the hardships that stand in my way.

Language (and literature in particular) is a mirror of our world. It captures and reflects some of the deepest human emotions. Language is one of our most carefully crafted tools, a tool that we continue to reinvent, sharpen and expand in order to better express ourselves. And, since language is designed entirely around our needs of expression, it is arguably the best way to examine human life and ultimately connect with ourselves.

To take that idea a step further, poetry, being a concentrated form of language, could prove to be one of the most beneficial forms of literature to read and analyze.

Let’s take a look:

The Journey (excerpt)
by Mary Oliver

…the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

And with that, we venture into the black hole of poetry. Now, we’re not just calling it a black hole because everyone who seems to like poetry wears black — we mean, quite frankly, that poetry is a vortex. Poetry envelops those who read beyond the Frost poems they learned in high school and keeps everyone else far, far away, in a distant orbit. But are people as far from poetry and its benefits as they think they are?

Kenneth Burke, an American literary theorist, said “stories are equipment for living.” This suggests that our language, and the stories we are able to create with it, are essential human needs, like food and shelter. We are a social species (why else would blogging be so popular?) and we relate to one another through stories, no matter the form (i.e. movies, novels, web posts or poetry). Stories are, in such cases, a social tool used to relate to one’s world.

What’s more, Professor Carol S. Pearson, PhD., and psychologist Hugh K. Marr, PhD., have discovered that people can significantly improve their lives through a process of identifying the story they are living. They outline twelve archetypal patterns that human life can emulate and have a self-test (the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator) to help people gain an objective view of the story of their life. If you are interested, check out one of their books, What Story Are You Living: A self-improvement guide for discovering and directing the unconscious influences that drive your life story. It is a detailed guide to self-awareness that demonstrates how stories can also be a tool to understanding yourself.

Unfortunately, poetry has developed “an aura of formality … that can make it seem pretentious, and irrelevant to our daily preoccupations,” says Robert Housden, author of poetry collections such as Ten Poems to Change Your Life, extraordinary poetry by some of the world’s most known poets. And exactly how can reading poetry change your life? Housden answers, “great poetry can alter the way we see ourselves. It can change the way we see the world. You may never have read a poem in your life, and yet you can pick up a volume, open it to any page, and suddenly see your own original face there…”

As you read the excerpt of the powerful Mary Oliver poem that opened this article, you most likely found yourself relating to the poet’s sense of awakening and conviction. You sympathize with the anxiety that accompanies major changes in life. If you’re interested in reading the whole poem, you can check it out here. Notice how Oliver begins the poem with the voices of others, shouting “their bad advice,” and the voice of the self rises by the end — perhaps that is a familiar story to you? By relating to the poem (and the poet) our own story comes into focus. What is it we must change in our life? Have you heard that new voice that is your own? What is it saying? And finally, the last four lines deliver what is at once inevitable and profound.

determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

What do these last lines do for you? Inspire? Convince? Instill hope? Whatever your take on it, there most likely has been a shift in your thinking. You may now, as Housden says, have changed the way you see yourself and the world.

It may be hard to believe that the mythical beast of poetry could actually grant you access to your own deepest feelings and revelations, and it does not always have to be so ponderous. Poetry is much closer than you think. It often recreates itself in the more socially acceptable form of the lyric.

“Be joyful, may your
song always be sung, may you
stay forever young”*
-Bob Dylan

In just three lines, we are reminded to keep our spirit fresh and strong — a reflection that can inform our mindfulness deeply. Poetry (or the lyric) is well-marinated language. It can seem simple while simultaneously reaching the deepest parts of human emotion, so it appeals to both your ear and your heart. The lines are brief, but still contain rhythm and a story that, judging from the song’s continued popularity, is well understood. If you enjoy lyrics, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy poetry.

Check out Poets’ Corner or poets.org. At poets.org, look at some of the poetry by Dorianne Laux, Mary Oliver and Stephen Dunn. Focus your reading on how much story they pack into a small space.

Do not underestimate how deeply the loss of our animal loved ones can affect us. Our loved one is a part of our identity. We are everything to him. We are a part of each other — even when we are apart, we are connected.

Our loved one is interwoven with the details of our daily life. She is the witness and partner in our life story. She anchors us amid the confusion and complexity of life.

Our loved one offers us extreme acceptance and loyalty. He sees parts of us that others may not see. We feel safe with him, and allow him to see deeply into our soul.

When we lose our loved one, it can uproot our life from the core of our self to the tiny details of everyday life. We can feel lost, empty, and painfully alone. We might fall into despair about the fragile nature of life, the cruel unfairness of aging and death, and the slipping away of time. Everyday life can seem wrong, off, imbalanced. Our routine has been changed. Our companion is missing at each step of our day.

There is no right or wrong way to feel. It is normal to feel fine and even relieved one moment, and collapsed with sadness and disorientation the next.

There is no time frame for how long we are focused on the loss — it may be days and it may be months. Comparisons with other types of loss, or with how other people deal with losing an animal, are not helpful.

Our grief is what it is, and other people’s grief is what it is.

There is likely to be guilt and regret. We want another chance and more time with our loved one, and we can’t have it. We also might have had to be the one to decide to let our loved one pass on, or we might have lost him or her to a tragedy. We are prone to turn our anger about our lack of control of the situation against ourselves, and get caught in repeating thoughts about how we could have been better to our pal, and given more love and attention. We want our loved one back, and feel guilt because we imagine we could have changed the course of history.

Just as our loved one offered us love and acceptance, let us be kind and accepting with ourselves about our own unique grieving processes.

When we are grieving, it is the right time to reach out for support and ask for help, even though it may be difficult to do so. Grieving is not something to try to do alone. Sometimes friends and family know how to help with grief. Sometimes they don’t, and talking with a professional is the best choice.

Support for our grief gives us the strength to honestly face the depth of feelings we have for our loved one instead of running or hiding from that truth, or being permanently broken by it. We never ‘get over it’ when we have a major loss. With support, however, we can properly honor our loved one by carrying him or her with us, in our thoughts and spirit, as we move forward in our lives.

So it may come as a surprise to find out that intelligent people are not necessarily rational people. Or, it may surprise some people to learn there is more to good thinking than intelligence. In fact, intelligence is a weak to moderate predictor of many rational thinking skills.

And in some instances, intelligence shows zero correlation with rational thinking skills.

An example of the dissociation of intelligence and rationality is seen with myside bias. Myside bias is displayed when people evaluate and gather evidence in a manner biased toward their own beliefs and opinions.

In a series of experiments Stanovich and West (2008) examined the association between cognitive ability and two cardinal critical thinking skills- avoidance of myside bias and avoidance of one-side bias. (One-side bias is demonstrated when people prefer one-sided arguments over arguments presenting multiple perspectives.)

In Experiment 1 natural myside bias was investigated in 15 different propositions. In Experiment 2 myside bias and one-side bias was studied. In Experiment 3 associations between thinking dispositions — in addition to cognitive ability — and one-side and myside bias were investigated.

In Experiment 1, the researchers concluded, there was “no evidence at a ll that myside bias effects are smaller for students of higher cognitive ability” (p. 140). The main purpose of Experiment 2 was to investigate the association of cognitive abilities with myside and one-side bias. “The results… were quite clear cut. SAT total scores displayed a nonsignificant 7.03 correlation with the degree of myside bias and a correlation of .09 with the degree of one-side bias (onebias1), which just missed significance on a twotailed test but in any case was in the unexpected direction” (p. 147).

It was also revealed that stronger beliefs usually imply heavier myside bias.

In Experiment 3 “the degree of myside bias was uncorrelated with SAT scores,” and “[t]he degree of one-side bias was uncorrelated with SAT scores” (p. 156). Myside bias was weakly correlated with thinking dispositions. One-side bias showed no correlation with thinking dispositions.

When discussing research on intelligence, we are referring to narrow theories of intelligence — those mental abilities measured by the tests mentioned above. These theories provide a scientific concept of intelligence generally symbolized as g, or “in some cases where the fluid / crystallized theory is adopted intelligence (Gf) and crystallized intelligence (Gc)” (Stanovich, 2009, p. 13).

Fluid intelligence reflects reasoning abilities (and, to a degree, processing speed) across a variety of domains, particularly novel ones. Crystallized intelligence reflects declarative knowledge acquired by acculturated learning — general knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal comprehension, etc. Mental abilities assessed by intelligence tests are important, but the assessment of a variety of important mental abilities is missed by intelligence tests.

Cognitive scientists generally identify two types of rationality: instrumental and epistemic. Instrumental rationality can be defined as adopting appropriate goals, and behaving in a manner that optimizes one’s ability to achieve goals. Epistemic rationality can be defined as holding beliefs that are in line with available evidence. This type of rationality is concerned with how well our beliefs map into the structure of the world. In order to optimize rationality one needs adequate knowledge in the domains of logic, scientific thinking, probabilistic thinking, and causal reasoning. A wide variety of cognitive skills fall within these broad domains of knowledge. Many of these skills are not assessed on IQ tests.

Keith Stanovich coined the word dysrationalia, “meaning the inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence” (Scientific American Mind, 2009, p. 34; “What Intelligence Tests Miss,” 2009, p. 18). Rationality encompasses good judgment and decision-making, and it is just as important as intelligence.

Why do we act and behave irrationally? Two broad categories contribute to this problem: a processing problem and a content problem. When choosing the cognitive strategies to apply when solving a problem we generally choose the fast, computationally inexpensive strategy. Although we have cognitive strategies that have great power, they are more computationally expensive, are slower, and require more concentration than the faster, cognitively thrifty strategies. Humans naturally default to the processing mechanisms that require less effort, even if they are less accurate. Individuals with high IQs are no less likely to be cognitive misers than those with lower IQs.

A second source of irrational thinking — content problem — can occur when we lack specific knowledge to think and behave rationally. David Perkins, Harvard cognitive scientist, refers to “mindware” as rules, strategies, and other cognitive tools that must be retrieved from memory to think rationally (Perkins, 1995; Stanovich, 2009). The absence of knowledge in areas important to rational thought creates a mindware gap. These important areas are not adequately assessed by typical intelligence tests. Mindware necessary for rational thinking is often missing from the formal education curriculum. It is not unusual for individuals to graduate from college with minimal knowledge in areas that are crucial for the development of rational thinking.

There have been a variety of tests developed to assess rational thinking skills. Utilizing tests of rationality are just as important as tests of intelligence. Rational thinking skills are learnable, and with the development of rational thinking skills we can expect better judgment and decision making in everyday life. Because of irrational thinking “physicians choose less effective medical treatments; people fail to accurately assess risks in their environment; information is misused in legal proceedings;” (Stanovich, 2009), millions of dollars are spent on government and private industry; millions and millions of dollars are spent on dietary supplements and so on.

Stanovich and colleagues recently introduced a taxonomy or irrational thinking tendencies and their relation to intelligence. As mentioned earlier, intelligence has shown a weak to moderate correlation with some rational thinking skills while nearly zero with others. Good thinking is more than intelligence; it is rationality. Intelligence tests do not adequately assess rational thinking skills.

How does one improve rational thinking skills? In a recent interview I asked the Stanovich research lab to address this question (Hale, 2010). They answered with the following: “[a] good first start is education, which readers have already started here by reading this blog entry. Having an understanding of how cognitive scientists have expanded what is meant by rationality is important, namely that rationality is about two critical things: What is true and what to do.”

References

Hale, J. (2010). Dysrationalia: Intelligent People Behaving Irrationally. Knowledge Summit. [accessed November 16, 2010]

Perkins, D. (1995). Outsmarting IQ: The emerging science of learnable intelligence. New York: Free Press.

Stanovich, K. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Stanovich, K. (2009). Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking that IQ Tests Miss. Scientific American Mind. Nov/ Dec [accessed October 4, 2010]

Stanovich, K , & West, R. (2008). On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases. Thinking and Reasoning. 2008, 14 (2), 129 – 167.

Few things, however, are as simple as a label would suggest. This becomes obvious when we look at our food choices. For example, fish, which have long been thought to be a healthy choice, are now fraught with issues related to their capture and population decline. Likewise, eating too much fish, particularly species which are larger and higher on the food chain, can result in dangerously high levels of mercury in women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Our categories quickly dissolve and lose their utility.

In relation to food, the terms “good” and “bad” typically relate to calories, fat, or carbohydrates. Foods low in these things are considered good; foods high in them are bad. Instead of looking at our food choices in a comprehensive way, we typically apply these labels and take foods out of context.

As a psychologist who specializes in eating disorders, I hear people do this all the time. For example, many of my clients believe that doughnuts are bad. They have difficulty with the idea that doughnuts are neither good nor bad, but should be considered holistically in the context of everything we eat. If we were to eat nothing but doughnuts for a week, this would certainly be unhealthy. Likewise, vegetables are not inherently or exclusively good; if we were to eat nothing but asparagus, we would deny our bodies much-needed protein and fat. (Not to mention the smell that would result.)

“Good” and “bad,” as they relate to food, typically mean more than merely “healthy” or “unhealthy.” Morality is at play: When we eat foods that are considered to be “bad,” we are breaking a moral code. In this instance I’m not referring to how animals are raised or killed, or to a food’s environmental implications (all of which, in my mind, might actually deserve to be evaluated on morality). Foods associated with immorality are those that are seen as gluttonous or otherwise sinful, based on the latest fad diet, or at least on the most current scientific information.

The terms “good” and “bad” are problematic not only because of their association with morality, but also because they imply a false, mutual exclusivity: food is either good or bad, but not both. This is clearly not the case, as we saw in the example of fish.

For some, the pairing of food and morality will seem harmless. Take, for example, Trader Joe’s line of Reduced Guilt products—everything from crackers to brownies. Although much of my paycheck goes to TJ’s (you will find me there multiple times each week), I am astounded by this name. It reflects the notion that we ought to—and do—feel guilty for eating certain “bad” goods. There are many other examples, too: the Guiltless Gourmet line, the ubiquitous references to “sinfully” good dessert, chocolate, etc. These references abound.

We have been wary of gluttony for millennia (indeed, the Bible warns of it), and nearly every culture has identified particular foods as forbidden or unfit to eat (e.g., pork in Judaism). Our modern categorization of “bad” — based on calories, fat, or carbohydrates — is not usually thought to affect our chances of getting through the pearly gates. But it does have potentially devastating consequences, partly because we can’t seem to escape the onslaught of media messages which warn us of committing such alimentary sins.

We are bombarded by falsified images of impossibly perfect bodies, and barraged with messages that, if we eat the “right” foods, the “good” foods, we will be able to look like they (the good, the anointed, the moral) do. Those who have eaten the “bad” foods are featured in the “before” shots, and once they have exercised virtue and self-restraint, they are in the “after” shots. It’s a wonder there is no halo superimposed on their new, svelte image.

I spent several hours recently in one of our local ERs. It ranks as the all-time worst experience with medical personnel of all stripes that I have ever had — and that, I assure you, is saying something.

My therapist has been increasingly concerned about my physical condition, to the point that he called a nurse friend of his to come up and look at me in the middle of our most recent session. She was sufficiently worried that they agreed a trip across the street would be in order. My therapist, G., called ahead, filled them in on my symptoms, and said we were on our way, then walked me over.

I don’t know if being accompanied by a mental health professional had anything to do with it – my guess would be a resounding yes — but I was triaged nearly before I got my butt in a seat in the waiting room and put in an “acute care” room.

Different hospitals call them different things, but the name doesn’t really matter. It’s what they’re missing that matters. Among those missing things: Cords, sharp objects, sharp edges, pictures on the wall, your clothes, keys and belongings, which disappear immediately in favor of paper scrubs or a gown where everything is visible. Generally there is a cop or three standing across the hall, peering in at you every so often.

This one also had a closed-circuit TV and no fewer than three giant red “panic buttons” for staff who might find themselves with particularly agitated patients.

After that description, I bet this won’t surprise you: It turns out that nobody paid attention to anything G.’s nurse friend or he himself said.

The first physician who saw me said, “So you came in for a fever?”

Umm, no. The fever was minor, and just the beginning. It happened to be at the top of the symptom list G. and the nurse wrote down, or it probably would have been overlooked.

The doctor continued on to ask if I had a runny nose and sore throat. Again, no – not something I would have taken up ER resources for.

So, even though what had concerned G. and the nurse had been typed into my electronic record and read over the phone to the admitting clerk before I got there, I had to try to remember it all. I have severe brain fog these days, and when I’m not feeling well anyway, I’m not exactly reliable.

I did manage to mention the meds I’m on. G. thinks perhaps there is some toxicity going on. I have no idea if there is a way to measure Abilify, which just got added to my regimen. But I know for sure Depakote and lithium can be tested for. One of the two made it onto the lab panel. One didn’t.

I was asked if I wanted to see a psychiatrist. I said yes, as the reason I’ve been seeing a therapist three times a week recently is so he can make sure I’m still breathing.

The psychiatrist told me she didn’t understand why I wanted to see her:

“I read your history and you have chronic suicidal ideation [which is untrue] and you’re bipolar and you seem fine to me.

“I mean, not that I’m trying to be dismissive or anything.”

She didn’t have to try at all. She just was.

I don’t know what part of “I spend basically 24/7 thinking about wanting to die” she didn’t comprehend. I told her that I’ve been maxing out the PHQ-9 (a quick quiz that measures the presence of depression and its severity) for weeks, and she said, “Yeah, you’ve probably got those questions memorized by now.”

Which is unfair, because while there are a couple of those forms I can fill out in my sleep (and I do), that one I take seriously. I really try to determine how I’ve been feeling — and how I’ve been feeling has led me to max it out for weeks.

But it got better. She came back a bit later and asked if I lived in an adult foster care home.

“Yes, I’m the caretaker,” I said.

“OMG, I’m so sorry,” she laughed. And then left.

Yep. You just told me five minutes ago I seemed fine to you and couldn’t benefit from some intensive therapy and a med assessment, but I seem somehow screwed up enough to be a resident of a traumatic brain injury home instead of a worker there?

The (male) nurse who was on duty had his moment in the sun too, but I’m still too frosted to talk about it. (Also, it might not quite be fit for public consumption.)

And do you know what? Nobody ever really addressed the medical issues I went there for. They sent the nurse in, four hours or so after it all started, to tell me my lithium level was low and I could go home. I didn’t even get a suggestion to follow up with my primary care doc.

My very first psychiatrist asked me if I thought it was an accident I was a communications major, because he had never met anyone so desperate to be heard.

I have struggled for a long time with my mental health. It has mightily affected my life. But it doesn’t define who I am.

Can you hear me now?

Scientists are learning amazing things about the brain, mood disorders and mental illness. Studies are proving the connections between mental health and physical well-being.

Yet many outdated attitudes remain. Millions of American adults and teen-agers still worry that if they seek care for minor or major mental health problems, they might lose their jobs, their housing or their health benefits.

Illnesses centered in the brain can range from the minor upheaval of a temporary mood disorder to a serious chronic condition such as autism or schizophrenia. The spectrum of disorders is matched only by the spectrum of people affected by mental illness: During any given year, 51 million Americans will have a mental disorder.

I know how important good mental health care can be because I personally benefited from it.

My husband and I already have shared our positive experience with family counseling after our son’s 1989 automobile accident. But when the crisis was over and all was better, I found out something many women discover at such turning points: I had been taking care of the emergency so well that I had not been taking care of myself.

I needed to talk about what I had gone through. I turned to a trusted counselor who saw that my sadness called for extra support and recommended that I be treated for depression. I am so glad I followed her advice. The conversations and treatment let me return to my old self and do a better job as a worker, wife and mother.

Depression can affect anyone at any age. A high school student named Susan told me, “Kids who are depressed or suicidal usually aren’t obvious about it. They keep smiling and don’t give any clues.” At least, her sister didn’t before she tried to take her own life.

Many older people diagnosed as depressed are responding well to anti-depressants. Rose is one. A savvy 90-year-old in Maryland, she was happily looking after herself in her own home. After the loss of a dear friend, her heart condition deteriorated, and she was placed in a nursing home. Fortunately, doctors found that Rose actually was depressed, which had led her to neglect her heart medication. After treatment, she returned to her own home.

Bill is a midlevel manager at a small company. Work became stressful. Bill’s attention span shortened. He snapped at co-workers. His blood pressure escalated; his work suffered. With the aid of an unusually enlightened employer, Bill sought help and was treated for a mood disorder. Soon his work performance was as good as ever.

In traveling around the country, I have met so many people who have been successfully treated for depression and so many more who are afraid to come forward. I hope after reading this fewer people will be afraid to get help.

We have taken steps to integrate good mental and physical health care by passing the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which helps people keep their health insurance when they change jobs, and the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act, which helps ensure that people with mental-health needs get equal treatment. And on June 7 the White House is hosting the first-ever White House Conference on Mental Health, which will explore cutting-edge programs and treatments.

We need to continue building on the best of the new connections being discovered between the mind and the body. The data are conclusive: Mental well-being helps keep you from getting physically sick.

Good preventive care that helps support emotional well-being also will save money. For example, Ernst Berndt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that the annual $44 billion cost of depression equals the cost of coronary heart disease.

But even more important for American families is the prospect of having a health care system that focuses on helping us to stay healthy in every way, rather than waiting for us to fall ill before we can seek treatment.

So let’s move our medical care into the 21st century and encourage it to look at how our minds and emotions affect our bodies and our ability to recover well from surgery and disease. Let us learn all we can from the medical experts documenting the link between mental states and physical health and then make good policies out of their findings. Let us encourage affordable counseling and medically based support groups that can stave off physical or psychological problems.

Let us explore elementary school programs that teach children how to manage their emotional development in healthy ways, thus lowering the incidence of drug addiction, suicide and violence in adolescence.

And, just as importantly, let us talk about mental health treatment in an up-front, matter-of-fact way so everyone can get care in an America where doing so is seen as it should be: no big deal.

This article was originally published on May 7, 1999.

My favorite assignment has students researching one of a selection of mental illnesses, and then writing a fiction piece from the perspective of a person with that illness. I worked with one of my students (I’ll call him Joe) on this amazing project.

I loved the idea right away. Getting young people to think deeply about mental illness, and gaining some appreciation for what it must be like, sounded so valuable. But I also wondered what students might make of this experience. Could they “get into” the head of a person with mental illness in any meaningful way?

I was also quite aware that because I don’t have a mental illness, my own capacity for understanding and relating was limited. I was excited to hopefully gain some insight, myself. But I was also worried about helping Joe treat the subject in as accurate and respectful a manner as possible.

Joe selected bipolar disorder as his topic of interest, which gave him effectively two mental states to study: mania and depression. Joe’s initial assumptions about both conditions were the predictable, common knowledge misimpressions. Joe figured that mania was like “being hyper,” and depression was like “being really sad.”

We spent a lot of time talking about depression, with me pulling from information I hoped Joe could relate to. I found this wonderful quote from a woman with chronic fatigue and depression:

Imagine you are wearing a suit of armor and the floor is a magnet.

This got Joe’s head working. It was an image both he and I could savor. We sat quietly and really felt that heavy pull of gravity. Imagine moving through life feeling that! Depression, Joe began to understand, is not simply Big Sadness.

The single best resource was Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon (I wish I could make this book assigned reading for the entire human race, so as to give everyone some inkling of the devastating seriousness of this disease). We read Solomon’s descriptions of his own depression and his vignettes from people he interviewed. Here are two that Joe and I found especially powerful:

One day last week I woke up and it was really bad. I managed to get out of bed, to walk to the kitchen, counting every step, to open the refrigerator. And then all the breakfast things were near the back of the refrigerator, and I just couldn’t reach that far. When my kids came in, I was just standing there, staring into the refrigerator. I hate being like that, being like that in front of them. (p 61)

At the pitch of my anxiety, my friend in Berkeley and I set out for a bit of exercise and we walked on and on and then I couldn’t go farther. I lay down, fully dressed in perfectly nice clothes, in the mud…For an hour I lay in that mud, feeling the water seeping through, and then my friend pretty much carried me back to the car…I felt as if my head had been encaged in Lucite, like one of those butterflies trapped forever in the thick transparency of a paperweight. (p 66)

After each reading, Joe and I would sit and let the words sink in and evoke feelings in us. We were both shaken by the experience. I could see the dawning awareness on Joe’s face. He was shocked and a little bit frightened.

And then Joe began writing.

Most of my high school and college friends who took or are taking depression meds are not shy about it. I’ve sat through multiple debates over which SSRI is the best, and every time a new friend would start taking medication, several others would pipe up with advice. I’ve had friends drag me to the pharmacy to keep them company in the prescription line, friends warn me that they’re going off their meds for awhile so I should help watch out for them, even friends tell me that I should give antidepressants a try when I was in a bad mood.

High school and college are years of mental turmoil for all of us. With the constant changes in both hormones and life responsibilities, every teenager has periods of deep despair. This near-universal stage of emotional volatility must make it difficult for psychiatrists to draw the line between a healthy level of teenage angst and a diagnosis of depression that requires medical treatment. Judging from the sheer number of people I know who started taking antidepressants at a fairly young age, it’s hard to imagine every single one of them absolutely needed to have their emotions chemically regulated.

But by diagnosing my friends so young and reinforcing those diagnoses with powerful medication, depression became part of who they are, a facet of their still-developing identities. For some of them, depression became a way to explain their commonplace teenage sadness to themselves; for some, it became an excuse for not trying harder to find things in life that would make them happier. While certainly some of them genuinely benefited from the medication and used it responsibly, not allowing it to become an unnecessary crutch, others grew to think of their antidepressants as an essential part of themselves, as something they were not even interested in removing from their lives.

I often think of something one of my close high school friends, whom we’ll call Albert, told me about his own struggles with depression. Albert has had severe emotional troubles his entire life, including many serious depressive episodes untied to traumatic life events. In many ways, he seems like a prime candidate for antidepressants, and many of our friends, seeing him in pain, encouraged him to visit a psychiatrist for a prescription. He always politely refused, until even I, who had no personal experience with depression medications, thought he was being a little ridiculous. He explained to me that even if the drugs made him happier, by messing with his brain in its natural state, they would also make him less himself. In contrast to my other friends, Albert believed that antidepressants would take away his identity.

While Albert is probably a bit overly philosophical about the issue, he has a good point. There is something disconcerting about tinkering with the brain’s chemistry in general, but especially in the case of teens, who are in the midst of their most fundamental personal developments. While there are people who end up needing to remain on antidepressants for their entire lives, it seems dangerous for teenagers to have already decided that depression and its treatments will be a permanent part of themselves. It’s wonderful that teens with serious mental health issues feel less need to hide them, but perhaps some schools have reached a level of too much acceptance.